We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katheryn Langelier a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Katheryn , appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Fifteen years ago, I started this mighty little business. It was 2010. I was working three different jobs and hustling Herbal Revolution at farmers markets, events and doing cold calls to stores in my free time. I was living in a log cabin in Lincolnville Maine, growing a 1+ acre garden on my neighbors’ land and wild harvesting in magical places around the state of Maine.

At this point in my life, I had been doing outdoor education, farming and working with plant medicine for close to 15 years. I was deeply connected and committed to working with the land and wanted to have a greater impact on my community. I wanted to work with people around health self-reliance with the support of bio-regional plant medicine.

From this passion came, Herbal Revolution.

In my personal life, I was dealing with low immune response as a result of chronic Lyme disease. So, I decided to make myself two different mushroom blends to support my immune system. One blend for the cold and flu season and another to support my body year round. These formulas had a profound effect on me and later went on to become Herbal Revolution’s well loved, Elderberry + Mushroom and Roots Elixir and Mushroom + Roots Elixir, two of my favorites still to this day.

Mushroom medicine is a mystical process. A process that I took my time with and took years to learn and cultivate. Back then, I was foraging all the mushrooms, gathering them, preparing them, cooking them for hours/days on a wood stove. Tasting them. Blending them and creating with them. Thinking back to this time leaves me feeling mystical, magical and beautiful. All the ingredients I needed at the time to start a business.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

An Herbal Beginning

When I was six, my family moved from the city of Lewiston, Maine to the farming community in Turner, Maine. I remember that feeling of wildness expand. Suddenly, we went from having mostly houses surrounding us to a forest that nurtured my imagination. A place I could run and play. Disappearing into another world, a world where the plants and animals talked with me.

I can’t remember which memory happened first but I do remember some of the first memories of tasting plants. They happened the first summer we moved into our new house. I’m guessing dandelion came first because it’s first to bloom and I was obsessed with it, like most kids. I could rub it on my sister to make her skin turn yellow, and it had a thick white liquid that was sticky. I remember tasting that white liquid and how the bitterness seemed to run over every part of my tongue. It was intense but I loved it even more. Red clover was next, this one being a very different experience. I remember picking each little flower and tasting the sweet nectar on the tips. The memory of that sweet nectar has stuck clear with me to this day.

I feel so fortunate to have grown up in Maine, and during a time when there were no computers or cell phones. I lived outside and at that point I knew a lot of the plants that grew around me, which ones I could eat or which ones were poisonous. In 1994, I moved to the coast of Maine, where I worked at a coop and bought my first herbal books by Rosemary Gladstar and Deb Soule. I cherished these books and still do today. I poured over them by candlelight in my cabin and made every single recipe.

By 1995 I was teaching outdoor education leading wilderness trips and apprenticing on farms. I went on to continue working on organic farms throughout my 20’s in Maine, Vermont and California. Many of these farms not only grew produce but they also grew medicinal plants. When they were putting up their food for the winter they were also making their medicine. Between all the books I was reading, all the wilderness trips I was leading and the farms I was working on, my herbal foundations were growing.

Around 2007, I went to massage school and was truly disappointed in the massage products available on the market. So, I made my own body butter. Then in 2009, I attended my first herb conference, the International Herbal Symposium. The conference had an herbal products contest and I thought I would enter my body butter and other products I had been making. Well, I ended up winning first place in the categories I had entered! I got to meet Rosemary Gladstar, who has gone on to be a dear friend of mine now. This was such an uplifting experience to receive such powerful affirmation from an herbalist I had been looking up to for so many years. It truly gave me the confidence I needed to come home and create my company, Herbal Revolution.

