Values that weave in and out of the stories of our land stewards make us all part of something bigger than ourselves. Communities supporting each other and helping those less fortunate. The role of multigenerational families engaged with the land, protecting endangered species and ultimately individuals, families and communities sharing the gift of ancestral knowledge. Isn’t that the essence of the holiday season?

Story 1.
Sheep and a llama win in this ROC olive grove.

Patrick Martin is a sixth generation farmer and owner of Frantoio Grove. This is a quick look at how he cultivated the world’s first Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) olive grove. This past spring he toured us on his family’s land and olive oil pressing-mill operation. Patrick is best described as a seriously committed farmer and artisan with an encyclopedic mind. When Patrick first took over the farm from his father in 2020, it was already certified organic. He explained to us that while it was certainly a giant leap from conventional farming, it still followed a recipe requiring an array of costly inputs to fertilize and protect the grove. 

Faced with ‘olive leaf leprosy,’ he found that the standard model didn't have answers. Through informal research, in-depth analysis and information gathering he found himself in the world that connects soil and trees to climate and sheep. Restoring soil microbiome, increasing soil organic matter, and teaching his trees to source nutrition from soil biology were the keys to helping trees not only become more resilient to changing climate, but also produce a vibrantly flavored and nutritionally dense oil. His trees now drink compost tea, and he’s replaced his farm machinery with a team of lawn-mowing, hoof-aerating and ground-fertilizing sheep guarded by an impressive llama named Kronk. 

Story 2.
Restoring the sovereignty of ancestral heritage.

Members of our team celebrating the planting of one of forty eight thousand argan trees with our friends from Argand’Or and World Artisan Guild in Lagroune, Morocco in September 2024.

Near Ighrem, a small rural village at the foot of the Anti-Atlas mountains in southwestern Morocco, the women of the Al Amal Co-operative have always welcomed us with song and dance. Their leader Fatima embraced us with the observation that though from different places and cultures we are all connected. Al Amal is a self-governing, democratic women's cooperative founded in 1991 for the purpose of improving the economic vitality of the local Berber community. Berber are the indigenous people of North Africa’s Maghreb region. Ighrem, surrounded by argan forests, is a beautiful and quiet albeit impoverished place.

This past September was the second time the evanhealy team visited the Al Amal. The first was in 2017. Our hosts for both visits were Simo and Stefan. Simo is Mohamed El Karz, a Moroccan-born German-based environmental engineer, who in the early two thousands initiated a venture to share the argan tradition of his homeland with the world. Stefan Hauke is a US-based entrepreneur with German roots, importing argan through his twenty-year connection with Simo. Stefan’s company is World Artisan Guild. 

When we were last here, we sponsored the planting of four hundred argan saplings. We are told that our little project has inspired a much larger project. In the ensuing years Simo has worked with the government of Morocco to fund the planting of forty-eight thousand trees. Individuals and families own tracts of land, sometimes a few acres, sometimes more. The government plants the trees. The individuals, who own the land who are often members of the coop, have the rights to harvest. As a highly prized oil with a limited supply and a world of corporate players, this is an important step in restoring control to the grassroots. Reforestation increases soil fertility. The trees’ deep roots help to stabilize the soil and prevent wind erosion. Carbon sequestration improves the air. Dignity of income has grown so that the women of the cooperative are now purchasing property. The argan forest is a UNESCO protected biosphere meaning that the trees can’t be cut without permission. All of this restores sovereignty of their ancestral heritage.

Story 3.
Personal commitments to local communities.

As a proud Chilean, Raul has long invested in championing Chile’s precious wild rosehip to the world. His team at Granasur, led by Pablo, Soledad and Mauricio along with seasonal collecting crews, steward the hundreds of thousands of acres of farms and ranches in Patagonia where rosehip grows wild. It’s a labor-intensive process that requires a personal commitment to local communities, fostered over a lifetime.

Most rosehip seed oil producers have no connection to the land, harvest or processing of their raw materials. They simply purchase the already-processed seed from one of the few, large corporations that dominate the Chilean rosehip industry. On the other hand Granasur is involved in every step of the process. They visit the fields, work with the collectors, dry and process the seeds, and cold press the oil from the seeds just prior to delivering it to us. Granasur pays fair wages to collectors. They’ve contributed one thousand trees through the initiative “Reforestemos la Patagonia”. 

Story 4.
Consulting with elders and community leaders.

Madhi Ibrahim and Jamie Garvey started Böswellness in 2004. Mahdi, a native Somalilander, wanted to start a business that kept him connected to his homeland. Visiting with elders and community leaders, he heard the challenges they faced – endangered forests, drought and exploitation. By directly sourcing the resins from harvesters, Böswellness laid the groundwork for a model that protected trees, improved water access and paid fair wages. With strong ties to the region, they established a direct route from tree to distillery. This chain of custody enables them to guarantee the purity and quality of their oils and resins.

Böswellness has forged direct connections and deep relationships with harvesting communities in the Sanaag region of Somaliland where they have installed solar powered wells in villages. Returning twenty percent of profit into regional development, while strengthening the local economy for multigenerational families, they were the first company to offer certified organic frankincense worldwide. Fostering the future health of the forest, they partnered in a multiyear study on the health of Boswellia forests with the Centre for Frankincense Environmental and Social Studies (CFESS).

Story 5.
No gifts please. 

