Steve Solomon has been writing Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades since 1979. He has homesteaded in Oregon because he believed in living self-sufficiently, and he is the founder of the Territorial Seed Company. Marina McShane joined the Territorial Seed Company in 1981 working in the seed room and helping in the trial grounds. That intensive immersion into the philosophy and practices of the organic gardening of vegetables still informs her approach.