Making gardening easy: The Urban Farm Company of Colorado

At Motherlove, our roots are in the dirt!  Our founder, Kathryn Higgins, grew up tending her family’s country garden, and she continues to maintain a large garden.  Her connection with the natural world is the foundation for her passion for herbal healing.

That’s why we’re happy to share this interview with the founder of The Urban Farm Company of Colorado- a new company in our area which makes gardening accessible to even the most intimidated and time starved of us.  We asked its founder, Bryant Mason to explain how his company works.  Bryant has worked in local food and gardening, served as a research fellow studying socially responsible endowment investment, and interned at Natural Capitalism Solutions.  He co-founded and led “CU Going Local,” a sustainable food and agriculture student group at the University of Colorado.

How does your company help people grow their own food?

Our goal is to make gardening more easy, simple, and fun! I believe that gardening doesn’t have to be a chore, and should be an integral and fulfilling part of people’s lives. I also believe that vegetable gardening is one of the best ways for people to reconnect and learn about our planet, our community, and ourselves.The Urban Farm Company of Colorado helps individual households and businesses install high-yield, raised vegetable gardens.  After an installation, our customers have access to an extensive online database of gardening resources (from suggested crops for Northern Colorado to how to harvest and store vegetables).  Our gardening method is intended to simplify and streamline the process for someone who has never gardened before, and has very little to do so.  Our optimal soil mix is nutrient rich, our beds require no fertilizer or tilling, and our growing method is very high-yield per unit area.  Customers can purchase additional products and services such as monthly garden coaching and drip irrigation to supplement their garden and simplify the growing process even further.  Our customers will be incorporated into a Growers’ Network, offering additional benefits like cooking and gardening classes.  Ten percent of our profits will go toward subsidized gardens for low-income communities and families.  For more information, check out our website.

There are many benefits of growing your own food.  What’s your favorite?

My favorite benefit of gardening is one few people know about. There is a bacteria in soil called mycobacterium vaccae. When gardening, you breath in this bacteria and your bodies immune response creates serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is an anti-depressant, improves mood, and boosts overall happiness! Who needs prescription drugs when you have soil?

Why do you install raised beds instead of preparing the soil in people’s yards?

It takes a gardener on average 7 years to get their soil “just right” from amending it. In Colorado, our soil is very full of clay, making a ‘double dig’ incredibly difficult. With raised beds, we can fill them with an optimal soil mix on day one, and skip the years of low yields and nutrient-poor soil. Because this soil is so valuable, the raised beds contain the mix. Raised beds also make it easier to connect cold frames and trellises, and simply look better in your yard!

What do you think stops most people from growing food in their yards?

Where do you start and how do you go about doing it? People are often times daunted by the process. While gardening is a simple concept, there are actually several snippets of important things you need to know to have a thriving garden. Learning these things can be difficult with such a hodgepodge of information online, and many people don’t want to spend their weekends weeding their garden or digging in their clay-filled soil. Also, gardening has been branded as the ‘grandma’s hobby’. We want to make gardening more hip and cool so everyone wants to do it.

You advocate “disruptive eating.”  What does that term mean?

It’s a term that I made up. My goal is to create a business model that disrupts the status quo of agriculture. The beauty of gardening and eating is that everyone makes dozens of food choices every day, so everyone has the power to disrupt this status quo through food. By making ethical, conscious, and healthy food choices, a person is making a tremendous positive difference in the world. Luckily these larger goals are perfectly aligned with the pleasurable-driven goals of eating tastier and more nutritious food!

Eat your dandelions!

While most people see dandelions as a nuisance, here at Motherlove we have a lot of respect for this humble plant and its many uses.

The entire dandelion plant is edible, and it’s higher than most foods in vitamins and minerals, especially Vitamin A.  It has a number of medicinal uses, too.

Motherlove founder Kathryn Higgins writes, in her Pocket Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants, “This recognizable plant is so beneficial that I don’t understand where it got its bad reputation.  Instead of eradicating this useful plant we should all be enjoying its beauty and many uses.”

She recalls:  “I started giving wild edible plant identification classes in 1985 on our land in Rist Canyon.  After class I fed everyone a meal made with the plants that we had previously identified.  The main course was nettle lasagna, along with a wild weed salad of lambsquarter and dandelion leaves.  To this I added sheep sorrel for a lemony taste and bull thistle.  Peeled thistle stalk makes a great substitute for celery. Side dishes were dandelion pickles, the wonderful dandelion muffins, and drinks of cold nettle lemonade and hot roasted dandelion root tea.  The children helped me with the gathering and making dandelion muffins- picking the open flower heads and pulling out the beautiful yellow fluff.”

