We believe the potency of a plant begins with the care of the farmer. That’s why we’re also honoring our North American partners at Oshala Farm, one of our most cherished bulk herb suppliers. Their commitment to organic farming and land stewardship reminds us that care for the Earth happens everywhere, from the Amazonian rainforest to stateside soil.
Rooted in Oregon’s Applegate Valley, Oshala has long been our trusted partner in growing some of the most vibrant, high-quality medicinal plants we work with. Many of the botanicals you experience in our formulas and in-store offerings are cultivated in close relationship with their team. Oshala’s commitment to organic, regenerative practices and deep land stewardship reflects our shared values: honoring the Earth, supporting farmers, and preserving the integrity of plant medicine from root to shelf.
When you choose herbs from brands like Anima Mundi, you're preserving something sacred. You're entering into a relationship with the land that grew the plants, the farmers who tended them, and the lineage of knowledge that made the medicine possible. Here at Oshala Farm, we farm 290 acres in the Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon, where the river bends through fields edged by oak and madrone, and the soil is dark and alive with the kind of richness that takes decades to build. This is a place where the deer move through our fields at dusk, where the geese return each spring in pairs, and where the coyote trots past the echinacea without fear because we've chosen not to fence nature out. On late summer evenings, the air hums with bees and fills with dragonflies—hundreds of thousands of them, more every year, a living confirmation that when you create the conditions for life to thrive, nature answers.
We think of farming as a partnership with all the life that shares this space. The insects, the birds, the deer and coyote, the frogs that sing at dusk. Our job isn't to control what grows here but to understand what each plant needs, what the land can offer, and how we all live in this space together. Over generations, both plant and human, we've selected and saved seeds, carrying forward the work our mentors gave us and selecting for the farmers who will come after. These are plants that respond to the Applegate's particular balance of heat and cold, dry summers and wet springs, which have been bred over time to be more potent, resilient, and alive. We give those seeds living soil, built through crop rotations and cover crops that feed the earth rather than deplete it. Nearly 60 percent of our fields are dedicated to long-term perennial crops and multi-year cover, because the land needs real rest to regenerate. We don't use plastic mulch. We don't spray herbicides or pesticides. We let the frogs, ladybugs, and dragonflies keep the balance. We work with the system, not against it.
The farm itself is a delicate matrix of space, place, time, and species. Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, Apiaceae, Malvaceae, and a dozen other plant families rotate through the fields, separated by the farmer's hand and the soil's needs. Not all pieces fit in all places. Sometimes the rocks won't allow a root crop to go deep, or the afternoon winds that batter one species help another reach its fullest expression. As farmers, we do our best to listen to each plant's inner nature and to what the land is asking for. It's this delicate balance of place and time that defines the work.
When the plants are ready (and they tell us when they’re ready!), our team harvests them at the peak of their medicinal value and moves them quickly to the dryer. The color stays vibrant. The aroma stays true. The volatile oils, the resins, the aliveness of that particular day—all of it locked in the plant, preserved for the moment you open the jar months later, and the scent of calendula or the sharp brightness of tulsi fills the room. We keep the plants as whole as possible for as long as possible, using traditional destemming techniques on most aerial harvests, so what arrives in your hands, it still carries the integrity of where it came from.
We’re proud to be Regenerative Organic Certified®, a standard built on three pillars: soil health, animal welfare, and farmer-worker fairness. For us, the certification wasn't a shift in direction. It was a recognition of what we'd been practicing all along. The third pillar—farmer and worker fairness—is audited with the same rigor as the soil itself. Every member of our team is paid at least 10 percent above the MIT-calculated living wage for this region.
Partners like Anima Mundi seek us out because they know their customers care where plants come from and how they're grown. This kind of intentional sourcing matters, and it's part of why we're building something larger through the Oshala Farm Collaborative, pulling farmers together from all over the world to carry forward the work of our teachers, and theirs before them. We are merely students in this journey. Nature is the ultimate teacher, and what we're preserving is a way of being in relationship with the land that's been passed down through generations and is in danger of being lost. We're engaging, educating, and inspiring both existing and future farmers to lead the industry, because we believe quality can't be industrialized. It has to be grown, taught, and shared.
Here's what matters most: this kind of farming only exists because of the choices you make. When you choose brands like Anima Mundi that source with intention, when you ask where your herbs come from and how they were grown, when you invest in regenerative organic medicine, you are directly funding the future of this work. You make it possible for us to pay our team fairly, to leave the fields unfenced, to let the frogs and dragonflies keep the balance that chemicals never could.
We are but stewards of this land, and we're grateful to walk this path alongside partners like Anima Mundi and the community they serve. Thank you for choosing regenerative organic sources for your food and medicine. This is how we remember what we've always known: that we belong to the Earth, and the Earth belongs to all of us. This is the world you’re planting with every choice you make.
