John Gallagher: You were listening to HerbMentor Radio, by LearningHerbs. I'm John Gallagher.
Tara Ruth: And I'm Tara Ruth.
John Gallagher: Tara, I think the top thing our listeners might be wondering is where have I been?
Tara Ruth: Yeah, John, where have you been?
John Gallagher: Well, Tara, you may not remember this, but HerbMentor Radio was like the biggest podcast on the whole internet back in 2008.
Tara Ruth: Right, right, right.
John Gallagher: I had the fame, the pressure got to be too much. There was the autographs, the parties, you know? You know?
Tara Ruth: Oh, yes, yes.
John Gallagher: Actually, HerbMentor Radio was on for about seven years and we have 75 great episodes that you could go and listen to with amazing herbalists. But, to be completely honest, things got a little busy here at LearningHerbs. We released three books. We had a lot of video trainings come out, and that break I took just kept growing and growing. But then I realized that HerbMentor Radio was the favorite part of my job and I really wanted to get started again. And, in that time, I think podcasting became so big that one out of every three listeners listening right now probably has their own podcast.
Tara Ruth: True, true.
John Gallagher: So I met you, Tara, and I was like, you know what, let's do this again. This is going to be fun. So for those of you who are new to LearningHerbs, my name is John Gallagher and, with my wife, Kimberly, we started LearningHerbs way back in the early years of the 21st century when our kids were little. You may know Kimberly as the creator of our Wildcraft board game, author of the book Aphrodisiac. And these days the kids are all grown up, which tells you that, "Hey Tara, these herbs work. They're still alive."
Tara Ruth: That's good. That's probably good.
John Gallagher: So I want to introduce you all to Tara Ruth, the new co-host of HerbMentor Radio, so welcome.
Tara Ruth: Oh, thank you, John. Happy to be here.
John Gallagher: Yes. It is awesome to have you here. And so Tara, where did you start learning about herbs? Did you grow up learning about them or is this something you learned along the way?
Tara Ruth: Yeah, well, I grew up in Northern California with two hippie parents who worked at Whole Foods, so there's just like always a lot of herbs swirling around in our kitchen. And I still remember hating the taste of echinacea tincture as a kid and craving the camomile tea and the honey my mom would make me every night. And it was just so normal to use herbs daily and in first aid moments that I didn't even really realize until I was older, that it turns out that not everyone was using that same nasty echinacea tincture when they got a cold.
Tara Ruth: Which, for the record, I mean, no offense to echinacea anymore because we've since become the best of friends. It's great. We hang out every day. I love it. But anyways, after I grew up and left home, I started to just really fall in love with the plants again and kept drinking that camomile tea and I just knew I wanted to deepen my relationship with camomile and all those other plant friends. So I did the California School of Herbal Studies Community Herbalist program and two years later here, still nerding out on plants with y'all.
John Gallagher: And it's so awesome to have you here on HerbMentor Radio.
Tara Ruth: Thank you.
John Gallagher: We have some fun ideas, Tara and I, and one of our plans is to make HerbMentor Radio a place, not just to share the stories of herbalists that you might have heard of, like teachers and authors, but also to meet folks just like you, who are using herbs in your day-to-day life and have some cool stories to share. We're going to all learn from each other and we're excited for that.
Tara Ruth: Yes.
John Gallagher: Yes. And so for today's episode one, which is really episode 76, but there's this statute on podcasts called The Statute of Podcast Limitations, and I think that's over, Tara. It's been too long. I looked at the podcast feed on one of the iTunes or something and the last one was like 2016, and I was like, "Okay, you need to..." We'll just call this number one.
Tara Ruth: Sounds great.
John Gallagher: We have a very special guest today, Jocelyn Boreta. Tara, would you do the honors?
Tara Ruth: I would love to. So Jocelyn Boreta is the granddaughter of a farm worker, a community organizer and herbalist, committed to cultivating health equity through the empowerment of indigenous knowledge and self-healing communities. She's a staff herbalist at the Integrative Health Clinic Farmacopia in Santa Rosa, California, and co-founder of the Botanical Bus, a bilingual mobile herb clinic.
