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.

SEEDKEEPERS, BIRD NEST ANNEX

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.

Together with Vivian Wehner, they established the Bird Nest seed library annex in Angwin June 2023.

SEED KEEPERS, ST. MARY’S EPISCOPAL ANNEX

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.

SPANISH LANGUAGE CULTURAL SEEDKEEPER

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.

CO-FOUNDER, YOUTH COORDINATOR

Lavender “Lavi” Muscatine is of African American and Russian descent, born in St. Helena, California. She is 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 a “seed library” fully since she wanted her mom “off the screen.” Once her mom found that there was no seed library in nearby, she helped announce the project via YouTube and build one at their home. Lavii 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.

CO-FOUNDER, PRESIDENT

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’ San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science. 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 library in nearby Contra Costa County, she and her daughter 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 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.

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.

SEEDKEEPER, DOWNTOWN NAPA

Jacob was born in Napa and grew up running through vineyards. He is the culinary gardener for the CIA at Copia, giving fresh produce to chefs and students all year. He loves chatting with anyone who finds him in the weeds, and hopes to inspire healthy relationships with land and food. Jacob and Vaughn Gessley, together with students of The Oxbow School, led the creation of the Downtown Napa seed library annex, which is located at the culinary garden where Jacob cultivates a wide variety of fruit trees, fresh produce, herbs, flowers, native, and other beneficial plants. His efforts have produced the largest example of a fully organic, ecosystem-centered, and regenerative garden that is freely open to the public in Napa County.

SEEDKEEPER, DOWNTOWN NAPA

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. Currently working at the Oxbow School as the Environmental Science teacher and Garden Manager, he works with students to manage the campus gardens, where they care for chickens and bees and cultivate fruits, vegetables, fiber plants, medicinal plants, flowers, and material sources. He is most interested in growing and talking about echinacea species in addition to gourds for instrument-making. He is involved with the Napa Valley Beekeepers Association and worked with his students to envision and create the Downtown Napa seed library annex in 2022.

SEEDKEEPER, ST. HELENA PUBLIC LIBRARY

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.

A serendipitous meeting with Lauren Buffaloe-Muscatine brought her life of gardening full circle to establishing the third annex of the Napa County Seed Library inside the Saint Helena Public Library. She is its seed keeper.

GARDEN EXPERT, WRITER & 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 8 or more varieties every season.

If you’re fortunate, you’ll find Aileen and at Van Winden's Garden Center, where she guides gardeners at all levels toward their next adventures and successes, all as she writes their weekly e-newsletter!

SEEDKEEPER, BIRD NEST ANNEX

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 June 2023.