An Herbal Revolution

Herbal Revolution started as a passion, vision and dream and I jumped in head first. Over the years, I’ve offered herbal tincture, elixirs, vinegar tonics, teas, body products, herbal oils, flower essences, hydrosals, seed garlic and so much more. I started selling directly to my community through farmer’s markets, events and fairs like the Common Ground Country Fair and through our website. Over the years we have grown and expanded to selling to coops, natural food stores and natural grocery stores. When I started this journey, I had no business background and was working fulltime jobs as a landscaper and stone mason. No seed money, full on bootstrapping and after about five years, the business had grown enough where I was able to purchase a farm and see a dream come to life. Growing the plants that go into the products I create is everything. Without this connection there would be no Herbal Revolution. I feel grateful and honored to grow food and medicine. To me being a farmer goes far deeper than sowing a seed. On a daily basis, I care for the land, the insects, and animals. I’m a steward. I listen to the land every day. I’m a student of my surroundings and ecosystem, and a teacher of this knowledge about the food and medicine I grow. I believe sustainable farming can help support food security and health access to people in my community and throughout the country.

Herbal Revolution is now going into it’s fifteenth year. Holy, Holy. We have a 23 acre farm with currently about 2- 3 acres in medicinal herb and vegetable production growing as much as we can for the Herbal Revolution products. I share the farm with my incredibly talented, handsome and ridiculously funny partner Gus Johnson, a collection of goats, a donkey, a pony, chickens and cats.

About 2 miles down the road from the farm in Union Maine, is Herbal Revolution’s headquarters, which is the production and manufacturing facility. This is where the plants are dried and stored, and where all the products are manufactured and shipped out. The second building is in the process of being renovated into our retail store and café, where we will host events, music, herbal programs, classes and workshops year round. We have so much exciting work going on, but it always comes back to the plants.

Herbal Revolution, the name, was inspired by dandelions and other plants bursting through sidewalks and up through concrete and pavement, saying, “F*** you! You can’t hold us back.” The resilience of these plants is beautiful, inspiring and motivating. If they can be this strong and resilient, then we can too. We can stand up to all the bullshit and make change happen, first within ourselves and then within our communities, which then will ripple to other communities and continue from there. We hold a lot of power; it’s easy for us to forget that.

This is a but shorter Founders story than above:

Growing up in Maine, I spent every moment I could spare outside, climbing trees, running through the fields and woods, meeting the plants and animals in our area. I learned what plants liked to live in the woods, on the edge of fields, and which ones were edible and medicinal. In my late teens, I was living in the woods off grid and working on organic farms and teaching outdoor education. During this time I was fully immersed in living with the land, deepening my relationships with plants, and expanding my knowledge of how to create plant medicines while working closely with the plants in my bioregion.

By 2010 I was inspired to start my own organic herb farm & herbal products business, which was really just an extension, literally, of my lifestyle. I took my passion for plant based medicine, organic farming and started Herbal Revolution and have been bootstrapping this badass business ever since. The name Herbal Revolution was inspired by dandelions. The resilience of dandelions and its tenacity has always inspired me. The way it grows up through the concrete sidewalks and parking lots is powerful and indicative of its medicine.

At this point in my life, I have near 30 years of experience working as an organic farmer, botanical formulator and community herbalist. Working with whole plant based medicine and sustainable, organic farming is the heart of this business. This is our life and passion. In an industry overflowing with greenwashing, we’re the real deal. I get to work with an amazing team who also have a passion for the land, environment, social/civil justice, our communities and a passion for what we create.

I’ve received awards from the AHG, IHS and New England Made Shows. Featured in Down East Magazine, New York Post, Maine Women Magazine, Boston Globe, New York Times, Mother Earth News, Bangor Daily News and HerbalGram and received awards from American Botanical Council and American Herbalist Guild for my work with the Fire Cider 3 and Tradition Not Trademark.

I’m the author of Herbal Revolution: 65+ Recipes for Teas, Elixirs, Tinctures, Syrups, Foods + Body Products That Heal, released December 2020 and over 12 herbal zines.

Our mission is radical wellness. We strive to create high-quality, plant-based products that reconnect humans to plant medicine in modern ways. We are fueled by the commitment to empower people to take action for their health and wellness. As honored stewards of the land, we value this mission over revenue, focusing on premium ingredients rooted in the highest organic, sustainability, and fair-trade standards.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

As a farm to bottle business, also known as value added, we are the farm growing and harvesting the ingredients, as herbalist, I’m creating and formulating the products, as a manufacturer, we are making/producing, packaging the product and as a retailer and wholesaler, we are doing all the sales, marketing and shipping to our B2B and D2C customers.

