Faith in a seed.

Byline: Kate Nelson knelson@abqtrib.com / 823-3691

More than a catalog, more than a business, Seeds of Change wants to revolutionize our relationship to food

EL GUIQUE, N.M. Micaela Colley plunges her hands into a plastic tub, catching the spillover from one of five seed-sorting machines.

Her hands emerge, brimming with what could be described as beet seeds of the Detroit Dark Red variety.

But the manager of the Seeds of Change research farm holds something more powerful than that.

She holds food for hungry people, grown in a manner to sustain a stressed-out Earth, sold by a cottage industry that has blossomed into a profit-making marvel of the organic-gardening world.

From four-star restaurants in the nation's biggest cities to backyard gardens around the globe, Seeds of Change is salvaging heirloom varieties of the food we eat and reforming our notions of how to grow it.

Standing in the company's workroom, Colley's hands bear more than seeds.

They hold a revolution.

Dawn pulls away from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, sparking prisms off the previous evening's irrigation. Droplets adorn spidery bergamot flowers, sturdy basil plants and a bombast of sunflowers.

The aroma of ripe apples and wet soil mingles and wiggles skyward.

Guinea hens cluck and screech in towering cottonwoods. At this hour, it's the only sound at Rancho La Paz in English, "the Peace Ranch," but in spirit, "the heart and soul of Seeds of Change."

That's how the farm is described by Howard-Yana Shapiro, the company's vice president of agriculture and on-site inhabitant of this testament to chemical-free, sustainable gardening north of Espanola.

With his long white beard wafting in the breeze, Shapiro a two-time Ford Foundation …