News

Holiday Season is Upon Us...

And we’re here to help with holiday giving!

Give your loved one the gift of wellness this season, with our custom-made Gift Bundles! Explore our Rest and Relaxation Pack or pamper new Mama and Baby with all-natural goodness. These come already boxed and ready for wrapping, or just send it directly to your loved one. So convenient!

Check out our new inventory of teapots and infuser mugs—they're perfect for the loose-leaf tea drinker, and take the effort out of cleanup. These go fabulously with our selection of tea blends.

Try our Winter Defense Tea for an extra immunity boost during the cold and flu season! Or for a full sensory experience, enjoy our Hazy Morning Tea, with notes of vanilla, licorice, smoky Lapsong Souchong paired with a delicate floral jasmine overtone.

We’re stocked up on everything that goes into our special Gift Bundles… which color teapot, or infuser mug, would be perfect for that certain someone? You probably know exactly what they’d love to receive, whether that’s a single well-chosen item, or one of those bundles.

Not sure what to choose? Easy! Our Gift Cards are perfect: your lucky gift recipient can pick out their heart’s desire from our wondrous selection of herbs, teas, and unique body care products. The cards are generated as credit codes, in denominations of $10-100, by our Shopify platform, that are redeemable on our website at checkout. You can also phone or email us to buy old-school paper gift certificates for any amount.

Order soon to avoid shipping delays, and let us help take the stress out of shopping this season! 

In All Seasons, Calendula is Your Skin’s Best Friend!

Brightly colored Calendula Flowers have been revered by herbalists for centuries. Our Pure Calendula Oil and Salve are two of our signature products. So simple—and simply wonderful!—for so many applications. We call them the good for everything salve and oil.

Autumn weather is still inviting in some places, sunny and warm. Calendula Oil and Salve are soothing for bug bites and sunburns, and may even have some protective effect as a sunscreen. Hands cut up or dried out from gardening? Calendula Salve takes care of that fast!

As the season moves along elsewhere, we're spending more time in heated indoor spaces—and drier air tends to aggravate chapped skin and rashes. Calendula Oil and Salve are great for moisturizing those dry spots, reducing the effects of aging on skin, and relieving dry, itchy scalp.

A summary of the herbal lore notes Calendula's value “…as an ointment or oil for burns, bruises, and injuries… boils and accesses… sore nipples, yeast infections, shingles, bedsores, sprains, varicose veins, acne, pulled muscles, sores, warts… wasp or bee stings.”

David Winston adds, “anti-fungal, antibacterial, and a styptic… athlete’s foot, insect stings, bacterial vaginosis, cervical dysplasia, and vulvodynia.”

Some issues can be troublesome in any season...

• Calendula Salve is terrific for treating and preventing diaper rash.
• Calendula has been proven effective for helping to heal venous leg ulcers.
• Calendula can prevent the dermatitis and pain that are common side effects of radiation treatments for cancer.
• Healing cuts and wounds is one of Calendula’s super powers, from the battlefields of the US Civil War to modern obstetrics—mothers recovering from cesarean sections healed their incisions faster, with less pain, using Calendula ointment.

For a super easy-to-use Calendula product, our Pure Calendula Salve is hard to beat: it absorbs into your skin readily and won’t stain your clothes.

Pure Calendula Infused Oil is more concentrated, and also serves as a great ingredient for making your own salves, soaps, massage blends, and so on.

Both products are certified organic, and handmade with love in our shop. Try them, you’ll like ‘em!

Spotlight on Infused Oils: Comfrey Leaf & Mullein Flower

Herb-infused oils are excellent for abrasions, soft tissue and joint injuries, recovery from closed wounds, rashes and other skin conditions, and therapeutic lubrication for massage treatments, either diluted or full-strength. They’re also great as carriers for blending essential oils!

Comfrey Leaves and Mullein Flowers—two remarkable healing plants, in full flower during the summer, and both widely used by herbalists for centuries—feature among the brightest stars in our line of infused oils. These oils are all handmade in small batches in our shop, and certified organic by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

Comfrey flowers are small and purple, and its leaves are big and hairy. Comfrey’s anti-inflammatory action is helpful for osteoarthritis and back pain, bug bites, acne, eczema, psoriasis, phlebitis, bedsores, bleeding hemorrhoids, and herpes lesions.

