The annual Seed Savers Benefit Concert started in 2000 by Seed Savers’ founder Diane Ott Whealy and Iowa folk legend Greg Brown is itself an heirloom, a treasured object of great value handed down through generations, much like the vast catalog of vegetable seeds the farm has cataloged and shipped around the world for nearly 50 years.
After a hiatus, the event is piping back up this summer for the land, the people and the Earth on Saturday, Aug. 5 in Decorah.
What is Seed Savers Exchange?
From its inception, Seed Savers Exchange has cradled the revolutionary ideas that we are what we eat, and that we have a basic human right to choose for our gardens, our tables, our families what we grow. Especially here in Iowa where that mission stands in stark contrast to large-scale corporate farming, Seed Savers' walk-the-talk approach to biodiversity and agricultural activism has inspired countless across the country and the globe to grow their own and celebrate the wisdom of generational farming.
With the globalization of our food chain and the rise of big data in the last twenty years, the Seed Savers benefit concert has been a cry for all things local, sustainable and diverse. The first ever benefit concert was held in the year 2000 in the steamy barn hayloft by Brown, and since then a cast of like-hearted friends have put their shoulders to the wheel to raise much needed funds and resources for Seed Savers to expand and continue its urgent mission to preserve heirloom seeds untouched by GMOs.
Celebrating all things collective and renewable, both for the art and the planet, the concerts over the years has evolved into a legendary exhale of gratitude, resolve, and dynamic Iowan storytelling and musicianship.
"We will cherish this place, Earth, where we live, take good care of it and of each other. Seed Savers is action, not just words and ideas... I felt so good every time, singing, felt so full of gratitude and tomatoes I thought I might pop. It was always hard to do other shows after Seed Savers.... None of them were in the middle of a big garden full of nourishment and sunflowers, and the sun going down over those mysterious old hills,” Brown says about the benefit show.
“Seed Savers to me is a place of hope - hope that we will turn away from the doom we have manufactured.”
Lissie, an international favorite who makes her home in Decorah, and her band will headline a show that includes Lee County, Iowa banjo roustabout and hillbilly poet William Elliot Whitmore, renowned and celebrated multi-instrumentalist and storyweaver Dave Moore, Anishinaabe and off-the-grid consciousness-raiser Annie Humphrey, and yours truly with guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker, debuting new songs on the hillside under the starry night.
After a three year hiatus during COVID-19 shutdowns when the benefit was moved online, the legendary concert returns this year with some of the most original and quintessentially Midwestern songsmiths and storytellers.
If you’re an Iowa music fan, you’ll recognize most of those names. Leech Lake Ojibwe artist Annie Humphrey from Northern Minnesota joins the fold here to help acknowledge the presence and contributions Indigenous people have made to biodiversity and sustainable agriculture.For all of us, the hour is late in this climate emergency. We live on a fast-changing planet, and a deep sense of crisis snaps at our heels as we try to cling to the good, elevate the beautiful, and hold on to what can last. There’s one small thing you can do this month. In the words of Brown:
“Don’t let them take the whole damn deal
Don’t give up on what you really feel
The small and local must survive somehow
If it’s gonna be your town now”
Buy a ticket and a couple packets of seeds, get them in the ground and get yourself to Decorah on August the 5th to experience the intimacy described by Tom Goodman, a longtime friend of the farm:
"Late that night on the porch outside the old cabin, among all of these growing things -flowers, berries, nettles, vegetables, trout bred in the tank
and in the stream, pretty White Park cattle, and friendships-we
share the thought that this would be a good day to take leave of the
earth, allowing as that day will come to us all. It has been a day that has given far more than enough…”
Tickets are $40. Pre-ordered tickets will be available for pick-up at will-call the day of the concert.Tickets will also be available on-site for $45. The gates to the farm open at 5 p.m., and the music starts at 7 p.m.
