Welcome To Our Farm!

You have reached Nancy and Michael Phillips, the folks who have written The Herbalist's Way and The Apple Grower.

We intend to make this web site worthy of your visit, with photos, columns on all things herbal and growing organic apples, ordering information for all our farm products and books, and a posting of our speaking schedule.

Isn't this good earth a grand place to spend these precious days? And what a blessing now to count you among our friends!

A Sabbatical Year

Hard-working farmers -- and hard-worked soil -- eventually need a break. Accordingly, we will not be cultivating medicinal herbs in 2007 but rather cover cropping our gardens to renew soil fertility. This means we will have time to travel a bit as a family (while Gracie still wants to be with Mom and Dad!) and catch up with projects on the homestead. This isn't your typical business move, but then we never promised to be typical business folk.

Chances are we will wildcraft a few favorites like hawthorn and raspberry leaf, so please check what healing herbs come available this harvest season. We will still offer six varieties of hardneck garlic for seed and kitchen use, with such orders being filled in September. A limited selection of quality tinctures, compound formulations, and family favorites can be found in Nancy's Apothecary. And sooner than soon, it will be time to harvest Lost Nation apples for local sale.

Farms are not easy places to escape, eh?

Class Schedule for 2007

Nancy offers her Herbal Foundations class for those of you just starting with the healing herbs. Our program is an in-depth experience for anyone wanting to identify, grow, harvest, prepare and use herbs for health and well being. We meet five different weekends throughout the growing season, and use Rosemary Gladstar's to augment the hands-on learning here at our farm.

We intend to resume Further Our Herbal Wisdom classes in 2008 with an exciting array of guest teachers, so please stay tuned!

A Revised Apple Grower is Rarin' to Go!

Michael's apple book has been written anew. This time around Apple Grower comes in full color with many practical charts and completely surprising features, including a whopping seventy pages of new information on growing worthy fruit.

The cover price has gone up slightly to $40 for this expanded edition, but we promise to ship for free within the United States. We appreciate your direct support of authors and are quite happy to inscribe any of our books, if you wish.

This definitive guide to growing apples wisely, naturally, and with gentler impact on the earth covers all the cultural points of apple growing. Michael's personal voice and clear-eyed advice have already made The Apple Grower (click for online edition) a classic among small-scale growers and home orchardists. In fact, anyone serious about succeeding with apples needs to have this updated edition on their bookshelf.

Sneak Peek

Ahh, that urge to write! Michael's latest project is a concise guide for backyard gardeners who want the inside scoop on growing tree fruits and berries organically. Requests for recipes from Nancy's herbal kitchen have prompted us to begin a self-published venture in that direction. Living in These Viral Times continues on the backburner of our good intentions!

Our Commitment to the Plants

Heartsong Farm Healing Herbs has made a commitment to monitor local populations of endangered medicinal plants and to cultivate such plants in our field and woodland gardens. You will not find endangered or threatened plant species in any of our herbal offerings unless these have been organically grown from seed or root stock. We encourage everyone to get involved further with the vital work of to both honor and conserve our green friends.

Join our Herbal Healing Network

Stay informed about issues important to herbalists and the happenings here at Heartsong Farm Healing Herbs by signing up to be a part of this emailing list. We'll write only on occasion, as you can imagine how busy life on an herb farm gets to be throughout the growing season.