We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jere Gettle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jere , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

From an early age, I knew I wanted to be involved in the seed business somehow. I grew up gardening with my parents and grandparents, and I especially looked forward to getting seed catalogs each year. When I got a little older, I started noticing that the old varieties — the heirloom varieties I loved so much — were disappearing from the catalogs. This really bothered me. Eventually, I joined Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization which began publishing a yearbook in 1975 where people could list the seeds they had saved and share them with others. By then my family had moved to an old homestead in southern Missouri. I was trading, sharing, and growing heirloom seeds, and soon I had too many! When I was 17, I asked my parents if I could publish a small catalog, and they said, “Sure!” So, in 1998 I put out my first catalog. It was a simple 12-page, copied publication with listings for about 70 varieties, plus illustrations my mom had drawn. We sent it to about 500 family, friends, and fellow seed savers. That first year I made enough money to publish a catalog the following year and build a little seed store on the farm.

In the beginning, it really was just a hobby. I was just pursuing my passion, and I never set out to make a lot of money. I really just wanted to do well enough to be able to travel and collect seeds, support myself, and keep growing seeds and publishing the catalog.

But then along came Y2K, when people were really worried about what would happen to all the computer systems at the turn of the millennium. People were worried about disruptions in the food system, and that’s when we saw a big upturn in seed sales.

From there, it’s just continued to grow, and Baker Creek has the largest selection of exclusively heirloom and open-pollinated varieties.

We believe these old varieties are a key to self-sufficiency, self-determination, and sustainability. Unlike modern hybrids, they were bred for flavor, nutrition, and uniqueness. They are varieties handed down in families or communities over generations. They can all be grown and shared freely, and provided they are saved correctly, they will grow true to type year after year. Unlike patented or GMO seeds, no one can own them.

The definition of an heirloom variety may vary a bit, but generally speaking it is a variety that has been in cultivation for 50 years or more. These seeds are connected to people and places. They have social and cultural significance. They are seeds with a story.

The open-pollinated varieties (sometimes called “new heirlooms) are the result of breeding (every heirloom started with a cross, after all), but this is accomplished through techniques that mimic what happens in nature, not through genetic alteration. Open-pollinated varieties are grown over successive generations until the genetics are stabilized, and like the old heirloom varieties, they can be saved, shared, and grown season after season.

I think the company grew because our work really resonated with people. People were really ready for better food. We tapped into a need. We were able to introduce heirloom varieties to a wider audience than just the seed-saving community or the small, regional seed companies offering heirloom varieties.

Jere , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. / rareseeds.com sells about 1,000 historic and open-pollinated seed varieties from around the world. We have one of the largest collections of Asian seed varieties of any U.S. company, because we think these beautiful vegetables, flowers, and herbs deserve to be more widely known and grown. They are beautiful, delicious, and nutritious.

Charitable giving is a foundational principle of our business. At Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, we focus on preserving heirloom seeds and creating a strong sense of community through gardening. A portion of our revenue supports global humanitarian, gardening, and educational projects. We’re passionate about promoting healthy eating and providing free seeds to organizations, ensuring access to nutrient-rich, sustainable food year after year.

In addition to our e-commerce platform, rareseeds.com, we publish two catalogs each year: The Whole Seed Catalog, a 532-page, value-added catalog featuring gorgeous photography, stories, seed histories, and recipes, plus detailed listings of every variety we sell. We also publish the Rare Seed Catalog, a slimmed-down, free catalog with listings of our most popular varieties. Circulation of the two catalogs is currently 1.2 million per year.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We embraced the internet early from the beginning; a web presence was such an important way of bringing awareness to our work, especially because we are based in a rural community in the Missouri Ozarks! We bought the domain name “rareseeds.com” right away and have always sold on our own site. Over the years we have continued to invest significantly in technology and digital infrastructure, because the world shops online. We now ship seeds to over 100 countries, so this really is a homegrown business with a global reach. Our site is integrated with a fulfillment management system and many other backend tools, and at the volume at which we sell, a third-party platform like Amazon or Etsy just wouldn’t work.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Like everything else at Baker Creek, our social media audience grew organically from the work we were doing and sharing. It helps that we have such a beautiful, dynamic environment at the Baker Creek farm, and a colorful cast of characters (our staff) who are deeply engaged with their work. We also like to have fun! Growing our social media following has meant experimentation, trying to keep up with best practices, pivoting away from approaches that aren’t working — and most of all, being super responsive and engaging with followers. Our best advice is: Be authentic. Be yourself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rareseeds.com/
• Instagram: @bakercreekseeds
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/rareseeds
• Twitter: @rareseeds
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/rareseedsbc

Image Credits

Please credit all images to: Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. / rareseeds.com