Divine Farmer CSA
What is a CSA?
It stands for Community Supported Agriculture. While most CSA's provide vegetables and produce for their members, Divine Farmer's CSA is focused on bring herbal medicines to our community. The CSA model reflects an innovative and resourceful strategy to connect local farmers with local consumers; develop a regional growing supply and strong local economy; maintain a sense of community; encourage land stewardship; and honor the knowledge and experience of growers and producers working with small to medium farms. A CSA is a partnership of mutual commitment between a farm and a community of supporters which provides a direct link between the production and the herbal medicine we use.
How is this CSA unique?
Divine Farmer Herbals is the work of many herbalists from Boulder who support Marco Lam and Jamie Furstoss in growing herbs for the Boulder community. Our herbs are found in local herb shops and in many companies who produce herbal products in Boulder. This is a way for people to connect with the local medicines that grow in our area, learn about their uses and ultimately prepare the medicines that they can use to support their optimal health.
Why the name Divine Farmer?
The Divine Farmer, also known as Shennong, was the original herbalist. Chinese legend holds that Shennong was an Emperor of China over 5000 years ago who taught man how to properly steward the land for agriculture. He is said to have tasted hundreds of herbs to test their medical value and had a magical relationship with his body which enabled him to know the exact medicinal properties of the herbs. He wrote the first book on herbs, known as the Divine Farmer's Materia Medica, whose body of work still exists today and is the foundation for much of the practice of Chinese Medicine. Beyond a mythical Chinese hero, the Divine Farmer represents a tradition of close relationship with the land and the medicines that it provides and for a practitioner to keep close to the land in his treating of patients.
What happens when I show up?
Tuesday afternoons, prior to class time, we will engage in a variety of herb related activities. All CSA members are welcome to attend the early sessions in addition to the classes. During these afternoons we will do occasional off site
adventures to collect wild herbs, conduct herb walks, as well as work the fields harvesting together at Earth Star Farms. We will potluck at the end of the evenings and play music sometimes! We will provide all of the supplies, equipment and organic grain and fruit alcohols to make medicines, as well as access to all of the herbs.
Depending on the day, we will harvest herbs and then put them in organic alcohols to extract them. After the constituents have been extracted out over a month's time, we will press them out with a high pressure herbal extractor. Then we will have a class about the herbs that we are pressing and you will go home with some of the medicine that you have engaged in making. We will also have additional classes on growing medicinal herbs, herb walks, biodynamic farming practices, beekeeping, mead and cordial making as well as an advanced track for skilled herbalists.
What is wild?
We are all a little wild! This is our first year offering this CSA program and our lease ends on the farm at the end of the Summer. In the past we have had a big volunteer program and an internship program, but this year we need some community support to see where our next step in growing medicines goes. We are all excited about the idea of a local herbalist's guild and crafting medicines together! It is both exciting and deeply gratifying to put together a pharmacy of local plants to help you and your community!
Local Herbs for Local People
First and foremost, as a clinical herbalist, I want a product which I know is both safe and effective for my patients. The relationship between us and our herbal allies can range from the strength of an intimate understanding to a basic hope that an unknown plant can help us. We all want full and radiant health, but so often we forget the primary tenet of well being. The simple knowledge that our health is our relationship with our environment, with strata ranging from our emotional and internal environments to our external environments of home, diet, community and watershed.
In the age of global trade and commerce, it has became convenient and cheaper to use herbal products from outside our ecosystem. Herbs grown and harvested in other nations, that lack the labor and environmental regulations that are in place here, can cost a fraction of what it would cost to produce them here. So why use local herbs at such a price?
As a practicing clinical herbalist, I wrestle with this issue. Chinese herbs are available quite inexpensively and often have no local replacements that I understand. The issues with Chinese herbs grown today include abuse of worker rights, chemical contamination, heavy metal contamination and the unsustainable use of endangered species. The Chinese Medical industry is evolving in terms of heavy metal and contaminant testing, but the organic standards and labor practices are still in their inception. Going back to the roots of Chinese Medicine, we understand the medicine comes from aligning our health with the natural world. The ancient doctors all used local herbs, long before the advent of the modem commercialized herb trade. In the earlier traditions, there was a living relationship with the herbal medicines used that both strengthened the community, the land and the individual. This is the medicine that we seek to reconnect with.
Using local herbs, we know the source and have a better understanding of the environment that they are grown in, both human and ecological. Ecologically, it is a more efficient process as the herbs do not have to be shipped long distances. Clinically, we have found a large resonance between the conditions most commonly seen in our area and the medicinal uses of the most commonly occurring herbs, both native and introduced. On a deeper level, we feel that the local herbs have an important message to the people that live in our watershed. The teachings of the plants surpasses just treating disease, but encompasses a sense of well being and a greater health that comes from a relationship with the land that surrounds us.
My abiding love for the herbs that I interact with in my local ecosystem brings me joy that I hope I can share. Join us in claiming our birthright of health that comes when we move deeper in harmony with the natural world that surrounds us.
Sincerely,
Marco Chung-Shu Lam
Clinical Herbalist, Licensed Acupuncturist and Farmer