To start things off, can you share some of your go-to herbal books or favorite herbalists that you look to for inspiration?

All of my teachers have been amazing, but the few who have inspired me the most are: Madelon Hope, Rosemary Gladstar, Tieraona Low Dog and Trishuwa.

Given your background and close ties with the herbal community, where do you see the future of herbalism going in the next few years?​

There has been a major shift in the community of herbalism over the past decade.  There are many younger people getting involved, teaching, making products, and growing.  They bring with them a fiery energy that is both vibrant and infectious.  I think Jeff Carpenter captured it perfectly when he said: “We have come to the end of the herbal renaissance, this is the herbal revolution!”  It’s been beautiful watching the transformation! 

Do you have a favorite plant or two at the moment?

I love them all, but I think Nettle and Dandelion are invaluable.

If you could go back in time to meet yourself when you were just starting on the herbal path, what would you say?

Don’t rush so much.  I was in Rosemary Gladstar’s certification course in VT while taking Gale Ulrich’s yearlong apprenticeship at the same time.  I wanted all the knowledge at once, but it doesn’t work like that.  I have no regrets; I was where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there.  I feel honored to have studied with both of these amazing woman.

What advice would you give to budding herbalists?

Spend time with the plants -- they can teach you more than anyone.

Are there any non-herbal hobbies or interests that you love doing as well?

I love the old ways.  I play the harp, spin wool, and had a crane installed in my fireplace so that I can learn and practice hearthside cooking.

Any guilty pleasures you’d like to share?

I tend to never refuse myself anything.  It’s all about moderation!  I do have a weakness for all the regulars, coffee, chocolate, wine…

Can you tell us more about your passion for teaching?

As far as my teaching goes, I have always been a gypsy teacher.  I will go where the students are.  For my certification courses in Aromatherapy I often teach for the Boston School of Herbal Studies, Alternatives for Health and I also teach on Cape Cod.  I co-teach herbalism for the Boston School of Herbal studies as well as offer my own herbal certification course on Cape Cod.  I also teach workshops in soap making, palmistry and flower essence making.  Traveling to teach has its challenges, but it has allowed me to meet some amazing people!  I often say “it’s not the average person who studies herbs.”

What’s one fun thing that most people don’t know about you?

I ride a Harley-Davidson (without a helmet, when possible.) (Don’t tell my children.)

by Jenny Hauf

I am sitting in my kitchen on a Sunday morning, having luxuriously slept in to the seventh hour. There are herbs neatly (well, relatively neatly) placed on shelves and in the brand new stillroom that we created from the worn out walk-in closet that used to house unused tennis rackets and jumbled canning materials. On the kitchen table are the remnants of wreath-making: sprigs of rosemary and thyme, dried gomphrena, statice, and strawflower stems, bits of wire and pliers. My last market of the year is in a few hours and I won’t be selling anything freshly harvested, only the fat of summer and fall’s harvests. There will be the green salve created with lush comfrey leaves of September mornings and the beautiful calendula of hot afternoons. Spilanthes tincture from when that magic eyeball plant was bounding over the edges of the bed, finding more soil to root in and land to spread eagle in. The wreaths are made of grapevines trimmed during my friend Coco’s prunings of fall, the flowers from her daughter Mal’s dewy harvests at the flower field at First Root Farm. ​

This is the unthinkable: a morning spent at home before leaving at 10:15 to get to Harvard Square. Listening to the radio in my bathrobe. Barely thinking about the field, as the field’s asleep, covered in the comforts of straw and cardboard. The energy is all underground as winter slowly (too slowly) comes in. 

I’m going to a concert tonight, a pleasure rarely afforded during the months of tendriling, weeding, and harvesting. I’ll be seeing Joanna Newsom, who may sing a song of “the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating. Joy of life,” and to which I raise a glass of nettle beer and holler, yes! To life, but also to farming! To all of it trapped in jars and bottles and bags for winter. To the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating JOY of it.

All the pain, all the hours spent doing one movement over and over. All the sun and all the sweat, the rain and the water, the gas station food, the butterflies. To the summer sounds of cars driving by, the leaves everywhere, the trees surrounding me in their shimmers of transition, their eventual undressing, their standing as sentries with such blessed bones and bark. To the moon lighting up a scene that made me guffaw when it was finally too late to work and I realized again that this place, ever so briefly, was mine to harvest and sow. To the crabgrass everywhere and the hands that helped me pull it, to the hands that helped me plant the white cloves of garlic, the huge bulbs of daffodils, the hands that shared picnics and sumac lemonade on long afternoons.

To the stripping of chamomile flowers from stems on CSA mornings, to running around with an apron and a clipboard, to drinking coffee for the first time in months. To Paula Poundstone for making me laugh as I put the bags together, to Car Talk for cracking me up on the drive to Somerville, to Ira Glass for making me misty eyed in Jamaica Plain. To the bees singing around tulsi inflorescences while I weeded and harvested in heaven. To the way that the swamp milkweed burst from its buds and silently waved its beauty of pinks and whites on the 4th of July. 
​
To sleeping too little and driving too much. To singing really loud in the car and alone in the field. To never having clean knees and crabgrass seeds getting in my hair. To wrapping California poppies in butcher paper and taking one thousand pictures of honeybees. To podcasts. To wildcrafting plantain and goldenrod, to climbing ladders to get to elderflowers. To wearing big boots and short shorts. To not showering. To dressing up and scrubbing almost all the dirt off. To meeting beautiful people. To slinging fertilizer in a good straw hat. To growing and dying and growing back. To resting all winter. To all of the defeating, the repeating, the outrageous Joy of it.

​To all of it, I give thanks. To all of it, you’re forever in my heart and the dirt of my knees. I’ll drink you in winter; I’ll see you in spring.