Tara Ruth: Jocelyn's community activism has roots in 10 years working as program director of the Global Exchange Fair Trade Stores, in partnership with indigenous women in Guatemala, Peru, and India, to sustain cultural integrity and livelihood. You can learn all about Jocelyn's work at thebotanicalbus.org.
John Gallagher: Jocelyn, welcome to HerbMentor Radio.
Tara Ruth: Yes, hello.
Jocelyn Boreta: Thank you. Thank you, John and Tara.
John Gallagher: I've read that your mission is to provide care for those whom the traditional healthcare system has failed. So can you tell us a bit more about that mission and what led you there?
Jocelyn Boreta: Absolutely. I had just finished study at the California School of Herbal Studies. Well, actually, I was actively engaged in their Community Herbalist program and my daughter had just been born. I just very organically started going out to a community garden in a primarily Spanish-speaking neighborhood of Santa Rosa called Bayer Farm.
Jocelyn Boreta: There was a group that was starting to meet there and I was invited as a herbalist to join the group, a group of herbalists, just as an exchange, a really organic knowledge exchange around traditional herbalism. And this group of women, they were all Spanish-speaking immigrant women from Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, and every Friday we came together and this group really became a lifeline for me as a new mom, moving back to Sonoma County after 20 year, and really finding who I was as a mother.
Jocelyn Boreta: And, really, that's the reason I came to herbalism was because I wanted to feel the power of this ultimate caregiving role as a woman. And here I found myself in this group of grandmothers and community members who had a deep knowledge of herbal medicine and, above all, a profound confidence in the ability to care for one another. I was just really moved by this group of women and our love for each other and our love for the plants and the power that we had together.
Tara Ruth: Yes. Thank you for sharing. And you mentioned that community organizing has been a huge part of your life, even as a kid. Were herbs always part of that, as well, or did this blend between the herbs and community organizing come later?
Jocelyn Boreta: I think I've always been a plant person, so I've always seen the power of plants. My family, my partnership, I'm married to a gardener. We find our happy place and our power in plants. And I think that, in that life transition of becoming a mother, I just needed to lean into that for myself and for my family. And that's when I pursued education, in that transitional period, through the California School of Herbal Studies and then had the opportunity to kind of bring the two worlds together and the concept that I know there's a lot of us that really believe in strongly, is herbalism as activism, as something that can translate into building movements together and empowering our deep knowing that we can take care of ourselves and we can take care of our families and we can take care of our communities.
John Gallagher: Did you feel the seeds of the activism work, that that's like you wanted to feel your way there when you were in school? Was that a motivator in-
Jocelyn Boreta: I guess it's always been a part of my identity, that that's what I want to bring to whatever knowledge that I'm gaining. That that's what makes me feel alive within that new knowledge and, honestly, just how we all... If we're inspired and held by a community, that's how I felt when I joined that community group of grandmothers and mothers, just who inspired by the power of herbal medicine.
Jocelyn Boreta: They were weaving baby blankets for my children. When my son, my second child was born, they were holding me. It was this new community of women that I was inspired to learn from and who are now my best friends and family. And I just kept on wanting to know them more and wanted to share knowledge with them more and found foundation with them in this really deep knowledge of herbalism and power as women together.
John Gallagher: So then did that lead to the origins of the Botanical Bus?
Jocelyn Boreta: Yes. Yeah, we continued to come together once a week. I was breastfeeding my tiny child. She's seven now. And I always measure the birth of our organization, honestly, with my daughter's age, because Angeles Quiñones and I came together in that setting at the Community Garden and then decided a few years later, I think it was in 2017 when there were fires here in Sonoma County that were devastating. And, of course, speaking of these deep inequities that exist in our communities, these agricultural communities, where we have labor forces that are sometimes temporary that come in and work the vineyards and leave, and just knowing and seeing that deep inequity in the community that I have chosen here, when the fires came through, it impacted the farm workers more profoundly that it impacted the rest of the community.
Jocelyn Boreta: The Latinx and indigenous community were impacted by those fires deeply. We got out into the evacuation centers, and I was, at the time, working at Farmacopia as a staff herbalist and the owner there, Lily Mazzarella opened Farmacopia as a free clinic during the fires because there really was no... That was the way forward. It's what our community needed.
