River Hills Harvest Raises Elderberry Production to New Levels

Jill Henderson ~ Show Me Oz
Acres USA – April 2017 issue

In the heart of the Midwest, River Hills Harvest is riding the new wave of demand for elderberry products. At the helm of this enterprise is Terry Durham, a long time advocate of sustainable agriculture, a builder of ground-breaking organizations and an elderberry expert best known for his devotion to developing the entire elderberry market from the ground up. “There is no competition for elderberry producers and growers are desperately needed to fill the rising demand for elderberry products.”  Read more…safe PDF opens automatically.

The Sweet Cicely Revival

Jill Henderson ~ Show Me Oz ~

If you are a lover of kitchen or healing herbs, you have most likely heard of or read about Sweet Cicely, but have never seen it in person or grown it yourself.  The truth is that this lovely herb is rarely grown or used in America today, which is why I often refer to it as one of the “forgotten herbs”.  That being said, I think it is high time that herbalists and culinary artisans turn their attention back to this delicate beauty and return it to a place of honor in both the culinary and ornamental gardens of today.  (Feature image by Amanda Slater, Coventry, England – Sweet Cecily, CC BY-SA 2.0, edited,  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4225926)

The Roselle Zinger-Growing Hibiscus for Food, Profit & Fun

Jill Henderson
Acres USA – February 2017

What do you call a remarkably ornamental plant that produces an obscure yet desirable international commodity plus a wide array of useful products like seed meal, cooking oil, coffee alternative, fruity beverage, natural food coloring agent, organic pectin, medicinal herbage, and strong hemp-like fibers? Most English speaking people call this plant Roselle, but around the world it is known by many names including Rosa de Jamaica, Florida Cranberry, Red Sorrell, Jelly Okra, Karkadé, and Bissap (bee sap), just to name a few. But if you are a producer living in an area with a long growing season, you might wind up calling roselle a money maker. For such a desirable crop, most people in Europe and North America know roselle only by taste. That’s because it is the singular ingredient that gives Celestial Seasonings popular Red Zinger Herbal Tea its infamous berry-like “zing”. Yet, for all of its flavor and versatility, this tropical beauty is rarely grown in the home garden or in the fields of American farmers.  Read more…safe PDF opens automatically