Farmer/Producer Profiles: Song of the Stars

Local herbalist Rachel Randall is passionate about herbs.  She tends her young plants from seedlings, harvests and dries them, and then turns these raw materials into a wide selection of herbal products.  “I want to make herbs available to people in whatever way they’ll use them,” Rachel explains.  Currently, Rachel has her dried herbal blends available at the Co-op, but she hopes to expand her offerings in the future.  In particular, she is looking to incorporate an educational aspect of herbs to the Co-op’s customers.  Rachel also makes oils and tinctures for herself and her family as a hobby.

Over a cup of lemon balm, hyssop, and nettle tea, Rachel told me how she began her career as an herbalist.  After growing up in Massachusetts and attending College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Rachel took a summer apprenticeship at Sweet Pea’s Farm on Mount Desert Island.  There, she discovered that “herbal medicine is very much a big part of my purpose.”  At the farm she was given a piece of land to utilize and eventually grew over sixty different varieties of medicinal herbs.  When she moved to Brooksville to live at the Valley of the Stars farm, she transported most of her perennial garden, pot by pot.

In addition to working with herbs, Rachel is one of the bakers at the Tinder Hearth bakery in Brooksville.  She also does accounting for the business and helps grows vegetables for the community there.