Theme Image

Farm News - Fall 2008

With fall falling upon us at Oregon's Wild Harvest, that means it's time to wrap up the harvest of above-the-ground plants. These include skullcap, echinacea tops, and calendula flowers (p.s. did you know calendula is the Herb of the Year, as declared by the Herb Society of America? It is).

Following the harvest of our above-the-ground plants, we will begin working on the roots, probably mid-October. We have an excellent crop of astragalus root this year, as well as some hardy ashwagandha. It's difficult to find good quality, certified organic ashwagandha, but we have it in abundance! We will wait until the last minute to harvest the ashwagandha, and let it grow as big as possible, since weather gave us a rather slow start this spring and many of the plants could use a little more time in the ground. After the root harvest, we will turn the soil and plant our cover crops.

During all of this harvesting we are of course aggressively stripping and collecting seeds for the next season. There's no shortage of work to be done, but it's a very rewarding time of year as well: seeing our hard work come to fruition.

We look forward to putting our harvest in your hands!

- Randy Buresh, Owner, Herbalist, Farmer