Circle at Banyan Farm.
This is a story about a wizard, a boy, an enchantress, 3 wildlings, and 37 co-conspirators of sort, who encounter each other, on a journey of transformation, over the course of 4 days amongst plants, farms, mountains, fields, streams, and forest.
As told by David Gordon, co-founder/ceo evanhealy.
The wizard does not immediately reveal herself. She does not know her powers. She simply follows the beating of her heart. She moves quietly amongst us, sometimes unseen in her willowy frame, evoking Gandalf’s quiet knowing ways. Her name is Ann. In June I attended a four-day workshop hosted by her. Her full name is Ann Armbrecht. She is the founder of Sustainable Herb Initiative. She’s an anthropologist, writer, and filmmaker. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University; is a 2017 Fulbright-Nehru Scholar documenting the supply chain of medicinal plants in India; author of The Business of Botanicals: Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicine in a Global Industry; co-producer of the documentary Numen: the Nature of Plants; and author of the award-winning ethnographic memoir, Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home, based on her research in Nepal.
The workshop is co-hosted by Julie Arts, a senior Faculty member and consultant with the Presencing Institute, which draws on awareness-based systems to foster change. Forty participants from the herbal industry are in attendance. Included are representatives from Asheville Tea Company, Banyan Botanicals, Harmonic Arts, Herb Pharm, Native Botanicals, Oshala Farm, Pacific Botanicals, Sarjesa, The Synergy Company, Traditional Medicinals, Wishgarden Herbs, Yogi Tea, and several others. Surrounded by the Siskiyou Mountains, a coastal subrange of the Klamath Mountains, the sessions take place at four farms in the Applegate Valley of southern Oregon. Specifically, Banyan Farm, Herb Pharm, Oshala Farm, and Pacific Botanicals.
Julie on left, Ann on right.
At the outset wizard states that, The challenges the botanical industry is facing (including) poverty, biodiversity loss, the climate crisis, urban migration can't be solved by any company alone. Our goal is to create a place where we might challenge and encourage each other … to build a network of ongoing support and collaboration to tackle these issues moving forward.
Up before six each morning with long glorious days on the land, sometimes in small groups, other times the collective, often in circles exploring our sensory experience with new acquaintances, these are the impressions that I am left with.
My sense of time slows down. My awareness shifts to the vastness of both time and space accentuated by the surrounding mountains and forests. Enhanced recognition of the scale of time; of indigenous people who communed with the land for thousands of years offer a different perspective on what it means to be with plants, to respect nature, to be alive.
This is a story of those who care for the land (stewards), and those who value the truth of the old ways (elders). That truth has always come to us in some form of myth and magic. We spend time with both wild crafters and soil stewards. Decades and decades, even centuries, of gathered intelligence. Layers and layers of knowledge. What plants grow best here, what plants do well there. When to harvest, how to harvest. The healing properties. An uncommon depth of knowledge. Often acquired from a mentor. Sometimes from a colleague. And perhaps most wondrous, simply by being on the land.
Several times a day we stand in sharing circles way past my back’s comfort. Or just as challenging, sit on tic-infested ground far past my city boy life. Here we ponder queries as to what is most vibrant in the moment, or what would you do if you had 20% more courage. (Take a nap.) We look up at Doug Fir trees, or down to the lake. We walk in herb gardens, in sprawling farms where herbs are allowed to find their own place, sometimes moving hundreds of yards from one place to the other on their own accord. Our colleagues seem to know the names of plants, the species, their origins. Our leaders seem to know about different micro-climates as little as a few hundred yards away. We peak in work sheds with machinists that every day without fail are called upon to fix one piece or another of the equipment necessary to run a farm. Everywhere there are men and women working with their hands, whether driving, riding or guiding machinery or simply sorting herbs. Men and women on the land with rakes, hoes, cutters. In small groups. With sun protection hats and long shirts. Quietly going about their work. Heads down. An ease. Trust permeating the air. That we breathe.
Left to right: Tyler Wauters, Ann, Mark Wheeler, Alexandra, Matt.
In my memory Tyler Wauters is the first to speak. Thin strong face elongated by his grey beard evokes a seer of ancient times. He tells stories of the first peoples who communed with the land that we are here on. Weaving tribal names, mountains and rivers, plants and trees, healing properties. A spell is cast that lasts throughout the week and then some, lingering in my being as I write.
At Pacific Botanicals founder Mark Wheeler walks us around the farm. I have a sense of someone walking down the street telling stories of his friends and neighbors. This one now works at that place, this other had troubles, this one went off to another city. Each field, each plant, or structure. Each has come into being in response to an opportunity, a challenge. As if the whole had unfolded from the simple act of beginning.
Left to right: Elliot Proffitt, James Jungwirth, Alan Odessi.
We meet three wildcrafters. James Jungwirth founder of Naturespirit Herbs who has been harvesting seaweed since 1989. James shares that there is a window of time of low tides that allows access to harvest seaweed for only a few days before and after the new moon and full moon. Alan Odessi, seventy-two years and just retired. Forty-one years of wild crafting. His son has taken over. It’s heartening to know that it is a business – a multi-generation business in fact. Alan started as a forester. Yet somewhere along the line he came across a story in a newspaper about wild crafting and he was captivated. Elliot Proffitt with his angelic face and his long red strawberry hair supporting a home and a family sharing his entrepreneurial challenges of figuring a fee for wild crafting. It is incumbent on all of us to place a proper value on their work, to see that they are rewarded properly for the important work that they do.
