Community Supported Medicine shares are awesome

Take the becoming-more-common foodie and locavore adage, “food as medicine,” and push it further. Food is medicine. Medicine is food.

"Hanging Milky Oats to dry. Oats are considered a nutritive herb help replenish the body. They are loaded with calcium. It is a nervine tonic which means it helps with stress and anxiety. This is the same plant your oatmeal comes from...just harvested at a different stage of maturity" (lancasterfarmacy.blogspot.com).

Winter is commonly heralded as an external cold and slow slumber. Thanks to children’s books about bears and butterflies, and many times our own empirical evidence, we recognize winter as a temporal space which allows for necessary but unseen incubation to enable recuperation, regeneration, and a later on outward growth.  The same could be said for Lancaster Farmacy.

"Wild Bergamont harvest with a hint of Bee Balm. The bees and butterflies love this plant and it grows in the wild. We love it so much we had to grow it at the farm. It tastes and smells like oregano, and helps with digestive problems. A poultice of it helps draw infection from things like bee stings too" (lancasterfarmacy.blogspot.com).

About four winters ago (in 2009), Casey and Eli founded Farmacy after moving home to Lancaster. With varying but complimentary backgrounds and ideological allegiances in herbalism, rewilding, community organization, grassroots activism, cooperative modeling, and farming, the Community Supported Medicine share was planted. The CSM is a crop that’s grown out of the winters away from Lancaster and the mutual labor and love on Casey and Eli’s return. Their mission was and still is to use their herbal medicine shares to heal the local community and land naturally.

Bio dynamic farmers, Casey and Eli, resist the confines of conventional, mainstream food and medicine by working to rewild their land through decisive and cooperative—both community- and environment-based—farming. Their goals are to not only supply our community with local, organic medicine but also to support our local bioregion by sustaining accessibility to food and medicine for all community members.

"Just like the sun, Calendula opens up everyday. This flower does wonders for skin ailments including eczema, sunburns, rashes, you name it. Internally great for stomach problems and makes a mouthwash for helping canker sores. The flowers are edible and we make a colorful gazpacho with it" (lancasterfarmacy.blogspot.com).

 Their CSM share is excellently unique to LFFC—healing based on the CSA model with organic herbs and local herbalist wisdom. Each share is a monthly (3^rd week of each month) delivery of 3-5 items. You can expect any of these items to be healing salves, a bunch of fresh or dried herbs, tea blends, syrups, infused oils, bath salts, tonics, or tinctures. CSM shareholders will also receive an educational guide about each share inclusion whether it’s chickweed salve, Echinacea drops, a bunch of mint julep, or tea.

Photo and Information credit: Lancasterfarmacy.blogspot.com