One Sky Farm

One Sky Farm was established in 2000 in Morgan County Indiana. The farm has protected varieties of orchid, as well as many medicinal herb species that have been grown there for 14 years. Vegetable farming has been very important to us throughout the years. One year, an old man showed up in my greenhouses with stories of a tomato that he had been growing for nearly 70 years there in the county. He claimed the tomato won many county fairs for size. Thinking not much of it, I continued growing my organic hybrids and the season ended. The next year, the same old man showed up to talk about tomatoes once again. This time he brought one with him. It was medium size, he said he had quit growing prize specimens years ago. We ate it there in the driveway, and it was very good. Firm flesh, little seeds, it really was a great tomato. A few weeks later, he returned with a pill bottle that had a paper towel with some seeds smeared on it. We chatted a bit and off he went. I learned he passed away later that year, and never having caught his name, guessed it was the name on the bottle. Realizing he had given me this tomato he had been growing for so many years, to take care of, I immediately thought "What am I supposed to do with this?" That began my journey into seed saving. We have spent years learning technique and proper practice when breeding and offering seed for sale now. We have other varieties that have started showing up, including another nice tomato named after the man who settled an 8 generation farm not far from ours. We focus our seed saving on adapting existing varieties to the varying conditions of the Midwest, and look for traits like drought tolerance, flavor, disease and insect resistance, all being carried out using organic production methods. All the seeds we offer will have been adapted to these systems. Factors such as sturdy root systems to seek out nutrients and relationships between the soil, roots, and microbes are the types of things we keep in mind as we select the plants that will make next years seed.