This process has been a journey.

Growing herbs and creating products with them, is what I know and love, but doing this on a business scale has proven to be lesson after lesson.

I spent the first 9 years of my business working from various locations. The plants were being grown on multiple neighbor’s properties and then dried back at my home and or processed fresh. To make the products and be in compliance, I was renting a shared use commercial kitchen space by the day. Once the products were made, I then had to load them back up and bring them back to my house to ship. Looking back over those nine years the amount of driving and hauling of 100 lb boxes filled with finished feels insane! But it also paints a picture of doing what needs to be done in order to get things done. Running a business requires resilience, trouble shooing and willingness to do challenging things on a regular basis.

About six years ago I purchased a property that we renovated into our manufacturing facility. Conveniently located 2 miles from our farm.

Over the years, I’ve had the support of business mentors, cohorts, and advisors as I constantly evaluate the most effective and efficient way of doing things. For me the best way to learn is to jump in and do. Trying things out and testing the results is how I’ve best understood often how to proceed. There isn’t a year that goes by that doesn’t present some challenge. It could be figuring out how to scale to a national level, to the next year realizing that scaling may not be the best option for our farm to bottle business model.

Being all parts of the business, is not easy. It’s not always the most efficient. The growing and harvesting of the plants can be costly. More costly than buying them, but our love for growing plants and the quality we can produce is so superior over what we would purchase at lower cost, that it keeps it worth it for us.

Other challenges are labor and consistency along with upkeep and maintenance of the infrastructure, often doing most of the work ourselves. We also carry all the liability and have to run a quality program making sure all the products we produce are cGMP and FDA compliant.

The beauty of doing all this ourselves, ensures the quality of our products. No one is going to make our product as well as we can with the same quality ingredients. We also have a small carbon footprint based on the location of the farm to our facility. We work with whole plants and are not over processing. We are able to monitor our waste, compost and reduce and recycle.
And it’s for all of these reasons, I continue to hold steady with this business model.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We have been a consistent voice of authenticity.

I’ve dedicated my entire adult life to working with plants and plant medicine. When I started my business in 2010, I was already fifteen years in of studying and making plant medicine. Years of learning before I put myself out there. something I’m starting to refer to as slow learning. I’ve lately been thinking about how I grew up in a time of slow learning. A time where there were far less distractions allowing more time and capability to fully immerse oneself in a very hands on way of learning. It took time to learn plant medicine and had deep reverence for this process.

Like most things in my life, it’s a lesson of patience, and this is part of the ingredients that support building a long lasting brand and reputation.

When I set out and started Herbal Revolution one of my goals was to grow a brand that could be trusted. That people would find us in stores across the country and have confidence they were receiving, high quality, effective whole plant medicine.

Although this goal hasn’t been necessarily achieved on the grand national level I was imagining, it still has been achieved on a smaller scale.

For many years, I went to farmers markets, vended at fairs, events and herbal conferences. It was at these events I got to meet people. Talk to them. Offer them samples of our products and tell them my story. This is how trust was built and how community has been created.

Over these years we’ve received awards for our formulas, for our style, sustainable measures and for what we stand for, by our peers and the industry. I was one of many that stood up for the herbal community against a company that trademarked a well known herbal product, fire cider. But I was one of three herbalist that was sued by this company. Instead of shying away and settling with this company, we fought for what was right, taking it all the way to federal court, where we won and the term, fire cider was released back to the herbal community.

Over the course of the past fifteen years, I’ve consistently stayed true to our mission. Our products are still the same high quality and small batch products being made fifteen years ago. We still value people and provide our community with effective, premium herbal products and this is how we continue to grow our reputation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.herbalrev.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/herbalrevolution/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/herbalrevolution
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herbal-revolution-501b3430/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@herbal_revolution

Image Credits

Chip Dillion, Amy Bley