Fw: Horizon Herbs Holiday e-newsletter

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Horizon Herbs Holiday e-newsletter

Dear Seeders,

Here at Horizon Herbs, it is our complete intention to treat each of our customers as compatriots in the sacred work of re-greening our Earth, one plant at a time. The reason I capitalize the word Earth is because she is our Mother-- the conjoining of nature and spirit. I believe that by planting vegetables, medicinal herbs, vines and trees we can revitalize the landscape and make a good home for everyone. It is the basic right of every human being to be entitled to work the land for the production of one's own food and medicine. Communal gardens, home gardens and organic farms are all fertile places to exercise this right. This holiday season of 2010 marks the anniversary of our 25th year of providing wholesome seeds to all you Earth healers. It amazes me when I look back on the hundreds of thousands of organic plants, roots and seed packets that we have had the honor to disseminate over these years, with love, and to imagine and experience what positive effects the planting of these special entities has made on the lives of everyone who gardens them, as well as their children, neighbors, and indeed the whole interconnected web of life. May everyone pick up on this positive lifestyle and work together to nurture the world with good, honest sweat and seeds of hope.

As we garden here on our little piece of land in the Southern Oregon Siskiyou Mountains, we strive to make of ourselves a living example of how to live lightly on the land. We practice an agriculture based on building the soil and letting the soil grow the plants. We've learned the paramount importance of cover-cropping our gardens during the fallow season, and we recycle every bit of carbon, both soft (weeds) and hard (tree trimmings) to produce on-site compost. Nature works in circular cycles (the surge of the oceans, the phases of the moon) so all that good compost then goes back to the land as a mellow and concentrated builder of the soil, a nutrient source and ultimate food for plants which will eventually become our bodies. We eat and breathe our soil, as it were.

Here at the seed house, every time we send out an order, we like to think of you-all unpacking and thrilling over the potential of all those blessed seeds. We hope for your success. Sometimes you contact us and tell us of your experiences. We rejoice in your successes and lament with you (briefly) over the failures. It is a long learning, this road of returning to the land that bore our ancestors, back when people were innately inseparable from the land. We look to a return of these times through the many advantages of local Earth-centered gardening and agriculture. People, please learn, teach and practice permaculture. Attune to food as medicine, medicine as plants, plants as emanations of the Great Spirit. Let us respect our landscape by greening it up for the benefit of all beings: rocks, microorganisms, insects, plants, trees, fishes, mammals, birds and humans. May the elements of soil, sun, air and water nourish our plantings and contribute to the balance of nature. If you find yourself separate from this balance-- if your mind is fettered by the distractions of modern times, if your breath comes quick and shallow, if your body aches from stasis, if your emotions spill out of control and bring you down, then I have only one piece of advice. Go outside. Find a tree you like and put your hands on its bark, close your eyes, and feel the tree. Understand that the tree gives selflessly of its shelter, its earth-building leaves, and its fruits. The tree is a good example of how we can best purport ourselves on Earth. It is our teacher. Then, if it is warm outside in your garden, or if you have plants in pots in your greenhouse, solarium or apartment, find a plant you like and speak softly and encouragingly to it as you pull the weeds out from around it. Bury your fingers in the soil and cultivate around the plant, improving nutrient dissemination, giving this lovely miracle space to grow and breathe. The plant gives selflessly of its aromatics, beautiful flowers, seeds, and in many instances, its very body! By caring for the plant we care for our own spirit, and in so doing, we heal our Mother, because she is us.

During this holiday season, we encourage you all to eschew the chaos of electronic gadgetry and plastic gee-gaws, the bright and empty, gaudy detritus of civilization. As my friend Butterfly Hill says, there is no "away" where you can later throw this stuff. Instead, invest in the miracle of life. Buy seeds and make plans to plant them. Self-sufficiency may be a dream now, but in the ensuing years it may well become a necessity. The open-pollinated seeds we send you are 100% seed saver friendly. This means that once you have the plant in your garden, with care, you can continue to grow your own, year after year. Then, in a pinch, you can still eat. Perennial medicinal plants and trees are in many cases as permanent on this landscape as you and I, so planting them once, their positive effects can be effortlessly appreciated for the duration of our stay. Every morning, each of us has the potential to bring goodness to our fellow creatures. I bid you all to awaken to the potential of the new morning. May your eyes be bright, your voices gentle, your hearts warm, and may your days be filled with love.

Richo

For more of the above, and a lot more detail, read our manifesto "The Medicinal Herb Grower" now available at a 15% discount

To obtain a copy of Richo's classic work "Making Plant Medicine," click here (also discounted 15%)

To obtain both The Medicinal Herb Grower and Making Plant Medicine together for a big 25% discount, click here

Here's a link to the fast, furious and funny DVD "Adventures in Zanzibar" at an affordable $15.00

We've packaged new harvest seed sets in colorful stocking stuffer colors. Here are links to a few of them:

Poppy Set

Sage Set

Lotus Set

10 certified organic culinary herb seed packets for $19.95 (check how much an inferior and not organic and less diverse set of culinary herb seeds costs in other places on the web, it is the muddy tortoise to our sleek hare, and this time, it does NOT win): My Mother's Kitchen Garden Seed Collection

Exotic spices from Zanzibar:

Cinnamon quills 50 g pkt $4.50 (for mulled cider)

Whole Cloves 50 g pkt $4.50 (for clove apples)

Dried and ground up Organic Medicinal Herbs:

Tulsi Tea 1 lb $25.00

Ashwagandha root 1 lb $23.00

Turmeric root 1 lb $23.00

Tools for self-sufficiency! Over the top quality, a major gift for self or sweetheart:

Seed Cleaning Screens Set of 8 $179.50

Horizon Herbs Stainless Steel Tincture press 1 gallon, Classic Green and Red, 6 Ton, on sale for $890.00

Horizon Herbs Stainless Steel Tincture press 1/2 gallon, Classic Green and Red, 6 Ton, still available at old price, soon to be increased, $680.00

We will make every effort to get you these things before the 25th, but we are at the mercy of the "delivery powers" (USPO, UPS), so pray.

If you want to e-mail Richo, don't hit "reply," it won't work. Instead, use his email herbseed@...--------------------------------------------------------------------To unsubscribe from this Mail Listsimply REPLY to this message withUNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject field.