 Hi, I'm Lauren. I'm a mom, a seed saver, a gardener, and a science editor, and I'm the co-founder of the Napa County Seed Library. And my daughter Lavender wholeheartedly supported this project. She became its co-founder and youth director, and she's been on my side doing this with me ever since. The mission of the Napa County Seed Library is to grow, save, and share seeds that are locally adapted in our county. We believe that seeds should be a free, sustainable resource. We can reclaim our food systems. We can ensure our food sovereignty by doing the thing that we've done for thousands of years by saving and sharing our seeds. Today, 50 percent of the world's seed is owned by just four chemical companies. And we've been misguided to believe that our food systems are secure, but actually they're at risk because we have lost about 20 percent of the plant biodiversity since the 1900s. Locally adapted seeds are the solution. Locally adapted seeds have a history of thriving in the area where they grow. We've established four seed libraries in our county in the north, south, and west, and then one inside the St. Helena Library. A free seed library is a place, well it's kind of like those free book libraries you see in your neighborhoods. Instead of having books inside, they hold seeds inside. People borrow seeds from the library and they plant them in their own gardens. Then they allow some of those plants to grow to their full maturity, letting them flower and produce new seeds. They save those seeds and then they return them back to the library for other people to do the same thing. Our seed library since March 2020 has distributed over 800 packets of donated seeds and we've created 40 videos to help people learn basic gardening skills and seed saving skills. And now we see lots of people exchanging plants and seeds and gardening tips with each other in local neighborhoods, but then also from city to city within our county. The Spanish-speaking community makes up a large portion of our population here in Napa County and they're integral to the agricultural base that we're known for. We want to make sure that we are including everybody in our project for seed saving and sharing. In fact, some of these very same people are the ones who originated the most historically locally adapted seed here. My motivation to become involved with the Napa County seed library came from my interest in looking into my roots and really figuring out what was the involvement that my family had with agriculture and the land. Once I learned that my grandfather's books were involved in the agriculture in Mexico and working with the land, I became interested in learning more about the seed library. I'm also excited about promoting the value of a more diverse food system, one that incorporates more crops than just our monoculture of grapes that we grow here in the valley. We're famous for that, but we've always had the potential to grow so much more. So using plants as an example, we can be inspired and start to play with how diversity is the engine of involvement. I think saving and sharing seeds gives us really hands-on experience and confidence with learning how to adapt within our changing environments.