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.

Farm to Pharmacy: Come Play a Hands-On Role in the Grassroots Healthcare Revolution!

Our signature program — newly expanded for 2012!

Farm to Pharmacy is an innovative internship program that takes place at Goldthread Herb Farm and Apothecary in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts. Educational and life changing, the internship offers participants the chance to play a pivotal role in the Grassroots Healthcare Revolution. Find unparalleled communion with the medicinal plants themselves as well as a community that emphasizes sustainable, non-toxic and cost effective healthcare grounded in organic agriculture and empowered self-care for all.

Goldthread offers interns the rare opportunity to learn fundamentals of both traditional medicine and plant cultivation side by side. Synthesizing Chinese, Ayurvedic and Western herbal traditions, our educational offerings are a comprehensive compliment to the abundance of time spent outdoors. We welcome herbal medicine students from all walks of life and are happy to facilitate college credit where possible.

During this experiential seven-month program, students divide their day at Goldthread’s organic herb farm between classes in herbal theories and supervised work with the plants in over 3 acres of fields. Educational herb walks in the learning garden to practice identification and discuss botanical characteristics will compliment lectures and coursework. Subjects range from the major classifications and their specific healing properties to the medicinal applications for a wide variety of medical conditions.

Over the course of the growing season interns will participate in all aspects of plant cultivation from preparing beds and planting seeds through to harvest and beyond. Interns will learn to process and prepare herbal medicines transforming freshly harvested flowers, leaves and roots into tinctures, syrups, teas, salves, elixirs and oils for our apothecary.

Included in the internship program are many additional learning opportunities taking place off the farm at our apothecary in Florence and in the wider community. Goldthread offers lectures and demonstrations in many specific areas and aspects of healing with monthly themes and outreach programs. Join us as we supply local low-income community gardens with seedlings or sit in on an elaborate discussion of the benefits of an herbal spring cleaning program. The wider community of the Pioneer Valley itself is brimming with opportunities to further your immersion into a culture of true sustainability in action.

Upon completion of the program, interns come away with an extensive understanding of the theories of herbal healing, the agricultural training to cultivate the major medicinal herbs in their own space, and the practical skills to apply their new knowledge and begin healing themselves and their families.

Come play a hands-on role in the grassroots healthcare revolution!

Dates: Wednesdays 9-4 , April 11th -October 10. Work study is available and will begin on March 15.

Tuition: $2450. Pay in full before March 15th and save 10%.

A non-refundable 25% deposit is required to hold space.

See our website for more details: www.goldthreadapothecary.com

Join us at Goldthread Farm for a Magical Winter Distillation and Essential Oils Workshop!

   

February 25, 2012 • 10am-4pm  

$60 Advance Registration Required

In this special day long workshop at Goldthread Farm & Distillery participants will have a rare hands-on opportunity to learn about the  fundamentals of essential oil distillation. We’ll begin with an invigorating winter hike into the forest to gather the evergreen branches from which we’ll extract fresh essential oil the traditional way — in Goldthread’s 85-gallon wood-fired distiller. 

As the fire beneath the distiller crackles and the scent of crisp evergreen fills the air, we’ll gather for class by the woodstove and sample a wide variety of  essential oils, discussing their therapuetic properties and invaluable role in grassroots healthcare. How can we use these oils to effectively prevent colds and flus, ease muscle and joint aches, heal wounds, aid in relaxation and sleep?

Participants will come away with a fundamental understanding of essential oil: the alchemy of distillation, its many therapeautic uses, methods of administration, dosage and safety information — as well as a bottle of the freshly distilled evergreen hydrosol from our day together, and instructions for its use.

call to reserve your place! 

413-587-0620

No special tools are needed. Dress warm, bring a lunch, and Goldthread will provide hot herbal tea.

Gigantic Online Holiday Sale!

Here is the link to our online store!

Holiday Gift Ideas (and a Sale!) from Goldthread

Dear Friends,
As we head towards the holidays, Goldthread Apothecary in Florence is filling up with exciting new products, and we hope that by the time you've finished reading this newsletter you've decided on the perfect gift for everyone on your list!

First, we've expanded our bulk tea section where, in addition to artisan teas from around the world, you will now find traditional matcha and maté accessories, gorgeous flowering tea sets from Numi Tea (that's one blooming, above), lidded tea cups, super-convenient (and BPA-free) on-the-go french press mugs in 6 glossy colors, and more.

We also have lots of stocking stuffers to choose from, like Juniper Ridge incense made with 100% wild-harvested leaves, wood and resins from the mountains of the West. There are also new charcoals and Japanese incense bowls for burning the Floracopeia resins we carry — like Black Copal, gathered from wild "elephant trees" of the Sonoran Desert of northern Mexico.

Speaking of Floracopeia, we recently restocked our essential oil display with some of our customer's favorites like tea tree, Frankincense, and peppermint — and have Aroma-Globe nebulizers in which to diffuse them. Compact, quiet and attractive, Aroma Globes are the most technologically advanced nebulizing diffuser systems on the market today. In fact, if you need to restore some focus during the hectic holiday season (and who doesn't?) an excellent mental clarity blend of essential oils for diffusing is 4 drops of lime, 2 drops tulsi and 2 drops of peppermint.

If you haven't yet experienced our super-comfy "Farm to Pharmacy" organic bamboo and cotton tee shirts, you can find them in a new display at the front of the store, with more colors and sizes due to arrive this week.

As always, we have a wide variety of Goldthread-grown culinary spice mixes, teas, hydrosols, herb-infused honeys, tinctures and elixirs, many of which are currently on sale for 20% off! Organic, local, hand-harvested and produced in small batches, these special items are rich with the colors, scents, and tastes of our Conway summer gardens and make wonderful, unique holiday and hostess gifts, especially when gathered together in a basket. Click here to see our sale flier for details.

Community Supported Medicine Shares for next summer's herbal bounty also make excellent gifts, and we have customizable gift certificates available for those, as well as a special price! From now until December 31, 2011 both small and large shares are $25 off — small shares are now $125 and large shares $225. During our summer distributions, shares can be picked up at the farm in Conway or at the Apothecary in Florence, or shipped if you'd like to share the herbal goodness with someone who is not local.

Come to the Apothecary to shop locally, take a class, browse our new books and items, or to just say hello, relax and savor the scent of the resins we'll be burning and the sight of last summer's harvest dried and tucked into glass jars in our bulk herbs section.

We wish you a happy and healthy holiday season.

Best Wishes,

Goldthread

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!