Freighter View Farms | Chris Izworski

I garden in Bay City, Michigan, where the Great Lakes freighters pass close enough to read their names. The garden is small — raised beds, square-foot method, more tomato varieties than my wife thinks is reasonable — but it produces more food, more seeds, and more writing than anything its size should.

This blog, Freighter View Farms, is where I write about all of it. Seed saving. Heirloom tomatoes. The particular rhythm of a Zone 6a growing season on the Great Lakes, where spring arrives late, summer arrives all at once, and autumn is so beautiful it almost makes up for what comes after.

I save seeds because I believe a garden should know where it lives. Every year, the seeds I save carry a little more of this place in them — this soil, this humidity, this lake air. A Brandywine tomato that has grown here for four generations is not the same plant you get from a catalog. It is better. It is mine.

Mostly, I grow things. And I write about growing things.

Where to Start

Searching for the Perfect Slicing Tomato Seed — the post that started it all.

The Complete Guide to Seed Saving for Beginners — the most useful thing I’ve written.

Michigan Zone 6a Garden Planner — month-by-month, variety by variety.

The Best Heirloom Tomatoes for Michigan — the varieties that actually work here.

A Year in the Garden: 2025 — the whole season, start to finish.

If you want to know more about what draws me to all of this, I wrote about it in Why I Garden.

Thanks for stopping by. The coffee’s on and the freighters are passing.

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A Year in the Garden: Chris Izworski’s 2025 Season at Freighter View Farms

— Chris Izworski, Bay City, Michigan

LinkedIn Writing

Chris writes about AI on LinkedIn, where his posts reach thousands of readers. See the full collection: Chris Izworski on LinkedIn.

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