Jocelyn Boreta: And the outpouring support from the herbal community across the nation was profound. It was a disaster and we suddenly had donations of herbal medicine coming in from all over the country. And Lily turned to me and she knew the work that I had been doing in Community for years. And she said, "We have to start an organization. This can't stop here. We need to keep this moving forward because this doesn't stop with fire clean up. This is climate change." And of course the fires continue every year, and with COVID. So it was that time where we said we need to keep this momentum moving forward. And so that's when we established as a 501c3 and really formalized our work and community.
Tara Ruth: Nice. And now how has the Botanical Bus evolved since then? What kind of services do you offer, and programs?
Jocelyn Boreta: Yeah, so like I said, we started really organically with these regular weekly wellness workshops that are community-led. So really based on participation and medicine making together and community. And we really wanted to match that, everything the community was bringing to these workshops with some access. We were still dealing with the problem that, okay, we are sharing knowledge, we are growing together, we are feeling our power and the power of plants, but herbal medicine is still inaccessible. It's expensive. Integrative health services are inaccessible to Latinx and indigenous community, based on pricing.
Jocelyn Boreta: And insurance, if the community does have access to insurance, insurance usually doesn't cover those services. And so we just started working hard to launch a clinic in which we were able to offer one-on-one direct integrative healthcare to our community. And so that's what we're doing now. It's been a year and a half. We have a Farmworker Clinic every Saturday, March through November.
Jocelyn Boreta: We meet people where they're at. It's a really big part of it being a mobile clinic so that we're not asking our community, who often can't access clinics based on their work hours, as well, or their transportation. So we come to family service centers that are trusted and in neighborhoods for the indigenous Latinx clients that we serve. We also get out to vineyard work sites where vineyards can sponsor a clinic, or [inaudible 00:14:22] can sponsor a clinic that's on the work site during paid hours. And, at those clinics, we provide a variety of services.
John Gallagher: Yeah. What does that clinic look like? Like, I get out of the car, I arrive, and what is in front of me? How is that set up?
Jocelyn Boreta: Yeah. So the first thing, how I like to explain it is these clinics are really centered around providing culturally relevant care. So these are unique in the integrative care, the spectrum of integrative care that's being provided, in that we meet our clients where they are at, and we arrive with culturally relevant care. So when you arrive at the clinic, there's music playing that makes sense, that people recognize, that it's home. And we have herbal agua frescas, so we serve delicious pineapple tolse, agua fresca, or if it's cold, we'll have a traditional champurrado, which is a made with organic corn masa and adaptogenic roots for stress relief and building immunity.
Jocelyn Boreta: And so we make sure that at every level it's safe and people felt heard and seen for the power of their own culture, and their own culture identity is seen right when they arrive. And our partners in the clinic is an organization called Lideres Campesinas, which translates to leaders from the countryside, countryside women, leaders, and this organization are female farm workers who have actually organized around sexual assault in the fields and now are just advocates for health and wellbeing of farm workers across the state. They do the intake and, really, it was our idea to launch these clinics together. And so at every level we want people to feel held.
Tara Ruth: For most people, how is their experience with the healthcare system before coming to the Botanical Bus? You talked about the importance of culturally relevant care and just how this might be a very different experience for folks, especially, who might not have access to medical care. So just a question about that.
Jocelyn Boreta: Absolutely. So most of the farm workers and community members that we see in clinic report... The statistic, actually, I can pull right in front of me. It's 88% of the Latinx and indigenous farm workers that we see in our clinics report high levels of acute anxiety, depression, and fatigue, and 36% of this group identify this stress as debilitating.
Tara Ruth: And when you're in this work and relying on this knowledge, what are some of the herbs that you most commonly use with people in the clinic?
Jocelyn Boreta: Yeah. Oh, even just those figures that we gather over clinical intake over the last year with acute stress, levels of stress, the most common condition that people are coming to us with is, or that needs to be addressed before anything else can be addressed, is acute stress in the form of anxiety, depression, and fatigue. And so our nervines are present in almost every formula, it feels. Yeah.