The story of Baraka Shea Butter starts when Gifty Serbeh, the daughter of a tribal elder in northwestern Ghana, set out to study abroad. After time in England she moved to Canada. In subsequent years, on a trip to see her family in Ghana, she asked what gifts she could bring. Her sisters wanted nothing but for her to purchase shea butter from the village and sell it in Canada. Not long after a trucking-sized container was packed with shea and shipped to Canada. Gifty applied her spark to a line of shea butter featuring blends of essential oils. Which brought her on a tour of Whole Foods including a store in Toronto where one fall evening Evan and I settled into a classroom to learn her story. Soon after we were purchasing shea directly from a villages in Ghana through Baraka – the company co-founded by Gifty and her then-husband Wayne Dunn. Drawing on decades of expertise gained advising international organizations on corporate responsibility, today Wayne carries the mission working with a collective of over one hundred women from the villages of Kperisi and Konjeihi fulfilling their vision.

In January 2014, Evan, I, and four of our longtime brokers journeyed to the village of Wa in northwestern Ghana. There we spent several days in and around the village seeing the various stages of shea production: gathering nuts, roasting, and grinding nuts, whipping and whipping and more whipping of the pulp into a creamy golden butter. All done by hand. Often in the open air. Always among a community of women and their children. As part of our fifteen-year history we’ve invested in their community providing school uniforms, a grinding mill shed, and environmentally friendly roasters. Early on we co-sponsored the certification of the village’s shea butter as organic. In the last year the challenges of maintaining organic certification in the villages have become ever more burdensome. Knowing that our business represented only 3% of their volume and the remainder did not require organic certification, it seemed a reasonable decision to put a pause on certification. 

Story 6.
Activist creating change through business.

On the eastern end of Ghana another story had been unfolding. Julius Arwaregya was raised in Paga, a small village in the northeast part of Ghana. When he was young, he witnessed how farming and nature generated everything his family required. He was taught to take care of the environment. At a young age his father passed away. In order to survive, the family was forced to cut trees and burn charcoal destroying the things he had learned to value. When he graduated university, he went back to his village to offer support. He first created ORGIIS an acronym for Organization for Indigenous Initiatives and Sustainability as a conservation model. Recognizing the necessity of income for the community, he added a supply-chain business initially featuring baobab and later shea. Fifty percent of revenue from the business goes back into the community to support conservation. His direct leadership has mobilized the community. Women are organized into groups. These groups are registered as cooperatives. Credit unions have been created to manage savings, which are invested in education for their children. His initiatives are responsible for planting trees for the community as well as for individual households providing income and food respectively. Moreover, the community is being trained in agricultural practices including soil health to further healthy productivity. A corresponding project has Julius working with governments in the management and protection of wildlife. In the meantime our first shipment of Regenified and organic certified shea butter is enroute from ORGIIS which will be showing up in our whipped shea butter products before the end of the year. 

Story 7.
Soil has helped revive this community of farmers.

Since 2007 we’ve worked with a half dozen or more farms along the Columbia River Valley in northeastern Washington. Nothing of what we’ve learned, accomplished and ultimately shared about the transformative healing journey of hydrosols would have been possible without the support, dedication, and friendship of Anne and Jud Carleton, owners of Morning Myst Botanics – our anchor to this extended network of family farms. 

Starting in 2011 we’ve been bringing our extended team to their home to participate in the annual distillation. It’s a truly grounding experience. Returning always feels like coming home. This yearly journey embodies so much of who we are: community, hands in the earth, shared meals and the magic of this four-thousand-year-old tradition. 

Distillation is the transformation of plants into matter through the mystery of alchemy.  The plants are harvested by hand at peak hours then immediately packed into the stills. Distilled at low temperatures over the course of several hours. This slow, labor-intensive artisan process creates a vitalizing hydrosol, offering subtle, aromatic benefits for all skin. In contrast, conventional distillation distills primarily for the essential oil – the hydrosol being reduced to a by-product – and uses stainless steel and high temperatures; the entire process typically lasting only forty-five minutes. 

Jud sums up their story this way: “Farming allows us to look at something bigger than ourselves. There's a regularness to it; a life of its own. As you partner with nature, there's a completeness. It's so important that we appreciate the ground that we have. It's from where we came. It's what helped create culture and society and ultimately cultivated our human relationship with the rest of the natural world. Building soil has helped us revive a community of farmers and distillers. It’s gratifying to see how our children have grown up and followed in our footsteps, much like I took inspiration from my father and grandfather.”

Story 8.
Love flows in the easy exchange of families working together.

Jeff and Elise Higley are owners of Oshala Farm in Applegate Valley, Oregon. In June a few of us traveled to the region to participate in a four and a half day learning journey hosted by Ann Armbrecht, anthropologist, writer, filmmaker, and founder of Sustainable Herbs Initiative. During the workshop close to forty other of us spent time with Jeff and Elise on their Garden of Eden sanctuary created over the past decade. 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. 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. 

During dinner 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. Within a month or two from the time our visit, their certification as a regenerative organic certified farm came through. Since then we have placed our first order for eight herbs which we will infuse here in our Carlsbad lab. By next summer Oshala will be growing close to twenty herbs for us to use as extracts in our cleansers, moisturizers, and butters. 

In summary:
Love looks upon the world peacefully.

At this time of the year something that my meditation teacher shared many years ago seems particularly relevant: “We are not responding to this instant if we are judging any aspect of it. The ego looks for what to criticize. This always involves comparing with the past. But love looks upon the world peacefully and accepts. The ego searches for shortcomings and weaknesses. Love watches for any sign of strength. It sees how far each one has come and not how far one has to go. How simple it is to love and exhausting it is always to find fault, for every time we see fault we think something needs to be done about it. Love knows that nothing is ever needed but more love.” ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.