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:

•   Preservation Gardens
•   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 Lillian Goldman Visitors Center that offers a wide selection of heirloom seeds, horticultural books and garden gifts.

Seed Savers Exchange adheres to the Safe Seed Pledge.

Preservation Gardens

There are many thousands of heirloom garden varieties being permanently maintained at Heritage Farm. The Preservation Gardens are planted on certified organic land and are open for public viewing. From each packet of seed purchased, 25 cents goes into an endowment to help pay salaries of employees who maintain SSE's vast collection.

Historic Orchard

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 a diverse public orchard, where hundreds of 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 breederm, Elmer Swenson.

Ancient White Park Cattle

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.

heirloom seeds