Tasha Greenwood: There is as much diversity in a tide pool of seaweeds as there is in your average patch of forest or meadow. And a lot of times we really don't see it because seaweed gets a bad rap of just being like, "Oh, the brown stinky stuff that washed up on the shore." When really seaweed is fundamental to coastal ecosystems and not just for the animals there, but also for the people.
John Gallagher: You are listening to HerbMentor Radio by LearningHerbs. I'm John Gallagher
Tara Ruth: And I'm Tara Ruth today. We're chatting with Tasha and Devon Greenwood. Tasha and Devon are the co-owners of MXED GREENS, an apothecary herb shop and community gathering and education space in Northampton, Massachusetts on Nipmuc and Pocomtuc land.
Tara Ruth: Tasha is a community herbalist and educator who's currently deepening their clinical herbal practice through the Clinical Herbalism Program at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism. For MXED GREENS, Tasha co-tends the gardens, formulates products, and is the face you'll usually see at the store.
Tara Ruth: And Devon is a community herbalist, registered nurse, and resource mobilizer. They're also currently deepening their study of Clinical Herbalism at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism and for MXED GREENS, Devon works with Tasha to cultivate and tend the medicinal plants, formulate herbal blends, and so much more.
John Gallagher: Welcome, Tasha and Devon, thank you so much for joining us today.
Tasha Greenwood: Thank you. Hi.
John Gallagher: This is quite a moment for us speak here on HerbMentor Radio, because it's the first time we've had four people on at the same time. So this is going to be... I am so curious how this is all going to go.
Tara Ruth: Oh, I'm very excited.
John Gallagher: Very excited. So were you both interested in plants before you met or did your love for herbs grow after meeting?
Tasha Greenwood: Yeah, well, both of us definitely were in love with plants before we met, but coming from different places, I grew up on, this is Tasha, I grew up on the coast of Florida. And so in that tropical plants ecosystem and I studied Marine biology and fell in love with seaweed and Devon.
Devon Greenwood: Yeah. So I'm Devon, this is the voice you'll hear from me. And I grew up on the coast of Maine and spent a lot of time outdoors in all seasons. And within a year of when Tasha and I met, I went to a health justice workshop that was led by Lauren Giambrone and Mandana Boushee of Wild Gather: The Hudson School of Herbal Studies. And so when Tasha and I started living together, we were able to do a summer course with them over the full summer of 2018. And that really initiated our relationship with each other and relationship with the plants. So those things have continued to grow and deepen simultaneously.
Tara Ruth: And now after, I guess, how long has it been since you started studying herbs and now you have your own thriving herbal business with MXED GREENS?
Tasha Greenwood: Gosh, let's see. That was 2018? 4 years now.
Tara Ruth: Wow. So impressive that you already have an herb shop. Why did you start MXED GREENS and what role do you see this beautiful space playing in your community?
Tasha Greenwood: Yeah, well, so before MXED GREENS became a thing, I was making herbal products under the name Blue Whale Apothecary, weaving together ocean medicine and plant medicine. And then it was later in herb school when I met Tara that I was, yes, I was really thinking and feeling into how I was going to serve my community as an herbalist. And I had the vision of an herb shop where there's all the things that you would expect bulk herbs and tinctures and herbal products, but also a space for community gathering and sharing skills and hanging out on the couch.
Tasha Greenwood: And also just getting a moment to rest. And actually rest has really become a big part of it. Running a business is hardly "restful" most of the time, but running your own business does let you set rest times for yourself and you can set your own expectations.
John Gallagher: What about the rest times for people coming into the shop? Life is so busy and they're coming in, is this really illuminating to a lot of people to be like, "Wait, a big part of healing is rest."
Devon Greenwood: Yeah, definitely. We have a nice little couch in the shop. It's in the window. So we always invite people to come in and be a little shop cat and just like hang out for a bit and really know that there's not an expectation that people are like, "Oh, you want me to come hang out at your store?" I'm like, "Yeah, you just come hang out with us."
Devon Greenwood: It's really nice to have a place to socialize with other people and build community. And especially in the context of a retail setting, it can often feel less awkward for folks to continue wearing masks and to be inside with each other more safely during this airborne pandemic that we're living through. And so folks are not comfortable spending time in each other's houses, being able to hang out at the shop, and we'd have a little zine library. We have a self care station. So those are all nice ways to just informally, get to know some other people and be a presence in the community that's not just a fast rush in and out, which can be some people know exactly what they need. They come in and out, but other people linger for a while and have a little more of that coffee shop vibes, even though we don't have food served.
Tara Ruth: Yeah. What's part of your self care station?
Tasha Greenwood: Oh, yeah. There is a variety of different hydrosols that you can spritz on your face and take that moment for yourself. There's a selection of little zines. There's also the Dirt Gems Oracle deck where you can sit and pull some cards. And there's also, I just recently put in this store, what I'm calling the snail mailbox and it's a box where half of it contains materials to write little anonymous letters to people. And then the other side of the box contains letters or notes or affirmations that people have written, as well as stickers and other little treasures, that you can always stop by and pick something out of the snail mailbox. As a little letter gift to yourself.