See below for her recipe for Dandelion Muffins!

Here are some of the many ways you can use the dandelions in your yard:

Edible uses:*

• Before the plant blooms eat the young greens in salad or steamed.
• Pickle or steam the unopened buds.
• Add flower petals to flours and batters, and make them into tea, wine, beer, and syrup.
• Soak small pieces of the flower stalk in equal parts of water and vinegar overnight for pickles.
• Dry the root and roast in a slow oven until brown (about 4 hours), grind, simmer 10 minutes for a drink some liken to coffee with no caffeine.
• Eat the boiled roots as a vegetable.

Medicinal uses:*

• Dandelion leaf tea is a good diuretic for fluid retention and to eliminate toxins and constipation.
• The flower oil is good for a stiff neck, skin sores, and back tension.
• Splash the tea on skin to heal chapped or windburned areas, age spots, large pores, and wrinkles.
• Dandelion root is an excellent liver and stomach herb to treat liver congestion, to increase bile production, and help weak digestion.
• The root tea or tincture is recommended for jaundice, anemia, and skin blemishes.
• Use as a poultice on breast tenderness, cysts, or plugged milk ducts.
• Juice from the stem clears up warts.

Kathryn’s recipe for Dandelion Muffins:

Mix in bowl:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cups clipped dandelion flowers.  Mix the dandelion flowers to into the flour with your hands separating the bigger clumps of petals.

Mix in another bowl:

• 1/4 cups oil
• 4 T honey
• 1 beaten egg
• 1 1/2 cups milk

Combine dry and liquid ingredients.  Stir to moisten- it should be lumpy. Spoon into oiled muffin tins.  Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

*Of course, be sure that your dandelions haven’t been chemically sprayed!

At Motherlove, Every Day is Earth Day

This week, communities around the world will celebrate Earth Day.  Here at Motherlove, we’re not doing anything special.

That’s because we observe Earth Day every day of the year.

Motherlove was born from a deep respect for the gifts from the natural world, and we aim every day to create our products in ways that protect and preserve it.  Our products are truly gifts from nature, and we aspire to honor that generosity in every choice we make.

Here are just a few of the ways we maintain our commitment to the environment:

• Our certified organic ingredients reduce the use of pesticides and create a healthier product for you.  All of our products score a “zero” (zero toxins) on the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetic safety database.

• We manufacture using wind credits, lessening the use of non-renewable energy sources which contribute to global climate change.

• All of our office supplies, packaging, and company literature is made from recycled materials.

• We use glass packaging for our salves - a choice which reduces the use of plastic, permits endless recycling, and allows for safe and creative reuse!

• None of our products are ever tested on animals and all are completely cruelty-free. We are third-party certified by Leaping Bunny, which means that not only our end products, but also the ingredients (where most animal testing occurs) are third-party certified. There are lots of bunny seals, but only Leaping Bunny is a third-party certification and not just a company statement.

• Through our Nurturing Life Foundation we support environmental education for kids at places like The Mountain Park Environmental Center.  Over 10% of all Motherlove Herbal Company’s profits are donated to organizations that help nurture life and give children the opportunity to experience and explore the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

• Our founder, Kathryn Higgins, teaches on the gifts of the natural world through her lectures and writing on the use of herbs for nutrition, medicine, and body care.  Kathryn’s first book, Pocket Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants, not only showcases the ingredients found in Motherlove’s products, but focuses on using native plants and sustainable harvesting methods. Kathryn is currently working on her second book, Sowing Seeds: Growing our Future, which focuses on growing herbs with children.

We are constantly striving to make Motherlove as respectful of the planet as we can, and encourage everyone to do what they can to make every day Earth Day!

Podcast: Herbs to increase your milk supply, with Motherlove founder Kathryn Higgins

We’re very happy to share a podcast interview with Motherlove Herbal Company founder and owner Kathryn Higgins on galactagogues – herbs to increase milk supply!