Jocelyn Boreta: And that's the first step that we're taking, helping people to sleep at night, dealing with acute anxiety attacks. So yes, camomile, manzanilla, skull cap, lemon balm. Lemon balm in Spanish is toronjil. Passion flower, passiflor. I'm thinking of the herbs we run out of.
Tara Ruth: Totally.
Jocelyn Boreta: Yeah. Kava. Just because we see a lot of, coming to the clinic and there's trauma that needs to be addressed and sometimes receiving care for the first time, like maybe a massage for the first time, can be triggering and sometimes kava can be immediately effective in calming the nerves, like a heavy hitter when it comes to dropping it in the moment and helping people achieve that balance, calming the nervous system kind of quickly-
Tara Ruth: Yeah, absolutely.
Jocelyn Boreta: ... in acute positions. So I think the nervines are the ones that come to the top. And we also have a lot of allergies here and that's something that people suffer with a lot. So I think, oh gosh, that elderflower, goldenrod, those will be coming into action soon.
Tara Ruth: And when you're administering these, are these mostly tinctures, teas or a wide variety?
Jocelyn Boreta: Oh, it depends. It depends on the formula. Our tincture bar, Galen's Way sponsors our clinic.
John Gallagher: I love Galen's Way tinctures.
Jocelyn Boreta: Yes. They're our neighbor. They're in Community with us in Sebastapol. And they donate all the tinctures that we distribute.
John Gallagher: Oh, that's wonderful.
Jocelyn Boreta: Which is amazing, yeah.
Tara Ruth: That is amazing.
Jocelyn Boreta: Yeah. And the quality of their tinctures are outstanding. The other amazing thing is that they are evolving a really strong glycerin line. And so we feel increasingly comfortable to distribute tinctures that are alcohol free. We have more options. We don't distribute any tincture without a clinical herbalist formulation. So a clinical herbalist needs to sit with a client for a session before we distribute any tincture medicine.
Jocelyn Boreta: So our distribution of tincture is limited, but we do distribute a lot of tea. Everyone who comes to the clinic leaves with Traditional Medicinals, also is a sponsor of the clinic and provide us with so much tea that we just need to make it our job. It's our job to distribute.
Tara Ruth: Great job.
Jocelyn Boreta: So we've got lots of tea. Yeah. We've got lots of tea that we distribute, Traditional Medicinals tea, and then also our herbalist, our clinical herbalist, will formulate tea blends. Almost every client that gets seen by a clinical herbalist will leave with a... depending on, what form of medicine they feel most comfortable with, a combination of tea and tincture, depending on their conditions. And then everyone who attends the clinic leaves with bags of tea.
John Gallagher: Then what's the relationship between your teas and tinctures and basic food as medicine, teaching people some herbs that they can just cook with? Is that a big part of the work you do?
Jocelyn Boreta: Yeah. So at every clinic, in addition to the one-on-one direct services, like I said, where the clinical nutritionist or the clinical herbalist will be actually distributing those tinctures or teas, we also have a workshop at every clinic. So each client comes, they receive an average of two one-on-one services, and then they have the option to sit in a 45-minute workshop. And those workshops are led by the promotoras and their topics range.
Jocelyn Boreta: But a perfect example, I haven't introduced Doña Norma yet. She's a promotora with the group. And her specialty is kitchen herbalism. So she shares recipes. We make recipes together. We've made bone broth in Community, at that workshop. We make fire cider with Doña Norma. So everyone who leaves the clinic leaves with that recipe, there's a little sampling of their fire cider. And we'll move into this year with a range of topics like that. But kitchen herbalism being one of the themes for our workshops, and those workshops are diverse.
Tara Ruth: I was reading how the Botanical Bus has distributed, and maybe it's more now, but over 1,500 Mutual Aid Garden Kits to indigenous and Latinx residents of Sonoma County. And I'm just curious, what results have you seen from folks who have received these and why do you think, or how does food insecurity really intersect with the mission of the Botanical Bus?
Jocelyn Boreta: Yes. Well, there was some pivoting that happened for all of this last year, with COVID. We were just about to launch our first clinic in March of the year. Then suddenly there was a pandemic. And so everyone were stunned for about a month. Like, how do we move forward safely? And the first thing, we ended up launching our clinics of September that year, the only way we know is with the strictest COVID safety protocols in place and it's gone well.
