Goldthread's November Newsletter

For those of you who aren't yet subscribed to our email list (which can be done here), we wanted to share our November newsletter...

Dear Friends of Goldthread,

It's hard to believe we're already in the midst of the busy holiday season and standing at the threshold of winter, isn't it? At the farm in Conway we handed out the last CSM share of the 2011 season, have nestled bulbs of garlic into the cold soil for next summer's crop, and are about to build a new, second greenhouse for this spring's seedlings. Both our Community and Clinical Herbalist classes are headed into their second months, and applications are already coming in for the 2012 Farm to Pharmacy internship, which begins in April.

Spice Month Ends... 

Spice Month at the Apothecary ended on November 9th with a Spice of Life Workshop. In a review on the Northampton/Amherst Herbal Meetup site one attendee wrote of the two hour class, "Bill was very generous with his ideas, suggestions, explanations of illness and how herbs and rest can help ward problems off. He sent around interesting samples of items that were available in his store and we sampled them...I felt very well taken care of in his place of business. I bought a couple of items that resonated with me, and would go back to hear more and learn more and purchase items that could do me some good that I do not have at home already." 

Spice Month is over but our organic culinary spices, grown at the farm and processed by hand, are still available and make great stocking stuffers for the locavore cook on your list! Hand processing means that none of the valuable essential oils responsible for an herb's medicinal qualities, taste, and smell are burned off and lost to the heat generated by commercial, mechanized processing — this makes a huge difference in the quality of our herbs and spices compared to larger producers, as fans of our products know. 

Immunity Month Begins! 

If you've been by the Apothecary recently you've seen our new window display and know that Immunity Month is in full swing! Inside the shop the front table is stocked with our own line of immunity-boosting elixirs, tinctures, honeys, and teas as well as a big basket of organic garlic from the farm, some Ayurvedic neti pots and nasya oil and (just in case your immunity wasn't quite ready for the season), cough syrups and teas for either wet or dry coughs. 

This month William Siff will be teaching two Wednesday night classes about immunity, on December 7th and 21st.

The first, Building Deep Immunity will focus on the best strategies for building the deep immune reserves that we need to stay healthy throughout the winter months. We will review and discuss aspects of immune function and dysfunction from the point of view of traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Western herbal theory and will discuss a variety of the most important remedies for optimal immune health, including how to prepare, when to take, and at what dosage.

In the second class, Grassroots Herbal Remedies for a New England Winter, we'll discuss some common disorders that can make living in New England during the winter quite a challenge — coughs, colds, flus, sore throats and fevers — and learn some of the grassroots remedies and strategies that can be used to help you and your family prevent and treat these unwanted winter guests. We'll discuss the most effective use of essential oils, Echinacea, garlic, Tulsi, Osha, Slippery elm, Neti pots and more. You'll walk away able to confidently use these remedies immediately to treat a range of common conditions and regain the skill and knowledge that every grandmother once knew.

Tuition for each of these 2 hour classes is $25 at the door, or pay in advance and save $5! Pre-registration is required so we can reach you if the class doesn't run. RSVP by calling 413-587-0620 or emailing info@goldthreadapothecary.com.

Stay tuned for next email newsletter — we'll be tempting you with a list of some of the new products arriving daily at the Apothecary just in time for holiday shopping season and getting you thinking about next summer with a special offer on our Community Supported Medicine Shares. We hope to see you soon in a class or at the shop, and appreciate your continued support.

Best Wishes, 

Goldthread

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!

Locally Grown Ginger? Yes!

Here at Goldthread Apothecary we have the perfect antidote to the early arrival of winter in New England — deliciously spicy locally grown ginger!

A few years ago the folks at Old Friends Farm decided to bring a bit of Hawaii to nearby Amherst, MA and pioneered the growing of ginger as a Northeast crop. Harvested at a young stage, this local ginger is more tender than the older roots typically found at stores and has less inner fibers and no tough skin. Since the harvest season runs only from late August until mid-November, NOW is definitely the time to stock up on this delicious root (without all those transportation miles) — especially with the holiday baking and cooking season right around the corner. Ginger-glazed turkey, anyone? Fresh Ginger Gingerbread? And let's not forget what fresh ginger adds to a cup of homemade Masala Chai.

