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Heirlooms are non-hybrid varieties introduced before 1940. This date is important because it marks the era when companies began hybridizing corn for greater yield. The protein content of corn has been declining ever since. As opposed to modern sweet corn’s “empty calories,” heirloom dent corns such as ‘McCormack’s Blue Giant’ and ‘Hickory King’ are more filling.

Dr. Jeff McCormack, who has taught courses in plant physiology and plant ecology at Middlebury College in Vermont, the University of Virginia and Sweet Briar College, started the Virginia company Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in 1983 to bring back heirloom varieties that thrive in the hot, humid Southeast (hence, the name) and to focus on genetic preservation. His interest in heirloom plants and the stories behind those plants started with a maroon-and-white-speckled seed called Jacob’s Cattle Bean, reputed to have been developed by Jacob Trout of Virginia. At a Blue Ridge Mountain seed exchange, where food, music and seeds not commercially available were shared, McCormack was introduced to the yellow potato onion, which resembles a shallot. Thoroughly impressed with this mighty perennial multiplier, whose bulbs have outstanding keeping quality, he wrote an article on them for Organic Gardening. From his research, his seed company was born.

One day in the 1980s, a trip to buy a computer proved fortuitous for McCormack when he met a woman and began telling her about his business. She said, “You ought to talk to my husband’s grandfather.” The professor did talk with Ed Martin and his grandfather, M. C. Byles, a 1930s radiator repairman from West Virginia better known as “Radiator Charlie,” the originator of the Mortgage Lifter Tomato. McCormack taped a long interview with Martin and Byles, later featured on NPR, with Martin getting his grandfather to reminisce about the way he came up with the huge tomatoes in the 1940s. Byles crossed six generations of tomatoes, including German Johnson, Beefsteak, English and Italian varieties, to produce a hefty tomato—up to 4 pounds each. He sold the plants for $1 each, a very high price for the time. Over the next six years, that tomato enabled Byles to pay off the mortgage on his house.