Community Supported Medicine: A Conversation with William Siff, Goldthread Herbal Apothecary

This afternoon an interview with Goldthread's founder William Siff was featured on the Numen News & Blog. Haven't heard of Numen?

Numen, defined as the animating force in nature, is a 95-minute documentary film focusing on the healing power of plants and the natural world. 

Featuring stunning footage of medicinal plants and thought-provoking interviews with Drs. Tiearona Lowdog and Larry Dossey, the late Bill Mitchell, ND, author Kenny Ausubel, herbalists Rosemary Gladstar, Phyllis Light and many others, the film calls for a re-awakening of traditional knowledge about plants and their uses. You can watch the trailer on YouTube.

Here's an excerpt from the interview, which you can read in its entirety here. And finally, here is a link to more information about our Community Supported Medicine shares!

Community Supported Medicine: A Conversation with William Siff, Goldthread Herbal Apothecary

Posted February 9th, 2012 by Ann Armbrecht

Goldthread Herbal Apothecary is a fantastic example of grassroots, community based medicine. Like many herb schools, they offer classes, apprentice programs, and herbal medicines for sale. But to me their community supported medicine program (CSM) is the most exciting – and revolutionary – work they are doing. I was thrilled to be able to speak with William Siff about his vision behind this model. Lots more information is available on their website!

Ann: I love the model of herbal CSAs on so many different levels and wondered if you could talk some about how you came to create an herbal CSA. What is your vision is with your CSA? And why do you think it is important?

William: We modeled our CSM after the now popular CSA model thriving in certain parts of the country like here in Western Mass. In my opinion the CSA model of reviving community-based agriculture is one of the most positive social trends happening in our culture today. Herbs are just a natural part of this revival and yet the knowledge and understanding of where and how they fit into daily life to enhance and improve health has largely been lost. The CSM is an attempt to reinvigorate this knowledge and connect people directly to the source of their medicine and associate it with the emerging organic vegetable renaissance.

A Snowy Open House and CSM Distribution at Goldthread Farm

I must admit that when the date for Goldthread's final Open House and Community Supported Medicine share distribution of the season was set about a month ago, I was not envisioning the gardens being covered in snow. Despite looking more like early January than early November, yesterday's temperature was actually quite comfortable and a handful of adventurous herb lovers ventured to the farm to pick up shares and take a snowy sunset tour.

The third and final share of the season included bulk herbs and teas: Lemon Lunacy, Flu Relief, Goldthread Basil Blend and Immuni-Tea; immunity-boosting tinctures of Echinacea and Ashwagandha; compounds: Elderberry Elixir, Throat Spray; Infused oils of Mullein Garlic and Lavender; Dominican Sage, Yarrow, and Balsam Fir hydrosols; Holy Basil and Lavender Sage honeys; and bulbs of this season's garlic.

The Lavender Sage Honey seemed to be a popular choice at last night's distribution. Since I was on the farm this summer as a Farm to Pharmacy intern I remember the day in July when we harvested lavender flowers and started infusing that sun and flower-filled honey...

...which is truly a taste of summer in the winter months.

I also remember the Ashwagandha root harvest...

Being on the farm from April to October gives one the opportunity to see the complete growing cycle and personally I feel far more connected to both the plants and the medicine as a result.

Speaking of connected, I baked these ginger cookies for the Open House using the locally-grown fresh ginger from Old Friends Farm in Amherst MA that I blogged about here. These were accompanied by hot Lemon Lunacy tea.

We even had a surprise guest, though he was a bit shy.

The bad news is, this was the final CSM distribution of the 2011 season. The good news is, full shares of medicine will be available until January and can be picked up at Goldthread Apothecary in Florence, MA or shipped (we will post a list of what these shares include in the near future). The best news is that we are already planning for the 2012 season of Community Supported Medicine and for continued opportunities to visit and tour the farm during next summer's distributions.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support!

Goldthread in The Boston Globe

From today's Boston Globe....

Locally grown herbs finding their niche

By Karen Brown Globe Correspondent / September 5, 2011

CONWAY - Almost everything Joanna Miles consumes comes from a local source. The 34-year-old stay-at-home mother gets her vegetables from one nearby farm, her meat and grains from another, her milk from a local dairy. And this summer, she learned that the locavore movement has come to medicinal herbs.

That’s how she ended up at Goldthread Herb Farm, a picturesque three acres in the foothills of the Berkshires, choosing from an assortment of herbal tea, hydrosols, oils, and tinctures that originated in its lush fields.

Miles, who lives in Easthampton, filled her bag with clary sage to calm her premenstrual moods, California poppy to help her sleep, and dried nettles for calcium - all of which she could have bought at a retail store.

“I really wanted to see the ground, see where they grew,’’ she said, “to talk to the people who make it, see the care and the love they put into it. And to support the growing efforts.’’

Miles is just the sort of consumer William Siff had in mind when he bought this certified organic farm six years ago and started what he calls a Community Supported Medicine program - a variation on the better-known term Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA.

Siff’s goal is to get his medicinal herbs into the consumer’s medicine cabinet the same way that vegetable CSAs get local produce onto the kitchen table.

Fifty to 75 people invest in a share of his harvest every year, he said, each paying $150 to $225 for three pick-ups a season - about 20 percent less than the retail price. Instead of kale and lettuce, they get calendula and skullcap - usually packaged for internal or topical use.

“They treat all manner of what you would typically see at the individual or family level in the course of living your life in New England for a year,’’ Siff said. “Colds, flus, allergies, coughs, sleep and stress, minor skin things.’’

