Activating Agriculture

Join us at Greenfield Village as we revive the work of a maker of modern agriculture, Luther Burbank.

Luther Burbank Birthplace

Make Your Own Doll: 9:30am - 4:30pm
American resourcefulness starts at the stalk. Create your own fun with a doll made from corn husks.

Soil Sampling: 9:30am - 5:00pm
Test the soils of Greenfield Village to learn how to test the soil at your own home for best growing practices!

Produce a Battery: 9:30am - 5:00pm
Can potatoes power a lightbulb? How about lemons? Test produce as batteries to see just how much power the food we grow can hold!

Create Your Own Flower: 9:30am - 5:00pm
Build your own flower like Luther Burbank and his experiments on creating hybrid plants. What kind of flower will you create?

Luther Burbank Office

Join curator Debra A. Reid, The Henry Ford’s Curator of Agriculture and the Environment, as she leads several talks on the life and works of Luther Burbank.

Overview of Luther Burbank’s life and career: 10:30am & 1:30pm
General overview of Luther Burbank (1849-1926), renowned agricultural scientist and one of Henry Ford’s closest friends, starting at his birthplace in Massachusetts and moving to his California Garden Studio building.

Burbank, 1900s-1910: 11am & 2pm
Burbank, his interests and career during the first decades of the 1900s, featuring correspondence with school children in 1906 and his involvement in dedication of the Luther Burbank School in Santa Rosa, California, on Burbank’s 58th birthday (March 7, 1907). He worked out of his Burbank Garden Studio building starting in 1906.

Burbank, 1910s-1920: 11:30am & 2:30pm
Burbank and Ford during the 1910s, including publication of 15 volumes about Luther Burbank’s botanical and horticultural experiments [published by Luther Burbank Press], and Henry Ford’s gift of the first Fordson Tractor, manufactured starting in October 1917 by Henry Ford & Son, Inc., Dearborn, Michigan. Ford shipped this first tractor to Burbank for use in his California experimental plots, and then Ford replaced it with another Fordson in 1920 and acquired no. 1 for Edison Institute collections.

Burbank, death in 1926 and posthumous plant patents: 12pm & 3pm
Burbank remained active in plant research during the 1920s. After his death, his wife managed his estate, and Stark Brothers Nursery began marketing Burbank inventions. A Supreme Court decision facilitated plant patents, and several of Burbank’s inventions received patents after his death.