At Banyan Farm, sitting under the canopy of a large tree, we explore the history of the land and the peoples who inhabited it. The discussion is led by Brook Colley, Chair & Associate Professor of Native American Studies, Southern Oregon University. What strikes me is the thought of ancestors living in a particular geography for thousands and thousands of years and then suddenly having the very land that you had communed with, that had become part of you, ripped away. Not just the land but your language, the legitimacy of your thought, and your healing and spiritual beliefs. I’ve always felt the protection of large trees that canopy the dark forest floor. I think it must cool my pitta nature. In my mid-teens I bicycled to a treed estate to read Lord of the Rings. In my late teens I waited tables at the first vegetarian restaurant in Winnipeg, founded by my meditation teacher, it was called the Banyan Tree. In my mid-forties I conducted workshops sitting under an allegorical banyan tree, with its accessory trunks spreading out indefinitely, exploring possibility.
At Herb Pharm, Matt walks with us in the fields. All listen intently while he explains that microorganisms in the soil have to breathe. That there is oxygen in the soil. That there are two ways to add organic matter back into the soil. He references the soil’s digestive system. It’s aliveness. He talks about organic matter as a glue-like substance that holds the soil together, about the biology of soil health, and the years that must be spent to build good soil.
From the moment we arrive at Oshala Farm, the Garden of Eden created by Elise and Jeff Higley, everything seems to have its place. The natural beauty, the expanse of land, the mountains framing the space and giving it depth. The barns strong and well-crafted like a craftsman cottage. Size and scale. Consisting of structures that you’d expect from a much more established entity. Somehow this family has built it in little more than a decade.
Doing the work alongside their farm workers. A flow of love visible in the ease of exchanges between these two extended families embodied by their back and forth in Spanish. Here language helps link cultures. Colleen, my co-lead at evanhealy, paints an image of Elise as enchantress pulling a salve out of a pocket, a different ointment out of her apron, and a healing fairy-like being from her hair. Later, at the wrap-up ceremony, Elise has her hands clasped with others, beaming light from the depth of her being, as each participant shares their learning. We are all engulfed by her love, we are all under her spell.
Left to right: Julie, Elise, Ann; far right, Jeff.
At dinner Jeff tells a few of us his story framed as a sequence of ‘successive failures’. We are all charmed. Of course, we recognize a series of accomplishments, along the stream of life, supported by someone – his spirit guides perhaps – seeing his competency, drive, vision. My favorite: at 23, with no hospitality industry experience, he is sent by the owner of a hotel in Fiji to be the manager in her absence. Upon his arrival he is greeted with the statement, We needed a manager and she’s sent a boy. Yet quickly and over the next few years his innate leadership resulted in the whole village, unsolicited, coming together to upgrade the resort in preparation for the owner’s visit, so that she would be compelled to have Jeff remain. His last story is of finding land nearby to where we sit, only to find that though having not been sprayed in 25 years, it still has excessive amounts of DDT. Abandoning that dream, Elise and Jeff find another tract nearby, yet do not have the funds required for a conventional purchase. Instead, the former owner sells it to them saying, I’ll hold the note for as long as it takes.
Jeff shares a thought from motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. The way I recall it, he says, ‘make other peoples’ dreams your dreams’. It strikes a deep chord in me. I tell him that I’d like to be part of his dream. He responds, I want to be part of yours. In fact, I want to be part of everyone’s dream here as I want to make their dreams mine. I later look the quote up and it reads, ‘If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.’ I like Jeff and his adaptation better.
Jeff and a few others pull out guitars and what look like bongos. It doesn’t take much time for the music mixed with wine to explode in joyful song. Jessie and Aviva of Asheville Tea Company sing back-up. Jeff belts out a few numbers in a gravelly voice. A world that framed my youth reverberates with Tom Waits and Janis Joplin. And then, Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower. A song from 1967 popularized by Jimi Hendrix. Laden with biblical meaning and ancient blues influences, the song enjoins the listener to ‘not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late’. Though more than a half century has since passed, just the day before, another young visionary, Alexandra of the tea company Sarjesa, shares a different kind of song with a few of us. She says that when she has an important decision to make, she brings many of her team together with various individuals assigned to represent the point of view of the environment, culture, and climate.
Dinner at Oshala Farm.
In my reflection on our journey, with a few weeks hindsight, I happen to see the wrap-up episode of Season 3 of The Bear. In her short farewell to friends and colleagues, Chef Andrea, an executive chef from an award-winning fine dining restaurant played by Olivia Coleman, says that she has gotten to do everything she dreamed and importantly it’s not the food she’ll remember but the people.
~ David
Farms and participants
https://sustainableherbsinitiative.org
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-business-of-botanicals/
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/thin-places/9780231146524
https://www.u-school.org/team/vita/julie-arts
https://www.pacificbotanicals.com
https://www.banyanbotanicals.com
https://ashevilleteacompany.com
https://www.nativebotanicalsinc.com
https://www.wishgardenherbs.com
https://www.organicherbtrading.com
https://www.traditionalmedicinals.com
https://shop.naturessunshine.com