Photo Essay by Alice Gebura

All Photos by Alice Gebura Copyright 2022-2026 All Rights Reserved

In a valley in Decorah, Iowa, David Cavagnaro has carried on a sustainable, life–affirming farm, the Pepperfield Project, for 30 years. On two acres he he has been growing 98% of his food needs while preserving biodiversity and food quality through seed saving. The hundreds of cultivars he planted include 200 varieties of tomatoes and 45 varieties of beans. On the eve of his retirement, in 2022, I drove out to Decorah to photograph and interview this man who pioneered seed savers and self-sufficient farming back in the 1970s. At age 80, David is selling his farm. My photos are accompanied by David’s words, in his voice, as he talks about plants, farming and seed saving.

The garden at Pepperfield looking towards the house.

The Back Story

“The most important legacy for me growing up in my Italian family is that we ate together. We ate together for every meal–all of them. If we had company, we stayed at the table and more food came out and conversation got deeper and deeper.

That was part of the inspiration for founding the Pepperfield Project. I wanted to create a place based on a lifestyle where we would be growing all of these beautiful heirlooms. Where people could come and learn the second half of seed saving, which is how to grow the material and cook with the vegetables and appreciate all of the wonderful ethnic heritages that went into the development of these varieties around the world.

In 1987 I came to Decorah to be the first garden supervisor at Seed Savers Exchange. After some years I found and bought some land in the area. It was in a valley and it was all pasture. Everything you see–the vegetable gardens, the fruit trees, the flowers, the house–have all been put in over the years. The project also includes the hospital garden at Winnesheik Medical Center where I maintain a one-acre garden that yields about 2,000 pounds of food for the hospital cafeteria.”

David Cavagnaro

“Before Pepperfield I had started a farm project in California. I bought a raw piece of land, 180 acres. When I started that project we wanted a garden orchard and teaching program. I went back to every fruit tree I had ever planted or gotten fruit from and ended up with 150 fruit tree varieties and 45 types of grapes by the time I got done. I got them from abandoned homesteads and Italian family gardens that were somebody’s creation at one time. I got there after the fact. All these places were run down. They’d gone back to nature. The fruit trees had gone feral. I reconstituted them into my orchard.

For 12 years I had sunk my life into that place, all the while thinking that was my last stand. I ended up having to bail after going through a divorce and trying to go through Land Partners. Then the land ended up getting subdivided and all the terrible things happened that I didn’t want to have happen. So I had to walk away from everything that I had done.

The guy who I sold it to promised he was going to keep the garden but it didn’t happen. The whole thing was abandoned. I didn’t return to it for five years, which is nothing. In that five years everything had gone back to nature. 75% of the trees had died. The fences were broken down. The wild pigs had gotten in. The grape vines had grown over other stuff. It was the secret garden all gone downhill just like all the places I had collected the stuff from in the first place.

But guess what. I just recently got an email that said “I’m the new owner of your old place.” He wants my input because he’s reconstituting the orchard, putting it all back together and going forward with his own project.

So I have learned to just let go.

I’ve been here for 30 years and now I need to be true to my last chapter which is to devote my time to my writing which I can’t do if I’m managing all these gardens. I bought a house in town. It will be hard for me not to be living in the country surrounded by nature. There is a lot of letting go for me.”

The fence provides a trellis for growing gourds.

Tour of the Farm

“I grew three kinds of kale this year. I call most kales pot scrubbers because they’re kind of tough. Siberian is tender and delicious, it has these beautiful, easy-to-process leaves.”

Siberian Kale

“Russian Red is the most tender of all.”

Russian Red Kale

“Dinosaur kale is my favorite for the edible landscape although it’s a little harder to process. It’s beautiful for its foliage– the reptilian texture of the leaves– and color. It looks great next to this Old Timey Blue collard, an heirloom from Seed Savers.”

Dinosaur Kale

“I started with this variety of chard, Verde A Costa Bianca, from a wonderful catalog, Seeds from Italy that sells only imported Italian varieties. Swiss chard with these really wide stems is popular in my Italian family. I put the plants in the root cellar and over-wintered them. Now I have my own seed from that variety. Look at the size of these leaves! Swiss chard was the first thing I ever cooked as a child when I decided to be creative in cooking. With these big leaves I realized I could fill them with a stuffing, then fold them over and dip them in some egg batter and bread crumbs and fry them in olive oil. I just made that up. It was the first thing I ever cooked because we had these big leaves for eating. You can also cut the stems and lightly steam them, then marinate them in olive oil and vinegar.”

