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Humans have an opportunity to be a contributing factor to overall ecosystem health. We believe that how we grow and source our foods, medicines, and fibers can improve soil health, water resources, biodiversity, and overall community vitality — all through the act of agriculture.
You get a much denser, more productive Sage when you remove the previous year’s dying material so the next year’s flush is highly productive. So, we walk up to the edge of the coastal sage scrub and harvest both the vegetative growth foliage and flowers, where the oil resides. At the same time, we remove the dead material from the plant and deposit it on the ground so that it can decompose naturally. We try to get all that carbon in contact with the ground so microbes and fungi can break that down during the next rain cycle.
The Black Sage is part of a plant community called the Coastal Sage Scrub, which is one of immense biodiversity. It’s usually undervalued by ranchers and developers because it’s not good forage, and has the potential to burn in forest wildfires. So the ecological need through the sourcing and distillation is the tending and care of these fragile and diverse ecological sites as we prune and remove dead material and as we open up the canopy to diversify the undergrowth and the overstory of oak tree — which increases the accessibility of this ecological site. This way we can create an enterprise that values this native system and incentivizes farmers and ranchers to engage and tend it.
The process to get people to care and to act in a manner that shows their care, is one that requires clear communication. If we can find more clear ways of communicating the impact of our regenerative land stewardship in a way that is connected to the products derived from what we harvest, then we can allow people to physically act in a different way. This is what we mean by direct impact.
We harvest, and then next year there is more. This is not the norm in agriculture. By taking what you need, and not taking too much, it enhances the capacity of that plant to produce more. So the real hope is to get people to smell good with natural fragrances, and to remind people that harvesting responsibly can create more health and vitality in an ecosystem.