Small things are often the most overlooked and underestimated. But tiny things can hold the greatest potential.

Consider seeds, wee but wondrous. Quietly contained in a single seed is the script for a majestic performance. Seeds contain critical sustenance, each can become vital nutrition, energy, flavor and beauty. We depend on these silent little kernels for nearly everything: food, fuel, fiber, medicine and more.

“People don’t really think about seeds. But seeds are powerful.” When Ken Greene, cofounder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library, talks about seeds, he radiates affection and equanimity. He and his partner, Doug Muller, have devoted themselves to making locally adapted heirloom seeds available and affordable for local gardeners and growers. Their seed library promotes the intricacy and magic of seeds and humbly asks us to consider the central role that seeds play in our food supply. It also asks us to realize that while seeds are indeed powerful, so is the act of saving them.

Seed saving has long been a practical tradition, one that growers have used since the earliest days of agriculture. Over the course of centuries, by saving seeds from plants that exhibited desirable qualities, people bred improved plants that succeeded well in particular locales, plants that demonstrated greater resilience, plants that were more beautiful or that simply tasted better. All the qualities that we love and need in plants exist because of the act of seed saving. (And saved seeds, when properly cared for, will often oblige us by lasting for a very long time—recently, scientists successfully germinated a date palm seed that was 2,000 years old.) When we preserve seeds by saving and replanting them, we defend plant varieties and genetic resources.

Lately, many of us are tracing our food to its origins by understanding where and how our food was produced, sourcing food from people we can talk to and places we can see and, increasingly, growing some food ourselves. Eating locally and learning about food production means uncovering the food chain as well as discovering complexity each step of the way. Trendy catchphrases tend to depict this as a linear process: “farm to fork,” “plow to plate” and “seed to table.”

In fact, it’s far more cyclical. Yes, the plant that made its way to your table started as a seed. But that seed came from a plant itself, which started as a seed that sprang from a plant, and so it goes. Those plants, and their seeds, were all affected by very particular methods of growing and gathering. To truly unpack the story of a squash (or a carrot or a cucumber), we have to look at the lineage of its seed.

All seeds are not equal. The seeds that Ken and Doug are busily growing, saving and selling are open-pollinated heirloom seeds. This means that they are not hybrids, nor have their genes been tinkered with or modified. They are pollinated by natural means: wind, birds, bees and insects. Hybrid seeds can’t be saved because they will have unpredictable results, and genetically engineered seeds are often illegal to save or are programmed for sterility (as in the case of the “terminator gene”). In contrast, these open-pollinated seeds can be saved and, most importantly, replanted with trustworthy results.

These are traditional varieties that have evolved through saving and selection, making them better adapted to local conditions. These are hardier plants with lots of character. Humans, culture and plants have coevolved through the practice of seed saving; these seeds reflect people’s decisions, preferences and migrations. Like a micro-archive, these seeds inherently hold our agricultural, political and cultural history.

The heritage embodied in these seeds is as valuable as the genetic material they contain. Immigrants to this country knew the power of seeds, smuggling family favorites in hems, hatbands, even under postage stamps. Just a hundred years ago, there were 7,100 named varieties of apples being grown in this country. Now there are about 300. The other 6,800 are not just lingering in the wings—they are extinct. It is estimated that 75 percent of the diversity of agricultural crops has been lost since the beginning of the last century. That loss is permanent. It is loss we should mourn.

Extinction of yesteryear’s varieties is due to the rise of industrial agriculture, hybrid seed technologies, genetic engineering and seed patents. Ten corporations now control over half of the world’s commercial seed supply. The hybrid seeds that these companies sell cannot be saved for subsequent seasons because they won’t produce plants that are true to type (the cross must be repeated each season).  Genetically modified seeds, also called “biotech innovations,” are created by large agribusinesses who forbid seed saving. Intellectual property laws that allow the patenting of life give these corporations proprietary ownership of genes and seeds.  All of this forces gardeners and farmers to purchase new seeds each year, therefore remaining dependent upon their annual seed purchase from agricultural giants.

Like most of our food system—and our culture in general—what was once localized, dispersed and diverse has become consolidated, highly controlled and homogeneous. Uniformity has come to dominate.  You can see it on Main Street, and you can see it in your main course. This uniformity equates to vulnerability. The loss of genetic diversity doesn’t just mean a loss of the unique tastes, colors, smells and shapes these plants would have produced. It means a loss of resilience and an increased susceptibility to pests, diseases and the negative effects of climate change. We, as farmers and consumers, need biodiversity to keep our ecosystems strong.

As diversity diminishes and our ability to successfully save seeds is stripped away, the need for self-sufficiency—free from patents and profiteering—intensifies. By conserving plant varieties that are varied and traditional, and making them accessible to regional growers, the Hudson Valley Seed Library is preserving cultural knowledge and crop diversity, essential for survival.

Ken sums it up, “Seeds are a living community resource, not inanimate commodities. For generations, this resource has been stewarded by countless seed-saving gardeners. Saving seeds is a simple and enjoyable art that resists corporate monopolies, the dominance of hybrids and GMOs [genetically modified organisms], the destructive power of industrial agriculture and the patenting of life. The Seed Library keeps seeds where they should be—in the dirty hands of caring gardeners.”

