Tom Woods (plot #91) is the executive director of Mission Houses Museum. Knowing that he has an absolutely fascinating background, I asked him to please tell us about himself. Here is what he wrote:
"I moved to Hawaii last April, and it was a bit of a shock not to have a backyard to plant a garden. I grew up on a farm in Minnesota and have always had a home garden. I was lucky to become a co-gardener with Emmanuel Dennis for a year before getting my own plot.
"I have a Ph.D. in American Studies and am an agricultural historian and have worked in an area of the open-air museum field, called Living History Farms, for most of my career.
"I directed a living history farm in Minnesota, and then was head of all the historic sites in Minnesota for the Minnesota Historical Society, before moving to Wisconsin, where I became director of a large open-air museum called Old World Wisconsin, a place with ten 19th and early 20th-century working ethnic farmsteads.
"We farmed with horses, oxen, equipment, and plant varieties of the appropriate period. I became very involved in historic varieties of garden vegetables, crops, and breeds of animals.
"For seven years, I served as vice president of the board of Seed Savers Exchange, a national organization headquartered in Decorah, Iowa, that collects heirloom seeds and their stories. It was this organization that reawakened interest in heirloom varieties of seeds among the commercial seed companies, and it is the source for most of their seed stock. I also worked my way through college by founding a landscaping business, so gardening of all sorts is in my blood.
"That’s the short story. I am delighted to have a plot in Diamond Head Community Garden and am enjoying the neighbors I have met there."
LINKS:
Minnesota Living History Farm:
Old World Wisconsin:
Seed Savers Exchange:
http://www.seedsavers.org/ Mission Houses Museum:
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