Photography by MJ Photography
Shaded by large, floppy hats and crouched low to the ground, three women in the field pick bugs off winter squash.
Farmer Elisabeth Weaver takes the 80-degree heat in stride, walking the curved, long rows of plants growing in the farm’s raised rainbow beds.
“We do everything on a contour plan here, growing to the contour of the hillside,” she explains. “We’re trying to do water conservation and erosion control. As opposed to conventional farming, tilling a large area or growing in a patch, we have a more sustainable practice for agriculture.”
There are about 40 kinds of medicinal herbs growing in this particular section of the farm. As Weaver walks, she touches plants, plucking some and rattling through the names. She is a veritable encyclopedia of herbs: remedies, properties and even farming techniques roll off her tongue.
Weaver smells a fragrant sprig of lavender. She chats about catnip, used in dried tea blends. And she palms a leafy, green plant that she identifies as elecampane; Weaver says this herb can help people with bronchial issues, and some elecampane will soon be sent to a company who makes tinctures, or concentrated herbal extracts.
This is Lancaster Farmacy (www.lancaster farmacy.blogspot.com), a certified organic farm of both produce and medicinal herbs that sits on four acres of land. It was Eli Weaver’s dream to start such a farm to help her local community. So, alongside her partner, Casey Spacht, Weaver leased land to start a progressive, sustainable farm centered on healing herbs.
“This is a way for us to reclaim an aspect of traditional healing,” she says. “You don’t want to rely only on herbs, but they’ve been there all along. It’s an integrative approach. You should still go to the doctor, but it’s about finding ways to restore your own health.”
Since the farm is part of a larger organization, a farmer’s cooperative, they participate by providing fresh herbs and seasonal produce, like watermelons or asparagus, as part of the crop shares. But the Farmacy stands alone too, offering its own members community-supported medicine, or CSM, shares. Members sign up for six months at a time and receive four to six products per month. In the spring, the farm focuses upon detoxifying products, ones that clean out one’s liver or help with allergies. They’re currently making a harvest tea blend consisting of chamomile, anise, catnip and holy basil.
“A lot of herbs do many things, but in a blend, some are even more powerful,” she says. “We try to make it easy and accessible for people to use.”
Weaver rifles through a box of products that the farm distributed in June. Lifting Lemon Herbal Tea is stuffed into a petite brown bag. It bears a short description, “a refreshing blend,” and directions for use. An all-purpose healing salve made from plantains, red clover and calendula, among other ingredients, is in a small jar. “Our members call this a miracle salve,” she says.
…
Raised Mennonite on a farm north of Manheim, Ella M. McElwee was skeptical about medicinal herbs growing up. As she watched her mother sell fruits and vegetables at a stand in Lebanon, she heard her talk about natural remedies with fervor. And so McElwee went into nursing, hoping to prove her mother wrong.
“I wanted to be able to show this ‘home stuff’ is baloney,” she says. “I scoffed at herbal treatments.”
But after five miscarriages, McElwee thought she’d finally listen to the advice expounded for years by her mother and look into natural solutions. McElwee eventually had three healthy children; it changed her entire perspective.
“It made a believer out of me, even though I was resisting this information,” she says.
McElwee opened a clinic in Manheim with the goal of helping people help themselves. She moved her practice, Health by Choice (www.healthbychoice.net), to New Enterprise in western Pennsylvania in 1985, and in early the 2000s opened up a second practice again in Manheim. McElwee takes a holistic approach to healthcare: Patients are evaluated through urine, saliva, sclerology and iridology screenings; they receive customized nutritional recommendations to improve their overall wellness.
“We’re not here to take a doctor’s place, but we’re here to assess what the body is telling,” McElwee says. “Herbs are quite medicinal, either singularly or combined. It’s a way to add to the circle of healing.”
She says that it’s normal to have doubts about natural remedies. After all, it’s what we have been taught to think. But, she points out that many faiths, from Amish to Mennonite, have traditionally relied upon natural remedies for decades. “It’s not necessarily rejecting medicine, but looking to make something more complete,” she explains. “We try to get people to go back to the old ways, either growing produce in your own garden or getting it at a local farmer’s market. It’s about ‘What are we doing every day to go past the wellness barometer?’”
…
Back on the farm, Weaver scoops up a tow-haired boy who is running around the fields. The two-year-old, her son, is now perched on her hip, pointing and giggling as Weaver walks towards the back of the farm, passing butterflies and compost heaps.
The old barn is covered in sage green tiles; its large doors are propped open and dozens of bulbs of organic garlic hang upside down from thin white ropes inside. The fragrance is overwhelming. Weaver ducks inside, flips on the light and climbs the creaking old steps. “This is where the drying happens,” she says as she strolls into a small, climate-controlled room upstairs packed with wooden drying racks.
Weaver’s uncle helped her to build the rectangular racks with mesh inlays. Each rack is filled with fresh herbs that will take days to dry before heading into processing. That’s where a person standing at a long table will carefully separate leaves from stems and drop them through metal mesh below. Herbs are then weighed, bagged and stored until they’re ready to be used in blends or sold in bulk.
“Sometimes to get one pound of dried herbs, it may take 30 pounds of fresh,” she says. “A fresh product is easier, but it doesn’t have a long storage life.”
Weaver says that she wants people to feel empowered by learning that they can help themselves with herbs and concoct their own remedies. She says it all boils down to prevention: using natural products to boost immunity.
“The cool thing about herbs and plants [is] they’re doing their thing; they’re there. We go to them when we’re ready and still enough to try them,” she says. “Once you have an experience in using an herb that will help you, you’re turned onto this whole world.”
Simple Healing Herb Guide
SYMPTOM/ ISSUE: Lethargy, colds,congestion
HERB(S): Elderberry, Echinacea
• Loaded with antioxidants and often made into a syrup with glycerin or honey, elderberry helps to boost the immune system. This herb is especially popular during flu and cold season.
• Echinacea, an immunostimulant herb, helps the body fight off colds. It’s often made into tea or tinctures, taken prior to becoming ill.
SYMPTOM/ ISSUE: Sunburn, skin ailments, scars, cuts, brush burns, insect bites
HERB: Calendula
• Frequently made into an oil or put into lotions, calendula is a good “cure-all herb” that can help heal wounds and repair cell tissue. It can be used to treat everything from diaper rash to athlete’s foot.
SYMPTOM/ ISSUE: Stress
HERB(S): Chamomile, Lavender, Lemon Balm
• These herbs help to soothe away stress and calm the nervous system. Lancaster Farmacy often uses chamomile, lavender and lemon balm in their tea blends. Others turn these herbs into de-stressing elixirs.
