Wishing all of our friends, colleagues and customers a very happy, healthy 2019! Above, from left to right are the team at Blue Moon Herbs with Mali Klein, who visited recently - Emily Angelo, Danielle Yoder, Anais Starr, Debbie Jakovac, Mali Klein, and Hannah Rostocki. Not pictured are Angie Vance, Danielle's and Emily's daughters and sons, who are Junior Blue Mooners 🙂 nor the many more who remain anonymous but have helped us help you better through their friendship love and support.
Update as of February 9, 2019:The light is now noticeably coming back here on the 47th parallel, both in length and intensity. January was a bit of a winter no-show as we watched points east of Montana getting the business. But ever since February came, it has been blizzarding and making up for lost time. I'm just about done dreaming of hills blossoming in green and gold and planting Sheep sorrel and a candy store's worth of vegetable and herb seeds, many from Strictly Medicinal Seeds and, snow or not I shall plant seeds next week! Inside. Ho hum! Outside and planting and prepping the irrigation system, adding lots of wood chips, etc., all too soon by May or maybe even April it'll be time to trade in the parka for gardening duds! Its been a few years of getting underway with infrastructure in our garden in Hot Springs Montana. Just recently we tested our Sheep sorrel seed and it is ready and viable, 50% germination rate, and those tiny seeds guarantee a good outcome.
This original blog was posted on January 12, literally just a few days before...you guessed it...winter officially really started nailing us... 🙂 Boy do I sound naive!
How Bout the Weather this Winter!
"Another six short weeks and what so far is the warmest winter I can remember in my whole life of living in Montana won't have enough blast left to make a cold snap. Hopefully there will be moisture of some sort coming, though. Our area is naturally on the dry side and we need snow in the mountains in the winter to produce a spring runoff for the valleys.... I could even rake the yard but I am holding out for snow in hopes it doesn't come to that!...It is so seductive to think maybe we'll get away without a real winter. But it being Montana and all...it always seems to come...and actually I really do like it like that. It feels 'normal.' All I know is it is Way Too Soon to call winter a no-show..." Winter has shown! It is still showing!
The Glad To Be Here Project
2018 was dedicated to strengthening our community connections. Danielle, Emily, myself, Hannah and Angie began volunteering at the local soup kitchen. Soup kitchens are great places to give Essiac away as there sure are ample folks in need who appreciate it. Essiac is a new idea to many, often welcome and encouraging.
In this vein, we have started a project encompassing our Flathead Valley and surrounding communities called the Glad To Be Here Project. There are many reasons for being glad to be in the heart of Western Montana, with the grandeur of Glacier National Park and the Mission Mountains and Flathead Lake right out your window. We believe a little bit of the healing energy of this place is in every packet of herbs we put out.
Glad to be here is a state of mind though, and the positive effects from Essiac can make it apply to wherever we find ourselves. There is beauty inside us no matter where we are.
However...there are people here, just like everywhere else, that live with poverty and despair because of health and other problems. We are giving Essiac herbs and/or made-up decoction ready to consume to anyone in our area who would like to try it for a few months or if in need, longer, at no charge. We will be keeping close track of the folks who want to take part in our follow-up research but for those not wishing to share their personal information, no questions asked. Essiac doesn't care about all that.
The heart of our mission is to simply put people and Essiac together. That is truly what we are about more than anything - that and encouraging others to do what we are doing, in their own communities. Say Yes to being an Essiac tea-maker and/or Sheep sorrel grower (for the root). There's a big change coming and it's returning herbal medicine to its well-earned place at the table. "Essiac is a worthy vocation." - Gregory Klein
The Glad to Be Here Project is putting Buddhist philosophy (lovingkindness, gratitude, service) into action and it is also an experiment to see how high quality local Essiac can make a difference in lives!
The big projects and huge organizations have a role to play but we all do. What it ultimately boils down to really is about making a difference in a direct way, with benefit for giver and receiver alike from one-on-one connections, one person at a time, one day at a time. Saying "Yes" and keeping promises.
It was Rene Caisse's dream that Essiac become freely available for everyone everywhere. We CAN change the world. We were told that one person was not going to be able to, but the rest of the story is that people coming together to heal what is broken opens the doors of miraculous positive change where anything is possible. May the Force be with you!
