Big Summer 2026 Updates!

Dearest Family of Self-Healers,

I have been really lagging behind in terms of updates and educational material to everyone. What can I say? It's a bit like "pulling teeth" (pun intended) for someone like me that rather sits on a tractor shoveling wood chips and talking to plants... but I started to realize that I am missing the connecting with you all!

So here it goes with the latest from Summer 2026:

On the homestead/herbal farm front, we continue to use a lot of our energy to work with the forest around us in terms of its health and wildfire protection. I truly hope this will ease up as we move forward! It is backbreaking work and both my sweetie and I are no longer spring chickens :)) I get frustrated with myself at times as I have to stop simply because I don't have it in me... pooped out after 2 full batteries charges on the weed whacker for example! So now I know that pretty much is my limit :)

We have amazing neighbors! I had no idea (when we moved into our house) how blessed and lucky we would be!! Many of them work in forestry, one way or another, and my very next door neighbor is an arborist who offered to take down 8 huge and very dead pines for us! At $25 a tree!!!!??? I think the expression on Tunde' and my face must have been priceless LOL...$250 per tree would have been the deal of the century! I was worrying about when and how to take them down safely and how we could afford it. He smiled and said that it added to the safety of the whole neighborhood since dead pines light up like candles, spewing sparks everywhere... super dangerous to everything around it. What a guy!! Love it!

I think it becomes more and more obvious that we can go far when there is communal support! It takes a neighborhood/circle of friends/co-creators etc to build resiliency!  

6 Ladies with Chainsaws: We reduced underbrush and dead wood on about an acre of land.

We are in fire season now and my utter respect goes out to our first responders and volunteers! They are on it!! And we have great air support too which is desperately needed in our rough and often steep terrain in the Sierra Foothills along the Yuba river. My prayers go out to them and our region every single day as I watch them battle the numerous fires. "Watch Duty" is a great app to stay informed.

We are in the planning stages of building a pond that will catch run off from the driveway as well from our gutters in Winter. Keeping water on the land feels like a very worthy endeavor! And for so many reasons: It will attract more wildlife and pollinators and give us irrigation water at least for part of the year. It will give extra storage water for our sprinkler system around the house in case of a fire...

The herbal allies are doing very well this year after 3 years of wood chips being added to cover the soil, giving nutrients and minimizing water evaporation. And... drum-roll please!... the irrigation system is basically installed and working its magic! The plants are loving the deep soak instead of me standing there hand-watering a little! Yikes! What took me this long???? It is saving me 2 hours a day plus "people on the farm" would have died!! We have arrived at that stage where a person with a hose can't physically do it all anymore. Yay :)

Our next big project (my sweetie is rolling his eyes at me) is building an outdoor farm kitchen. It would provide easier access for setting on herbal glycerites, tinctures and oils right after harvesting! Farm into glass jar 10 feet from where it grew! The quality of our remedies will grow exponentially since we can determine the exact best time for harvest with no shipping/travel involved. That is the goal :)

20 years ago, I had to decide to either just make remedies and run the business or work an herbal farm for the remedies. There was no way at the start of the apothecary to do both! Now, after 23 years in business, I have the chance to re-visit that decision!

I LOVE making remedies... don't get me wrong!...

But I LOVE GROWING herbs even more! 

I must be following my grandfather's footsteps because I saw him puttering around the garden, talking to his plants, his fish and his dog more than I saw him behind the counter of his apothecary (in Germany). He was a nature guy through and through and loved helping people with natural remedies! Every pharmacy in Germany (in my childhood years) had a kitchen at its core! And ours was no exception! My grandfather was always making salves, cough syrups, hand-rolled pills and so much more (including popcorn for us kids and almost burned his kitchen down!!!) as well as filling prescriptions from the doctor above us.

Rupam on her Grandfather's Shoulders. Awww!

It was a time when a pharmacist still made much of the medicine by hand and with herbal ingredients. The smell in my grandfather's pharmacy was intoxicating (at least to me!) On his shelves were hundreds of bins filled with all kinds of herbs and labeled with Latin names and descriptions. I took Latin in school for 9 years (everyone going into science had to) and forgot EVERY word of it. I actually hated it to be honest! It's a dead language for crying out loud :)) and my brother was able to learn French !!! But I knew those names on my grandfathers' jars and bins by heart!! What a time in healing it was... bittersweet looking back for me!

Lots of changes are coming. I imagine that is happening for all of you as well! Let's be resilient and flexible together and move forward with an open heart in deep contact with nature! 

Much love to you & blessings all-ways!

Rupam, Blake and Linda