The Herbalist's Way: The Art and Practice of Healing with Plant Medicines

The Apple Grower (2nd, Revised Ed): Guide for the Organic Orchardist

Rosemary Gladstar's Family Herbal: A Guide to Living Life with Energy, Health, and Vitality
Rosemary Gladstar, founder of United Plant Savers, demystifies herbal healing and shares expertise, recipes and formulas for herbal soups, salads, teas, tinctures, elixirs, creams, salves and baths for people of all ages. She points the way to physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, using her natural means but warns of the dangers of improper usage.

Seattle, WA © 2007 Barbara Adams, www.BarbaraBerstadams.com. While some like to predict all fruit will eventually come cheaply from China, not so, says farmer and author, Michael Phillips of HeartSong Farm. He has found that less than three American acres and old-fashioned human innovation can keep orchards in production on our continent, especially when added as a diversifying component on the small farm. Michael is a consultant to organic apple orchardists, and once operated a leased organic apple operation. Today, his new young apple orchard, "Lost Nation Orchard," is just coming into full production. Together with his wife Nancy Phillips, also an author (see below), he has combined a unique herb business with the apples already producing to create success on HeartSong Farm in Groveton, New Hampshire.

In order to obtain what Michael feels is the minimum to earn a decent living as an apple orchardist, he says an acre only needs to produce 400 bushels of fruit, which he considers modest. He states that 50% needs to be sold for $40 per bushel (usually direct to customers) and the other half should average $10 per bushel (such as apples sold for cider and value-added products).* This generates $10,000 minimum per acre.* Depending on location, he feels that three acres or less are good numbers for diversified farms that want to include a small orchard.

"Successful orchards today are charging the same prices as the supermarkets," Michael said. "Only we deal in fresher, higher quality apples. Add organic to the mix and customers are really making out well!" he said when asked how to get the general public interested in local apple products. "Local marketing of nutrient-dense and tastier apples begins with eye contact and trust," he continued. "Knowing your customers and caring about your customers is the key ingredient that makes farmstands and farmer's markets alike successful."

HeartSong Farm is nurturing some unusual apple varieties that include "Sweet Sixteen," which can offer a nutty or even cinnamon-spicy overtone. "Bullock" is a very good flavored "Golden Russet" cross. "Adam's Pearmain" is a sweet, rich antique with delicate russeting, the "Baldwin" is an old American favorite, and "Reinette Simirenko" is similar to a juicier Granny Smith with a hint of citrus.

And another unusual product of HeartSong Farm's orchard is their apple cider vinegar.
"One intriguing cross market product comes from the real cider vinegar we make and age in genuine wooden barrels. You have to understand that many of the health benefits long claimed for vinegar are not to be found in the modern industrial product on the supermarket shelf. Aging in the presence of wood is what develops the enzymes that make vinegar such a cure-all."

The apple cider vinegar, which is used in part to create their herbal tinctures, is one of the farm's products that links well with the herbal department of the business. They grow together well, also. In general, the herbs are grown in a variety of separate gardens that add up to about one and a half acres, but the apple orchard adds to the herbs growing area. "Many of the larger trees are ringed by comfrey, for instance," Michael explained. "This particular herb serves as a living mulch, growing two to three feet high, blooming delightfully for the bumblebees (a very important pollinator that needs summer-long bloom to build up populations), and then falls over to smother competing sod. We harvest second and third growth leaves from the comfrey to dry for sale, and also dig the rather large roots of bigger plants in the fall. Another intriguing herb-apple interaction of sorts is in the hawthorn trees we have let grow along the orchard edges. Normally, an orchardist would cut such down as a source of insect pressure for the fruit trees. Here the hawthorn gets harvested as a very profitable herb."

HeartSong herbs are dried and sold in bulk across the continent, but a number of value-added products are also produced and sold from the farm. Some of the preparations are sold only seasonally, and the demand has been high. Nancy's herbal mouthwash concentrate, for example, contains Echinacea, spilanthes, white willow bark, and the essential oils of peppermint and tea tree. Customers add a minimum of five drops of this mixture to water. Other herbal products proving successful include several varieties of organic garlic, including Georgian Crystal, German Extra Hardy, and Romanian Red.