We have a new partner for sourcing Essiac done properly in Europe! We have been working closely with a team based across Germany and Switzerland, Arupa AG, to produce a fresh organic crop Sheep sorrel. It's been two years in the making and I have now received word that the sorrel roots and tops have been successfully harvested and will be available to us in the next couple of months. Germany has long held a reputation for producing some of the finest herbal medicine in the world and we are very pleased to announce we will be offering an international sampler: Essiac with German Sheep sorrel and Essiac with US Sheep sorrel - both top quality and certified organic!
Our new partnership with Arupa AG means that we will also be able to offer our overseas friends and customers a more local source for good quality Essiac herbs. This will help bring down the high shipping rates considerably as well as reduce the delivery times. For more information click here. All teas are now in stock and can be ordered online from the link.
Thank you everyone for a great 2018! May our world be blessed with peace and prosperity for everyone everywhere in 2019.
Debbie Jakovac
Owner, Blue Moon Herbs
"This is the Way of Peace: overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love." - Peace Pilgrim
Greetings all lovers of Essiac with Sheep sorrel roots included! It has been far too long since we came up for air and gave a progress report on our growing operations. (Click here for Part 1). So, here goes:
Basically we have been digging Sheep sorrel roots since spring 2016 and only stopping when the ground freezes. It has been a long haul, but finally we have secured a couple good sources for organic Sheep sorrel root that we do not personally have to dig up ourselves!! We have gotten a great handful of local growers going too! I am very glad because it has been extremely hard to keep up with demand and keep our root content at 25%. Now we're in good shape for the forseeable future!
Spring 2016 - commercial source of Sheep sorrel root dries up
Pacific Botanicals, our supplier, sold out and did not continue growing sorrel for a whole herb harvest and we began relying 100% on growing and harvesting all of our own. We got the Essiac Growers Guild going on Facebook, to encourage folks to grow their own Sheep sorrel and to find possible growers for Blue Moon Herbs. In the spring of 2016 we also lost the lease on our "North 40" Sheep sorrel beds just outside of town and had to move the plants we didn't harvest to other gardens around the area, mostly in Hot Springs, MT.
A fine crop of Sheep sorrel was also planted across the ocean by kindred souls and we will soon have beautiful organic German Sheep sorrel roots for our "Hands Across the Water" Essiac mix :). We have also secured certified organic Sheep sorrel root from this side of the ocean! Hallelleujah!!!!
We found an organic lavendar farm on the Olympic Peninsula. They had lots of volunteer Sheep sorrel and they began harvesting it for us in the summer of 2016. The stuff really grows out there where there is more moisture than here in Montana, and it was discovered that wood chips are the best mulch and produce fat beautiful roots that come out easy and clean!
We leased 1/2 acre of organic garden in Hot Springs MT in May 2017 that already had Sheep sorrel growing in it. The driest summer since 1929 ensued. The grasshoppers turned the most lush early spring Sorrel beds into a wasteland. We planted more starts last fall and hope they come in good and that all those roots that were safely underground and away from the grasshoppers, are still there alive and well! Spring 2018 is predicted to be cool and rainy there so I've got my fingers crossed for a good year!
The most beautiful pristine mountain meadow was found in June 2017. It was full of sorrel! The owners gave us permission to dig and we drove over 100 miles one way to dig weekly all summer and fall. Our first time there we were greeted by two Sandhill Cranes which was pretty darn cool! The wild Sorrel there is very hardy and prolific though on the small side like wild Sorrel is and it takes a long time to harvest. However, more than making up for that was a hot springs just up the road for us to recuperate at. The forest fires kept us from getting up there for over three weeks. What a joy to have made the acquaintance of this place!
These are some of the highlights of the past two growing seasons. And now here it is almost March and time to start more Sheep sorrel! Happy growing, folks!