Tara Ruth: Oh, my gosh. That is so sweet.
John Gallagher: That's great.
Tara Ruth: Well, I'm excited to visit the shop in a few weeks. Oh, my gosh.
John Gallagher: Yeah. And we'll have some photos on where this is posted on LearningHerbs so folks can see this shop and, Tara, got to make sure we posted some photos of the self care area.
Devon Greenwood: We're excited to show you all. I was really proud of Tasha. There's some very cute little snail collage on the box as well.
Tara Ruth: Oh, my gosh. It just sounds like every facet of MXED GREENS just has so much care put into it, which doesn't surprise me based on knowing you two. And I love too that the first thing that you present when talking about the business was rest, because I don't think I've ever heard a small business owner talk about rest when they're talking about the first thing that comes to mind with their business and that's such a beautiful way to disrupt that narrative of what is possible in starting a business, especially a business that's so focused on community wellness.
John Gallagher: Yeah. And yet rest is the most important part of healing, which is so overlooked.
Tara Ruth: Yeah. I'm just wondering in this journey of being small business owners, and MXED GREENS is just over one year old, do you have any advice for our listeners out there who are interested in starting their own small business perhaps? Sounds like rest would be a big one, but are there any other lessons you really gleaned in this past year that you would love to share with folks who are interested?
Devon Greenwood: Yeah, definitely. I think one of the main things that led us to wanting to start our own business, to get to be our own bosses in some ways, and I know that is not a reality for everyone, but to think about what kind of boss, manager, supervisor do you want to be?
Devon Greenwood: We've had a number of people in positions of authority over us and other jobs who we really didn't like working for. So we have to be our own good bosses to ourselves and allow ourselves to take those breaks, allow ourselves to push for certain goals that we have like getting a certain number of workshops done in a month, or coming up with different new products, or contacting new small business makers to stock.
Devon Greenwood: We want to treat ourselves with the compassion and mind towards sustainably being able to run this business that we wish we could have had in other jobs. We're doing this for the long haul. This is so much the, I don't want to say culmination, because we're just starting, but in so many ways the space that we've created to be able to pursue our dreams with each other, we can't burn out on that.
John Gallagher: No, no. And so I'm curious the name MXED GREENS and you spell it, M-X-E=D Greens, what's the origin of that. That's really cool. I love it. And I just like, "What's the story?"
Tasha Greenwood: Oh, my God. So funny. So this is actually a pretty funny story in that, well, okay. So back when we got engaged and people were really on the wedding hashtags trend and we were like, oh gosh, maybe we should have a wedding hashtag. That would be really funny. And because my last name is Greenwood and Devon was taking my last name, we were like "Greenwood, something with that." And both of us are non-binary and we use MX as the honorific instead of Mr or Mrs.
John Gallagher: Okay.
Tasha Greenwood: So our wedding hashtag, it was a joke, was MXED GREENS, spelled that way.
John Gallagher: I love it.
Tasha Greenwood: And we hardly ever used it because we ended up canceling our big wedding anyway, but then fast forward a few years down the road and we were like, "Gosh, what do we call this beautiful dream of this herb shop that we're having together and all of these things and MXED GREENS was it.
Tara Ruth: Love it.
Devon Greenwood: It's great. People can know the pun. You're like, "Oh greens, like greenery, like herbalism, great." They get that right off the bat. But then if you deeper, there's a queer subtext that definitely draws customers in which we really love too.
John Gallagher: Oh yeah. And I really appreciate that because just learning so much and we haven't had many conversations on this podcast with queer and trans herbalist. So I'd like to talk a bit about that and your experiences through that lens, talk about MXED GREENS and its importance for the queer and trans community.
Tasha Greenwood: For sure. There's so much to say there definitely.
John Gallagher: Yeah, please do.
Tasha Greenwood: Yeah. I think first maybe an important framing is just that herbal medicine and plants themselves are so queer. Plants don't have genders. And even when we talk about different parts of plants getting assigned different male or female designations because of certain structures, morphologically, those flowers still often have both pistols and stamens. And it's just so many blurring of lines of sex and gender. And that is the same for humans too.
Tasha Greenwood: And so our introduction to her herbalism was in such a queer affirming space and really through that lens. And I think a lot of queer people are also drawn to plant medicine because we have a lot of terrible experiences with the traditional medical system, which is really binary. And often doesn't recognize, not just the nuance, but even the validity of queer and trans bodies and our health needs and our health desires.
Tasha Greenwood: And there's so much space in plant medicine for that, for all of it. And so it feels so important to have herb shops that our queer and trans run to bring more folks into these spaces of plant medicine and show people that there are all these ways that you can resource your body and relationships you can have with these plants that are so supportive that really see you for who you are and where you are in your journey in your body.
Tasha Greenwood: And for us too it's, especially, this feels really relevant coming out of June Pride Month in which a lot of organizations and corporations will put a rainbow flag on their window and say, "Everybody's welcome here." And that is good, but it's really just the very, very tiny starting place.
