Cutting Root Farm & Apothecary

Scabiosa or pincushion flowers are a rockstar pollinator plant in our garden. My partner Valerie is an insect nerd (@valeriewarhol) and they realized most of their butterfly pictures from the farm were butterflies on scabiosa flowers! So, I’ve kept it a little under wraps, but I’m hanging out in Florida with my family for the winter and ya’ll, today we saw so many butterflies. White, orange and blue ones! It was so lovely. And reminded me of the life that these flowers bring to our gardens- so stay tuned for our plant sale! We’ll be posting SIX VARIETIES of this plant for our plant sale on Valentine’s Day. #plantsale #pollinators #cuttingroot

Let’s finish raising this money for Diné folks! Delicious and beautiful raffle prizes!

Bloomfield Market day! Today 11-2. The market’s winter attendance has been FOUR TIMES what it has been previous years y’all! If you haven’t been yet you are missing out on all sorts of locally made delicious goodies. Kendra will be selling these beautiful naturally dyed scarves, shirts, leggings and jumpsuits, AND dogs are invited back in! #farmersmarket #markethustle #cuttingroot

Is anyone else dreaming of seed starting and the return of plants and flowers into our lives!? We’re going to open up our plant sale for preorders on Valentine’s Day this year! So start dreaming about what kinds of herbs and flowers you want in your garden this year. #herbfarm #flowerfarm #seedingsale #cuttingroot

Ahhh these pictures are sustaining my soul as I take milky oat medicine. I see the fields before me, the sown oats in late May, the germination starting, the field a burst in July, and waiting for that very special day when the oats turn milky. Giving us about a week to harvest them all. Milky oat is medicine for our nerves, our nervous system tissue, for the overwhelmed, for the burnt out. I picture the milky-ness encasing our myelin sheaths, allowing our nerves to fire the...ir electrical impulses. Allowing me to feel. This is medicine. If you need some uplifting milky oats, you can buy them on our website AND we’ll be at the Bloomfield Winter Market this Saturday with our teas to help you slowly sip your way through this chilly winter. #milkyoats #oats #cuttingroot (and- if this resonates with you but you can’t buy these oats from us, do you have oats in your kitchen? Could you make some oatmeal to eat? Put some in a bath for your body or your feet? This is accessible medicine, this is deep support that we can turn to when we’re in need) See more

Flowers for Black Girls: An Affirmation of Our Lives! We are excited to continue sharing the beauty and healing power of plant medicine this winter. If you are interested in contributing a love offering to this project, we want to connect with you! We are aiming to deliver 10-15 gifts of love and care to Black womxn, trans women, girls and MaGes (people of marginalized genders) each week, and we’re seeking donations for these packages. If you’d like to donate flowers, herbs, teas, tinctures, other body care and wellness products, artwork, or other gifts of care, please email [email protected] #FlowersForBlaxkGirls #flowers #cuttingroot

A personal fave of mine.... #crampease tincture for all your PMS, cramps, emotional ups and downs, pain and so much during during your menstrual cycle. Just a few more days to get 15% off on our website with the coupon code 2020- it expires at the end of the year. #herbfarm #herbalapothecary #localherbs #cuttingroot

Use the coupon code: 2020 for 15% off on our website until the end of the year! Just a few days left on this deal, but we can’t wait to tell you what’s coming in the new year (classes, medicine makers CSA and more!) #herbfarm #localherbs #localapothecary #cutflowers #cuttingroot

The Wild Cherries Intro to Herbal Studies has a few more spots open. Classes are one weekend per month, March- November, following the seasons in parks, our farm and our student garden to craft medicines, learn about anatomy and physiology, energetics and plant allies for helping us with all we hold in our bodies and spirits. Note: some of these photos were pre-covid- the 2021 cohort will have classes via zoom and outside and masked once the weather allows. Applications up on our website. #herbschool #herbfarm #school #cuttingroot

Wild Cherries Intro to Herbal Studies 2021 application is live! Check it at www.wildcherries.org. Three main herbal teachers, plant walks, student gardening, medicine making, social justice discussions, anatomy and physiology, materia medicas and more! Our classes are flexible for all learners- we’ll be meeting on zoom and in person (outside and masked). Come learn with us #herbschool #herbteacher #wildcherries #cuttingroot

