In my previous job I spent over two years growing a range of different herbs, and for most of that time I was propagating them - starting off new plants from seed, cuttings or division. The work was enjoyable and absorbing and my experience of the plants was deepened by the intimacy of helping them to procreate. We were producing herbs for sale and to make sales easy everything was grown in containers. This enabled me to develop an understanding of a certain way of growing, one requiring a high degree of care and attention to the plants and a number of artificial measures to ensure their healthy growth into maturity, but I found it limiting in that I had no practical experience of how to grow these plants in the soil.
With some time on my hands before starting a new job I decided it was about time I tried to get to know herbs on their own terms, with their roots in the ground, leaves in the rain and flowers in the sun. After making some enquiries, a friend recommended that I spend some time at The Organic Herb Trading Company in Milverton, Somerset, where I could work as a volunteer in return for food and lodgings.
I arrived in Milverton just after eight on a Monday morning, having spent the previous (rainy) weekend staying in Exmoor. Driving just out of the village we turned off the main road into a lane which ran up a hillside and into the car-park of Organic Herb Trading - I was surprised to see a number of cars and a reasonably large building which I later found out housed the main part of the business; offices and space for the processing of herbs which were imported from various parts of the world.
The caravans were tucked around the corner above the car-park, and it was there that I found Sarah, the only employee paid to work in the herb field full time. She welcomed me and showed me to the caravan which would be my home for the week and where I unloaded my bags. It was well equipped with its own kitchen and plenty of space, plus an outdoor covered area with a table and seats and decking made from pallets. The compost loo and shower I would be using were over in a building beside the factory, and I was glad I'd brought my torch for making the journey after dark.
Our main job for the day was weeding - there isn't much else to do in the herb field when it's raining because the herbs can only be harvested in dry weather. The herb beds are organized in blocks, with rows of herbs running across a south-facing slope. At this time of year most of the plants have finished flowering, but there were still the bright orange flowers of Calendula to contrast with the fading purple-pink petals of Echinacea.
The funny thing about weeding in a herb field is that so many of the weeds are herbs themselves, growing either from seeds already in the soil or from nearby crops which have seeded around. Sarah decided that the Sheep Sorrel weeds could stay as they would be useful and could easily be transplanted to another bed for cultivation. She'd recently needed dandelion to harvest for a pet food producer so there were plenty of these around too.
Our weeding the following day was more heavy-duty, clearing brambles and nettles from the sides of two blocks of beds and cutting back overgrown Buddleia. And the rain continued. Happily, the weather changed on Wednesday which meant we were able to get some harvesting done, so we spent several hours cutting comfrey into harvest sacks, weighing and recording. In total we harvested 149 kilos of comfrey leaf! We then had to process the comfrey by chopping it (using an old chaff cutting machine) and dividing it up into boxes to go into the dryer.
Thursday was spent with the compost heaps. We turned one between us and built another, using a mixture of wood chippings and herb waste from the factory - bags of powdery material made up of anything from nettles to ginger. It was a physical and satisfying day. Friday was sunny and perfect for harvesting Calendula flowers, which was probably my favourite job because I seem to get great enjoyment from picking things. Spreading out the flowers on screens to dry was such a joy - the bright orange petals are exquisitely soft on the fingertips and I felt like I was experiencing one of life's most innocently sensual pleasures.
Another great pleasure of the week was how good everything I ate tasted when I was truly hungry from physical work. Sarah and her partner Mike grow lots of vegetables around the caravans and I had the privilege of being able to use whatever they had grown. The tomatoes were astonishingly good, as were the cucumbers - warm and fresh and all the more delicious for having never seen a refrigerator. I think I ate more tomatoes in one week than any human probably should, but saw no ill effects from it!
I also had the pleasure of a tour around the tincture-making department with a herbalist. Although new herbal medicine legislation has greatly reduced the number of tinctures made at Organic Herb Trading, there was still enough going on for me to be fascinated by the equipment and the smells of the oils and tinctures.
All in all it was a wonderful week. Sarah was fantastic company and taught me a lot about field-grown herbs. I have never seen such healthy sage and rosemary plants, and the whole field buzzed with life and vitality. The plants showed me that they don't need to be fussed and mollycoddled when grown in the ground - given healthy soil they will go on producing crop after crop, some of them for years on end. I have come back re-inspired by herbs and how they can help us to heal.
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