Gaia Herbs | plant intelligence

Horizon Herbs is a certified organic farm and organic processor located in the Williams Valley of southern Oregon. The Cech family grows a variety of medicinal herbs and is dedicated to providing untreated, open-pollinated, vigorous and viable seeds. Gaia Herbs is proud to work with Horizon Herbs to source high quality, wild-harvested and certified organic seed for the Gaia Farm.

Horizon Herbs’ land lies clasped between the outstretched arms of the Siskiyou Mountains. There is a perennial creek and a number of different soil types including sandy loam in the creek bottoms and rocky clay in the fields. Medicinal herbs tend to thrive in the rocky clay, unlike a lot of food crops, which would not be vigorous in such soils. Seed collecting begins with Chickweed in the early spring and continues past the first frosts, which is when Poke berries are harvested. The woodland gardens mature out Black and Blue Cohosh, Goldenseal and Stone Root in terraced beds. All the Cechs’ work is hands-on, from growing the plants to collecting, from hand winnowing and cleaning to gently drying medicinal herb seeds.

In addition to foraging and cultivating in the southern Oregon vicinity of the Horizon Herb farm, the Cechs travel extensively throughout the world to procure ecologically wildharvested seed: from the tropical rainforest of Hawaii to the temperate hardwood forests of Kentucky, and internationally with harvesters from Saskatchewan, Australia, China, East India, Greenland, Scotland, England, France, Morocco, East Africa, Israel, Belize, Mexico and Paraguay.