SECRETARY, MASTER GARDENER, AND VERMICOMPOST EXPERT

Debbie Stevens' passion and happy place is gardening. Worms, compost, gardening, and seeds are a natural fit for her so she became a Master Gardener in 2005.

Lauren and 4-year-old Lavender walked into her life 12 years ago at the Napa Farmers Market when she was affectionately known as "The Worm Lady." Later, in 2019, she moved to north Napa and to her delight saw Lauren walking across the street! Since then they have enjoyed collaborating in their gardens, sharing seeds and gardening ideas.

Debbie helped create the foundation for the Napa County Seed Library by advising Lauren on early financial and nonprofit documentation, and connecting her with local businesses and community service organizations. She assists at seed functions and outreach events throughout her community, and is especially talented at convening informal neighborhood and civic support groups to provide connection and shared resources in times of stress. She is affectionately known as the "Mayor" of her neighborhood in north Napa.

Debbie has had fun working with Lauren to make the dream of a seed library plus annexes a reality. Last spring, Debbie introduced Lauren to the Oakland Library's Dimond branch, her granddaughter's favorite place, to experience how an established seed library operates in a library setting. That field trip eventually bloomed into the seed library annex established at the Napa Library.

SEED KEEPERS, NAPA LIBRARY ANNEX #8

Refugio Rivera and Katie Olding serve as Library Associates at the Napa County Library. Staying true to the core values of public libraries, both Refugio and Katie are dedicated to being "information detectives." They not only locate information but also educate the community on how to access free, reliable resources to meet their needs. The mission and values of the Napa County Seed Library align perfectly with those of all public libraries. So, why not establish a seed library within an existing library?

Whether you need a book recommendation or seeds to plant a garden, Refugio and Katie are your go-to gals at the Napa County Library. Because of their dedication, good humor, and know-how; naturally Katie and Refugio are the seedkeepers for the Napa Library seed library annex.

SEED KEEPER, JEFFREY PINE ANNEX #7

Kim Monero is from Washington, D.C. and came to California via the United States Air Force. She gained a love of gardening from her grandmother who grew the largest collard greens in “the projects.” When her family separated from the USAF, she opened her in-home child care and started a garden with the children. Her interest in gardening and passion for the children, coupled with the opportunity to share seeds in her community, allowed her to partner with Addy Johnson and become the seedkeeper for the Jeffrey Pine seed library annex in the City of American Canyon.

CEO, CREATOR, NORTH NAPA ANNEX #2

Jeff Hagar has been celebrating and supporting the Napa County Seed Library since its inception. It has been his immense pleasure to observe first-hand the creative and powerful unfolding of Lauren’s dream and the amazing community of seed nurturers that has come together in the process. Jeff has a lifelong appreciation of the natural world, having spent much of his time roaming the wilder places and becoming acquainted with “all our relations”. He planted his first garden at age eleven and has continued to plant and forage whenever possible since. He thoroughly enjoys his current involvement with the Seed Library whether it is helping with planting, tending, and harvesting of seed gardens; brainstorming strategies and activities; or washing the dishes.

For many years Jeff worked as a fisheries biologist, helping public agencies to find ways to better manage their activities for the benefit of life in streams and rivers of California, including salmon and steelhead trout. These days, he divides his time between visits in Napa and living off-grid in Oregon’s Upper Willamette Valley pursuing his interest in living a low-impact lifestyle, supporting development of non-industrial food supplies, and staying connected with the natural environment. He considers himself in extreme good fortune to be involved in this vitally important endeavor and to be able to accompany Lauren on this amazing journey.

FARMER, SEED KEEPER, DOWNTOWN NAPA ANNEX #1

Jennifer Lang is the garden manager for Seven Roots Ranch, a privately-owned property in Napa California, where she and her beloved dog June rule the roost!

Jen came to Napa from the Mendocino Coast where she worked as a gardener, naturalist, and tended to the heritage orchard at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. She holds deep roots and memory of Ohio and her family's lineage of farming, which grounds her education and experience at university where she studied Anthropology and Biological Sciences.

She is the seedkeeper of the Downtown Napa seed library annex.

SEED KEEPER, CARNEROS RESORT ANNEX #6

Velvet Majus Markakis is a California Native who was brought up in Guatemala Central America where she had the opportunity to be immersed in a culture of art, hospitality and farming. Velvet is passionate about environmental and sustainability stewardship and enjoys teaching others about it by implementing hospitality programs that highlight the importance of land, culture and community. She looks forward to connecting with more seed savers, farmers and beekeepers to continue learning all the different ways we can contribute to make mother earth a better place.

CREATORS & SEED KEEPERS, BIRD NEST ANNEX #5

Carmen Butler-Thomas learned a love for gardening from her folks, as she and her sister played hide and seek in the corn and squash plants. Gardens became a part of Brent Thomas’s life when he married Carmen. Over the years tending their family, they’ve created a beautiful and abundant garden that surrounds their home. In 2020, Carmen created the Napa Valley Zone 9 Gardening group on Facebook, an active group of gardeners learning from each other and each season’s successes and challenges.