Comfrey Leaf’s best known component is allantoin, a small hormone-like molecule that stimulates cell growth and speeds tissue repair for broken bones and wounds, sprains, ulcers, and burns. The plant is also rich in calcium, potassium, phosphorus, vitamins, triterpenes, chlorophyll, silicic acid, and trace minerals. Applying this versatile herb as an infused oil is so effective, and so easy!

Mullein flowers are small and yellow, opening up a few at a time on a tall stalk of buds, atop a base of soft, fuzzy leaves. The flowers are great for soothing pain, relaxing muscles, reducing swelling and inflammation, draining lymph, and fighting bacteria and fungi.  Warmed-up Mullein Flower infused oil is the classic remedy for ear issues, such as mild cases of otitis media, swimmer’s ear, or earwax buildup.

Mullein Flowers contain tannins, alkaloids, saponins, polysaccharides, and flavonoids, and topical use of the herb has proven beneficial for wound care. For instance, a 2021 double-blind study of 100 postpartum women recovering from episiotomies showed significant improvements in healing time and pain relief with a Mullein Flower preparation, compared to placebo.

These two oils deserve top billing among your cast of herbal helpers!

The Magic of Mints—for Summertime and Year-round!

When hot days make us long for cooling herbs, two that come to mind right away are Peppermint and Spearmint. These familiar and wonderful plant friends are members of the Lamiaceae family, often simply called “the Mint family.”

It’s a big family, with over 200 genera and 7000 species! And it includes many plants with roles to play in both healing and cooking. Speaking broadly, the key to what makes the Mint family herbs so special is the volatile oils they contain—the main source of both their various flavors and fragrances, and much of their medicinal value.

Many of healing actions of this family of herbs can be summed up in four categories:

• Digestive, for all kinds of GI ailments

• Calming and comforting, for depression, insomnia, anxiety

• Clearing, for nasal and lung congestion and coughs

• Antimicrobial, for bacterial and fungal infections, etc.

The volatile oils act powerfully, whether you take them in as teas, tinctures, or foods, or inhale their aromatic vapors, or both at once. If we had only had this one family of herbs to use for healing, we’d still have so many powerful allies to work with!

Those digestive, calming, and clearing actions owe a lot to relaxing effects on smooth muscles that line the digestive and respiratory tracts. As tensions are released and spasms are eased, stomachaches, coughs, and many other symptoms are relieved. This sense of release and relaxation is also felt in the nervous system.

As a bonus, some of the fragrances that we find appealing (or at least don’t mind!) in these plants are also effective for repelling insects and other pesky varmints—especially in the form of essential oils.

White Sage

Pure Lavender Infused Oil

Essential oils:
Basil
Catnip
Clary Sage
Lavender
Marjoram
Oregano
Patchouli
Peppermint
Sage
Spearmint
Thyme

The “dog days” of summer are a perfect time to revisit your favorite mints, and get to know some new ones!

(Photos: Catnip growing next to Lemon Balm; Spearmint)

Summer’s Here, Ready or Not!

In our “upper left” corner of North America, this spring has been exceptionally cool and damp. Many other parts of the country have been much hotter! Long-term weather forecasting is tricky, but as the National Weather Service image above shows, the predictions are for quite a hot one. Note that our Bulk Herb Sale continues through the end of June—so right now is a perfect time to order up some cooling plant friends to help you cope with the heat!

In traditional herbal medicine systems, like classical European, Chinese, and Ayurvedic ways of healing, our mind-body system is understood in terms of a balance of hot/cold/wet/dry (fire/earth/water/air) qualities. Few of us are ever perfectly in balance, and herbal prescriptions are typically based on which of these elements predominate in our individual constitutions at a given time.

When the weather heats up, environmental temperatures can strain or overwhelm your body’s capacity to maintain this balance, even if your usual tendency may be on the cooler side. Expressions of excessive fire energy may include sensations of heat, pain, redness, and swelling (the classic inflammatory signs, known in Latin as calor, dolor, rubor, and tumor); acid reflux, loose stools, painful menstrual cramps, burning eyes, hot flashes, dizziness; insomnia, racing thoughts, agitation, worry, anger, recklessness, and so on.