So in addition to saving and selling seeds, the Seed Library is teaching the art and craft of seed saving to more of those dirty hands. “As agriculture has become increasingly industrialized, gardening skills have been lost,” Ken points out. The Seed Library frequently offers public talks and demonstrations around the Hudson Valley to encourage the revival of this practical skill. “We teach seed-saving skills to home gardeners and local farmers to close the loop from seed to seed that is truly necessary for a sustainable local food system.”

Freely shared resources and knowledge are key counterparts to seed saving. It was in this spirit of cooperation and public access that the concept for the Hudson Valley Seed Library germinated. In 2004, Ken was the children’s librarian at the town library in Gardiner, NY. He began to learn about the loss of genetic diversity, the impact of biotech and industrialized farming practices, and the crisis affecting seeds. He asked the head librarian, Peg Lotvin, if he could add seeds to the library collection, and she enthusiastically agreed: “When I was first at the library we lent out fishing poles. It’s a wonderful extension of the library, and I just thought Ken’s idea was the coolest thing I’d ever heard of.”

Gardiner Library members were encouraged to “borrow” seeds, plant them and grow them out—harvesting some for fruits and flowers, and some for seeds. A few of the next-generation seeds could then be returned to the collection. The new acquisitions garnered great interest. Plants and gardeners proliferated in tandem.

Peg and Ken loaned and sold heirloom seeds, built big seed displays and taught workshops in seed propagation and saving at the Gardiner Library. Peg, an avid gardener herself, recalls a woman who bought seeds for a peach tomato to give as a gift to the county supervisor. “The next spring I went to see him, and there was a huge bowl of peach tomatoes he had grown. I could just feel all these roots spreading out, touching one, touching the next. It was like an incredible movement.” Peg made her own personal contribution to the collection— an heirloom her father had saved and grown for years, dubbed “Hank’s Xtra Special Bean” by the Seed Library.

“The decision to start the Seed Library grew out of my love for seeds and the fact that I was working at a small town library feeling a renewed appreciation for what it means to have public access to information and imagination,” Ken explains. “I just fell in love with the public library system. It’s like our last radical democratic institution, still committed to equal access and information for everyone. It seems to me that seeds and books have a lot in common. Some of the seeds we are saving are like out-of-print books at the library—but they’re still accessible, and we’re sharing them.”

In 2008, Ken left his job at the Gardiner library and he and Doug began to build the Seed Library into a genuine seed company. But elements of the library model remain: while anyone can buy seeds from their online seed catalog, there is also a membership option that offers special advantages. Members get a discount on their seed orders, and are encouraged (though not obligated) to return some saved seeds to the library, just like patrons at a library of books. For each variety that a member returns, they receive a credit toward the next year’s membership.” Unlike hybridizing and genetic engineering, saving heirloom seeds can be practiced by anyone. Food activist Sandor Katz (also a Hudson Valley Seed Library fan) connects the dots—“amateurism breeds diversity.”

This thoughtful do-it-yourself approach colors every aspect of the Seed Library. Neither Ken nor Doug has agricultural roots. Both have a background in education, and both are clearly talented learners and tireless enthusiasts who can easily build expertise and then in turn inspire others. Their shared passion for rebuilding a sustainable regional food system brought them to seeds, and their vision for the Seed Library brought them to farming. All of which led them to the site where they currently reside: a former Ukrainian summer camp in Accord, where they are building a homestead community.

The place is a rambling collection of structures, both dilapidated and new (including a house that Ken and Doug built themselves, by hand no less). Future renovations should allow for several people to live and work there. The farm exists on a secluded field with wooded borders. Here, Ken and Doug grow the plants that provide some of the seeds they sell. Currently, the locally grown seed is only available to members, but Ken and Doug are dedicated to building the local seed offerings over the next few years. (In the meantime, they also sell seeds obtained from other out-of-state farm sources. These seeds are carefully selected to ensure they are the highest quality organic seeds possible, free of any genetic modification or other biotech affiliation.)

The Seed Library says that it sells “handcrafted seed,” and a tour around the operation makes it clear why. Whenever possible, Ken and Doug opt for low-tech tools and lowimpact techniques. As I observed and learned about the many, many things they are creating, I began to see that the Seed Library itself is a work of hand-hewn art—in which threshing and winnowing become caring and artful performances.

Artwork pervades the project, most visibly in the innovative seed packaging. Each seed package variety comes in a folded enclosure (designed by Ken) that frames an original illustration created by a local artist. An avid collector of old seed catalogs, Ken explains that he “wanted to find a way to bring back the elegant artistry of old seed catalogs.”

It’s a tribute to all that the seeds represent. Ken illuminates this connection, “What we think of as genes are more than an expression of traits, they are an expression of the human interaction that has created a particular plant based on individual and community desires, likes and dislikes, regional dishes, and ideas of beauty.  Original artwork from many individual artists reflects the diversity, the imagination and the personality that is contained in each seed.”

Adding up all the richly layered dimensions of the Hudson Valley Seed Library conjures an image of a gracefully orchestrated talent show starring people, plants and gardens, with the art packs, the farm, its founders and the Seed Library’s supportive members all moving together in a delicate dance under a dazzling constellation of glittering seeds.