A Personal Field Trip to Four Elements Organic Herbals Apothecary

Somewhere there’s a certified organic family farm, surrounded by more than 9,000 acres of protected land, far from agricultural drift, with mineral-rich soil sitting on one of the most ancient outcrops of quartzite in North America. 

Four Elements organic farm in Wisconsin

In the pristine Baraboo Bluffs, designated as one of the Last Great Places by the Nature Conservancy, is the 130 acres where Four Elements Organic Herbals grows and handpicks herbs and flowers for its line of organic handmade soaps, balms, creams, oils, deodorants and hydrosols/toners.

Shirlie & I hiking at
Aldo Leopold Foundation trails

Four of us from Chicago were camping for a few days at the local Devil’s Lake State Park in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Before we ventured on one of our hikes up the park’s bluffs, my friend Shirlie pulled out a pump bottle of natural insect repellant from her knapsack. “Want to try it?” she asked. It was Four Elements Lavender Catnip Insect Repellant. She said she had purchased it at a shop in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago.

I was pleasantly surprised by my friend’s offering, as I had been using Four Elements products  I had immediately fallen in love with her soaps, in addition to a special roll-on facial oil called Golden Crown Botanical Elixir “designed for wise women with mature skin," for years. I first met Four Elements farmer and owner Jane Stevens at the Baraboo Farmer’s Market during a previous trip to the area.

Golden Crown
Elixir

Golden Crown Botanical Elixir is made from a list of luscious naturals: sage, calendula, gotu kola and ginseng infused almond oil, neroli, rose geranium, rose and clary sage essential oils, rose hip seed oil, vitamin E and something called “pretty face flower essence.” Smells so good! It keeps my skin glowing and I am totally unable to live without it. Thus, I have ordered it online ever since.

Evidently, Four Elements has increased their distribution beyond the local Farmer’s Market and online sales, as Shirlie could attest. Four Elements products are now available in retail locations in 36 states.

As I held and used the insect repellant that Shirlie just handed me, I asked her, “Do you have any idea where they actually make the Four Elements products?” She did not. “In the little town of North Freedom, just west of here!” From the Four Elements website, I had learned that they ran an apothecary of their products in North Freedom, eight miles west of Baraboo, the town closest to Devil’s Lake.

Coincidentally, with a Four Elements brochure tucked into my camping supplies, I had actually planned ahead to suggest a field trip over to the apothecary sometime during our stay in order to introduce Shirlie to their great products. Little did I know she was already familiar with them!

Four Elements Apothecary
in North Freedom, Wisconsin

No need to talk her into making the side trip to Four Elements Apothecary.  One afternoon, Shirlie and I and our significant others drove up to the Aldo Leopold Foundation Legacy Center and visited the buildings and trails on this bucolic, environmental site. On our way back, we made a loop into North Freedom (population 706) and pulled up to the unassuming storefront of the Four Elements Herbals Apothecary. 

Inside, we entered a modest shop area where the skin care and wellness products and testers were lined up on wooden shelves.  We were greeted by Molly, who explained how all the products are processed and packaged right on premises in a large area behind the shop.  And how everything that went into the products is grown and handpicked at the farm, located about six miles from the shop. How often does this this local farm-to-product process take place in America? Unfortunately, too seldom! The Four Elements farm itself, founded in 1987 and certified organic since 1990, is open to the public only on a special Open Farm Day held in late spring each year, or by appointment only.  This year marks their 30^th anniversary.

My cache from Four Elements Apothecary

After testing products on our skin, smelling their wonderfully natural aromas, and chatting with Molly about the benefits of each of the items we were interested in, both Shirlie and I gathered a cache of healthy selections to bring home with us. 

Hiking can sometimes leave me a little banged up after hitting stray tree branches or unseen jutting rocks, so I was eager to try the Four Elements Black and Blue Balm. In addition, my husband Carlos entered the apothecary with sore wrists and Shirlie with sore knees. After a couple of sprays of Four Elements Arnica Capsicum Botanical Liniment to the affected areas, the pain of both parties immediately vanished. Sold!

One of my family members is plagued by painful varicose veins, so I bought him a gift of Four Elements Very Close Vein Cream, which contains horse chestnut hull, gotu kola, St. John’s wort and other botanicals to help relieve vein pain, smoothly delivered in a shea butter and botanical oil base.

I was a little sad to see that my favorite and delightfully fragrant Four Elements Hunter’s Oakmoss and Pine Soap was being discontinued, but was able to pick up the last several bars half-off in the clearance bin.  A few other items rounded out my purchases including a Triple Lemon Tea, comprising lemongrass, lemon balm and lemon verbena. And Shirlie left with a healthy supply of items, as well, including a vial of the Golden Crown Botanical Elixir facial oil roll-on for herself. She and her beau Jim also liked the Herbal Shampoo in bar form. Easy to pack on camping trips, and not considered a liquid in flight carry-ons.

