We are participants on a Sustainable Herbs Initiative (SHI) learning journey. This is SHI founder and leader Ann Armbrecht’s 5th learning journey and our 3rd. We have volunteered to be one of four vans that gather folks at the Lyon–Saint-Exupéry Airport in Lyon, France. Colleen, my co-conspirator in all things romance and business, is the driver. I am the navigator. Lyon is situated between Paris and the Mediterranean coast. Famous for its food and culture and defined by two major rivers – the Rhône and the Saône, it is packed with grand buildings, bustling shops, and lively public squares.
A week from now, on our return journey, Colleen and I will take in a bit of the Parisian-style elegance of the highly walkable, centuries-old neighborhood of Vieux Lyon. For now we’re focused on finding our colleagues who will ride south with us to our destination in Luc-en-Diois in the Drôme region of southeastern France. Once there the Vercors mountains will backdrop our week.
We are being hosted by l’Herbier du Diois, a supplier of over 350 aromatic and medicinal herbs, spices and teas exclusively from organic farming. We hope the week ahead will show us their ‘why’ – inspiring us on our journey at evanhealy.
The airport in Lyon is named for Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator. His most popular work is The Little Prince. It tells the story of a pilot stranded in the Sahara Desert who meets a young prince from a tiny asteroid. The tale, as told by its protagonist – a curious, wandering prince – explores the contrast between the imaginative world of childhood and the narrow-mindedness that adults all too often become. One of the other characters – a wise fox – offers the book’s most famous lesson: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Like much of what I see in Ann’s teachings, The Little Prince is not only a fable about the importance of imagination, love and friendship, but also a critique of how we lose sight of what truly matters.
That very night, upon our arrival at the farmhouse, Ann will open with one of her tales – also from a distant land – that acknowledges a different way of seeing – and engaging with – the world. Her story draws on one told to her by a village shaman when she lived in northeastern Nepal. This tale considers the differences between humans (adults) and their (child-like) ancestors. The story line is that humans can only see the physical object, whereas ancestors ‘see double’. It is only by seeing both the physical object and all that our eyes can’t see that we truly see the world complete and whole. As I understand this parable, it’s our inability to see the whole – the visible and the non-visible – that leads to the kind of shortsighted and heartless behavior prevalent today.
From the time of a young age I was captivated by what was out of the ordinary; I’d say the unseen. At the age of twelve I picked up The Hobbit and was mesmerized by the first storyline. Bilbo’s quiet routine is suddenly disrupted when the wizard Gandalf and a gaggle of dwarves mysteriously arrive at his home. This topsy-turvy crew are traveling to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim their ancestral home. With Bilbo enlisted in their quest, they set off on a pilgrimage in search of the intangibles of wisdom and virtue, a path of righteousness.
At fifteen I’d ride my bike down to a treed estate along the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg Canada and read Lord of the Rings. Another epic myth of the big-hearted rallying together on a quest to vanquish the one towering evil. A journey of self-discovery drawing on both visible and invisible forces. At seventeen I began a lifetime of study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi renowned for teaching Transcendental Meditation to the Beatles. His message was that life is 200% - 100% inner and 100% outer. That meditation soaked the mind in the unseen stuff of universal being and that daily life infused that deep stillness into the very nature of mind, heart, being. (Colleen wears an Oshala Farm t-shirt with the slogan ‘cultivate consciousness’. I wonder, where is the line between spiritual seeker and farmer?)
Ann’s journey, encapsulated in her learning journeys, provide space for self-discovery. In her book, Thin Places, she writes about her time in Nepal, where she comes to understand that there are places in the world where the air is rarified, where one is closer to the gods, the unseen. While this might take the form of being in nature it is less about the natural world and more about how one looks at the world. Hers is a pilgrimage through valleys and mountains, of walking the skin right off her feet while her emotional vulnerability spills out as her inner guts are skewered for all to see.
Our time in France pushes a few of us outside of our comfort zone. Two of our four vans are 9 passenger vehicles with an extra foot of height. Three point turns on narrow winding roads through villages that quickly turn into quiet countryside, where we proceed up mountains and down valleys. An hour drive to each farm. Standing in circles of 25-30. Asking questions. Listening. Engaging with farmers. ‘Why do you do it?’ we ask. ‘Because I love it’, each answer. Proudly and affectionately his wife shares, ‘He was born in a tractor’. This is their office, their store, their warehouse, their laboratory. It’s a choice of how you want to live, how are you going to show up. On the learning journey we show up at breakfast each day at 8, we’re on the road at 9, in the company of farmers throughout the day, back at 6, circle up with key impressions of the day before dinner at 7:30 followed by a presentation at 8. After which some of us retreat to our rooms to attend to our day job until the midnight hour. My only disappointment: I am so bummed that I missed the one night with Jeff singing and strumming a guitar.
