In addition, Blythe has an Master’s degree in business and a professional background in technical editing, grant writing, business strategy development, and marketing. She also plays a pretty mean blues harmonica and can often be found out in the garden getting down with the plants.

As the soul surviving carrier of an herbal tradition passed from woman to woman in the oral tradition, Denise Joy celebrates her herbal lineage. Her early training, from 9-14 was guided by her Ukrainian Gypsy great grandmother. With decades of study and practice, Denise carries more than information or knowledge, she carries a way of life connected with place and community. She has served the Port Townsend area as an herbalist, medicine maker and practioner for over 31 years with her home-based business, Mountain Spirit Herbal Co. This spring Denise, with community support, conjured a small tractor to meet the expanding needs of her thriving business offering herbal medicine and counsel to people in her local area and through her website. www.MountainSpiritHerbals.com

During his medical careers, Buresh said he became frustrated with the way pharmaceuticals simply masked the symptoms instead of treating the underlying cause of each condition.

That's when he began to explore the world of natural organic herbal remedies that have been used for millennia.

The Bureshs grow and harvest the plants and then either dry or extract them into the products they sell - all on the farm.

Tim received advanced training in Chinese herbal horticulture from Robert Newman at the Learning Garden in Los Angeles. Tim founded the Adopt-A-Plant day events and established the TCM Herb Gardens to promote the activities in the garden, as well as a youtube page to host videos of the various proceedings. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/tcmherbal, https://www.youtube.com/user/sagradoross)

After graduating with a Master's degree in Chinese medicine, Tim pursued advanced herbal training in China, through Institute of Classics in East Asian Medicine in Portland and eventually at Bastyr in Seattle.

While pursuing a doctoral degree at Bastyr, Tim underwent extensive firsthand QA/QC training in the labs and classrooms and eventually moved on to a job in the QA/QC department at Heron Botanicals. Tim's doctoral degree focused on a comparison of domestically cultivated Chinese herbs versus Chinese herbs grown in traditional growing regions using modern analytical methods. In conjuction with this lab work, Tim also spent extended hours working in local farms and gardens on the cultivation, harvesting, processing and quality assessment of domestically grown Chinese herbs.

Currently Tim is working on a book through the Chinese Medical Database on the cultivation, processing and quality assessment of Chinese herbs, seeing patients full-time in Bellevue, working in the QA/QC department at Heron, and looking for any opportunity to educate on the importance of upholding traditional standards of quality when producing Chinese medicinals.

I have been growing Chinese herbs domestically for almost 10 years. I was originally mentored by Robert Newman. Robert is the epicenter of the domestic herb growing movement as he was the single greatest source of plant materials and was the major supplier to Jean, Peg, Joe, and Ricco. So I have a pretty good idea where the material currently in cultivation in the US comes from and how it could be improved upon.

I have grown these herbs, harvested them, processed them and performed rigorous QA/QC on them. My doctoral thesis from Bastyr was comparing Chinese Scutellaria speices grown domestically to those grown in traditional Chinese growing regions via HPLC fingerprint analysis and MTT cell survivability assay. I know of no else in the US who has this perspective, that of a person who grows the herbs, prescribed the herbs in a clinical setting and has performed rigorous QA/QC on said herbs with their own hands.

Additionally I took all the QA/QC courses at Bastyr and now work in the QA/QC department at Heron one day a week focusing on the Chinese herbs they are receiving.

So my main outstanding area of expertise is the QA/QC of Chinese medicinal materials/herbs.

Some of the most important information that will be presented in this lecture will be what days seeds are traditionally planted on and at what age roots are harvested for maximum potency; also an introduction to the relationship of macroscopic indexes of quality to constituent fingerprint will be discussed when applicable.

A similar presentation I gave in the past can be found at the link below-https://cultivate3d.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/focus-on-farming-2014-presentation.pdf

A similar presentation I gave in the past can be found at the link below-

https://cultivate3d.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/toxicity-of-ban-xia.pdf

My love for the earth and the plants grew I studied environmental education, sailed on oceanographic research ships, traveled the world, became a ranger/ naturalist and taught nature programs to all ages of people including many school groups for the City of Seattle for several years. I lived in England and taught nature education in schools for Plymouth Groundworks a conservation organization. I took many workshops and courses with revered herbalists over 3 decades and my favorite teacher is nature.

I started my herbal and Flower Essence company Green Lynx in 1999 after leaving my job at the WA department of Ecology as a Conservation Corp supervisor.

In the summers of 2004 and 2005 I spent 8 months intensive study in South America studying with native healers and herbalists from many parts of Peru and Bolivia.

I have taught herbal and flower essence courses at Peninsula College, Taught in 2013 and 2014 at Antioch University (beginning Herbalism/Permaculture for PDC graduate students). I have taught many courses and a shamanic herbal apprenticeship called "Herbventure" at my farm in Sequim WA for many years. Public workshops both local and distance herbalist/ distillation courses including the Skillshare program in Whatcom County, Hosted a Lost Arts Fair in Sequim in 2014.

I am teaching at Whidbey Institute in May 2016.

I met Herbalist James Green (while attended a United Plant Savers Conferance in Williams Oregon at The Herb Pharm in 1999). James taught a workshop on making a makeshift inexpensive home still for distillation of aromatic hydrosols. I was hooked and came home and distilled everything in my herb garden and the wild! My passion grew and I experimented finding many uses for all these hydrosols even buying a "hydrosol fridge" to keep them fresh and extend their shelf life. A year or two later the Lavender association here in Sequim invited Herbalist, author, and teacher Jeanne Rose to give a distillation workshop that I attended. I bought my first "real" still a while later and now have many different sizes to choose from dependent on the plant type, amount, etc. I am passionate about the art of distillation and love to share it with others. I really enjoy experimenting with fresh, small batch distilling of wildcrafted herbals like Mock Orange, Black Cottonwood buds, Devils Club root bark etc. to use in small batch crafting of luxurious creams and salves.