While Goldthread was among the first farms to launch this CSA model, the American Botanical Council reports a growing number of herbal farmshares across the Northeast and, to a lesser extent, beyond. Some sell their medicinal herbs at farmers markets or by mail order, and others, like Goldthread, invite consumers to pick up directly from the farm and learn there how to use them.

Siff, a tall, fit 39-year-old, is an acupuncturist and practitioner of herbal medicine who also runs a retail herb apothecary in Northampton. For years, he bought his remedies from producers as far away as California and China.

“It didn’t make much sense, considering the fact there’s a lot of fossil fuel usage getting them here,’’ Siff said. “You can’t ascertain quality and freshness at the level you can when you do it yourself, when it’s locally sourced.’

He decided to start his own herb farm - not just for his own clinical use, but to reach a growing market of people frustrated with Western health care.

Joanna Miles says the appeal of herbs, for her, is that they are designed to keep people healthy, not just treat them when sick.

Taking herbs “is self-empowering, because people can do it at home by themselves,’’ said Siff, who said he has not been to a Western doctor in 17 years. “They don’t have to run to the doctor every time they get a sore throat or a cold or cough. It’s basically the revival of what we call folk medicine.’’

Not that he expects his customers to forgo all pharmaceuticals. “But they’re looking for alternatives. Herbal medicine tends to be, if used right, something that not only deals with symptoms but strengthens underlying tissues of the body.’’

On a recent pick-up day, Siff - in a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals - led customers through his fields to see the plant versions of what they got in their shares. He passed wild jagged stalks of stinging nettles - good for arthritis and joint pain, he explained - and moved onto tulsi, a member of the basil family.

“Feel free to scratch or smell it,’’ he told them. “If you drink it every day, for a period of time, weeks to months, it will help to essentially enhance your energy, help you to sleep deeper, and resist the negative effects of stress.’’

Next was California poppy, an antispasmodic for the nervous system, Siff said. Take a dropper full of the tincture, he told them, “and then wait until you feel relaxation. Anywhere from every 30 to 45 minutes to an hour, do it again, until the pain is at a level where it’s tolerable. The thing with herbs is you have to monitor how it’s affecting you, moment to moment, hour to hour.’’

But even with this educational piece, some herbal experts question whether medicine - natural or otherwise - should be marketed the same way as eggplants and broccoli.

“Are you just supposed to take whatever medicinal herbs are being grown? Because that seems like an odd way to use medicine,’’ says Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a Georgetown University plant pharmacologist affiliated with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. “You wouldn’t go into a drugstore and ask for the drug of the week.’’

Siff points out that many people keep standard Western pharmaceuticals on hand, such as decongestants or aspirin, so why not do the same for herbal medicine?

Fugh-Berman, however, worries that untrained consumers may not know how to use the herbs properly, especially since the FDA does not regulate herbs for safety or effectiveness. And while she says many common herbs - such as chamomile or lemon balm - are benign, others can be problematic if taken in high doses, or with prescription drugs.

“If it’s strong enough to be pharmacologically active,’’ Fugh-Berman says, “it’s also strong enough to have some side effects.’’

On the other end of the debate, some question how well herbs work at all - and whether taking them could delay more effective Western treatment.

Dr. David Kroll, a pharmacologist at North Carolina Central University who studies medicinal herbs, thinks consumers should be aware that the quality and potency of plants can vary greatly from farm to farm. He also points out that major clinical trials have shown little to no benefit for some popular herbs, including echinacea for shortening the duration of colds and ginkgo for memory enhancement.

“There’s this beautiful emotional connection to the land, particularly if you’re buying from a farmer who’s local,’’ Kroll says. “But I think that it is just as much of a crapshoot as far as whether the herbs will have a desired effect when purchased from a farm, relative to a retail outlet.’’

Many of Goldthread’s shareholders say the herbs make a difference for them, but the appeal goes beyond efficacy.

It’s about seeing the farmworkers, many of them herbalism students, poring over each individual yarrow stem or pulling petals off each chamomile flower.

“I have a lot of respect for people who do this kind of work,’’ said Meredith Marcoux of Greenfield, who uses medicinal herbs for herself and her dogs. “I’d like to see this flourish.’’

Karen Brown can be reached at kbrown@admin.umass.edu.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

Meeting the Medicine

On Tuesday we distributed our first community supported medicine shares of the 2011 season — bags of nettles, chocolate mint and tulsi; tinctures of skullcap, lemon balm and California poppy; calendula and lavender oils; lavender, spruce and clary sage hydrosols; lemon balm and tulsi honeys, and fresh garlic and herbs from the fields.

To celebrate the abundance we also held an open house, and felt truly supported by the enthusiastic group of members and non-members alike who came to Goldthread to meet the plants, sample some chocolate mint tea tea, ask questions, and watch essential oil of clary sage being distilled over a wood fire. It was an amazing afternoon!

We were once again joined by local reporter Karen Brown of WFCR, who interviewed several of our members about their experiences with herbal medicine and their farm shares, and tomorrow morning the story will air at 6:30 and 8:45am eastern time on our local public radio station, 88.5 (or listen online here).

The open house was such a success we'll be holding another at the end of August when we distribute our second share. Anyone interested in seeing the farm and learning more about herbal medicine is welcome to join us!

Even if you missed the first official distribution, shares are still available for the season and can be ordered here (and we do ship). Thanks again to everyone who came out on Tuesday!