Tasha Greenwood: For us in our store what it looks like to really celebrate queer and trans people is most of the products that we stock, the makers, they're queer herbalist and makers. And you're not going to find anything on the shelves that's labeled like, "A blend for women's health," or, "Men's vitality," because gendered binaries like that really aren't serving anyone.
Tasha Greenwood: But what you will find are things like salves for top surgery scars, or a tea blend for your #hotgaysummer. We've got essences for transition and transformation and all of our botanically dyed clothing is not labeled with specific sizes or categorized by gender. So they're just some parts of that.
Tara Ruth: I'm curious too, Devon, as a nurse, have you felt in your herbal practice and as you're learning, bringing herbalism maybe more into nursing or bringing nursing more into herbalism, do you feel more expansion in herbalism?
Tara Ruth: I guess I'm thinking about how people often create this separation between herbs and "alternative healing" where there's more freedom and more expansion.
Tara Ruth: And then in allopathic medicine where there's not as much opportunity for expansion, but I really see you bringing your ethic of deep care and liberatory possibilities in all the work you do. So I'm just curious, can you talk about how you weave together herbalism and allopathic medicine and how you use those to really show up for your community in celebratory and affirming ways?
Devon Greenwood: Yeah. Thank you so much, Tara. I really appreciate that question and that observation because that is so deeply what I'm about and what I'm trying to do here with my life in this world. I feel like the fact that currently Western tech medicine is so regulated and has so many institutions and layers and things that different power systems and structures and people, it can be a lot harder to make changes in those systems.
Devon Greenwood: Whereas in herbalism, given the state of herbalism in the US right now, means that more individual people can have a bigger impact in education, in shifting conversations and narratives around bodies and how we're resourcing ourselves, bringing our minds and bodies into balance.
Devon Greenwood: So the ways that I've heard and learned from many other more experienced herbalist teach about queer and trans experiences, especially medical experiences, has really informed the possibilities that I find that could happen within the Western medical system.
Devon Greenwood: Where I currently work is a medical surgical floor. That's a regular inpatient. We have a lot of more elderly folks. It's a Northern New England more rural communities. So there's not as many opportunities there to really talk about or provide education around queer and trans health specifically.
Devon Greenwood: So right now in my current nursing work the queer health part doesn't really extend to the patients who I work with. Whereas it does much more so in the shop with customers. Those overlaps aren't quite as much there, but in terms of how I work with more pharmaceutical medicine and tech medicine interventions in my job at the hospital versus being an herbalist, I think those things do really go together in a lot of ways.
Devon Greenwood: I think about how Western medicine or medicine that was codified and practiced by white men for so many centuries, they were using plants too. At least through the 1800s the medicines they provided, that was from folk herbalism that they learned it from and took it from. And there wasn't that differentiation between... Big Pharma didn't exist for so much of the history of medicine.
Devon Greenwood: So the work that I feel like we're doing is to really remember and reconnect and reintegrate the medical system with herbalism. In terms of how I'm doing that? I think it's, obviously, there's certain legalities of what I can and can't say in the environment of a hospital with patients when there's that patient provider power structure there and my license, as well as what I can say in the shop, but the things that I've learned as an herbalist, and as a nurse, totally compliment each other in terms of the researching how different foods, different plants, all of those things can be either complimentary with pharma or other procedures that are done in a hospital or medical setting or which ones can work against each other.
Devon Greenwood: Tasha can talk about this more, but so much of what we learn at Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism is how to do that research, how to take the deep knowledge of physiology, of metabolic pathways, to which plant compounds, which pharma compounds can work with each other, are not able to work with each other, depending on the benefits you're trying to get?
Devon Greenwood: And the last thing I'll say about being a nurse and being an herbalist together is I think even historically, as well as contemporarily, there are a lot of overlaps. So the things that neither roles can do are to diagnose or to prescribe but the things that both of us can do, we can provide education. There's the lifestyle and dietary recommendations. We think about structure function language, and also evidence based practice.
Devon Greenwood: What are the clinical trials about specific ways to work with patients? What are the specific clinical trials that are about herbs on for COVID, for example? And so both herbalists and nurses can use evidence-based practice and also contribute to practice-based evidence for ever more effective health interventions.
John Gallagher: You said, Devon, the word reintegrate, hopped out for me, because I feel like the two of you in many ways in your lives are finding ways to integrate different worlds like allopathic and herbal medicine, and how can they coexist? Bringing trans, queer issues and herbalism and integrating that into what a lot of people are doing out there.
John Gallagher: Tasha, do you find that in the work that you're doing together? Is that sort of a big part of your relationship as a couple? Just because when my wife, we've been together 25 years, and we found that our life, our work together in the world, has a theme and it seems like you two together are a powerful couple and is that the case?
Tasha Greenwood: Yeah, Sorry.
Tara Ruth: Power couple.
John Gallagher: Yeah. Power couple and integrations and two worlds. I just feel like that's what a lot of what you're talking about is.
Tasha Greenwood: Yeah, no, definitely there is the integration, just of our own ideas together. I would say for anybody opening a business that doing it alone is really hard and doing it together is really great, and challenging sometimes because you're integrating two different people's perspectives, but what you get from that is so much richer, I think.
