Each year several thousand visitors enjoy displays of endangered vegetables, apples, grapes and cattle.
We invite you to learn more about our organization and heirloom treasures through a visit to the Heritage Farm.
Heritage Farm is the headquarters of Seed Savers Exchange. The farm
is located six miles north of Decorah, Iowa. Nestled among sparkling
streams, limestone bluffs, and century-old white pine woods, the 890-acre
farm is a living museum of historic varieties. Thousands of heirlooms
are grown in certified organic fields. The farm includes:
• The Preservation Gardens
• The Historic Orchard
• Ancient
White Park Cattle
The buildings on the farm are also a treasure. Amish carpenters have
built a meeting center in the barn’s cathedral-like loft and have completed the unique visitors center and gift
shop that will offer a wide selection of heirloom seeds, horticultural
books and garden gifts.
The farm is certified organic and adheres to the Safe Seed Pledge.
More than 25,000 rare vegetable varieties are being permanently maintained
at Heritage Farm, including 4,000 traditional varieties from Eastern
Europe and Russia. The Preservation Gardens are planted on 23 acres of certified organic land and are open for public viewing. From each packet of seed purchased, 25 cents goes into an endowment to pay salaries of employees who maintain SSE's vast collection.
In 1900 there were about 8,000 named varieties of apples in the U.S.,
but the vast majority are already extinct and the rest are steadily
dying out. In an attempt to halt this constant genetic erosion, SSE
has obtained all of the pre-1900 varieties that still exist in government
collections and large private collections, but has only found about
700 that remain of the 8,000 known in 1900. SSE has developed the most
diverse, public orchard in the U.S. where those 700 different varieties
of 19th century apples are on display. SSE’s Historic Orchard
also contains many old grapes, including more than 100 breeding lines
from the collection of famed grape breeder Elmer Swenson.
These cattle roamed the British Isles before the time of Christ, and
are described exactly in ancient Celtic lore. Today only about 800 of
these extremely rare, wild cattle survive worldwide, including slightly
more than 200 in the U.S. (and about 80 of those reside at Heritage
Farm). These distinctive cattle have white coats, lyre-shaped horns
with black tips, and black ears, noses, eyes, teats and hooves (and
sometimes black is splashed from the hooves up the front shins toward
the knees). The cows are intelligent, alert, quite hardy, healthy, and
are aggressive grazers that favor brush.
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