• Catnip
• Chamomile
• Chickweed
• Comfrey
• Elder Flowers and Berries
• Fennel Seed
• Hibiscus Flowers
• Lavender
• Lemon Balm
• Lemon Verbena
• Lemongrass
• Licorice Root
• Mints: Peppermint, Pennyroyal, Spearmint
• Myrrh
• Nettles
• Oregon Grape
• Rose Petals and Hips
• Shatavari Root
• White Willow Bark

Some herbs, like Elder Flower, Lemon Balm, Peppermint, and Chamomile (known as diaphoretics), have an additional effect of increasing perspiration—which also helps you cool down.

It’s also worth mentioning that most of our tea blends contain one or more of those cooling herbs. Hibiscus Cooler Tea is outstanding that way, and specially formulated to star as a delicious iced beverage for summertime!

Consider too that cooling down inflammation, in various forms and parts of your body, is the key feature in a great many herbal strategies. So, for example, we offer Time Out Tea, for chilling out overheated states of mind; Aller-Geez Tea, for itching, burning allergy symptoms; Happy Tract Tea, for acute intestinal ailments; P.P. Tea, for bladder irritation; and so on. Remember, you can add ice to any well-brewed tea, and enjoy it cold.

Have fun this summer! And be sure to take a little time to cool down when you need to… find a shady spot to relax in, and sip a nice cooling cup of tea!
 

Spring Cleaning Time, with Super Detox Weeds

Springtime peaks in the Northern Hemisphere around May Day! It’s a season for cleansing our bodies, as well as cleaning our homes. Lately, many folks have been moving around less much than normal... not just since the onset of winter, but for most of the past two years. Hope you’re getting outdoors these days, or back to the gym—returning to active routines that promote good health and well-being—limbering up, and sweating out the residues of recent seasons of inactivity!

Herbs traditionally play a vital role in this phase of spring cleansing. In much of North America, we need only glance outside to see the resurgence of Dandelion, Nettles, Cleavers (shown at right), Burdock, and Chickweed, growing in the places where wild plants (aka weeds) normally flourish—all classic herbs for your spring detox program.

It's the perfect moment to harvest these nutritious, cleansing herbs (if you're able to locate them in reliably unsprayed areas) and dry them for teas, or infuse them in tinctures. It's also so very easy to order them from us, certified organic and rapidly delivered to your home, all ready for your teapot or tincture jar!

Even more convenient: consider our Cleanse Me Tea, a potent detox blend of Nettles, Cleavers, Burdock, and Dandelion, plus Red Clover Flowers. Those of you with springtime allergy issues will want to take a look at Em's excellent Aller-Geez Tea, featuring springtime stars Nettles and Chickweed, along with soothing Sage, Licorice Root, and Eyebright—a brilliant formula for calming the hay fever symptoms that so many of us experience during this time of year, when tree and grass pollens fill the air.

Our bodies are awesomely designed to clear wastes and toxins... and our ancestors have helped these processes along, for millennia, using plant allies harvested in harmony with the cycle of seasons. Nothing could be more natural!

Our Teas are Certified Organic! 
After years of offering teas blended from 100% organic ingredients, we’re happy to announce that our tea blends are now officially certified organic! We'll be updating the packaging for the tea blends to reflect this change in status, keep your eye out!

Southwest Premium Harvest Herbs
Long ago, I did some traveling to the inland Southwest desert region. I met a number of people there who had previously lived in the Pacific Northwest, or were visiting from there. I became aware of the relationships that exist between different geographical and climatic zones. People who live in cool, damp places sometimes surrender to longings for sunshine, and flee to warmer areas—seasonally or permanently—while others (like my wife and I) tired of warm, dry climates, and escaped to greener regions, where trees abound, and water is plentiful.

We’re pleased to include sustainable and hand harvested Southwest herbal treasures among our selection of Premium Harvest herbs! Follow these links to learn more about our wild harvested Osha Root, Yerba Mansa Root, and Chaparral Leaf.