Devon Greenwood: We keep each other from posting stuff that's maybe a little too spicy for Instagram, like no hot takes one of us will like type something up, be like "Rage." And then the person's like, "Nah, nah, nah. Let's dial it back." Okay. I'll let Tasha continue.
Tasha Greenwood: So just back to what you're saying about integration and it does feel like it is really at the crux, I think, of a lot of herbal businesses right now is how do we integrate this medicine that has been around forever into the systems of capitalism that we're living in now? How do we bridge that?
Tasha Greenwood: This beautiful knowledge, these experiences, these teachers that plants are with the structures, rigidity, and demands of capitalism. And that feels really at the center of a lot of what we're doing. That's a huge statement in our work for sure that we're trying to continually navigate.
Tara Ruth: That makes me think about how a lot of your products you offer and your herbal consults on a sliding scale. And can you talk a little bit more about that? How you balance financial accessibility and sharing the medicine with your community and then also stay profitable as a business?
Tasha Greenwood: Yeah, totally. Well, so when I first started making herbal products, I offered everything on a sliding scale from the very beginning. And that's because sliding scale has always been a way that I've been able to access healing modalities and just other experiences generally. And over the years, as I've learned about different economic models within justice frameworks that it's only become more clear that with capitalism as the way it stands, sliding scale is one of the best and most easily accessible tools that we have in moving towards economic justice and financial accessibility.
Tasha Greenwood: So when we started MXED GREENS, we were like, "Of course, we're going to offer things on a sliding scale." And it's been a whole process and one that we're still figuring out what the scale should be, which products are on the scale, and what that looks like. And right now, products that we make and consults are on a sliding scale, while the clothing that we dye and bulk herbs are not. And it just really feels good.
Tasha Greenwood: We've set up a tiered system where the lowest tier is the base price of something, the cost to produce a product. And then the middle tier is what we would charge in the absence of a sliding scale. And then the top tier is a pay it forward price, and it's all written up on signage around the store. So it's really easy to figure out where you fall before you're up at the register and having to say what you want to pay. And the scale isn't fixed.
Tasha Greenwood: We don't take down people's names and say, "This is where you are on the scale." If you had a crappy week and some unexpected bills, pay less. If you just got your paycheck and you want to share some of that, you can pay more. And I think what's really important too, is that it's a system that is fundamentally built on trust.
Tasha Greenwood: And this feels crucial because I think a lot about this quote from Black organizer Reverend Jen Bailey, that, "Social change moves at the speed of relationships and relationships move at the speed of trust." And so if we're trying to have change, then we need to have things be relational and be based in trust. And there is that relational piece because as a small business our customers are our neighbors. They're our providers, they're our friends. And so it really does become this relational and trusting web. And it works. People don't always believe it, but it truly at the end of the month, our sales average out, the low end of the scale and the high end of the scale, and it keeps the business viable.
Devon Greenwood: And I really think about health justice and economic justice being incredibly linked together, "What healthcare are you able to access with different levels of money?" And how talking about these things can be really hard for people, or especially with people who do have access to a lot of money. People who do have maybe more than they need for their given month or for their individual family.
Devon Greenwood: And so being able to have someone read these signs, be at the register and like, "Oh, yeah." And have that recognition. It's a recognition, I think, for folks with more money privilege to be able to say, "Oh, wow, this is my positionality within the community. And therefore, what can I do with that?" And have that be not just a money flex of like, "Ooh, I just dropped a hundred dollars at MXED GREENS," but like, "Wow, I am helping to provide a space where people can access medicine at a lower priced tier." And people can start to take pride in being a wealth redistributor on that side of the scale.
Devon Greenwood: I think often folks who've had their finances maybe scrutinized by state systems for so much longer in their life are like really used to talking about it and used to talking about sliding scale. But I think just like the conversation of sliding scale has opened up a lot more honesty and a lot more trust within our community. And that goes back to what Tasha was talking about.
Devon Greenwood: So there's not there's not one way to do sliding scale. I think this works for us because while we do have repeat customers, it's not our livelihoods are dependent on maybe five clients who we see every week. So people like body workers, social workers, or therapists, people who are doing much more time and cost intensive sessions with people, I think their sliding skills can be really different.
Devon Greenwood: So I'm not trying to say that what we do at MXED GREENS is the only way to do it. But as a retail and herbal consultation business, it has worked for us so far.
Tara Ruth: Yes. And you talking about the trust that builds in your community too. And having trusting of your community and then being trusted by your community just makes me think about how, even at the beginning, when you're outlining, how you lay out the MXED GREENS space with the sofa and the self care station, it's a space where you're really welcoming people in and to down regulate their nervous systems and trust you.
Tara Ruth: It's just really, really beautiful how you've set up this space. And it just makes me want to see more of these kinds of spaces.
John Gallagher: I get the sense as sort of in your planning or in your visions for the future, it feels a little bit like a free clinic type of situation. Have you thought about creating that? When I visited and worked with 7song in Ithaca and he introduced me to the free clinic where there was all different kinds of practitioners there, Devon, you being a nurse and you both being herbalist, has that ever crossed your mind?