Since the time of junior high I wanted to be cool. While that didn’t always lead to the best choices, I’ve had a lifetime to assess who’s cool and how to define it. It’s as simple and as beautiful as it is challenging – be who you are. On this journey several qualify. One stands out. That one is Tijlbert Vink, CEO of l’Herbier.
This is Tijlbert’s story at least the way I remember it. At the age of 27 he’s studying for his Ph.D. in what I’ll describe as behavior-psychology. His father has contracted a serious illness, and he will not be able to carry on managing the farm. The farm is l’Herbier, where we are spending the week. His mother and father started the farm twenty years earlier with friends, another young couple from the Netherlands. Ton, the father, balances farming and sourcing herbs internationally with his other passion – physical education. Under his tutelage, the farm has survived two decades and grown to 2 million euros in sales and a staff of 4-5.
Tijlbert is asked if he’ll take over the farm. He asks for three months to decide. At which point he says that he will accept upon five conditions. He wants (1) a team; (2) machinery; (3) to farm the land; (4) to build an ecological structure; and (5) to provide added value outputs. Listening to Tijlbert I conclude that he saw how hard his parents worked and he wants to do it another way. He wants support and camaraderie with others to share the burden as well as to build excitement around a vision. Likewise machinery will help reduce the burden of labor as well as to support the opportunity for growth. His desire to shift the focus back to farming the land is counterpoint to his father’s shift to sourcing herbs internationally. He does not abandon international sourcing; he simply makes farming central to their mission. I cannot recall from hearing him speak, all twenty-five of us gathered around in a small meeting hall, whether he had a clear vision for his ecological structure other than an inherent belief in beauty and sustainability. Soaring arches of hefty wood planks that in my estimation reach forty to fifty feet in height that span a football field in their staggering beauty of repetition. Open workspaces that balance the scale of drying, cutting, storing tons and tons of herbs. This is their workplace.
As we come to the end of the tour of the facility, Tijlbert says with a glint in his eye, though somewhat bashful, that this is his church. In his case a place of worship for doing the work with righteousness. Of morality, of commerce mixing with humanity and community, of hard work taking on the responsibility of livelihoods, of sculptural beauty incorporated into the glory that is the land which we are upon, the mountains that embrace. Of the invisible being realized in the visible.
The visible: With Tijlbert holding the reins, staff increased to one hundred though as the economic climate shifted it settled at 54. Revenue sits around 11 million euros. He’s satisfied. He says, it’s a good number of people. Not so many that he doesn’t know each and every one. He’s brought the community to the table. Rather than looking to banks for funding, he’s asked the community to support his passion. Every year he has brought in a couple hundred thousand euros in investment at 3.5%. So now they have a working line of credit close to two million euros. It’s a small community. Over the past two decades over 50% of the community has worked here at one time or another.
The invisible: These are not wealthy individuals, yet they are putting their savings to work in the community. Tijlbert knows the responsibility he bears. I wonder what would it feel like to put it all on the line, not only for myself but also an extended community? I wonder, can you even do that in a city like Carlsbad (San Diego)? I think, what I wouldn’t do to expand our evanhealy community in this manner. Then again, isn’t that what SHI has started to foster in me? As I think this, I hear Mississippi John Hurt’s delicate yet raw voice reverberating in my gut from some forty years ago moaning his blues number, ‘Since I laid my burden down’. My favorite line: ‘I’m going to shake glad hand with angels since I’ve laid my burden down.’ Though a glorious sentiment, I hope that’s not for many years yet.
Zacharia Levine of The Pure Synergy brand of supplements describes the learning journey as a model for learning, a way of seeing. Are we here to study plants? Yes. Are we here to see l’Herbier’s operation? Yes, wonderfully so! Are we here to learn from each other? Yes. These are the tangibles, the seen. Yet Zacharia points out that we are also learning to see with fresh eyes, to see what we haven’t seen in the past, to rethink what’s possible. To see the visible and the non-visible, to engage in the physical as well as the metaphysical. To experience thin places. To be part of a rag-tag group of herbalists, farmers, and processors in a time of transition. To feel pride as we move from the harsh neglect of Mother Earth to one that celebrates those who nourish the land, who are willing to do the hard work of farming. Is there anything more important than being a steward?
In our voices I hear pain. The many challenges of survival. The lack of proper wages, profits that come and go. One might challenge any of us that we are pipe dreamers, that the big has already prevailed. Yet we know that not to be true. For all around us, we see faces like ours. Staying the course means real concerns are visible. Who will wild harvest when this generation of wild crafters pass? Who will farm as land increases in price, machinery is ever more expensive, interest rates are high, and the climate is changing. Yet here we all are – and I have never been more excited by the possibility.
