Heirloom Garden Show coming to museum
On Aug. 26 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Garfield Farm Museum in La Fox will host the 18th annual Heirloom Garden Show that features historic varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and antique flowers. Gardeners from the Great Lakes region are invited to bring, display, offer for tasting or sell their favorite historic varieties.
More than 500 varieties of tomatoes that come with different colors, shapes, sizes, cooking characteristics, taste, and shelf life exist. With the growth of the organic and specialty foods market, demand for these different traits is on the upswing.
This is in large part because of the Seed Savers Exchange of Decorah, Iowa, that has endeavored to preserve the genetic legacy of our gardening and farming ancestors. With Seed Savers, the slow food movement, organic, and sustainable farming interests, the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, and Garfield Farm Museum's show, today's consumer is better educated and desires more choice in the varieties of fresh produce.
To portray an 1840s Illinois prairie farm, Garfield Farm constantly researches and finds sources. Often finding mention of a particular variety grown in the 1840s is easier than finding the actual plant. The Seed Savers Exchange and the Center for Historic Plants have been instrumental in providing the sources for these old varieties.
Featured at this year's show will be John Swanson from Glenview and his garlic. Joe Cimmarusti and his family with their tomato display will be in front of the museum's 1842 barn. For those who like it hot, Jimmy's Chilies from Tinley Park will be attending with his homemade chili pepper recipes. The Travis family from Spence Farm, who have their own educational downstate historic farm, will be there. Many other gardeners will also be on the museum's grounds.
Tours of the heirloom vegetable and antique flower gardens, and the inn's kitchen garden and the prairie, will also be offered.
The focal point of the museum, the 1846 brick tavern will be open for tours as the museum's volunteers share the history of the site, which once was filled with teamsters and farmers hauling their wheat to the 1840s Chicago port.
Food and refreshments will be sold by Inglenook Pantry of Geneva.
Admission to the show is $6 for adults and $2 for children under 13 years of age. For information, call (630) 584-8485 or e-mail info@garfieldfarm.org. The museum is 5 miles west of Geneva, off Route 38 on Garfield Road.
Donors and volunteers from around the country are restoring this historically intact former 1840s Illinois prairie farmstead as an 1840s working farm museum.