North Circle

'North Circle' is a butternut landrace maintained by Zachary Paige of North Circle Seeds in Vergas, Minnesota, and pledged to the Open Source Seed Initiative so it can never be patented or restricted. It began life as Adaptive Seeds' 'Butternut Early Remix', a deliberate jumble of quick-maturing butternuts including Nutterbutter, Butterbush, Hunter F1, Early Butternut F1 and Butterfly F1, assembled out of Seed Ambassadors Project work by Andrew Still and Sarah Kleeger. Paige has since selected it in northern Minnesota for earliness in a cold climate and for classic butternut shape and taste, and grower Kathy Connell contributed roughly a decade of Minnesota selection toward a longer neck. Because it remains a population rather than a fixed line, there is real fruit-to-fruit variation — the trade-off accepted in exchange for a butternut that actually finishes in an upper-Midwest season. Seed offered through the Experimental Farm Network tested at 96% germination in October 2024, about 22 seeds to a packet.