MidFEx Kurle Memorial Lecture – Saturday February 24th, 2018 at 1pm

Dan Bussey of Seed Savers – Heirloom Apples for the Midwest Orchard

Daniel Bussey is an orchardist, horticulturist, historian, professional cider maker and former businessman, who grew up and spent most of his life in rural southern Wisconsin. Dan has taught workshops on grafting fruit trees, cider-making and other apple-related topics for more than 30 years and has grown heirloom apple varieties all of his life. He has been featured on Public Radio International’s “The Takeaway” and National Public Radio’s “Science Friday”, and has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles. This past August saw the long-awaited release of Dan’s seven volume work, “The Illustrated History of Apples in the United States and Canada” which lists over 16,000 apples that were grown in North America between 1629 and 2000. The book was a long-time project over 30 years in the making.

Dan is not only fascinated with heirloom apples and cider-making, but is a producer and grower of hard cider apples and has helped to introduce a new cider apple variety to the trade; Kronebusch Cider, with more varieties expected in the coming years. Dan has attended the Cider and Perry Academy’s advanced cider course at Cornell University and is an avid promoter of the cider beverage industry. Dan believes the essential element of craft cider making is the selection of the best variety of apples possible; those with superior flavors, aromatics and phenolic structure. Understand the apple and its myriad of flavors and everything else will follow.

Dan Bussey’s lifelong interest in raising fruit, seeking out rare, missing heirloom varieties and researching the history of apple growing in the United States and Canada is matched only by his other fascination, that of collecting and preserving horse-drawn sleighs, wagons and hearses, having assembled one of the largest collections of horse-drawn sleighs in the country along with numerous commercial wagons of all trades. Dan currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Carriage Museum of America, based in Lexington, Kentucky and is working on several upcoming publications on carriage history.

Dan now resides near Decorah, Iowa, where he is the Orchard Manager and Apple Historian for the Seed Savers Exchange, maintaining and enlarging the Historic Orchard at Heritage Farm to contain nearly 1300 apple accessions and make them available to orchardists. Dan believes that having a passion in life, whatever it might be, is the key to a satisfying life.

This event is free and open to MidFEx members and non-members.