Its not an easy thing writing about the vision quest retreat I took part in last June, at Grandmother Isabelle's in Northern Ontario. It marked the beginning of a new way of understanding the world....that just keeps unfolding. Well, it wasn't really the 'beginning' and I'm pretty sure there's not going to really be an 'end' either. The sky, the sun making a trail across it, as witnessed in silent awe. The vision quest brought to me my voice in a new way and I am obliged to speak. One place for that has been our Facebook group the Essiac Growers Guild. This is the unabridged version of my most recent post.
Here is the Vision: Locally grown whole herb sheep sorrel, for locally produced Essiac, available in dry form or made up by local Essiac caregivers for home delivery, the farmers' market, local health food stores and eateries, CSA boxes, and good research on the herbs in combination like Rene Caisse worked with them. Jobs for growers and wild-harvesters, tea-makers, care-givers, local money staying in town. A healthy community, vibrant in its ability to make the very most of its own resources for the benefit of all. Less pollution from long-distance hauling of foods that can be grown locally.
The Essiac Growers Guild is getting ready to 'grow 'its first chapter here in Montana's Flathead Valley. We will share our know-how and expertise and stay true to the historically accurate info about the herbs and how they were used, for a greater good. Whether its planting a small bed or getting the truck garden tractor out, all are welcome to be a part of this. Spring is coming, and sooner than it takes to plant a flat of sorrel we will be meeting down at Mrs. Wonderful's Marmalade Cafe for our first get together. Join us if you can, or if you don't live in the area, contact us if you'd like to do the same thing in your area.
There is a market for whole herb sheep sorrel. The best Essiac in the world is small-scale, locally produced, including the whole sheep sorrel plant. There will always be a market for whole herb sheep sorrel because it makes a huge difference in Essiac, and the importance of it is now finally really getting out. Essiac is becoming more and more well known. It's been recommended by Hoxsey, Gerson, and Budwig practitioners as a great adjunct to their therapies. And its 100+ year long anecdotal record proves it worthy of the respect.
But you can't buy it anywhere! The problem is that whole herb sheep sorrel is not being grown commercially. Anywhere in the world. Another 'problem' is that demand for herbs has skyrocketed in the past few years.
And it is easy to grow! Sheep sorrel is easy to grow. Although it prefers a more northern climate, it grows in all 50 states here in the US. It's native to Europe. Sheep sorrel met up with slippery elm, an American native, after arriving in the feed on the boats from Europe some several hundred years ago. Therefore, the people who were here already are the ones who first created this formula. Thank you Native America! And thank you for sharing it with the English woman who gave it to Rene Caisse. The thread has not been broken and there is a treasure connected to it.
Would you like to be part of a positive vision? If you are interested in being part of our collaboration - think WikiMedia - for really getting this right and creating a knowledge base about growing these herbs, harvesting, and/or working with the Essiac formulae, please contact us.
"I have always known that at last I would take this road, but yesterday I did not know that it would be today.” —Japanese Haiku
The term 'open source' is based upon "sharing information from publicly available sources (as opposed to covert or clandestine sources)."
I have been following a Facebook group called the Rene Caisse Essiac Tea Users Group. It has been quite a journey and has really brought home a few realizations. Facebook is like a slice of the greater world and … although free speech is a precious thing, things can sometimes get lost in the translation….or buried in the posts! Read More →
Greetings all! It doesn't seem like three whole months have passed since Mali Klein's 2014 visit. It is good to have the relative quiet of winter to absorb it all and start making plans for the coming growing season. February is like a lingering chance to do that before the sun is flooding in again and it is time to get back in the field! One of my winter projects was putting together this little recap of 2014 in a video format. So come along for a trip out to our Essiac growing sites in Montana's Flathead Valley to see what we have done in Phase 1 of growing the Essiac herbs. There is also a section with a few harvesting tips and some footage of Watercress and Goldthread in the wild. We hope you enjoy it!
I have been researching the meaning of 'wild simulated'. My idea of what that means was based on the permaculture principle that there are plant communities, or guilds, made up of plants that like to grow together, and they have complimentary properties that all fit together to make a well-rounded healthy ecosystem. I surmised that wild simulating would mean growing them in a setting as close to a natural one as possible. Like below! This is a picture of a Goldthread guild!