Tasha Greenwood: Oh, for sure. We have a million dreams. We're two very ambitious earth signs over here.
Tara Ruth: The Virgo energy is high. Oh, my gosh.
Tasha Greenwood: Virgo, Capricorn energy is real strong. But no, of course, and right now with the two of us doing herb school and also all the other things in life, setting up a more collective clinic space has not been as much at the top of the priority list, but I think it'd be a very, very cool thing in the future.
Tasha Greenwood: Oh yes.
John Gallagher: Well, I'm so excited for all the possibilities for the two of you.
Tasha Greenwood: Thank you. I also want to say too, within this conversation about what we're doing next is that it feels really important to name that within capitalism, there is so much of the idea that, "Your business always needs to grow. You need to get bigger, you need to make more profit. You need to have more things."
Tasha Greenwood: But like what if the goal isn't just continued growth and exponentially making profits? Our business model is so much centered on just making enough that the business is viable and that we're meeting our needs and paying ourselves for our labor, but really about the community focus and not just becoming the next big herb shop.
John Gallagher: Well, so important. And I'll tell you that in the 18 plus years that LearningHerbs has been around, it's always been you start a business and it starts to grow and then you hire a couple employees and then there's like, "Oh, you have to make payroll, oh, we have to do this."
John Gallagher: Whenever I take myself out of that and just go, "Wait a minute, John, what are we doing? We are helping people. We are supporting our community. We are being there. We are making change. We're having an impact."
John Gallagher: When I get out of that fear and put myself into the place of why we started this to begin with, things work out. And yeah, I feel like is always just what we need to exist and get by. And it's a much more happier and healthy life to focus on impact and relationships and building than it is to focus on the bottom line. So what you just said really resonated with me because I'm like, "Amen."
Devon Greenwood: Yeah, definitely. No, I'm so glad to hear that's been really big learning for you as well with LearningHerbs. I just think about how I, as an individual herbalist, and specifically as a white herbalist, in the Northeast, I don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Devon Greenwood: We don't have to be the people who are coming up with all of the answers and having the most popular tincture lines and having all of the clinics, I'm not out here trying to be other people's bosses. I'm out here trying to be in collaboration and connection. So I know you had a wonderful interview with The Botanical Boss and there's another organization out here called the People's Medicine Project that does a similar thing. And so we've collaborated with them and there's so many herbalists out here in Western Mass.
Devon Greenwood: So I think figuring out more ways that we can uplift each other and support each other. And maybe that is contract different herbalists or contracting web designer, or having other small artists have their work at the store. But to me, it's like, "How can we create this ecosystem?" To basically keep money local in a lot of ways and support each other, instead of just focusing on late stage capitalism, growth up to a precipice. That's definitely a lot of really big unlearning.
John Gallagher: Yeah. It really is. Just what you're grown up seeing, and then unlearning that's a good way of putting it
Devon Greenwood: Exactly. The unlearning and the relearning and being able to chat with other folks, like you all, about how we can collectively do this feels like the move, the move forward. And that's where we want to be orienting toward.
John Gallagher: Hey, Tara.
Tara Ruth: Hi, John. How's it going?
John Gallagher: Fine. I was just looking on HerbMentor here and I clicked on herbs.
Tara Ruth: Yeah?
John Gallagher: And there are dozens of plant profiles. Some people call them monographs, but we like to call them plant profiles.
Tara Ruth: Mm-hmm. Keep that alliteration.
John Gallagher: Yeah. Plant profiles. And what's so cool is that anytime you want to learn more about an herb that you may be reaching for this time of year, maybe it's summer so aloe, what else?
Tara Ruth: Chamomile for me. Hibiscus. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
John Gallagher: And you want to learn more about these? You can simply, I looked up hibiscus right here. You can go there. It works so great on your phone on [inaudible 00:33:16] and it looks so cool. And so you always have this information at your fingertips or at your computer, and there's all this, there's so much information here, about each plant.
Tara Ruth: Absolutely. Even after studying herbs for years, I find myself often reaching for HerbMentor just to cross reference things, make sure that I'm not like, for example, with contraindications, a lot of times I'll be like, "Oh, I want to recommend this herb to someone. I'm just going to double check that there's no contras that would maybe make this not a good herb for someone." And it's so nice just to have that all in my pocket with HerbMentor in my phone
John Gallagher: And information you know you can trust.
Tara Ruth: Absolutely.
John Gallagher: It's been vetted.
Tara Ruth: If I just Google, I don't know, are there any contraindications for hibiscus? On the worldwide web, I'm just going to find the million false claims about hibiscus. It's so nice just to have reliable info. Oh, my gosh.
John Gallagher: Exactly. Exactly. And then also what will show up are other resources on HerbMentor that might be of interest. There's a plant walk with Rosalee on hibiscus right here, and I can see what Rosalee has to say about hibiscus, or I can do that for any of the herbs on here.
John Gallagher: So, yeah. And of course, speaking of herbs, if you want to order any of these herbs right on HerbMentor all members get 10% off bulk herbs at Mountain Rose Herbs and that's pretty cool. That can pay for your membership in a year actually.