Kathryn talked with Tanya about several commonly used herbs to increase milk supply, herbs that are particularly helpful for mothers who have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) or had little breast growth in pregnancy, and herbs that are safe to take while pregnant.  She explained which forms of herbs (liquid extracts, capsules, teas) are most effective, and discussed some common herbs and foods which lower milk supply.  She even shared the Greek myth that gave us the word galaxy and galactagogues (hint: when you look up at the night sky, think milk!).

A nationally recognized herbalist, author, and teacher, with 35 years of personal and professional experience, Kathryn Higgins is the founder and visionary behind Motherlove Herbal Company.   While pregnant with her first child Kathryn began to gather herbs from her home in the Rocky Mountains to make teas, oils, baths and liquid herbal extracts that would support her own child birth experience.  In 1990, while pregnant with her third child, Kathryn founded Motherlove.  She remains a lecturer and teacher on the use of herbs, and is the author of the Pocket Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants.

You can listen to the conversation using the player below, listen with Quicktime, or download it for free at Motherlove’s iTunes store

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Kathryn’s Herbal Birth Story

I decided to have a home birth with my first child. We lived in the mountains in Colorado, far from a hospital. When my water broke and I went into labor, my husband and I drove to my midwife’s home in town, where we would be closer to a hospital in case of any unforeseen emergency. An intense 30-hour labor gave me plenty of opportunity to use my pain-relieving tinctures of crampbark and scullcap. But I had only dilated to three centimeters, and it was time to go to the hospital. There, hooked up to fetal monitors and pitocin, my cervix still would not dialate. Our first daughter was born by cesarean with her head tilted back and the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck three times; I was told she would have suffocated had she entered the birth canal. I was grateful for the herbs that helped me through a long labor and for the medical expertise that saved our lives. As soon as I returned home from the hospital, I put mashed comfrey leaves on the cesarean cut, and today I have no visible scar.

I was confident that I could have a successful vaginal birth with my second child, but my husband was not willing to try a home birth again. The local hospital had beautiful birthing rooms where I could bring my ritual objects, and I was encouraged to use my herbal tinctures during labor when I needed them. Soon after the birth of our second daughter, I took a combination tincture of crampbark, motherwort, and raspberry leaf to prevent any afterbirth cramping, give me emotional support, and slow the bleeding. I continued to take this tincture several times a day for three days. Our second daughter’s heart defect was discovered the day after she was born. The sitz bath and homeopathic arnica were invaluable to me, as I walked and sat comfortably through three days of tests and many appointments.

I was two weeks overdue in my third pregnancy. After consulting with my nurse midwife, I took a dose of blue cohosh tincture. Six hours later I went into labor. When we arrived at the hospital, once again I was dilated only three centimeters. But in less than an hour of soaking in a warm tub, with my oldest daughter pushing the pressure points on my lower back, I was ready to push.

The birth of our third daughter went very quickly. I walked and squatted as we waited for the placenta to expel. The placenta, however, had adhered to the uterine wall at my previous cesarean scar, and I was hemorrhaging internally. The warm blood came gushing out as the doctor on call prepared to do an emergency hysterectomy. My husband squeezed a dropperful of fresh shepherds purse tincture into my mouth. Almost instantly the bleeding “miraculously” stopped, and an incredulous doctor removed the placenta with a D&C instead of the planned hysterectomy.

Herbs are a great birthing ally. Used successfully by midwives for years to ease labor pain and reduce the need for drug intervention, herbs can also progress a stalled labor, slow bleeding, calm anxiety, provide focus, and give renewed strength and nourishment.

Tinctures are an easy way to use herbs during labor. In a tincture, active constituents of the herbs are extracted in alcohol and water for a minimum of two weeks. This liquid is then strained and bottled. The herbal drops are taken in a small amount of water to dissipate the alcohol, or used directly from the dropper bottle. I mixed my own tinctures, but they are readily available in natural food stores.

Raspberry leaf, the premier uterine tonic, can be taken throughout pregnancy and labor. Just as a runner prepares leg muscles before a marathon, raspberry leaf strengthens the uterine muscles so that they will work more efficiently during contractions. Raspberry leaf also helps to expel the placenta after birth, slow afterbirth bleeding, and increase breast milk. For convenience, prepare a tea or ice chips ahead of time to sip or suck on during labor. Add chamomile tea for a relaxing effect.

Scullcap, chamomile, and catnip tinctures, and a combination of chamomile and St. Johns wort, work well to relieve tension and ease labor pain. As the name implies, crampbark eases uterine cramping during labor, as well as pains after birth.

