MedicineCrow Blog

Dear friends:

A new adventure is about to begin.

Next week, Sara and I will fly to Paris, rent a car, and make a month long journey through the south of France, Corsica and Sardinia, in search of aromatic treasures.

Our itinerary will begin in Provence, where we will spend several days meeting distillers, learning about their farms and essential oil production methods, and purchase new oils for Floracopeia.

Somali Immigrant Revolutionizing Frankincense Industry with Fair Wages for Harvesters

Frankincense has been widely regarded as one of the world's most precious sacred scents.  Brokers purchase the resin in massive quantities and auction with large markups while the land-owners earn a fraction of the value of the substance, while the harvesters are paid only in food.  The trees must be scarified to express the resin, and as international demand rises, the trees are dramatically over harvested, threatening their fragile existence.