The herbs products are marketed in an alternative manner. "Herbal medicine definitely takes two forms today," Michael said. The pharmaceutical version of herbalism in many health food stores and chain drug stores is one of them. But Michael and Nancy are marketing more towards what they call the earth-centered herb movement, where everything from how and where the herb grew and how it is harvested is just as important as "what" the herb is. "Education (of customers) is definitely important in the earth-centered herb movement, and in that regard, our classes here at the farm and at conferences certainly opens people's eyes to the 'green path.' A small-scale, hand-crafted farm effort works as you build awareness on many, many fronts."

Michael and Nancy hold cider pressings and herb classes on the farm. Classes and gatherings offer the one-on-one contact that can attract life-time customers and even generational customers. Customers are beginning to want more than just the product. They want relationships with the land and the farm, and experiences they can get nowhere else.

The couple's classes include a series for adults and camps for children. The youngest children, from ages five to eight, spend four days singing, brewing herbal teas and potions, putting on nature skits, wading in the brook, telling stories in the tipi, playing games, learning the names of plants, hiking and more. Older children from age nine to 12 engage in activities including survival skills, creating nature crafts and herbal products. Educating children as a "secondary farm product," as with agritourism, has been the topic of discussion within numerous alternative farm arenas, where parents will pay to have their children experience a non-commercial, nature-oriented educational lifestyle. Adult and child students may pitch a tent in their pastures or orchard, or sleep in their barn. Some adult students stay in country inns nearby.

The Phillips also attend a number of conferences which boost their marketing effort. "Our herb sales begin with several major herb conferences here in New England which we attend and often time speak as presenters: International Herb Symposium, United Plant Savers, Woman's Herb Conference, Green Nations, Hudson Valley Garlic Festival. Sales at these events are brisk, and just as equally important we develop our reputation for high quality herbs. Much of our mail order herb sales follow from there."

Online sales and a brochure add to their marketing plan. "Each year in late winter we send out a farm brochure (the updated mailing list has approximately 1000 customer names) announcing our course offerings, bulk herbs and garlic, books, and herbal products."

"Healing Herb Reserve Notes" are yet another innovative marketing strategy. Michael explains: "One (marketing) pitch at this time is the Healing Herb Reserve Notes at $50 apiece with which people can pre-order any of our herbal offerings, and if ordered before May 1, receive free shipping on that order. We live far from the maddening crowd. The reason dried high quality medicinal herbs are such a fitting crop for us is two-fold. A year's shelf life is plenty of time to market the crop. And shipping is a relatively inexpensive means by which to get herbs and herbal products further afield. A $100 sale consists of a few pounds of herbs which can be shipped for about $8 or so anywhere in the country."

Besides classes and consulting, Nancy and Michael have further diversified by authoring two books on farming which they sell online, at their farm, at conferences and through other more traditional book marketing outlets. Michael is the author of The Apple Grower (2nd, Revised Ed): Guide for the Organic Orchardist, and both he and Nancy have more recently authored The Herbalist's Way: The Art and Practice of Healing with Plant Medicines, a guide for students of herbs with information on both production and business segments, including governmental regulations, growing, marketing and selling.

As their young orchard begins to produce more, they will further develop their local apple market. A method that proved successful in the past for Michael was the community supported agriculture model, where customers purchase an "apple share" to receive a regular delivery of apples throughout the harvest season, as well as juicing apples to take part in their on-farm apple pressings. Currently, an "Earth Medicine Share" is offered for herbs for $60. The share is shipped fresh from the farm each fall, and customers receive a four ounce bottle of echinacea tincture, a half pound each of two different garlic varieties, a two ounce jar of herbal healing salve, a four ounce bag of "vitamint" tea, and a four ounce bottle of wild cherry bark cough syrup.

Michael and Nancy are examples of the flexible and ever-evolving farm marketing method that gives micro eco-farms an edge: Selling what's available now with an eye towards how that ties in to future products, while continually adding and subtracting what works and what doesn't along the way.

*Apple prices may have already changed