Steve Trimmel and his partner Aline Crehore grow herbs, medicinals, and plants in Veneta, Oregon. The name of their company is Green Journey. One of their venues is Eugene's Saturday market. Aline is also an artist.

We live right on the edge of a forest. I got involved growing plants because I love plants and herbs. I've been growing herbs for years. It just happened. I really hadn't planned on it. I built a solar greenhouse; that blossomed into growing more plants and medicinals. We've got about an acre and a half of plants now.

If the government encouraged wildcrafting and selective forestry, it'd be one way to keep the forests from disappearing. For example, Oregon grape, an herb which grows abundantly in the wild, could replace golden seal, which is very expensive, and now is rarely sighted in the wild.

We grow everything organic. We grow medicinals, like shungiku, a Chinese edible vegetable, which is also a beautiful flowering plant. It leafs all summer, and in the fall you can make tea. We grow lots of echinacea, fo-ti, estragalus - which helps the immune system - and Chinese skullcap. We've been trying to grow medicinals from countries around the world, including China, Japan, and Mexico and try to find out if they can be climatized here. We try to grow a lot of nitrogen-fixing plants, for erosion control.

We grow kind of a wild garden. I grow everything with clover and alfalfa, just leave it in the ground, don't weed it out. I just try to get my plants established that way. I do think of myself as a small farmer. We pretty much try to live with the animals, like the gophers. I think they like having the plants there.

I've got more hummingbirds now, because I've got lots of nectar. We're also into the native, natural pollinators. I've been studying that because our honeybees, the European honeybees, are dying out. There are other pollinators, like mason bees pollinating apple trees, alkaline bees that pollinate alfalfa. Certain plants can bring about those pollinators.

Where they clearcut next to us last summer, I used to pick chanterelles. There's none left now. Out where we live in Veneta is a clearcut disaster. It hasn't affected the growing of the plants, but it's affected our psyches: hearing the chainsaw in the background all the time, hearing their monster machines crunch things up.

We had a bear in our yard last summer, so I know the bears must be running, trying to find territory. A pileated woodpecker flew over our house, crying - the big trees were in nearby woods they hacked down. Animals are running out of habitat.

I enjoy the aspect of growing herbs for our own use; it feels like I can take responsibility for health care. I really like the idea of making a living off the land in a way that is beneficial and isn't detrimental to the earth.

Copyright (c) 1997-98 OLIFE -- Oregonians for Labor Intensive Forest Economics.
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