Our owner Emily, a Northwest native, found her calling, and received her training as an herbalist, while living in New Mexico. She gained a deep appreciation for some of the powerful plant allies that live in the mountains and deserts of the great Southwest. For instance,

• Osha Root is a great medicine for respiratory infections, and provided Emily’s initial inspiration to study herbal healing.
• Yerba Mansa is an impressive antimicrobial and astringent root, and a source of berberine.
• Chaparral Leaf is a strong anti-inflammatory herb, with antibacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic actions.

Comfrey (Symphytum officinale), also known as Bruisewort and Knitbone, is an herb with a long history of use for assisting healing, particularly wounds and fractures. It's well known to herbalists as a source of allantoin, an alkaloid that actually stimulates the growth of new cells, as well as other anti-inflammatory phytochemicals including rosemarinic acid.

Starting the New Year… Again!

Maybe your New Year's resolution has already gone the way of so many others... ("Adios, amigo!"). Here's another one to consider—so easy, and you can still start it up before wintertime is finished. Doesn’t cost a lot, isn’t much trouble, and it’s really good for you. Just drink more herbal tea!

You’re already reading this blog, so most likely you’ve already got some idea about the difference herbs can make for your health. Short term help with things like improving your digestion, sleeping better, feeling calmer, hurting less, faster recovery from coughs and colds. Long term benefits like stronger immunity, cardiovascular improvement, allergy relief, renewed energy, and more.

And you’ve come to the right place to start up your new tea-drinking lifestyle! We’ve got all these terrific tea blends; we’ve got a great array of single herbs, so you can concoct your own formulas. (Note the delicious and unique new addition to our collection of teas: Hazy Morning!)

And we’ve expanded our offerings of tea brewing gear, with glass teapots in 25- and 42-ounce sizes; a neat 20-ounce French press pot; the stylish ForLife Curve and Dew teapots, and glass and ceramic mugs, all with handy stainless steel infusers; and our latest option, an elegantly simple 32-ounce white porcelain teapot.

For a perfect starter package, order our Tea Bundle: your choice of any three of our tea blends, plus a basic or fancier teapot—and get a sweet deal, with a little Whatcom County honey thrown in.

And speaking of gift packs, remember Valentine’s Day is coming up soon! Chances are someone you care a lot about will be very pleased to receive one of these very special packages. Pamper your beloved, or yourself!

Emily has been considering the idea of gift bundles for years now, and this year, the 2021 holiday season, is the time when that concept is finally manifesting!

The Rest & Relaxation Pack is a warm invitation to the healing wisdom of "Slow down, and smell the roses!"—the simple, everyday luxuries of a flower-scented cleansing ritual, and sipping a relaxing tea. (You might just want one of these for yourself, too!)

The Tea Bundle is one you can customize for just about anyone, and highlights Emily's genius for creating herbal tea blends that support good health—in many different ways, both general and specific—and also taste great! The oldest and most basic way to get the benefits of healing and nourishing plant allies is simply to brew them in hot water.

We're bundling your choice of any three of our organic tea blends with either a 24-oz. basic glass teapot—perfect for one or two tea drinkers—or a very nice, 45-oz. ceramic pot by ForLife, plus a small jar of local honey from right down the road here in Whatcom County, Washington. Either one of these vessels is likely to come in handy for folks who are new to herbal teas, and even for many experienced tea fans. You really can't go wrong!

Winter is a time when our immune systems work extra hard to keep us healthy. The Wellness Bundle offers support for that vital process, with three immune-boosting herbal teas, three essential oils, natural hand sanitizer, and honey and oxymel.

The Christmas story is the tale of a birth, and two of our bundles are dedicated to the mothers who bear new life into the world. The Mommy to Be Pack and Mother's Bundle are perfect gifts to honor and help those in the magical first stages of that unique and challenging journey, with organic artisanal body care products, original loose-leaf herbal teas, and more.

Please note that tomorrow, November 27, is Small Business Saturday—and Em's Herbals is the real thing, a small-town family business managing to thrive among many bigger and more corporate competitors. And November 29 is Cyber Monday, a celebration of the online retail experience. Consider what kind of enterprise you're choosing to support with your holiday spending!