Earlier this summer I was in Goldthread country and decided to try an experiment. Instead of digging up individual plants, I decided to dig up everything growing in the whole circle of foliage surrounding a few Goldthread (Coptis trifolia) plants. Three months later and both the little tree and the Goldthread are doing quite well, better than earlier transplants that arrived alone without their neighbors. 🙂
So what does wild simulated mean? Does wild mean the seed or the location? Can you till the soil? Can you weed? Or fertilize? What I learned is that the term appears to be mostly in reference to Ginseng production..although the concept should apply to any crop that varies when planted in tilled soil as opposed to a la natural. Here's what a Virginia Tech article said:
"Since there is no tillage of the soil with wild simulated ginseng crops, all fertilizers are applied on the soil surface. Applications of gypsum and/or rock phosphate may have to be made every two or three years. Soil testing should be done every year to monitor available soil nutrients." For the weed question, they simply recommend avoiding planting near any large stands of obnoxious weeds.
From what I have gathered, wild simulation is mainly about replicating what is happening in the wild by not intervening beyond planting the seeds - and only using shovels and hoes to do it, either in the wild or somewhere with similar soil pH and shade, moisture, etc., and commonly associated plant species growing there.
Tilling seems to be the defining no-no with wild simulation. In the case of Ginseng, the root is different and less sought after when it is grown in tilled soil. I don't think this would apply with Goldthread, since it is just little runner roots going everywhere.
Both Ginseng and Goldthread like deep shade and plentiful moisture. The climate in Montana is a lot more arid than Northcentral Idaho, where the nearest Goldthread is. I have learned that even a little too much direct sun will burn Goldthread and cause it to just stall out in failure to thrive mode. If shaded under a Rhubarb leaf, for example, it will be green and happy with only the sun that shines through the sheltering leaf. The problem with Rhubarb, however, is that it dies back and leaves the Goldthread exposed and the gardener has to get inventive. Last year it was an umbrella, lol.
So, for this year's experiment, I surrounded the little guild with other plants so that it would get a lot of shade, and I kept it well watered. To my delight, all of the plants in all of the containers loved their circle! And - the true test - no sunburned Goldthread!
Goldthread is a very slow growing plant, however. It is a worthy herb to propagate though, and is full of berberine, as evidenced by its bright yellow roots! The new little guild that came over the hill with me is clearly thriving although we are only starting to learn about growing it in a habitat that may fall far short of commercial quantities. Again, it is a case of everyone growing a small amount, for the best Essiac around, using herbs that are easy enough to grow enough of for a family or a group. I do have more respect than ever for those that do get us herbs on a larger scale so we don't have to grow them all. Make that something short of Big Ag though!
Well, there is more than one variety of Goldthread, and some of it grows faster, and is just as full of Berberine. I did get a Coptis chinensis seedling from Horizon Herbs and it has already made new leaves in the few months since it arrived. Coptis chinensis is most likely the mystery herb Rene Caisse was trying to order from India during the summer of 1977 when they were testing Essiac and she was short on herbs.
Wishing you all a great harvest season and may you enjoy these beautiful September days!
~~ Like Essiac herb growing info and sharing? Join the Essiac Growers Guild group on Facebook!
This is the only Essiac master class offered anywhere. It happens only once per year, and 2014 marks our final gathering in Missoula, Montana. This is a one-of-a-kind experience. It will not be recorded, in keeping with the idea behind such gatherings, so that the experience will be intimate, candid and completely unique. The theme will be about Essiac and its role in healing in the context of our personal lives as well as how that can best compliment the world we live in. Participants will directly experience some of the healing protocols Mali Klein has developed over the past twenty years. All are welcome, including those with serious illness, as well as those in the profession of providing health care. It is for anyone who sees the importance of keeping the knowledge and use of this and other herbal medicines alive and would like to be part of a dialogue about how we as individuals, professionals and businesspersons can help to facilitate this.
Essiac and herbal medicine can have an amazing role to play in the emerging healing paradigms of the 21st century. Master class attendees will be introduced to a perspective not shared quite so freely in the written word as it will be in this session. Each class has been a stand-alone experience and prior attendance is not required.
