With the passing of Fred Hempel, and the growartisan website being "paused", am I the only one freaking out that Fred's hybrid creations, and maybe others, will no longer be available?

Nope, I feel sad too that his projects and website seem to have been put on hold. It would be great if anyone in his family had the interest to continue on. I don't know how involved they were in helping with his work. We can only hope.

Well, he had just entered into some sort of larger business arrangement (Bene Seeds) to better commercialize the Benevento family of tomatoes, which was DBA Artisan Seeds...the question is whether that is all going to fall apart now.

https://greenbeefarm.blogspot.com/2023/ ... g-for.html

I'm not sure if the timing of that post shows that he had no idea he wasn't going to be with us now, or whether it all had to do with the idea that he might not be with us now.

IMO there's no way Fred would've been seeking investment for the Benevento project two months ago if he didn't expect to be around to see it through. If he was sick and anticipated a mortal risk, he would've been transparent about his intentions to leave it in others' hands.

I do believe that his collaborators and their investors will do their best to see it through in some form.

The obit that Karen O posted from Fred’s brother stated that a memorial service was planned for sometime in December. I assume that no big decisions will be made before then.

But I’ve still been checking the Artisan Seeds site at least once a week.

I offered Benevento F1 and Maglia Rosa at this spring’s master gardener tomato seedling sale, and I was hoping to offer them again, as well as some of his other varieties. I just heard that both of these were hits with other gardeners, and I’m sad that Fred’s not around to hear that tiny bit of good news.

habitat-gardener wrote: ↑Sat Nov 25, 2023 7:24 pm a memorial service was planned for sometime in December. I assume that no big decisions will be made before then.

Respectfully, Artisan Seeds is a business, with employees, payroll to meet, rent and taxes to pay, etc. Big decisions have already been made, like "pausing" the website. I don't see the timing of any memorial services to be relevant to the survival of the business. I hate to be blunt, but small business survival is generally tenuous, and sudden loss of the principal almost always results in failure of the business.

UPDATE: I am happy to see there is a new message at the Artisan Seeds (growartisan.com) website: "This site is being revamped and we are rebranding as BENE SEEDS, in honor of our famous flagship tomato variety, The Benevento. If you wish to place seed orders, please contact us at: contact@beneseeds.com"

So a step closer to being able to order seeds for 2024. I feel better but not completely until the new site is up, and I still feel bad about Fred

For those of you who didn't see Fred's memorial today, the president of Bene Seeds (a former co-worker of Fred's from his "corporate" past) assured the listeners that Bene Seeds is alive and well, and lamented the fact that Fred wasn't going to be able to see his vision of the commercialization of Benevento come to realization.

Update--I understand the new store is supposed to be up next week, I presume the growartisan.com address will redirect to the new domain.

I received this email today - https://beneseeds.com/

It looks like some of Fred's originals are not being offered at this time (at Bene Seeds). My biggest surprise is that Green Bee F1 seems missing. Most of what is missing seems to be the OP varieties (but I presume that those varieties will still be available at other sites. I also checked the Wayback machine (at archive.org), and evidently Growartisan.com was archived many times. Note -- the Wayback Machine is a little slow loading, and also, some pictures seem to be missing. But there is a lot in those archives. And you can compare the offerings on Fred's original site and the new one.

I asked for a bunch of varieties before the new website went up, and was able to obtain them. Most of what I asked for is not on the new website.

So if you need Green Bee F1 or any of Fred’s other varieties, I encourage you to inquire. We all want this new business to succeed so that we can continue to grow these great varieties.