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Linda Shanahan is a graduate of David Winston's Center for Herbal Studies. She owns Barefoot Botanicals, a Certified Organic farm in Doylestown, PA (Now Bluestem Botanicals). Linda runs classes and workshops connecting People with Plants for Food, for Medicine and for our Collective Future. With nearly two decades of experience in the herbal industry, Linda blends the craft of farming with the art and science of herbalism. Herbs grown by herbalists. Barefoot Farms never sprays synthetic chemicals and actively works to build the soil life through cover crops, crop rotation, and additions of compost, making them a perfect vendor for providing raw botanicals to Herbalist & Alchemist.
How did you first become interested in medicinal herbs?
After graduating from college in Philadelphia, I joined the Americorps program and found myself in a small logging town at the California/Oregon border in the mid-90s. There was definitely some culture shock, but the ecological shock was felt to me I think even more deeply. I had never lived in a place that didn’t rain between May and November, leaving vast valleys of brown for much of the year. I loved the yellows, oranges and blues that covered the hillsides in spring and the dramatic elevation changes that the mountains offered, but I still felt homesick. I went into the places that were green and reminded me of home - into the woods. I felt peace and comfort in the woods and eventually wanted to learn more about what grew there. I started reading books, trying my hand at plant ID and using some common herbs for medicinal use. I wanted to learn whatever I could- I even took a foraged basket weaving class. With each step I realized I wanted to learn more and be closer to plants. With the internet being rather new to me I did a search and found information about an herbalist/botanist teacher in Eugene, OR named Howie Brounstein. I reached out to him - interviewed with Howie and his Co-teacher at the time Steven Yeager- and the next few years I spent studying and working with them as well as other Eugene area-herbalists and fell more in love with plants and the West Coast every day.
I understand you studied with David 2008 - 2012. How did you find David's course? How has studying with him impacted your herbal path?
In 2004 I decided to move back to the East Coast to be closer to family. I was feeling lost and depressed, not sure of whether I had made the wrong choice to return. While my husband was able to find his footing and found community by starting a small organic farm here in our town, I had searched for herbalists and had found very few. Knowing that I had more to learn, I set out to find another teacher. Speaking with Howie one day, he assured me that I needed to consider David. I wasn’t sure as I had wanted to find a female teacher but hadn’t found her yet. Putting one foot in front of the other I reached out to David, interviewed with him, and decided he was the right choice, and I am so glad I did.
Having studied with a number of herbalists over the prior few years, I hadn’t found a way to bring it all together. I went to nursing school thinking that I could learn more about people (which I did) but it left me wanting a deeper understanding of clinical applications of herbs- a cohesive, energetic way to assess and formulate. I was pulling from multiple traditions and lacking confidence, but David’s program provided all that I needed. He was clinically oriented enough to meet my broadening understanding of modern treatments of acute illness and gave me the tools to confidently work with people experiencing chronic illness- ideally helping them to avoid seeing me in the hospital setting. It took a while to learn but I fell in love with the Triune system of formulation. It just works like magic when trying to address a whole (and always complicated) person! Of course, the foundation of all of this is to first learn how to live well, which is at the core of all that David teaches. I am incredibly grateful for all that I learned, and I continue to learn from David every time I refer back to my notes from over decade ago.
What herbs do you grow for H&A?
Having grown vegetables for a number of years, my herb garden grew with each season as I learned more and more about plants. I taught some workshops and had started to sell some fresh herbs at the farmers market but it was never enough to justify large plantings. But at a farming conference that H&A CEO Beth Lambert also attended she mentioned a need for locally produced bulk fresh herbs. I was able to convince my husband and farming partner Eric that it was worth a try. We started in in 2015, I believe it was, with Tulsi, which was a joy to grow and harvest. We decided after that year to start transitioning the farm to herb production and built a drying room, commercial wash/pack facility, and ultimately in 2018 added a commercial kitchen for processing our herbs. Over the years we have grown other crops as requested by Herbalist and Alchemist. We have provided Tulsi, Catnip, Parsley whole plant, and this year we are adding Peppermint and Figwort (Scrophularia).
Walk us through the life of the herbs you grow for H&A.
Some of the crops we grow are annual (plant seed in spring and harvest in summer or fall) and include Tulsi and Parsley. Others, such as Catnip, peppermint and Figwort, we grow as biennial or short-lived perennials.
For our annual crops, we typically seed a cover crop the prior fall and apply compost with the intention of a quick disking of the field prior to planting when the field is warm and dry enough in spring. If necessary to break up the soil further, we will till small strips but leave green paths in place between planting beds. We will then plant our baby seedlings that began life 4-6 weeks prior in the greenhouse. We usually need to cultivate with the tractor and then between the plants by hand 2-3 times prior to harvest. We use fish emulsion as fertilizer in addition to compost and that is usually enough to keep the plants happy, given rain and/or irrigation to help it all soak into the soil.
For biennial or short-lived perennial crops, we start our seeds in late July or early August and plant our baby plants in late September. We take advantage of the low weed pressure in fall and the cool wet winters that we have here to help the plants get established slowly over time. Come spring, the warm sunny days bring on what my friend Matt Dybala at Herb Pharm calls “plant teenage years”. The fall planted crops spring up and grow at such a fast pace that it’s almost hard to keep up with them! While we still plant many of them in spring as well, we usually get an early harvest from these early risers, and it makes for less field work for us during the busy and often wet days of spring.
Harvesting is done by hand, late in morning after the dew has dried but before the heat of the days disperses too many volatile compounds. We start the day by sanitizing our bins and harvesting tools. Sanitation is incredibly important! Because both our field and our are certified organic, we are very careful about any cleaning or sanitizing agents that we use in the kitchen and in the field. Our primary hand and tool sanitizer is certified organic cane alcohol at a ratio of 75% alcohol, 25% water. It dries quickly and leaves no residue or odor. We take this with us into the field to sanitize our hands (after washing) and tools prior to harvest, after taking a drink, or at any other time a risk of contamination of hands is suspected.
For plants that are harvested low to the ground, we bring them back to the kitchen for washing to remove any dirt or field residue. The plants are then air dried on sanitized tables with fans, and turned frequently to dry them as quickly as possible. For plants that are harvested higher from the ground, such as flowering tops, we bring the bins back to the kitchen as quickly as possible to cool down in the walk-in to remove any field heat before bagging them for delivery. We do our best to harvest one day, cool overnight, and deliver the next day. We LOVE that H&A is so close that we can proudly open our box of herbs for inspection upon delivery!.
Does your training as an herbalist inform how you grow herbs?
Absolutely! I notice the difference between how I approach the plants to how my husband or other growers approach them. I have been trained to “see” the plants in a deeper way than others have. I know it sounds a little woo-woo, but I feel them too. For this reason, I have never quite been able to give up my role in propagating most of the plants that go out to the field myself. I dream about them from the time I seed them, following them until they get big enough to grown on their own. I do weekly field walks to make sure that the plants are harvested at the right stage for medicinal value. Without my training, our field crew would simply grow for size or for weight. More than once I have had to explain why we harvest when a plant is smaller (such as nettle), or why we don’t wait until the plant is in flower but aim for bud stage (such as motherwort), for example. While I have always maintained a clinical practice outside of the farm (in herbalism and nursing), I feel that I will always be a part of farm operations in order to provide the kind of guidance that only an herbalist can provide.
