road trip: organic herb farm

It'd been a while since my first visit to Happy Herbs - the 100% organic herb farm on the shores of Lake Victoria where I buy dried herbs for One Mango Tree eye pillows. We were running low on our two scent varieties - energize (lemon balm, lemon grass, spearmint and peppermint) and relax (lavender, lemon balm, marjoram). The farm is on the road to Entebbe, so after dropping Zach and Anna at the airport, I took the bumpy road to meet with Ibrahim, the head gardener, to mix up some bags to carry up to Gulu.

I arrived following a rainy season shower, with deep blue-gray clouds on the horizon, and the overgrown driveway to the garden filled with pools of opaque orange water. The garden's paths wind in and out of tropical foliage, still dripping from the recent shower. I noticed a sprawling vegetable garden, with staked lima beans, beets and lettuces. Several plots filled with weeds - keeping the soil nutrient-rich for the next planting of herbs. I could hear the waves on the shore below - a garden on the lake (rows of herbs under tropical palms, right). When I got to the drying house, Ibrahim was just arriving - riding on a bicycle with his gumboots.

The drying house is lined with brightly colored buckets labeled using masking tape (Ibrahim, below, in the storage room). It reads like a giant-sized, encyclopedic spice rack: lemon basil, sage, cinnamon basil, rosemary, thyme, chamomile, etc. etc. etc. All varieties dried and also powdered for herbal remedies. Four ladies sat at a table with baskets of rosemary, picking the needles from their stems.

Ibrahim and I got down to business spreading out the herbs for our eye pillows on the table, carefully scooping handfuls and bringing them to our noses to measure the scent.

"Ah, the mint is too strong. Add more lemon grass," he suggested.

Happy Herbs was started by Marion Boenders. Her other occupation is running the Wagagai Clinic. Wagagai is a huge greenhouse, exporting cuttings to Europe. The Clinic serves the workers and surrounding community. But really, Marion's pride and joy is the organic herb garden. She showed up while Ibrahim and I were packing the herbs, and we headed off to have some lemon cake and herbal tea (which she sells locally in Kampala). She added chamomile to mine to "chill me out."

...perhaps we should consider adding chamomile to the next round of Relax Eye Pillows. I certainly left Happy Herbs feeling, well...happier.

Aromatherapy Adventures

Some of Marion's tea blends sold at local grocers, and the re-designed One Mango Tree eye pillow.

Yoga is getting big here in Kampala. Big in the sense that there is really good ashtanga vinyasa, and there's a nice (and growing) contingent of yogis that show up regularly for classes. Through the network of Kampala yogis, it's not too difficult to find meditation classes, massage therapy, lomilomi massage (and training workshops!), cranialsacral therapy, ayurvedic practice and counseling, etc. etc.

It's getting so big, in fact, that "The Munyonyo Studio" (as I call it) - Kevin and Gavin's beautiful home on Lake Victoria - is hosting Africa Yoga's spring teacher training course. One Mango Tree is providing all of the yogic accoutrement - mat bags, bolsters, eye pillows, meditation cushions, malas, organic cotton t-shirts. The resulting new product development has sent me to some amazing and unusual new places.

Yesterday it was Happy Herbs Ltd. - 100% organic herb farm near the airport in Entebbe. Started as a hobby garden by Marion Boenders (when she's not co-running Wagagai Ltd., a flower export company), Happy Herbs is a small farm that grows a wide range of aromatherapy and medicinal herbs - from tea tree (only grower in Uganda!) to staple cooking herbs like basil, thyme, marjoram. Marion and I spent the afternoon pinching leaves to get ideas for fillers for the One Mango Tree eye pillows. After a stop off at the drying shack (shelves and shelves of harvested herbs drying out and awaiting the chopper or blender - depending on their final destination) - we went into the storage room to start mixing.

The room is lined with rough shelving and neatly organized, colorful plastic buckets - labeled with all sorts of interesting things - including pulverized specimens like plantain, moringa, alfalfa (Marion makes capsule supplements as well). We took out some buckets and started mixing, smooshing the herbs in our hands to combine and release the smells - settling on five scent varieties. My favorite is Lemon Mint - which I imagine will be quite energizing and refreshing (especially when chilled) as an eye pillow. We mixed Lemon Balm, Lemongrass, Spearmint and Peppermint.

I'm currently checking into the export rules for products that include herbs - so you might be seeing Happy Herbs as part of the One Mango Tree line up in the US very soon!

Marion also makes a variety of herbal teas - I sampled a delicious one with lunch, which we shared on her patio overlooking Lake Victoria. Happy Herbs indeed.