The 2014 Master Class will focus on the original 8-herb formula handed down from an old Native American medicine man in Northern Ontario in the 1890s. But more than that, it will be from the perspective of the Medicine man that brought this formula to us in the 1890s. Before the days of Essiac. (The formula was later reduced to a four herb formula by Rene Caisse and those four herbs - Burdock, Sheep sorrel, Slippery elm and Turkey rhubarb, make up most of what is sold as Essiac today.)
This original eight herb formula is what Rene began working with when she first started her work with the herbs in the 1920s, and the results were impressive. Mali Klein's work now focuses almost completely on this original eight-herb formula, which has been shelved since the 1920s, and which Rene Caisse only revealed in writing once. Virtually all of the 8-herb Essiac formulas on the market today do not contain the herbs originally used.
Mali will be sharing her findings about this indigenous formula and what happened to it in her newest book Black Root Medicine, the Original Native American Essiac Formula, to be released September 1, 2014. Mali will share some insights and evidence that will forever change your assumptions about what Essiac is and how the politics and confusion about the correct formula following Rene's death resulted in so much misinformation about Essiac in the years to follow.
Included in the tuition will be signed copies of the new book!
Mali will go deep into the subject of healing and living a quality life, with or without serious health challenges, and will be sharing a unique approach to health and healing using a combination drawing from Native American, Buddhist and other spiritual traditions. Mali will also be available for private consultations from October 1 - 24.
Ever wonder what it must have been like to have a breast cancer diagnosis 120 years ago? Enter Black Root Medicine - The Original Native American Essiac Formula (softcover, 2014, 54 pages). This easy-to-read companion volume to The Complete Essiac Essentials book takes a uniquely inclusive look at the early history of the Native American formula that was the basis for Canadian nurse Rene Caisse's Essiac. The book is available as of September 1, 2014 on Amazon and here at ReneCaisseTea.com, for $12, or $30 for both Black Root Medicineand The Complete Essiac Essentials.
Mali Klein and her late writing partner Sheila Snow have documented the history of Rene Caisse and Essiac extensively in a series of Essiac books: Essiac Essentials (1999), Essiac the Secrets of Rene Caisse's Herbal Pharmacy (2001), The Essiac Book (2006). and The Complete Essiac Essentials (2010). Sheila co-authored the Canadian Homemaker's Magazine article that brought Essiac back from obscurity in June 1977: Could Essiac Halt Cancer?The final installment, Black Root Medicine - The Original Native American Essiac Formula, takes a step further back in time, to the days before the herbal remedy became known as Essiac.
In the 1920s when Rene Caisse was working at a hospital in Haileybury Northern Ontario, she met the woman who had originally gotten the formula from a Medicine man some 30 years earlier. The woman had recovered from breast cancer using the remedy. "Mrs. Johnson" is the only scrap of this woman's name not lost to history - "or it might have been Johnston." "A mining camp in northern Ontario" is as specific as it gets for the town she lived in. "A very old Native American medicine man" is as specific as the tribal affiliation gets - Ojibwa is just a guess.
Piecing together the details with such little hard evidence and a long-cold trail is a challenge Mali has met in good form. She has taken a step into the mists to reconstruct life in those days for us and in doing so has penned one of those books you can't put down. It is a quick read and a worthy bedside companion for ending each day on the final section!
If you are familiar with the Snow/Klein work, well, you'll be checking your preconceived notions at the door to Chapter 1. This amazing little book draws from the written history found in the Essiac archives while shining the light on the most recent research findings about the properties of the original herbs. Black Root Medicine adds another dimension, bringing late 19th century culture, traditions and worldview in the wilds of Northern Ontario to life in a way that makes perfect sense and symmetry. Through the pages of this book, Mali continually sheds very compelling light on how this original 8-herb formula may hold important clues for the 21st century.
‘Time is comin’ when all us on Mother Earth will be part of the army to save her.’ - Little Bill Penn (Uncle Yum), Twilight on the Thunderbird.
The book resonates with a feeling set by the illustrations as well as the pure prose of the writing. While the earlier Snow/Klein books have been outstandingly informative, this book takes things to a new level, with a view to sorting out another time and conjuring up images as they might have been seen through the old medicine man's eyes. The intimate connection with nature and the power of the animals and plants comes alive in a palpable way in the pages of this book.