Verde A Costa Bianca Chard

“This is what happens to okra when you let it go to seed. They get huge. This is a wonderful heirloom variety from the deep south, Choppee, that Seed Savers carries. When I open them up you can see the row of little seeds. There’s a row like that in every pod. This one pod would be enough, but you know me–I save enough seed to plant the whole world.”

Chopee Okra

“This is a perennial fennel. I collected the seeds for this in Cinque Terra in Italy. There, in that horrible rocky soil on the terraces where they grow the grapes, there was this knee-high weed. I collected some of its seeds. It doesn’t have the big seeds like the ones in California that grow roadside. I grow it as a pollinator attractor. I grow a lot of these herbs for the scent as I walk by.”

Italian Fennel

“One of my favorite varieties of pepper, Lipstick, was developed by a friend of mine, Rob Johnston, who founded  Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Rob and I were on the Seed Savers board for many years. Rob and his partner, Janika Eckert, did all of the pepper development for Johnny’s. Lipstick won an award, has a great flavor and really beautiful color.”

“Another favorite that I grow every year is Feher Ozon Paprika sweet peppers. Although the plant is small it is reliably loaded with peppers every year. In this climate this is the one that I grow for seed and prepare for the freezer for winter to put in ratatouille and so forth. The name is Hungarian and it’s a cream color in its immature stage, turning to a bright orange-red. A true yellow pepper, such as yellow bell pepper, goes from green to bright yellow.”

“Everybody in the Midwest should grow the Feher Ozon Paprika. You won’t find any other pepper – and I’ve grown them all – that is that reliable every year. These are early and super productive. Because the plants are small they bloom early before it gets too hot. Once they set fruit, peppers need a lot of heat– but not before. Do you remember when we had that super-hot dry spell early in the season this year? When the temperature gets that hot the plants won’t set fruit and make seed. Even tomatoes won’t set fruit when it gets that hot. A lot of my peppers were only coming into bloom at the time, yet these little guys had already bloomed and set fruit. I recommend this type to everybody.”

“In this squash patch I’m growing a dozen varieties that I’m saving seed for, besides what I eat and feed to the chickens. I use a ribbon to mark the squash I’ll use as seed savers. To make seeds there has to be plant sex. The pollen from the male stamen on one flower has to move to the female stigma in another flower. Big bees will do the job, but here I hand pollinate them myself and then cover them so the bees can’t get in and cross pollinate the varieties.

A friend living in South Africa sent me the seeds for this African variety called Flat White Boer. It’s very flat – it’s like a big platter. I cut these in half and feed it to my chickens. My chickens are so spoiled I have to bake it to soften it up for them. It’s also a very good eating squash. I’ve been growing it for many, many years.”

Flat White Boer Squash

“This Chursonskaya is from Russia. I put a tag on it to mark it. So I don’t get mixed up when I harvest them, I write the name directly on the squash, copied from the tag.”

“One of my favorite winter squash for beauty is from France: Rouge Vif D’Etampes, nicknamed the Cinderella pumpkin.”

Marina di Chioggia Squash

“The tamest chickens are Penny and Cutie Pie, but even the skittish ones know their names. The window on the chicken coop stays open during the day. I close it just before dark. I go in and I put my arms around them. I put my head between them and talk sweet nothings into their ears. They love it. They snuggle up. It’s the best part of my day when I put the chickens to bed.”

Seed Saving & Food Preservation

in the winter, lemon trees grow in pots in the house.

Root Cellar

Thank you to Tess Galati for assisting with sound recording and Harry Chalmiers for assisting with lighting and camera set up.

Postscript 2026

David sold his farm and the new owners are carrying on David’s work as part of their organization, Rerooted Connections. David writes that they have advanced a magnificently created plan, in coordination with many in the neighborhood and larger community, to form a land- and nature- based small high school with an individually motivated educational philosophy. So the vision lives on.