Tara Ruth: Absolutely. There's so many great recipes too. All on HerbMentor, when I'm on this hibiscus monograph or plant profile still, I'm seeing, "Oh, there's a tulsi and hibiscus oxymel or hibiscus tea or hibiscus syrup." So the world's really your oyster with HerbMentor.
John Gallagher: I have a feeling now that pretty soon on here, there's going to be one on Irish Moss, a seaweed.
Tara Ruth: Oh.
John Gallagher: We will find out about that right now. Should we get back to the interview?
Tara Ruth: Oh yeah. Let's see if Tasha has anything to say about Irish Moss.
John Gallagher: I want to hear, I wanted to ask a seaweed question. I want to...
Tara Ruth: Oh, my gosh.
John Gallagher: Get into the seaweed.
Tara Ruth: Yes. I was actually just going so perfect. Well, yeah, John wanted me to ask, because Tasha describing the amazing seaweed and pea flour cream that you made in herb school. And I still gush about it to people because it's one of the best things I've ever put on my skin ever. Oh, my God. And started off by saying that you studied Marine biology and I know you're writing a monograph for HerbMentor also on Irish Moss.
Tara Ruth: And so I'm just wondering if you could share a little bit about your relationship to the seaweeds in general? And then also talk a little bit about Irish Moss. I know nothing about that seaweed and I know it's getting so much buzz these days. So I'd love to learn a little bit more from you, my herbalist friend.
Tasha Greenwood: Thank you. Yeah. Well, oh my gosh, seaweeds. I love them. It's like there's as much diversity in a tide pool of seaweeds as there is in your average patch of forest or meadow. And a lot of times we really don't see it because seaweed gets a bad rap of just being like, "Oh, the brown stinky stuff that washed up on the shore." When really seaweed is fundamental to coastal ecosystems and not just for the animals there, but also for the people.
Tasha Greenwood: Coastal communities around the world have relied on seaweed as food and medicine and other economic income products for centuries. And Irish Moss is one that I love. It's such a cute little stubby red seaweed that glistens with this beautiful iridescence in the sunlight. It's very unassuming, but is so cool.
Tasha Greenwood: And it's called Irish Moss because the biggest place where it grows is off the coast of Ireland and the UK. But it's all around the Atlantic, Northern Atlantic, cold water. And the Latin name is Chondrus crispus, but its' pronounced Chandras Crispus, and there's been a lot of buzz recently about sea moss and what a lot of people are referring to is Caribbean sea moss or Jamaican sea moss, which is also a red seaweed, but it's actually Gracilaria, or Eucheuma is the genus. So they're cousins.
Tasha Greenwood: But I love Irish Moss because it's what's available here. And as a white person with ancestors in Europe and coastal Europe, this feels not only an ancestral food and medicine for me, but for a lot of people in the New England region, for sure. And so the cool thing about these two seaweeds that are called sea moss, but specifically Irish Moss, is this substance called carrageenan, which you might recognize from seeing it on labels of things from ice cream to toothpaste.
Tasha Greenwood: And it's a polysaccharide and when heated it forms a thick gooey gel. If you think about the goo that comes from marshmallow root or slippery elm, it's like that but even more gelatinous.
Tara Ruth: Delicious.
Tasha Greenwood: Delicious. Yes. So good. But that is what, in that cream that I make, with the butterfly pea flowers and nice lavender hydrosol and other things, helps emulsify the cream, which if you have ever made an herbal cream they are notoriously difficult to emulsify your oil and your water, but also feels so luxurious on your skin. And that gel matrix helps keep moisture on your skin longer in the same way that we use beeswax in creams to help hold that moisture onto your skin, but more historical uses and current uses are using that gel as a super soothing demulcent for GI tract stuff.
Tasha Greenwood: Whether that's ulcers or like IBS pictures, it's also soothing for the respiratory tract in that way that we can use marshmallow root to help soothe coughs and make them more productive. There's a lot of historical use of Irish Moss for respiratory issues. If you think on cold damp coastal communities where that's a thing.
John Gallagher: Yeah. I wouldn't know anything about that.
Tara Ruth: Oh, my gosh. That's true.
Tasha Greenwood: Yes. And then there's also some really fascinating research that is happening mostly in labs right now, but with the components of Irish moss being effective against HPV, Human papillomavirus. Which is fascinating and amazing because there's a lot of talk about making personal lubricants with it. So you're putting the medicine where it needs to go on that tissue and being really effective adjunct therapeutic.
Tara Ruth: That's so cool.
Tasha Greenwood: Yeah. And then there's also some like wild, new research that's about these ionized sprays with the carrageenan, nasal sprays, to work for COVID virus particles. Which it's not at all the home medicine that you can do. But I'm still always fascinated with the directions that researchers will take plant constituents.
Tasha Greenwood: Not necessarily because they're the most practical use, but just thinking about long term, how so many drugs come from plants and just, what are the possibilities? And also because pharmaceutical science, in that way, is often people's inroads into interest into plants. So I'm here for all of it.
Tara Ruth: Yes.
