MedicineCrow Blog

One of the world's great modern herbalists, Richo Cech, was recently interviewed by David Crow and Jai Dev Singh on MedicineCrow Radio.

Listen to a segment of their talk, in which Richo describes a spiritual lifestyle living close to the land in relationship with the plants, below.

David Crow Interviews
Deb Soule

Deb Soule is a lifetime herbalist. Her small herbal company Avena Botanicals continues to grow, prompted by friendly visits from government officials. David Crow visited the Avena Botanicals farm and wrote about his experiences in October. More recently, Deb was interviewed by David as a guest on MedicineCrow, when she shared her experiences as an herbalist, farmer, and business owner.

Reflections on the
Grassroots Healthcare Revolution

Part 3:

One of the fundamental concepts that William and I have emphasized in the Farm to Pharmacy series is the importance of having simple herbal gardens at home as the basis of grassroots healthcare. As our starting point, we identified about thirty species that meet the following criteria: easy to grow in most parts of the U.S., relatively safe and nontoxic, possessing a wide range of therapeutic benefits, and easy to incorporate into a home pharmacy and herbal lifestyle. The lectures, plant identification and medicine making workshops revolved around becoming familiar with these important plants. It is our belief that if families know how to incorporate these herbs into simple kitchen medicines and basic home remedies, as they once commonly were, that a vast amount of unnecessary toxic medications could be avoided and general immunity and health levels in the population increased.

Reflections on the
Grassroots Healthcare Revolution

Part 1:

One week ago William Siff and I completed teaching the fall season intensive at Goldthread Herb Farm. It was the sixth week-long program that we had done together, which included spring, summer and fall this year and last. It was again a unique and memorable event, filled with shared learning, healthy work with the healing plants and a sense of restoring and creating something precious and meaningful for our society. It was also a time to reflect on what we had accomplished, and where the program might evolve to next.

Last week we had the pleasure of visiting Deb Soule at her beautiful herb farm and apothecary, Avena Botanicals.  I had just finished teaching the Farm to Pharmacy week with William Siff at Goldthread Farm in Massachusetts and a weekend class in Portland, Maine, hosted by Gina Mastroluca. Gina had made arrangements in advance for us to make the trip north to visit Deb outside of Rockport.

Goldthread Medicinal Herb Farm Pioneering
Grassroots Healthcare Business Model

As a licensed Acupuncturist, Bill Siff was familiar with using herbs to treat his patients. However having exotic medicinal plants shipped from around the world didn’t sit with his idea of sustainable grassroots healthcare. He realized that for a resurgence of botanical medicine, herbs would need to be locally grown and cost-effective. Along with his wife Sarah, he started Goldthread Herb Farm in Conway Massachusetts, which supplies herbs for their associated apothecary in nearby Florence.