What’s up with the farm?

(a revised version)

The Medicinal Herb Farm

That is a frequent question from friends of ours, “What’s up with the farm idea?” Good question! Well… it seems something always came up that caused us to put the idea of starting a small farm on hold. Aging parents needing help, aging parents passing away, rising land costs, me pursing my art business, Jessica busy with her job, each of us getting a shoulder injury a couple years apart, trying to figure out how to make a living just from farming… it seems the list goes on and we keep getting older with each passing year.

I guess the easy answer is we’ve decided that doing the medicinal herb farm for bulk herb sales isn’t going to work for us on the land we have, and we don’t really want to make value added products and have to deal with all the rules that come with making dietary supplements. We love making tinctures and teas for ourselves or friends, but aren’t so sure about doing it as a business. We often feel there is just too much stuff in our consumerist world and why would we want to add to that? I know not everyone can or wants to make their own herbal products, but we would like to see more people growing their own plant medicine and food so they have a deeper connection to the things they are putting in their bodies.

Growing the plants is the part we love most. Every year we add new plants to our land, even during those years where we thought we were going to move somewhere else we’ve added new fruit, medicinals, and more. We often end up with a surplus and share plants with friends who are interested in adding new plants to their yards.

While we have let go of the farm dream, we are still going to grow for ourselves and friends, and try to be good stewards of our land and provide good habitat for all the other creatures who we share the land with.