Tasha Greenwood: Excited to learn about all the parts of it.
John Gallagher: Including the gel matrix. The gel matrix sounds so you mentioned that. I was like, "Yeah, got to go to the gel matrix."
Tasha Greenwood: Yes. Oh my gosh. Seaweed gel is so glorious. When we lived in California briefly during fire season, we filled a kid pool in our backyard with water and then put a bunch of seaweed in it with the gel, and then we just put that all over our bodies to try to deal with the heat and it was very soothing.
Devon Greenwood: It was very necessary.
John Gallagher: Wow. So I have questions practical question, if someone's listening to this, "Wow, Irish Moss sounds really cool. I want to get to know it." So if you're finding it or can harvest it fresh, what are the safest places for that? Or if you can't do that and you want dry does that work and where do you get it? Okay. So I'm just going to shut up and you can...
Tasha Greenwood: Totally, yeah. Seaweed harvesting is definitely an experience that I highly recommend if you live in a coastal place and have access to a shoreline where seaweed harvesting is welcome and allowed. The most important thing is, when you're harvesting seaweed, is that you leave the holdfast, which is what looks like roots, but isn't actually roots and part of the body of the seaweed, so that it can regenerate from there.
Tasha Greenwood: There isn't Irish Moss on the Pacific Coast, but there are some other fabulous seaweed species full of this wonderful gel one's called [inaudible 00:42:58] and it's beautiful iridescent reddish color that you can definitely easily ID with a guidebook. And if you're not near the coast, which most of us aren't, there are some folks who do harvest Irish Moss. My best recommendation is Atlantic Holdfast Seaweed. Michael Woodcock, he has been in the seaweed world harvesting, but also medicinal uses for years and is really an expert and also really sustainable harvesting of seaweed.
Devon Greenwood: And we do carry those at the shop very proudly.
Tara Ruth: Oh my God.
Devon Greenwood: So should find those on mxedgreens.com.
John Gallagher: Absolutely.
Tasha Greenwood: It's only available once a year, it's kind of an annual harvest of the seaweed and then it's available till it sells out. But I also am pretty sure you can get Irish Moss from Mountain Rose Herbs and a few of the other big suppliers as well.
John Gallagher: Do you harvest? Sorry...
Tara Ruth: I was going to ask if you sell your cream at MXED GREENS.
Tasha Greenwood: I do sometimes.
Tara Ruth: Noted.
Tasha Greenwood: I don't have a batch of it right now, but it will get remade soon.
Tara Ruth: Great. Just asking for a friend.
Devon Greenwood: Yes. I'm always like, "Tasha, what are you going to make your cream again?" The life in small business owners, there's always many different directions that we're trying to go. But if you are interested in this seaweed cream recipe, stay tuned with MXED GREENS. Tasha does some seaweed workshops annually where you can learn a lot more about that, as well as reading their Irish Moss monograph. That's going to be upcoming soon on LearningHerbs.
Tasha Greenwood: Yes. The basic recipe for the cream is in the monograph.
Tara Ruth: Oh, my gosh.
John Gallagher: Oh, wow.
Tara Ruth: Oh, so excited.
John Gallagher: Very excited. You just had mentioned about classes, things like that. Do you teach seaweed walks in classes?
Tasha Greenwood: Well, I don't usually teach seaweed walks just because we are in Western Mass and coordinating meeting up at a coastal area is a little bit harder, but I definitely would. Most of what we teach generally is botanical dye workshops that has been really popular. And then we also teach classes about basic herbalism and different medicine making preps on different farms. We are running a series this summer. It's all about sensory immersion with plants, with one of our favorite farms up here, it's called Sensing the Seasons of the Five Workshops. Each is a different one. So we're really excited to be getting this time to be outside, to really be on the farm and have people immerse themselves with the plants and get to know the plants as they grow and learn about touch, smell, taste, sight, and sound one at a time.
Tara Ruth: Ah, that's so cool. What farm are you partnering with?
Tasha Greenwood: It's called Foxtrot Farm. And they're an amazing herb farm. And they also have this CSA called Healing and Resilient Food CSA, and it's half traditional CSA and half herbal CSA. And it's really centered around climate resilient crops. So they grow with using the most minimal amount of plastic, hardly any irrigation, and really prioritize whatever medicinal and vegetable plants can grow with pretty big climate swings like drought or lots of rain or weird pests coming up. Pretty cool.
Tara Ruth: Wow. Do you all source a lot of your herbs from them or do you grow your herbs or?
Devon Greenwood: Yeah, that's a great question. We definitely source what we can from Foxtrot Farm. When we opened MXED GREENS last summer, the pre-orders for many local farms had already closed. So we were able to, this season right now at the end of this summer season, we're going to get a lot more from Foxtrot Farm.
Devon Greenwood: Tara, thank you for asking that. I think one of the main things that we feel really strongly about at MXED GREENS is to have the bulk herbs that we source be small batch makers who we stock in our store, that the plants that they're using, that they are really in right relationship with those plants that it's not going to be too extractive from the ecosystem. That means that all the bulk herbs, if you come in, all the bulk herbs, or if you still see on our website, they're all going to be from small scale herb farms in the US, which we're really proud of.
