Don Tipping has been farming and offering hands on, practical workshops at Seven Seeds Farm (home of Siskiyou Seeds) since 1997. Before that he was a student at University of California at Davis where he began working on local organic farms in 1991 and meeting a wide array of luminaries in the organic, biodynamic and permaculture movement including Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Dr. Alan Kapuler, Wes Jackson, Joel Salatin, Bill & Helga Olkowski, Gary Nabham, Gary Snyder, Starhawk, Penny Livingston, Doug Gosling, Harald Hoven, Paul Mueller & Dru Rivers, and countless others. 

Seven Seeds is a small, certified organic family farm in the Siskiyou Mountains of SW Oregon that produces fruits, vegetables, seeds, flowers and herbs, while raising sheep, poultry and people. The farm has been designed to function as a self-contained, life regenerating organism with waste products being recycled and feeding other elements of the system.  Lauded as one of the best examples of a small productive Biodynamic and Permaculture farms in the northwest by many, Seven Seeds helps to mentor new farmers through internships and workshops. Don has helped train and mentor thousands of students over the past 28 years here on the farm. Specific areas of passion and expertise include:

• seed growing, plant breeding and adaptation

• permaculture design, implementation and management

• keyline system water harvesting design and management

• ecological fire-restoration forestry

• a wide gamut of homesteading skills including basketry, wood craft, natural building, cider making, wildcrafting and herbalism

• Community building and activism

Current course offerings can be viewed HERE

Schedule a Consulting Call with Don HERE

In 2009 he founded Siskiyou Seeds, a bioregional organic seed company that grows and stewards a collection of over 700 open pollinated flower, vegetable and herb seeds and is constantly breeding new varieties that we distribute nationally.  Siskiyou Seeds produces about 50% of the seed at our home farm and then sources the remainder from a network of organic seed growers throughout the PNW.

Don is active in the Seed Stewardship movement and educates regionally on seed saving through the Seed Academy, the Student Organic Seed Symposium, Seed Schools and numerous conferences.  He currently sits on the board of a new non-profit called Sanctum that is developing educational programs from Gap year students and workshops aimed at growing humans through their head, heart and hands.He is also on the board of the community development non-profit, A Greater Applegate

Other collaborations include: Top Leaf Farm (Berkeley, CA), Ecological Farming Association (Watsonville, CA), founder of Siskiyou Sustainable Cooperative (Applegate, OR), the Family Farmers Seed Cooperative, contributor/educator Our Family Farms Coalition(Ashland, OR), Organic Seed Alliance (Port Townsend, WA), OSU Extension Small Farms Program (Medford, OR), the National Heirloom Expo(Santa Rosa, CA), the Ecology Center (San Juan Capistrano, CA),  the Organicology Conference (Portland, OR), the Organic Seed Growers Conference (Corvallis, OR), and numerous other small organic farm conferences and organizations.