Quality Over Quantity
Farmers who sell ingredients to extract companies often make money by the pound, so they grow as many pounds as possible at the expense of quality. We harvest at the right time according to research on optimum chemical profile because we only care about the potency of the final product.
A plant’s chemical properties can change tremendously over the course of its lifecycle as it puts energy toward leaf development, flowering, and finally seed. The key advantage to farming our own herbal extract ingredients is that we only harvest at peak potency.
Qing Hao (Artemisia Annua) plants can grow very large, but they shed important chemical compounds as they get larger and flower, so we harvest them early at their peak.
Focusing on the chemical life-cycle of each crop is essential to growing the highest quality ingredients.
Soil health through myceliated compost
Nourished from the Ground Up
We make the highest quality all-organic compost on our farm because composts vary widely in their quality and cleanliness. We feed our plants with sustainable compost nutrients without the use of chemical inputs or mined additives.
Building Soil Health for Superior Extracts
In addition to supporting the ecology, all of our trials showed that herbs nourished with our myceliated compost had more aromatic essential oils and higher potency. Feeding our soil with robust organic nutrients builds a healthy soil ecosystem and gives our plants the nutrients they need to produce more of the compounds we want in our extracts.
Giving crops an intergenerational home
By meticulously saving seed at our farm, we cultivate resilience in our herbs as they thrive in the same ecosystem as their parents. We are able to maintain consistent potency of our products because we don’t have to worry about purchasing inferior seed from year to year.
The Art of Seed-Saving
The therapeutic compounds found in plants are often stimulated responses to their ecosystems. Plants are ingenious chemists, able to produce hundreds of different compounds to support their health. Humankind has benefited immeasurably from our passed-down knowledge of how to use these plants.
A Haven for Pollinators
Farming Pollinator-Friendly Fields
Where Forests and Farms Coexist
Our farm preserves an abundance of biodiversity. These forests offer nesting locations to everything from insect pollinators to birds and mammals. We also maintain our own honey-bee hives and promote a non-toxic safe environment at our farm where they can thrive.
Planting for Pollinator Ecology
A big part of our field maintenance is working to offer a diversity of flowering plants in the same field. Different plants flower at different times of the year and by planting multiple crops on the same field, we provide a reliable and diverse food source for our pollinators.
The Truth about Geo-Authenticity
A common misconception has emerged that herbs grown outside of their native habitat are somehow less potent than those grown in their native habitat. This over simplification has been disproven by scientific studies.
Herbal Potency & Growing Conditions
Potency has little to do with the continent where they were grown. If a crop is grown on its native continent, but it is grown with chemical fertilizers in degraded or contaminated soils or if it is over-irrigated to boost yield, this will produce inferior herbs just as it will anywhere.
A study on Huang Qin (Scutellaria baicalensis), for example, showed that Huang Qin grown in Crystal Springs, Mississippi had higher levels of key chemicals, baicalin and baicalein, when compared with a sample imported from the plant’s native region (1). The truth is that how herbs are grown (i.e. soil conditions, irrigation, harvesting and drying etc…) determines the herbs’ chemical potency far more than the continent where herbs are grown.
(1) V.D. Zheljazkov et al. (2007) “Quality and Yield of Baikal Skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis) Grown at Multiple Locations” in HortScience 42(5): 1183-1187.
