Sponsored by Visit Winston-Salem
Updated 2024

Although Old Salem is just a 10-minute drive from Winston-Salem, it’s centuries away from the city’s contemporary urban center.

Visitors to the historic North Carolina town travel back more than 250 years to experience 100 of America’s most authentic and comprehensive collections of eighteenth-century restored homes, buildings, and gardens.

Vegetables from the garden are prepared according to Moravian traditions. 

More Than 250 Years of Agrarian Traditions
2016 marked Old Salem’s 250th anniversary. I explored the historic enclave when the leaves were turning, and the change of seasons echoed the transformation over the centuries from the city’s original agrarian Moravian origins to the modern Winston-Salem of today.

Back then, meals were farm-to-table before that was a thing worth noting; when the yield from Old Salem’s heirloom gardens provided–-and still does–-the staples for dishes cooked in the hearth as demonstrated in the Single Brothers’ and Miksch Houses and Gardens.

The Historic Documentation That Led to Preservation
When the Moravians, a group of Protestants from what is now the Czech Republic, founded Old Salem in 1766, it was the center of Wachovia, an area of about 100 acres. Residents kept meticulous records of their lives, interactions, and the town’s architecture and landscapes as it developed into present-day Winston-Salem. Their diaries, documents, and stories provide detailed insights into the lives of those who lived and worked in Salem throughout its history.

Composting at Old Salem.

The Moravians’ accurate documentation helped preserve roughly three-quarters of the historic town buildings, structures known for their builders’ attention to detail.

Notice the little stick figure dolls in the window.

Old Salem produces essential goods such as tools, ceramics, furniture, metals, and food as it did centuries ago. Visitors can experience how things were made in the town’s original buildings during demonstrations utilizing traditional 18th and 19th-century practices.

Ticks inscribed in wood beams were used to keep track of the pieces used during construction.

Traditional Methods of Baking
When I visited the Winkler Bakery, the hearty scent of fresh baking loaves wafted in the air as Brother Jeffrey kneaded and baked Vedalia Sweet Onion bread in the same traditional wood-burning dome oven used over 250 years ago.

Brother Jeffrey poses with his just-baked Moravian sugar cakes: a blend of brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter.

Brother Christian Winkler bought the bakery in 1807. In 1827, Winkler’s second son, William, took over the family business, after which he and future generations of Winklers lived and worked in the bakery until 1926.

Butter is about to be added to the dish.

The Birthplace of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts
I stumbled on a plaque commemorating the 1937 origin of Krispy Kreme doughnuts in Old Salem. The town’s baking traditions continued well into the 20th century and beyond when Vernon Rudolph began baking and selling his doughnuts to local grocery stores before expanding the brand nationwide. Like many residents who arrived in Salem, Rudolph’s doughnut was an immigrant; the baker had purchased his secret yeast-raised doughnut recipe from a French chef in New Orleans, the birthplace of the beignet.

The Single Brothers
Just as it sounds, unmarried men were called single brothers, and they all lived, worshiped, ate, and often worked together in the Single Brothers’ House.

The Single Brothers operated a plantation and garden and ran a brewery, distillery, tannery, and slaughterhouse. Some were master craftspeople of trades, including joinery, tailoring, pottery, and the dying of yarns and fabrics, which they conducted in a workshop building behind the house.

Early Water Systems and Indoor Plumbing
Old Salem had one of the earliest piped water systems. Wooden pipes fastened with iron collars transported spring water via gravity from northwest Salem into cisterns and wells throughout the town. Water was piped into the town’s homes where the kitchens had running water. The Moravians also employed rainwater cisterns and dug wells on individual properties. No wonder George Washington visited in 1791 to collect and bring back such ideas to Mt.Vernon.

Roof tiles were made in the pottery workshop.

The Tavern in Old Salem
Part of my peek into Moravian history included lunch at the Tavern in Old Salem, whose seasonal menu replicates original recipes with ingredients harvested a stone’s throw from the kitchen. Constructed in 1816 as an annex to the original 1784 Tavern, current owners Rick and Lori Keiper and their sons Jared and Jordan serve dishes inspired by 19th-century Moravian family cooking but with a contemporary twist.

Grilled Peach, Candy Pecan & Goat Cheese Salad

The Keiper family uses herbs freshly picked from Old Salem’s gardens to flavor dishes such as the Tavern’s famous Moravian Chicken Pie and its grilled peach salad drizzled with house fig vinaigrette.

Tavern’s Moravian Chicken Pie

I’m not a chicken pie fan, having been forced as a child to sit at the dinner table until I consumed the frozen Swanson’s pot pie my mother served when my parents were going out (I would never finish it.) I changed my mind when I sampled the Tavern’s savory combination of chicken blended with mashed red-skin potatoes and green beans submerged in a light chicken gravy. This Moravian version of chicken pie was delicious and bore no resemblance to the pre-packaged ones of my youth. 

 Lori’s Bourbon-Pecan Pie, photo via Tavern at Old Salem.

It was a three-pie day at the Tavern. After the chicken pie, I was lured into sampling the Heirloom Tomato and Goat Cheese Pie. Less a pie than a layered lasagne-like dish with a tad of crust, the tasty third course was a delicious segue into a conversation about how the Moravians once believed, as others did in those days, that tomatoes were poisonous. Read on because I’ll tell that tale later.

