Our Reason For Being

Each growing season, we maintain hundreds of historic, endangered, and downright delicious varieties. Seeds are a living embodiment of our collective history, each one carrying forth the story of all that came before it (and the people who planted them).

For many varieties that we bring to market, an immeasurable amount of time and effort is required to ensure their preservation. On occasion, a small sample of rare seeds will find their way into our hands and we get straight to work on restoring their population.

More often, we learn about a crop that played an important role in history or one that set a new standard for exceptional flavor, then embark on a hunt to find any seeds that remain and uncover the fascinating stories behind them. These efforts require countless hours of research, pouring through archived catalogues, journals, biographies, and oral histories from the generations of people who kept them alive for you to enjoy.

Far too often, our work serves as a crucial lifeline for the very existence of these crops, which weren’t bred for an industrialized society and consistently balance on the edge of extinction because of it. When a variety is lost, a part of the human story disappears alongside it. This is a trend that we seek to end.