As a result of their dedicated vision and efforts, they established the Bird Nest seed library annex with Vivian Wehner in Angwin in 2023, extending our network further up the valley.

SEED KEEPER, BIRD NEST ANNEX #5

Vivian Wehner grew up learning the best way to pick strawberries and how to grow vegetables in the short growing season of Oregon’s coastal foothills through her family’s love and practice of biodynamic homestead farming. Vivian codes for Instagram, and formerly for Facebook, where she established a workplace garden club onsite. She generously promotes the seed library through her ability to sponsor nonprofit initiatives on social media.

Together with Carmen Butler-Thomas and Brent Thomas, she established the Bird Nest seed library annex in Angwin in June 2023, extending our network further up the valley.

SEED KEEPERS, ST. MARY’S EPISCOPAL ANNEX #3

Sabrina Martinez and Roger Reichenberg are the newest seed keepers for the Napa County Seed Library! Sabrina and Roger are members of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Napa and have a passion and love for gardening of flowers and vegetables. They tend and enjoy a bounty of garden-to-table harvests each season. St. Mary’s pastor Robin Denney asked Sabrina and Roger to become seed keepers for the church after being its seed keeper for the first year.

Sabrina and Roger feel honored to serve their community by sharing local seeds through for the fourth seed library annex in our network, located downtown at St. Mary's Episcopal Church.

SEED KEEPER, ST. HELENA PUBLIC LIBRARY ANNEX #4

As a child Leslie Stanton spent a lot of time in the garden with her father, not only growing food in their suburban back yard but gleaning bean fields not far from their home. They often saved seed from year to year. As a teenager and young adult, she took over the family garden starting the plants from seed in the dilapidated greenhouse on the property her family relocated to in Saint Helena. Graduating with a BS in Plant Science and Viticulture from UC Davis she intended to continue working with her father in the family vineyards but got sidetracked into a 35-year career as Children’s Librarian at the Saint Helena Public Library. (Now retired, she still volunteers there.) A serendipitous meeting with Lauren Buffaloe-Muscatine brought her life of gardening full circle to establishing and becoming the seedkeeper for the first indoor annex located at the St. Helena Public Library.

SPANISH LANGUAGE CULTURE & SEED KEEPER

Anayeli is a Mexican woman of Huasteca Nahuatl decent and a naturalized US citizen. She holds a master’s degree from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and a bachelor’s degree from Sonoma State University. She has lived in Napa for 24 years and has experience working in non-profits, organizing, activism, and birth work. She co-edited and collected stories and testimonies of undocumented people in Napa and its surrounding areas in the book DREAM: A Book of Undocumented Migrant Spectrum of Education [in] Access.

Anayeli greatly supports the seed library using her bilingual skills and connections to Napa’s Spanish-speaking community to include and encourage their involvement.

PARTNER FARMER, SEEDKEEPER

Tessa Henry grew up in St. Helena, ancestral land of the Onasatis people. Her own ancestors are Norwegian on her mother’s side and a mix of Danish, Swiss–Italian on her father’s side. She studied Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara with a minor in Global Peace & Security. In effort to be outside and a friend to the earth, she worked as an intern for the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy at the Presidio Native Plant Nursery for a short but formative time. From there, she moved back to her hometown and learned about ecological farming at Frog’s Leap Winery. She has been growing fruits and vegetables in Napa County for 13 years and now manages the farm at Clif Family Winery. She lives in Angwin with her partner and two children.

Tessa has supported the seed library, since 2021 donating seedlings to farmers who grow for the Napa Food Bank, and in 2023 as one of the first Partner Farmers to grow organic seed.

PARTNER FARMER, SEEDKEEPER

With a background in gender studies and traditional Chinese medicine, Andrea served as an acupuncturist at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic and St. Vincent de Paul Wellness Center, performed harm reduction based outreach in camps in San Francisco and Oakland and provided in-home care for disabled people. After backpacking from Mexico to Yosemite on the Pacific Crest Trail, she earned her Permaculture Design Certification while completing a year long live-in internship at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.

Andrea is guided by an awareness that systemic oppression is undermining the life supporting systems of our natural world. This compels her to engage her labor toward ecological restoration, community resilience and social equity. She aims to foster social and ecological well-being through regenerative economy. Seed sovereignty is at the heart of this preserving our right to resources required to create sustenance and ecologically sustainable livelihoods while also preserving biodiverse, resilient seed systems in a changing climate. She desires for everyone to have access to basic resources of life, including seeds.

Andrea’s kind support of the seed library came in 2023, when she became one of the first Partner Farmers to grow organic seed. She and her son often visit the St. Helena seed library annex where they exchange seeds regularly.

ViCE PRESIDENT, SEEDKEEPER

Dale is the mother of Lauren Muscatine and grandmother of Lavender Muscatine. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland at a time when the milkman and the bread man delivered their wares to the front door. Her father owned a business selling and dressing poultry at his store on Laurens Street and in the Lafayette Market. Despite experiencing her family life in a bustling city environment, her family spent their summers “down the country” in Glenburnie, Maryland, Anne Arundel County, running around barefoot, riding the neighbor’s horse, and eating the many delights from Aunt Beatty’s garden. Eating apples from their own tree, and picking wild blackberries along the road for a baked dessert by their mom were wonderful experiences. Some neighboring families even grew fruits and vegetables in abundance. Years later, these experiences planted a seed within and a yearning for a taste of the country life. Throughout their travels as a military family, Dale, her husband, and children have enjoyed pear, guava, breadfruit trees and home gardens in their backyards.