Jocelyn Boreta: But before that, there was a really beautiful gardening movement that happened that spring, right? Where everyone was just like, "Can we please touch the Earth?" Where and how can we touch the Earth right now? Because we're really isolated in those early months. It was really extreme. And some of us could touch the Earth and other ones of us couldn't. Apartment buildings that didn't have Earth, we didn't have that, and so we were thinking about our...
Jocelyn Boreta: We didn't have clients yet, but we had been running our workshops in Community for about five years. And so we had our network of women, and men, who were trying to figure out what can we do for our community? And that's when we did the... Before we could launch our clinics, we just distributed garden kits that then turned into care kits, but the garden kits were awesome. We actually partnered with UFW, United Farm Workers Union, to do these really massive distributions. Also, with the family service centers that are our current partners, like La Luz Center in Sonoma, and Corazon, Healsburg.
Jocelyn Boreta: They were just amazing because people were coming to those centers for food, for emergency financial support. And we were able to partner with different sponsors from the herb industry. A great organization called Left Coast Wholesale, local donors for compost, Occidental Arts & Ecology for plants. All these local farmers, herb farmers, started coming out and donating so many herbs, like little medicine herb starts that we were... I live in a condo, myself, and I literally had to talk to my condo complex to say, "Can I store massive amounts of herbal plant starts in the commons?" There was an overflow of little baby herb plants-
Tara Ruth: That's beautiful.
Jocelyn Boreta: ... that were going out in these soil, what are they called? Little fabric pots.
Tara Ruth: Oh, GeoPots, yes.
Jocelyn Boreta: GeoPots. And so we were distributing GeoPots full of organic compost and little herbal medicine plants. And the whole idea was that it was access so you could grow herbal medicine on your doorstep if you didn't have a garden, and you could garden, even if you didn't have land access. So those garden kits we did in partnership with an organization called Daily Acts, and that felt like it was just this huge mutual aid push, where a thousand of those kits went out in less than a month.
Tara Ruth: Wow. And how can people help support the Botanical Bus and your mission?
Jocelyn Boreta: Yeah. So, join us, if you're local. We're actually going to be really jumping into this strong goal of growing our practitioner team. We accept volunteers, really, of many different healing modalities, and we stipend our volunteers so that it's sustainable for them to join us.
John Gallagher: Have you ever had someone finish a herbal school, finish studying at an apprenticeship for a year, and the Botanical Bus is a place to get some practical hands-on experience?
Jocelyn Boreta: We do have apprentices, yes. We have three apprentices for six-month terms. We don't have a formal apprentice program. We are working on it. But we do currently have three apprentices and they essentially run the apothecary. That does mean you have to be local, because the clinics are on the ground. We also welcome you to join our Wellness Workshops. First Saturdays of the month we have a free Wellness Workshop online together with the Sonoma County libraries. Those are currently in Spanish.
Jocelyn Boreta: But that's the place where you get to learn from our promotoras and hopefully just get a feeling of the power of this movement. Thirdly is, to donate, we are a small grassroots, nonprofit. Every donation goes really directly into the services we provide. You can donate through our website, which is www.thebotanicalbus.org. And we have a donate page right there where every donation counts.
John Gallagher: That's wonderful. And of course you can follow the Botanical Bus off of that page on Instagram, on Facebook, and be part of the community. And some of you listening will... maybe you're just able to donate because you live far away or not able to come join Jocelyn and all of the folks there. Or that might spark your interest to possibly be able to apprenticeship, do an apprenticeship, or learn directly or help directly if you're in that area. So that's very cool.
Jocelyn Boreta: And I'm always happy to be contacted via email, if anyone has questions. I love the camaraderie between folks who are trying to start up their own herb clinics. I spend a lot of time talking to other herbalist community leaders who are trying to start similar projects. So my email address is [email protected]. And I welcome any contact.
John Gallagher: Jocelyn Boreta, thank you so much for joining us on HerbMentor Radio.
Tara Ruth: Yes. And remember to visit The Botanical Bus at thebotanicalbus.org. And you can also follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
John Gallagher: Hey, Tara.
Tara Ruth: Hey, John.