Devon Greenwood: I know that means that there's not every herb that we have sourced there's amazing herbs from other buyer ranges in other countries. But, but for our practices, we really want to support those growers and those farms who are aligned in those ways and are coming up with more resilient ways to combat changing climate.
Tasha Greenwood: Yeah. And also if the pandemic cause anything about shipping delays. I remember when all of a sudden there was no elderberry and no chamomile and everyone was like, "What do we do?" And so it feels like really important, as a small shop, to build those relationships with farms where they're maybe not exporting globally, but will often have medicine growing if the supply chain is disrupted in a major way.
John Gallagher: And I love on your website, how when you click on shop, you have a whole list of these small companies and people that are doing the work. So you're featuring each company. And I encourage everyone to look at that because when you see this, you get ideas and are inspired about what's possible for you when you're looking at this.
John Gallagher: So people out there listening to this may find inspiration in that. It's like my first herbal mentor always said, "When you go in any herb shop or when you go in any store and you're attracted, or you're looking at different herbal products, look at what's in it, look at the ingredients. There's a learning experience in itself." And your website is a learning experience for so many things and I love it. The shop section, the event section. So cool. All the stuff you're doing right there. It's awesome.
Tasha Greenwood: Thank you.
Devon Greenwood: Thank you.
John Gallagher: And that website of course is M-X-E-D mxedgreens.com and I'm just wondering, it's amazing, right, Tara? How quickly these, these hours go by.
Tara Ruth: I know right. Here we are.
John Gallagher: You mentioned so many great resources and I hope everyone goes and Googles a lot of these companies and stuff. But so, Tasha and Devon, I was wondering if there's just something that's come up for you that you want to share in all that we've just been talking about and everything just to bring it all together, to help everyone integrate?
Devon Greenwood: Yeah. Thank you. I think one of the big things that we're really trying to do is create ecosystems of care and that's with our human community and with the plant communities. And so a lot of the folks whose products are at the store, some of them are local, some of them are regional, but in that we're all supporting each other, whether that's near or far to create the futures of herbalism that we want to have in the years to come, to create the care webs, the resources for health, the resiliency against new viruses as they come along, changing ecosystems.
Devon Greenwood: We're out here trying to learn how to care for each other and to use the incredible longstanding wisdom and knowledge of the plants to do that. So I'm just so grateful that we found herbalism and that we found each other and that our paths have been able to continue to grow and shift along this together.
Tara Ruth: And your commitment to just a deep care ethic. Just in being friends with you both really comes across in everything you do. Even when I ordered a beautiful botanically dye shirt from y'all. It had all these extra things in it that I didn't expect like a sweet sticker from the store, a plant print, and all of these things. And just in the time that I've gotten to know you both, I just feel so grateful for the care that you reflect. Just how you show up in the world. And then I'm so excited to visit MXED GREENS and just see this physical space that really represents that care and how you show up for your community.
Tara Ruth: So thank you both for joining us today. And I know John mentioned your website, MXED GREENS, but where else can people connect more with you? Do you have an Instagram and what's going on?
John Gallagher: Do you do that crazy social media thing that the kids are doing these days?
Devon Greenwood: Okay. We're not on TikTok.
Tara Ruth: Bummer.
Devon Greenwood: I know we're millennials. We haven't quite gone to the dancing around with herbs yet, but we try to post pretty regularly on Instagram. We give ourselves some days off of the week, but we try to keep it fresh there with different products, with thoughts, with beautiful pictures of plants, sometimes an occasional snap of us being cute. Some more queer love in your feed.
Tara Ruth: Oh my gosh. Yes.
Tasha Greenwood: The Instagram handle is at @mxedgreens.
Devon Greenwood: Yeah. The Instagram handle is @mxedgreens. We're @mxedgreens everywhere. It's M-X-E-D-G-R-E-E-N-S @gmail.com, mxedgreens.com for the website and @mxedgreens for social media. We have a newsletter. We have a monthly newsletter. That's the other way we keep in touch with folks outside of social. So if you're interested, feel free to sign up on our website, email us. We're really excited to keep making connections. And we're so grateful to speak with you both today and be connected with the Herb Mentor community.
John Gallagher: It's truly been an honor. It's been an honor. Thank you.
Tasha Greenwood: Oh, I was just going to say that we are in Western Mass, but we're doing more and more online workshops and such. So even if you're not local, you can definitely connect with us that way. And we love hearing from folks, whether it's a question or a really cool plant or seaweed story that you want to share. So thank you.
Tara Ruth: Ah, amazing. Well, Tasha and Devon, thank you both so much for joining us on HerbMentor Radio. It's been a pleasure.
Devon Greenwood: Thank you both.
Tasha Greenwood: Thank you. Take care.
John Gallagher: HerbMentor Radio is written and produced by John Gallagher and Tara Ruth. Sound engineering by Zach Frank. Visit herbmentorradio.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and for information on how to be part of HerbMentor, your home for herbal education. HerbMentor Radio is a production of learningherbs.com, LLC. All writes reserved. Thank you so much for listening.