From all of our team at Em's Herbals, with all sincerity—May the blessings of the holiday season be abundant for you and yours!

Fall Inventory Sale: 20% Off Selected Herbs

Spring cleaning is one thing, and getting things sorted out before Winter shows up is something else. We're looking through our inventory and as we clear a few overstocked items out, we want to pass some great savings on to you!

Here's what's on the table: Alfalfa, Ashwagandha Root (shown in photo above), Bilberry, Lobelia, Thyme, Valerian Root, and Wild Cherry Bark. Seven excellent herbs that could be described, broadly, as

• nourishing superfoods (Alfalfa and Bilberry)
• highly effective cough remedies (Lobelia and Wild Cherry Bark)
• calming nerve /sleep tonics (Ashwagandha and Valerian Roots)
• one of a kind (Thyme, a familiar culinary herb, is also outstanding for its medicinal actions, including antimicrobial, decongestant, and antispasmodic)

Use the links here to read about each one in more detail.

We'll be offering 20% off on our existing stocks of these through the end of the year—or until they're all gone. Nice deals on some amazing plants!

Fall 2021 Newsletter

Autumn is a great turning point in the yearly cycle, when we harvest the bounty of what we’ve planted in the spring and summer, and prepare for the projects and challenges of the cooler seasons.

We’re very grateful for the continuing growth in our business, for all the growers and vendors, who supply us with high quality organic herbs, like the Ginkgo and Damiana shown in these photos, and for all of our customers, here in the USA and around the world.

Our wholesale shipments to tea producers and other vendors are making a tremendous difference in the volume we’re handling. Building solid business relationships is a truly rewarding experience.

We’re looking forward to meeting the wholesale and manufacturing requirements of our entrepreneur customers, as well as the health and body care needs of our beloved retail consumers!

As we explore new sources of bulk herbs, we’re finding a need for independent testing to assure the quality of some some samples which arrive without the certificates of purity that accompany the others that we purchase. Fortunately, we now have a local lab doing that work for us.

Due to widespread issues in glassware supplies, we’ll be using amber jars for some of our two- and four-ounce salves. The amber glass doesn’t offer the same immediate visibility of the jars’ contents; on the other hand, it provides better protection of the product against sunlight, and so improves shelf life. We’ll continue to deliver the products you love, as we navigate the unpredictable covid-impacted supply chain!

Essential oils have become mainstream in a big way in recent years, and we have long offered a range of essential oils, almost all distilled from organic or wildcrafted plants (diagram at left shows a basic essential oil steam distiller setup).

However, many herb users are far less familiar with herb-infused oils, which include some of our favorite shop-made products.

So, what are the differences between essential and infused oils?

Essential oils are isolated aromatic fractions extracted from plants. For many plants, these fractions may be the most significant medicinal components. Their effects are often closely tied to their powerful fragrances, in addition to direct action against microbes, anti-inflammatory activity, etc.

Essential oils are highly concentrated and almost without exception must be diluted in other oils to be applied safely to the skin. In general they can be significantly toxic to take internally, and should never be ingested without consulting a knowledgeable practitioner.

Infused oils are made much more simply, extracting a much wider range of plant constituents (including many which are left out of the steam distillation process), and don’t need to be diluted! They can be used—straight from the bottle, or diluted—as massage oils, or applied topically for skin conditions, sore muscles, superficial wounds and abrasions, and so on. Like essential oils, they're suitable for topical use only.

And they are a perfect complement to essential oils, as they make wonderful carriers for diluting the "essences," adding their own healing properties to the resulting blends.

Speaking of herb-infused oils, Fresh Comfrey Leaf infused oil is a perennial favorite in our catalog, available seasonally as supplies permit. Comfrey’s ability to support tissue repair has made it a prized ally of herbalists for centuries. This year we’re especially pleased to be infusing batches of organic Comfrey (photo of plant above), cultivated for us just up the road in Lynden, WA.

The farm is also harvesting a beautiful crop of multicolored Calendula Flowers, suitable for a starring role in your potpourris or other projects, where their amazing hues will really shine!

May your fall be fruitful and colorful!