It was a highlight of our central Wisconsin trip to finally visit the Four Elements Herbal Apothecary in person to hand-pick new items and learn more about its earth stewardship and fair trade practices, and the dedicated local talent who grow, create, package and ship products

Owner Jane Stevens & her crew
who farm and create the Four Elements products.

they believe in.

Four Elements. Earth (some of the best soil on the planet). Air (clean air from 55,000 acres of surrounding forests). Water (set among the Baraboo, Wisconsin and Mississippi River watersheds). Fire (summer days of 16 hours of sunshine). It is all pure and vibrant in central Wisconsin. Hoping next year to take part in Four Elements Open Farm Day come spring! 

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For more information about Four Elements Organic Herbals, visit: http://www.fourelementsherbals.com

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A Personal Field Trip to Four Elements Organic Herbals Apothecary

Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices

Cynthia Gallaher’s chapbook Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices brings together poetry, foodie fantasy and herbal healing into one collection.

After some glorious hours of kitchen testing at the Culinary Suite of the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a workshop at the Culinary Institute of New England in Vermont, and time spent cultivating organic fruits and vegetables at Lisa Fishman’s Poetry Farm in Wisconsin, I wrote Omnivore Odes to celebrate superfoods and wonder herbs in our era of otherwise fast food and depleted nutrients.

The poems span foods from carrots to tempeh, herbs from black cohosh to turmeric, and spices from cayenne to cinnamon.

Cinnamon: The First Shall Be Last, and Last First

Cinnamon radiates like sun-warmed brick
in Sri Lankan woods,
where bark curls into little scrolls
where the world writes childhood memories.

Its beguiling fragrance
beckons grown-up customers into shops,
quickly sells market-listed houses
as heated ovens exude its allure.

Cinnamon, once the spice
that launched a thousand ships,
its coppery payload, darling hostage
of world trade and exploration.

To those from India, cinnamon
tastes like curry,
to Cincinnatians, chili,
to Mexicans, café canela,

But to most western tongues
its dozens of dessert appearances
seem to form their own
12 days of cinnamon Christmas.

Between sweet homemade apple pie,
crock-pot mulled cider and
oversized rolls sold in airports,
it’s the all things nice part about

This spice,
an insulin stand-in
to lower
blood sugar levels.

Did we not notice until now
its covert worth behind kitchen cabinets,
when it dropped its rolled-up-in-a-rug disguise,
to reveal its power to metabolize.

~ Cynthia Gallaher

Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spicescan be ordered through Finishing Line Press. It also makes a unique gift for your poetry-loving, foodie or natural healer friends.

Order Omnivore Odes

Here are a few comments on Omnivore Odes from authors I admire:

“What fun! In Omnivore Odes, Cynthia Gallaher uses wit and deft language to sing the music of the kitchen larder. Gallaher’s whimsy wanders from Popeye landlocked in the Texas spinach capital of the world to peanuts, ‘like the elephant, what many of us work for.’ In her gifted hands, the foods and spices of everyday life undergo transformation into fairy tales and new mythologies.”
~ Linda Rodriguez, author of Every Last Secret (St. Martin’s Press), Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press) and The “I Don’t Know How to Cook” Book – Mexican (Adams Media)

“Cynthia Gallaher weaves threads of science with seeds of the sacred. The result – a walk along a path that informs with delight. Certainly the best herbal poetry since Shakespeare.”
~Steven Foster, senior author of National Geographic’s A Desk Reference of Nature’s Medicine and Peterson’s A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs

“Omnivore Odes by Cynthia Gallaher is now one of my favorite books of poetry -- giving voice to food, herbs and spices. The poems are so well-crafted she succeeds in making them simple, and in that simplicity lies richness. She paints with words -- and the paintings she leaves are vivid and bright. Especially inspired by the line in the poem ‘Black Cohosh Cool’ – ‘That a certain age can’t be played in a minor note.’ Her poems make me hungry for such wisdom.”
~ David Hernandez, the “unofficial” poet laureate of Chicago and founder of “Street Sounds” poetry musical performance ensemble

Cynthia Gallaher, a Chicago-based poet and writer, is author of three full poetry collections and a writing workshop leader. She is on the Chicago Public Library’s list of “Top Ten Requested Chicago Poets” and named one of “100 Women Making a Difference” by Today’s Chicago Woman Magazine. She tweets about food and poetry at http://twitter.com/swimmerpoet. ◦

Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices