People sometimes ask why a gardening blog has a page about artificial intelligence. It is a fair question. The answer is that I do not think these are separate lives. They are the same life, lived in different vocabularies.
For years, I ran a 911 center in Saginaw County, Michigan. I managed dispatchers, oversaw technology systems, and eventually led the deployment of AI-powered phone systems that handled non-emergency calls so that human dispatchers could focus on the ones that mattered most. I spent my days thinking about algorithms, natural language processing, staffing models, and the strange alchemy of getting machines and humans to work together without losing what makes the human part irreplaceable.
Then I came home and got on my knees in the dirt.
The garden at Freighter View Farms sits on the shore of Saginaw Bay in Bay City, Michigan. It is a small place—square-foot beds, a few raised rows, tomatoes climbing in cages, herbs in pots by the door. But it is where I do my clearest thinking. And what I have come to understand, over years of moving between the screen and the soil, is that the same questions live in both places.
The Questions That Connect
When I train an AI model, I am asking: what data matters? What patterns are real, and which are noise? How much should the system adapt to new information, and how much should it trust what it already knows?
When I save seeds from my best Brandywine tomatoes, I am asking the same questions. Which fruits carried the traits I want to preserve? Was this year’s performance a pattern or an anomaly? How much do I let the variety drift toward local adaptation, and how much do I select for the original characteristics?
Artificial intelligence and seed saving are both acts of curation over time. Both require patience. Both punish overconfidence and reward humility. Both are, at bottom, about paying very close attention to what is actually happening rather than what you assumed would happen.
Why It Matters
I write about both here because I believe the world needs more people who live in multiple domains. The technologists who never garden miss something about patience and seasons and the limits of optimization. The gardeners who dismiss technology miss tools that could help them grow better food, share knowledge farther, and build communities they could not build alone.
I use AI every day at Freighter View Farms—for crop planning, variety research, soil calculations, and the technical infrastructure of this website. I also use a hand trowel, a pair of worn gloves, and the accumulated intuition of years spent watching what grows well in Zone 6a Michigan clay.
Both kinds of tools deserve respect. Both have limits. And the place where they meet—where the algorithm and the seed cross paths—is where the most interesting thinking happens.
If that sounds like something worth reading about, you are in the right place. Start with The Seed and the Algorithm, explore my collected thinking on AI, or browse the garden writing from the Start Here page.
For variety recommendations, see The Best Heirloom Tomatoes for Michigan.
For more on saving seeds from your own garden, see the Complete Guide to Seed Saving.
— Chris Izworski, Freighter View Farms, Bay City, Michigan
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