In the same type of dome oven found in the village’s Winkler’s Bakery, mom and pastry chef Lori bakes all the Tavern’s muffins, desserts, and the chicken pie crust, adding just a hint of cornmeal. After indulging in Lori’s Bourbon-Pecan Pie and Apple Cranberry Crisp, I was thankful for my stretch pants and a long walk back more than 250 years. Next stop: Winston-Salem’s earliest Moravian settlement.

Found citrus art, Bethabara garden.

Maintaining Centuries-Old Gardening Traditions in Historic Bethabara 
Bethabara’s—meaning “house of passage”—is the country’s oldest and only reconstructed half-acre colonial community garden. The gardens offer a modern-day glimpse into how the Moravian people cultivated crops and herbs centuries ago.

Back forty of the Bethabara community garden.

No Tomatoes and Corn In This Garden
Gardeners renting plots today must follow Moravian traditions, growing only those vegetables from an approved list and planting them diagonally across the garden’s rectangular beds. Tomatoes and corn are missing from the vegetables planted there because the Moravians, like many others in the 18th century, believed tomatoes were poisonous and corn was considered suitable only for animal feed.

The garden’s Monarch Butterfly Way Station.

Hortus Medicus: America’s Oldest Known Medicinal Garden
Had a Moravian individual consumed a “poisonous” tomato, the physicians would have likely treated the patient with herbs harvested from the pharmacy of that era, the medicinal garden, or Hortus Medicus. Rescued from abandonment in 2003 by local Master Gardeners, the garden was recreated according to Brother Christian Gottlieb Reuter’s 1761 map of the Hortus Medicus.

America’s oldest known medicinal garden, Hortus Medicus, was planted in 1753 by the first physician for the new Moravian community, the tall blond Brother Hans Martin Kalberlahn, known then as “the Angel of Healing.” The garden quickly became the area’s regional “medical center.” After Brother Kalberlahn’s death from typhus in 1760, Brother Johann Augustus Shubert planted the garden as it appears today.

 Adonis annua, aka Blooddrops was used as a cardiac stimulant.

The medicinal garden continues to function not as a pharmacy but as a living history demonstration and seed source. Some of the garden’s plants contain active chemicals with significant medicinal value and are part of our modern pharmacopeia, while others can be toxic and even fatal.

Dispensing these plants required knowledge and care. According to Victoria Fulton, Historic Bethabara’s Park Director who walked me through the garden, adonis annua, aka Blooddrops, contains adonidin and was used as a cardiac stimulant. Ten times more powerful than the standard modern heart drug digitalis, it can also be a potent cardiac poison.

To-may-toes, To-mah-toes…
Back to the previously-believed-to-be poisonous tomato: Was it because tomato leaves closely resemble deadly nightshade, part of the Solanaceae family of plants? Or perhaps because the fruit’s early nickname was “poison apple,” and as K. Annabelle Smith wrote in Smithsonian.com, “…it was thought that aristocrats got sick and died after eating them, but the truth of the matter was that wealthy Europeans used pewter plates, which were high in lead content. Because tomatoes are so high in acidity, when placed on this particular tableware, the fruit would leach lead from the plate, resulting in many deaths from lead poisoning. No one made this connection between plate and poison at the time; the tomato was picked as the culprit.” At the time, the Moravians still had a poisonous tomato mindset.

For more on the tomato and other quirky fruit and vegetable history and factoids, check out Evelyne Bloch-Dano ‘s book Vegetables: A Biography, where the author takes readers on a fascinating tour through the history of vegetables, drawing on art, literature, language, geography, genetics, and horticulture to create colorful narratives of some common plants.

Preserving Old Salem’s Agricultural Heritage
Today, Old Salem’s resident gardeners employ sustainable practices in and out of the garden to preserve the town’s historical roots. Locals provide heirloom seeds, some passed down through generations, to a seed collection initiative, “Seeds with Stories,” for chronicling and planting.

The Old Salem Horticulture Program’s seed bank collection includes the seeds of over 45 heirloom vegetables, herbs, and flowers cultivated in the Salem area before 1850. With practices like these, Old Salem can preserve and bring back to life its rich horticultural history by sharing the seed’s ancestry and the stories of the Moravian families who first grew them.

The horticulture staff collects and saves seeds for future use from plants that have gone to seed and also shares them with the Seed Savers Exchange, an organization that preserves heirloom plant varieties through regeneration, distribution, and seed exchange.

Beyond preserving Old Salem’s agricultural heritage and much of its history, the seed bank also rescues important varieties from extinction. By keeping its diverse seed stocks, the horticultural program also helps maintain the genetic diversity essential for the future of our food supply.

Visit the Old Salem website for hours of operation and a calendar of events. Workshops are closed on Mondays.

Unless otherwise noted, all photos by Robin Plaskoff Horton for Urban Gardens.

Disclosure: Visit Winston-Salem sponsored my trip to Winston-Salem and Old Salem. I was not paid to write this post; all opinions expressed herein are uniquely mine and not indicative of any sponsor opinions or positions.