According to the Old Friends Farm website, young ginger root can be stored in the refrigerator for 10 days in a waxed paper bag or sealed container. Any part of the root that will not be used within 10 days should be frozen in a zipper bag, and can be used from the freezer for many months.

PREPARING FOR FREEZING: Clean the ginger by running it under water and gently rubbing off any soil, then refrigerate or freeze it.

USING FROZEN GINGER: When using the frozen ginger, take it out and grate it frozen, do not allow to thaw and put any unused portions back into the freezer. Grating the ginger just before it is needed in your cooking, enables you to brush the frozen gratings off your cutting board and none is wasted!

Besides being delicious (if you need more inspiration Old Friends Farm shares a number of recipes on their site) the many uses of ginger as a botanical healer are well known. In Ayurvedic medicine ginger is considered the best and most sattvic of the spices, supporting a serene, harmonious, balanced mind or attitude. A warming carminative, ginger has traditionally been used to soothe occasional intestinal gas, bloating, and cramping and to relieve the symptoms of nausea. 

You can find Old Friends Farm locally grown ginger in the refrigerator to the left of the counter at Goldthread Apothecary — while supplies last!

Farm to Pharmacy, Tuesday September 13

 

As the Farm to Pharmacy internship heads into its final weeks we're taking advantage of the gorgeous weather to take long herb walks in the gardens,

  

stopping to admire the flowering chamomile and dill, sampling the bark of Slippery Elm (whose leaves are decidedly un-slippery),

harvesting the Bacopa, known as Brahmi in Ayurvedic medicine,

building fresh new willow fences along the driveway garden,

and enjoying the beauty of the farm.

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.

What's in Store at Goldthread

Those of you who are local and who have visited Goldthread Apothecary recently have probably noticed that we are manifesting a number of changes in the store this summer. For one thing, our shelves are in the process of being reorganized with categories clearly marked by new signage...

You'll also start to see more photos from our farm in Conway MA (where Goldthread's herbs are organically grown) dotting the shelves, as well as some images of our Farm to Pharmacy interns planting, harvesting, and making medicine. Of course we welcome you to visit the farm in person during our next open house on Tuesday, September 6 from 4-6pm (please RSVP to 413-587-0620 if you're coming) or get hands-on experience growing and making herbal medicine by participating in our 7-month long Farm to Pharmacy program which starts up again next April.

But I digress. Let's get back to the Apothecary!

We're adding more space for book and magazine offerings, and have removed some of the furniture in the front of the store to make space for this beautiful  new display table, custom made by Goldthread's Farm Manager, Thomas Schieffer...

You'll also be seeing some new signage in the store windows, displayed in two of these double-sided 2'x3' reclaimed wood frames built by local craftsman Jason Drew...

Goldthread is gearing up for an exciting year ahead. Come to Florence and say hello, or join us at one of our upcoming special events and classes!

An August Harvest...

The late summer weather in New England has been gorgeous lately, and this afternoon Farm to Pharmacy interns worked on harvesting a variety of crops, like these hops, above.

It was also time to harvest some of our culinary herbs — sweet basil, Thai basil, Greek basil, thyme, winter savory, marjoram...these are picked at the peak of the season and immediately brought to our drying room to ensure potent  flavor. 

Marjoram

We're excited to be offering our line of local, organic culinary spices to cafés and restaurants this year and hoping local chefs will incorporate them into imaginative offerings.

We also began to harvest a bit of Echinacea root for tincture.

As well as tiny Elderberries, the basis of an effective (and delicious) immune-building syrup we create and offer at the apothecary.

Elderberries slowly cooking over a low flame.

As summer turns into fall the harvested rows will be cleaned up and put to bed beneath a layer of fresh hay — but not before a lot more medicine gets made!

There is still time to register for our last Farm to Pharmacy Intensive Week of the season, happening September 19-23. We'll be taking herb walks, harvesting, medicine-making, distilling essential oil, and learning from herbalists David Crow and William Siff. September is a beautiful time to enjoy the rolling hills and crisp air of Western Massachusetts, and an amazing season of harvest at Goldthread. We hope you'll join us!