When the ups and downs and feelings of anxiety seem overwhelming, motherwort is the herb to use. Or use aromatherapy inhalers that contain specific essential oil combinations for emotional focus, clarity, and rejuvenation. Rescue Remedy, a Bach flower remedy, also helps when under stress. Take several drops when needed during labor. After a difficult birth, put drops on the wrists or forehead of the newborn baby as well.

Many midwives use blue cohosh and shepherds purse. Blue cohosh brings on labor when the baby is overdue and should not be used before the last two weeks of pregnancy. During a long, stalled labor, blue cohosh makes contractions more efficient and revitalizes an irritable mother-to-be. Shepherds purse is the best herb to immediately stop postpartum hemorrhaging. Take one dropperful of the tincture. For greater effectiveness, be sure it is made with fresh, not dried, shepherds purse.

Back labor pain and tension can be relieved by massaging with an oil made with chamomile, rose, calendula, lavender, or St. John’s wort. You can add drops of an essential oil with a comforting scent. Perineal massage is also helpful before labor, and as the baby crowns, to prevent tearing, ease any swelling, and lessen the sensation of burning. An herbal oil of comfrey or St. John’s wort works well; if you do tear or have an episiotomy, it will promote rapid healing.

After the birth, homeopathic arnica pills reduce the swelling of bruised perineal muscles. Arnica should only be taken internally in homeopathic form, not as an herbal tincture, which could prevent clotting. A sitz bath slows bleeding and brings immediate relief to swollen membranes. Use a mixture of herbs such as comfrey, yarrow, uva ursi, witch hazel, goldenseal, or garlic. Pour a gallon of boiling water over an ounce of herbs, then cover and steep for 20 minutes. Strain the strong infusion into a shallow tub or a sitz bath pan specifically made to fit on the toilet. Also squirt a strong comfrey tea from a bottle as you urinate. This prevents burning and aids in perineal healing. 

Chances are that you won’t need all of these items at the birth. But after experiencing three very different births, I have learned the importance of being prepared for anything that may happen. So remember to call on herbs to help you, as they did me, minimize the pain, promote rapid healing after the birth, and reduce the need for any unnecessary drug intervention, as you go through this joyous time of transformation.

Kathryn Higgins – Founder of Motherlove Herbal Company

Motherlove Celebrates 20 years!

This year marks 20 years of business for Motherlove and we wanted to celebrate with a big bash. In May we rented the Armory Event Hall in Fort Collins Colorado to have an eco-friendly celebration as our way of  saying thanks. Decorated with elegant flowers and delicious food, the day was spent with fabulous friends and family. Two amazing bands filled the hall with music and dancing went on into the night. Thank you so much for showing up and celebrating with us. We wish everyone could have been there, because so many have played a part in our story.  All of us at Motherlove want to thank our customers, your loyalty and support have made us a success. We also want to express our gratitude to everyone that sells and helps promote Motherlove products, we could not have made it without you. To all of our friends and family that have been by our side since we were making products in the kitchen, thank you for believing in us. To all of the amazing employees that have been with us through the years, you are the best. Thank you for going above and beyond every day, you make Motherlove happen. We are honored to be able to share this milestone with you.

Become our fan on Facebook to see more pictures of the fun!

Nurturing Life Foundation

 The Nurturing Life Foundation has a twofold mission

•         To promote breastfeeding and support mothers-in-need.

•         To create opportunities for children nationwide.

These are some of the projects the Nurturing Life Foundation has contributed to: 

• Realities for Children serves the needs of abused and neglected children. This private organization effectively creates a safety net of services so that the most vulnerable members of the community are provided for.
• Project Self-Sufficiency has been assisting low-income single parents in their efforts to achieve economic independence.
• LLLI Breastfeeding Peer Counselor Program has led women from welfare to work by providing education, communication, counseling skills and on-going personal and breastfeeding support.
• Habitat for Humanity -Women Build Women Build is Habitat’s volunteer program for women who want to learn construction skills and make a difference by building homes and communities.  Women at these builds have furthered Habitat’s home-building mission by helping to construct over 1,400 houses.
• Mountain Park Environmental Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing programming in order to create a citizenry that understands, respects, enjoys and cares for themselves, their families, their community, and the natural world.

The Nurturing Life foundation is wholly funded by Motherlove Herbal Company. Thanks to the growing support of our many customers, we are now able to support others as we donate 10% of our profits to organizations that truly help nurture life.