Once upon a time, people did more with their vegetables than simply cook and eat them. Because they grew their own foods, or knew the farmer who did, writes Amy Goldman in The Compleat Squash (Workman Publishing, 2004), people experienced "encounters with remarkable vegetables" in the field, at the store, and at the table.But that was in the early-to-mid-20th century (or even later, depending on the region), before American agriculture became a food-growing industry. Back then you didn't have to frequent a health-food store or seek out an organic farm to find vegetables (and fruits) that were flavorful, rich in vitamins and minerals, and beautiful enough to be still-life subject matter. Instead, vegetables were rather like the human beings who grew and ate them: strikingly uneven in shape and size, each of them destined to ripen only when it got good and ready. Some years' crops were better than others, and sometimes nobody could say just why. Some vegetables always thrived in certain places, while others, no matter what you did, just wouldn't ever come good. One tomato would grow so meaty it would burst its own skin, while the next ones on the vine might form perfect spheres and eggs. One tomato would gleam like a jewel in a canning jar while another would seem like the closest you could ever get to tasting the sun.

But the majority of tomatoes in American supermarkets today were grown to be sold—bred to fit so many to a shipping case and to ripen thousands of miles away from the farm, precisely timed for, say, sometime next October. Since the 1980s, when American agriculture began in earnest to consolidate its food lines, more than 30,000 vegetable and fruit varieties and 93 percent of food product diversity have been lost. According to the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, thousands more vegetables and fruits are endangered; in fact, every six hours, another is rendered extinct. Flavor and adaptability to region are being sacrificed in favor of uniform size, shape, and color, along with prescheduled ripening, in order to allow for mechanical harvesting and long-distance transportation of food, not to mention higher profitability brought about by chemical preparations that can create "uniform" growing conditions anywhere in the world.

Liana Hoodes, organic policy coordinator for the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, based in Pine Bush, blames the steady loss of vegetable and fruit species partly on the modern concept of "food as intellectual property." Because open-pollinated seeds now require patents, even if they are "unique enough to make a profit for a seed company, when the patent [expires] after seven years, companies may not have the diversity to support keeping the patent going." Therefore, seed companies are "increasingly dropping seed types and narrowing their lines for more profitability"—forced to compete or be taken over by larger companies specializing in bioengineered and mass-produced hybrid seed lines that do not require patents and can bring in huge profits.

Nonetheless, hope grows throughout the Hudson Valley. "Growing heirlooms and saving seed is almost like a declaration of independence," says Cheryl Rogowski, an organic farmer in Pine Island and a 2004 MacArthur "Genius Award" recipient. "[It's] something that has been done for millennia since the first man saved grass seeds and developed them into what we now know as corn. We grew up saving seed. Dad always planted onions for seed and saved seeds from various pumpkins and squashes for next year's crop." Today she counts well over 40 varieties of heirlooms at Rogowski Farms, including her late father's Detroit Dark Red Beet. "Customers will often tell me how much they love them and how my beets have flavor and someone else's doesn't," she says. "As in so many industries, with so few companies dominating the hybrid seed world, keeping these heritage varieties alive and well ensures continuity in the diversity of crops available to us. By saving our own seeds and growing the heirlooms we are preserving our independence and protecting our right to choose."

Ken Greene, director of Valley Educational Seed Saving Exchange Library (VESSEL), believes heirloom cultivation and seed saving is "an absolutely radical act." He founded VESSEL at Gardiner Library in response to the "complex and fascinating issues which are at the crux of many of our modern social and political problems" created by contemporary agricultural practices.

"Many food types have been reduced to one or two varieties," he explains. "This means greater chance of crop loss due to pest or weather changes, such as the potato famine. It also means limited food choices and historic and cultural losses as well. Governments like our own and corporations like Monsanto have been pushing for control of world food supplies. They are trying to patent life and have been successful in making it illegal for farmers and gardeners to collect their own seed. They cannot, however, patent an heirloom. By growing and preserving heirlooms, we are preserving our ability to be in control of what we eat. At the same time, we are keeping the cultural histories of the plants alive."

What constitutes an heirloom variety remains somewhat open to interpretation. Heirlooms, it is generally agreed, are open-pollinated cultivars that tend to grow in particular locales only. They usually have poetic names—like Moon and Stars watermelon. Many also have stories behind them, like Queen Anne's Pocket Melon—a small, originally Egyptian fruit, prized for its sweetness and exquisite scent, that Englishwomen carried before bathing daily became customary—described by Amy Goldman in Melons: For the Passionate Grower (Artisan, 2002). Or the German Pink Tomato which was handed down in 1975 to Diane Whealy and her husband Kent, founders of the now world-famous Seed Savers Exchange, by Whealy's grandfather, whose parents had brought the seeds with them from Bavaria when they immigrated to Iowa in the 1870s.

Because no two heirlooms look alike, and some appear downright odd, once farmers try them, and customers taste them, they're usually hooked. "Sometimes you have to work on selling it," admits Rogowski. "Like the forellenschuss romaine lettuce—last year was the first year we grew it. Everyone would look at it and walk away. We started to give out samples and now we can't keep it on the table." And some people "think they like a lot of seeds, but they don't realize how many seeds may be in an 'old-school' watermelon," says Ron Khosla of Huguenot Street Farm in New Paltz, although eventually customers always find the flavor of heirloom watermelons "wonderful."

Whatever its appearance, the proof of a vegetable is in the eating—not in the ease of growing and selling it. "I love to cook and if I'm going to the trouble of making a meal then I want it to be created with the best possible ingredients I have," says Rogowski. "How boring would life be if all we had available to us were seeds for perfectly round, perfectly sized tomatoes that all tasted like the same flat envelope they came out of?"