John Gallagher: Do you know why we call this podcast HerbMentor Radio?
Tara Ruth: I do, John.
John Gallagher: Okay. But if this is just the first time you're joining us here, HerbMentor Radio is part of HerbMentor, which is a wonderful community of folks learning about herbs. And it's not just a community, right?
Tara Ruth: Yes. HerbMentor has Rosalee de la Forêt's famous digital herb monographs. And I love the video plant walks with herbalists, like Rosemary Gladstar or Jim McDonald.
John Gallagher: And what about the courses?
Tara Ruth: Yes, the courses. And what I like is that they aren't like these long courses you usually find online.
John Gallagher: No, not at all. Because sometimes it's like I join a course and it's like, "I don't have time for this." It's like, "Oh, I'm inspired, but I'm not getting to it because I'm really busy. I have things to do. There's just so much going on." So we design these courses so they're like listening to podcasts like this one. You can even put the video on and even just listen to it while you're doing the dishes or maybe you're driving a car. But if you're driving a car, don't look at the screen if it's a video, right?
Tara Ruth: Totally. Totally. Yes. But I mentioned Rosemary and Jim and Rosemary has her Full Remedies Video Training, the same one she offers with her correspondence course. And there's a really fun course on herbal energetics with Jim McDonald and other ones on gardening, food as medicine.
John Gallagher: And there's never homework.
Tara Ruth: Thank God.
John Gallagher: Yes. We don't want to give you homework because, with herbalism, you just learn by doing. That's how it happens. It's just you learn these little bits of information, this inspiring stuff from this amazing herbalist and that amazing herbalist and you put it all together in your herbal soup and you make your own healing brew of goodness.
John Gallagher: So you could make your own herbal home study course with HerbMentor by itself, or you could just dabble a little bit, or you might be in a school or program already, like with Rosemary Gladstar's 7Song, or maybe even the California School of Herbal Studies.
Tara Ruth: Yeah, where I went.
John Gallagher: Exactly. So did you use HerbMentor when you were-
Tara Ruth: I totally did. I especially used the monographs. I still remember learning all about peppermint. I used to just totally underestimate it and think it was just this tea that I would drink at night, but it has so many amazing healing gifts, and thank you, Rosalee for teaching me all about it.
John Gallagher: And even if you just pop in the forum evert once in a while to ask a question, we just price it... It's priced less than a video streaming service, so it's totally worth it, however you use it. But if you really want to make herbs part of your everyday life, that's why we have HerbMentor.
Tara Ruth: Exactly. And if you'd like to check it out, even for just $1, you simply just got to go to herbmentorradio.com.
John Gallagher: And on that urbanradio.com, you could subscribe to this podcast on your favorite feed. Like, you might be an Audible person or an iTunes person. Whatever kind of person you are, you can do that.
Tara Ruth: Yes.
John Gallagher: And the cool thing is that, if you're not a member, you're going to get a great discount by just going over to herbmentorradio.com and you can do that there, too. And, like Tara said, start it for a dollar and, as an HerbMentor member, we have this cool feature where you can actually see a transcript of these podcasts [crosstalk 00:34:41]. So, please, we would love to meet you in our social media-free forum. So, Tara, not everyone's on Facebook.
Tara Ruth: Okay. Yeah. I respect that choice.
John Gallagher: But if you are or you aren't, you want to share story, ask questions, need a plant identified, take a little course, we have that there for you. And where is that again, Tara?
Tara Ruth: That's at herbmentorradio.com.
John Gallagher: On iTunes, Spotify, Google, 8-track and cassette.
Tara Ruth: Oh, great. Good to know.
John Gallagher: Thank you everyone for joining us today. This is just the beginning. Thank you for listening and joining us today. Thank you, Tara, for being here. Welcome.
Tara Ruth: Ah, thank you, John. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
John Gallagher: We have so many cool ideas. We'll see you next time.
Tara Ruth: Woo hoo.
John Gallagher: HerbMentor Radio is written and produced by John Gallagher and Tara Ruth. Visit herbmentorradio.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and for information on how to be part of our HerbMentor online learning community. HerbMentor Radio is a production of learningherbs.com LLC, all rights reserved. Thank you so much for listening.
