Appalachian Sustainable Development is holding a free open house from 4-6pm, at its Appalachian Harvest Herb Hub, 280 Boone Trail Road, Duffield. The event is free and open to the public, registration is required: https://events.humanitix.com/appalachian-harvest-herb-hub-open-house.
Attendees can participate in a facility tour and will learn about the resources ASD provides to beginning and experienced farmers who are interested in growing medicinal herbs for market. The Herb Hub can provide on farm site visits, production planning, seed to sale training, and planting stock mini-grants to farmers. Some of the workshops offered throughout the year help growers with plant propagation, forest farming practices and post-harvest handling. The Herb Hub also has tools and equipment to help producers and growers process herbs in an efficient way that ensures high quality products. Some equipment includes industrial scale driers, wash stations, hammer mills, and a variety of niche tools, such as elderberry destemmers.
ASD also provides aggregation and marketing services to connect medicinal herb farmers to buyers who are willing to pay premium prices for sustainably produced herbs. To meet increasing buyer demand, the Herb Hub is currently looking for growers for the 2023 season. Information about demand can be found here: https://www.asdevelop.org/programs-resources/herbhub/#2023_Current_Herb_Hub%E2%84%A2_Demand.
Launched in 2017, the Appalachian Harvest Herb Hub works to create a thriving and sustainable herbal economy in Central Appalachia, where plant conservation is achieved through profitable cultivation. ASD offers a variety of services to medicinal herb farmers to help them be successful that include: seed to sale training, herb processing, technical assistance, aggregation and marketing services, cost sharing funding and more.
Brian Jenkins, an herb farmer in Lexington, Virginia, grows black and blue cohosh, bloodroot, ginseng, stone root, goldenseal, solomon’s seal and wild yam. Jenkins comments, “The Herb Hub and Robin specifically does a great service in helping to market the herbs from small local producers. The herb hub finds the buyers which largely takes care of the task of marketing so that as a producer, I can focus more on production. I have been marketing through the Herb Hub for several years now and feel like that is a great service to producers like me. The herb hub is an extremely valuable resource for small producers such as myself.”
