Where Learning Takes Root - Dry Creek Herb Farm and Learning Center - Brief Article - Company Profile

Nation's Business, March, 1999 by Carla Goodman

Carla Goodman is a free-lance writer in Sacramento, Calif.

At the wooden gate to Dry Creek Herb Farm and Learning Center, tucked away in the Sierra foothills near Auburn, Calif., folk herbalist Shatoiya de in Tour greets you with an easy, friendly smile. Thick red hair. Sparkling hazel eyes. A fulllength cotton dress and a handspun, multicolored shawl. She reminds you of Mother Earth.

"You're just in time for a tour," says de la Tour, 44, as she leads you down the dirt path of a one-acre garden filled with rosemary, lavender, echinacea, and other, more exotic herbs.

The garden is the focal point of her 2.5-acre enterprise, a $375,000-a-year business that draws customers from as far away as Italy and Germany. They come to learn how to cultivate and use herbs for their culinary, medicinal, and cosmetic needs.

"Many students are city dwellers," says de la Tour. "They want to touch the earth, walk barefoot in the garden, and see plants grow. They want that earth connection."

Ten years ago, de la Tour followed a psychic's advice to move to Auburn from Ventura, Calif., where she had been growing and selling organic herbs to restaurants. "Auburn is ideal," says de la Tour. "It's a small town close to a big city [Sacramento], which provides an important customer base. Auburn is also as far north as I can go and grow herbs without greenhouses."

Through a real-estate agent, she found land to rent. Newly divorced and unable to get a bank loan, she signed a lease and borrowed $40,000 on credit cards to start Dry Creek Herb Farm and Learning Center in 1988.

De la Tour's immediate mission was educating people that herbs are safe, nutritious, and beneficial. She spoke to northern California garden clubs, parent groups, church meetings, and "anyone else who would listen."

Not everyone is receptive, especially those who demand scientific proof of herbs' healing properties. "What I teach is folk herbalism," she says. "It's based on empirical knowledge, what my grandmother told me and her mother before that. It's based on hundreds of years of women using herbs, not on scientific evidence.

"I ask people if they want to call the 20 mothers whose children were healed of conjunctivitis using camomile and eye-bright. To me, the proof is in the pudding."

Students ages 17 to 72 come to Dry Creek for classes on herb gardening, herbal first aid, spiritual attunement with plants, and dozens of other subjects. Instruction begins in a large, open-air, canvas-roofed structure built by Rick de la Tour, 46, Shatoiya's husband of five years and business partner in charge of their staff of three. It ends in the garden, where students are encouraged to explore herbs and make a personal connection.

The most serious students, including registered nurses, massage and physical therapists, and a few physicians, enroll in a nine-month apprenticeship program.

"When I first met Shatoiya, she had feathers in her hair, and I had my doubts," says Bette J. Pack, a Fair Oaks, Calif., chiropractor and Dry Creek apprenticeship graduate. "She has a fantastic energy and made learning a very meaningful experience. I've passed on to my patients much of what I learned about making soaps, oils, and tinctures from herbs."

At the end of the garden tour, de la Tour opens the door to the gift shop, a sunlit room filled with 180 varieties of organic bulk herbs, skin-care products, gifts, tapes, and books, including The Herbalist of Yarrow, an illustrated fairy tale she wrote.

Dry Creek derives about 60 percent of its revenue from classes and the apprenticeship program; the rest comes from gift-shop and mail-order sales. Three years ago, the de la Tours used a portion of their revenues to purchase the 2.5acre site, which includes their home as well as their business.

Even in this idyllic setting, the de la Tours have concerns. Rick is concerned about entrepreneurs with minimal experience who start herb businesses. "They give us a bad name," he says. 'We're an unlicensed, unregulated industry, and customers need protection" from people who know little about herbs or who are just looking for a quick profit. "We're glad to help people start herb businesses if they have the knowledge."

Last year the couple started the Northern California Herb Growers Association to help owners of herb businesses share information.

Shatoiya worries that critics who demand scientific proof of herbs' healing properties will convince government agencies that herbalists should be licensed and regulated. "This will drive folk herbalists out of business," she says. "If that happens, I'll either dig in and continue my drive to educate people about herbs, or I'll go into the mountains."