Recently, Dale caught the gardening bug when her daughter and granddaughter co-founded the Napa County Seed Library. Never before had Dale's father’s love for fishing, her mother’s love for growing flowers, and her husband’s knack for home gardening and cooking all come together in her mind to form this rich ancestral tradition of appreciating nature’s bounty. For three years, Lauren and Lavender encouraged and fostered Dale’s home gardening skills through their relentless volunteer work and informative, lively YouTube presentations. Now, Dale is proud to be able to sow and share seeds from her treasured tomatoes, hot peppers, green beans and soon her Golden Bantam Corn. But that’s another story!

CO-FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, SEED KEEPER, NORTH NAPA ANNEX #2

Lauren Buffaloe-Muscatine is an African American and Indigenous woman whose generational ties in the US date back to 1775. She is Co-founder and President of the Napa County Seed Library and a science writer and editor for UC Davis. She has lived, worked, and raised her daughter in Napa since 2007.

An avid gardener, Lauren began to hunt for locally adapted seeds in March 2020. Amazed by the discovery of the Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library in Contra Costa County, she and her daughter Lavender decided to establish the Napa County Seed Library in April of that year. Her partner Jeff Hagar built the North Napa seed library annex from second-hand and donated materials and it opened in August 2020.

Lauren is still amazed that a search for seeds would lead to a powerful personal transformation, and a way to build resilience, well-being, and healthy food options for her community.

CO-FOUNDER, YOUTH COORDINATOR, SEED KEEPER, NORTH NAPA ANNEX #2

Lavender “Lavi” Muscatine is of African American and Russian descent, born in St. Helena, California. As a result of her early adoption and dedication, she is the Co-founder and Youth Coordinator for the Napa County Seed Library. She is a dancer and dance teacher and attends school in Napa County. She and her mom share a birthday and she has lived in Napa her whole life.

As she noticed her mom become more consumed with work in 2020, Lavender supported the idea of creating a seed library project since she wanted her mom “off the screen.” She helped announce the project via YouTube and is the seedkeeper for the Napa North seed library annex. Lavender is so proud of her mom for doing this and happy she is apart of it to bring to young people the magic of seeds and seed saving.

CFO, FARMER, WEB DESIGNER

Stephanie is a professional chef and former bakery owner who enjoys using fresh herbs and edible flowers in her cooking and baking. After purchasing a small farmhouse in the Blue Ridge Mountains, she turned to farming in order to gain a better understanding of the food she eats and cooks with. Spice Holler Farm + Kitchen is entirely human powered, and the permanent raised beds are never tilled, sprayed, or without living roots in the soil. Her permaculture approach also integrates the use of chickens, native berries and shrubs, and a robust array of pollinator attracting plants to build a diverse ecosystem that is resilient to climate change.

Stephanie and her husband John created the Napa County Seed Library website. She and Lauren first met in 4th grade at Kamiloiki Elementary School in Honolulu, Hawaii, then again at the University of California at Davis, where they both graduated. They have remained friends ever since.

CREATOR, DOWNTOWN NAPA ANNEX #1

Jacob was born in Napa and grew up running through vineyards. As a culinary gardener, he grew and tended a wide variety of fruit trees, fresh produce, herbs, flowers, native, and other beneficial plants for the chefs and students at the CIA at Copia. He held the strong vision and coordinated the creation of the Downtown Napa seed library annex in 2022 with Vaughn Gessley. He is finishing studies to obtain a degree in Sustainable Agriculture.

CREATOR, DOWNTOWN NAPA ANNEX #1

Vaughn Gessley moved to Napa after graduating from the University of Kansas with degrees in Environmental Science and Psychology. He grew up in Kansas and was given a passion for growing from his aunt and a passion for native plants and their ethnobotanical stories while working with Dr. Kelly Kindscher at KU. He worked at the Oxbow School (now closed) as the Environmental Science teacher and Garden Manager, and managed the campus gardens with his students. They tended chickens and bees, and cultivated fruits and vegetables, and plants for medicine, fiber, and flowers. He inspired and led his students to envision and build the Downtown Napa seed library annex in 2022, in coordination with Jacob Tracy, He is continuing studies in advanced carpentry in Mendocino County.

GARDEN EXPERT, GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Aileen Carroll moved to Napa after she graduated from California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo with a BS in Graphic Communications. She has been volunteering her time and talent with local nonprofits ever since. She has been collecting seeds and growing vegetables her whole life but it wasn't until adulthood that she learned how important locally adapted seeds really are. Aileen, an early fan of the Napa County Seed Library, designed our logo. Her favorite seeds are beans and she grows eight (or more) varieties every season. If you’re fortunate, you’ll find Aileen and at Van Winden's Garden Center, where she expertly guides gardeners at all levels toward their next adventures and successes.