A little tour from last weeks snowiest day! I took a quick walk through our upper garden to check on things and thought I’d give you a quick looksie at what you have to look forward to! #localherbs #localapothecary #herbfarm #cuttingroot

Denise Edwards from Triple Moon Alchemy is a local Pittsburgh treasure y’all! Her body butters, teas, tinctures, incense and more is on sale at www.triplemoonalchemy.shop - please check them out for yourself. Denise formulates and blends all of her own medicines in small batches with so much care. She is a fertility specialist, birth worker, feminist, alchemist, healer and so much more. I highly recommend all of her products. #shoplocal #localherbs #localapothecary #triplemoonalchemy

Solomon’s seal root, name for the shape of the stem scars, each scar signifying a years growth. Some of our plants had six- six years old! This was my first time harvesting from my stand, the first plants given to me from Jim Duke’s garden in Maryland. This is going into a new salve next year- to nourish and restore connective tissue, a deep deep medicine. #musclemedicine #solomonsseal #herbalmedicine #herbfarm #cuttingroot

This week is already exhausting, so when you visit us at the Bloomfield market this Saturday, we’ll have our Heart Elixirs on sale- one ounce bottles available for $12 and two ounce bottles available for $20. What are your favorite herbs to help you de-stress? #heartmedicine #cuttingroot

It was a lot of work to transform all of these loofah gourds into loofah sponges! The first year we’re ever selling these, and our first day will be tomorrow at the Bloomfield market! Will have 2 foot long sponges as well as smaller pieces of sponges available for purchase. These are all natural gourds, grown on a vine, dried inside their little skin shell, and cleaned by hand. One loofah sponge lasts me up to a year and a half! No more plastic sponge trash y’all, start using these naturalllllll plant sponges this season! #cuttingroot

Planted our garlic in these beautiful new beds! We love using garlic as food as medicine. It goes in our immune zoom tincture, our ear oil our fire cider and all our fried potatoes and frittatas that we whip up in the kitchen! Do you still want to purchase some garlic from this years harvest? You can! Need some freshly made garlic tincture to keep away those winter germs? No problem. Head over to our website and decide how you’re going to beat cold and flu season. #herbfarm #cuttingroot

All of those hibiscus are dried and ready for tea blends! You can buy bulk herbs on our website. Delivery by USPS is the default but you can use the coupon code: pickup to get your herbs at the farm or the market. #hibiscus #jamaica #sorrel #herbaltea #herbfarm #localherbs #localapothecary #cuttingroot

St. John’s worts babies went on the ground last week! These plants are prolific many places but are fussy to grow. I’ve found that planting starts in the fall, covering them with row cover, and taking that off right before flowering, you get the best results. It’s still not, side of the road in Washington state or anything, but we’re in Pennsylvania and it is literally not Washington state here. SJW goes into our all purpose salve to relieve nerve pain, some of our teas to uplift mood and as a fresh tincture for herpes, neuralgia, SAD depression and more! #sjw #stjohnswort #fallplanting #cuttingroot

Elecampane! We dug the roots last week and this week we replanted the crowns (which you can see in the first picture). From each plant we dug, we harvested a few pounds of root medicine and had enough growth left over to plant at least four new plants! You can also start elecampane from seed, it’s very easy, but this always seems like less work to me. And each years medicine is the product of last years left overs. #herbfarm #cuttingroot

A custom bath blend! Roses, calendula, cornflowers and yarrow. Beautiful, tender, aromatic, healing and blood moving, this blend will help support before and after surgery. We will custom blend baths, teas, tinctures and salves for any occasion. Check out our website to see what herbs we have in stock and get in touch if you’d like us to blend them for you. #herbfarm #localherbs #localapothecary #cuttingroot

It’s Mittens the Kittens! Mittens is our farm cat and needs a place to live for the winter. She loves to be an indoor outdoor cat, is a good mouser, cuddler, and will let you know when it’s 7 pm and she needs snuggles on the couch. Let me know if you’d be interested in hanging out with Mittens, November-February #bestfarmcat #farmcat #mittensthekittens #cuttingroot

How we got our name.... cuttin all those roots! This is the last week we will be harvesting roots out of the garden and I am so glad, my hips hurt from so much digging. Pictured here is astragalus from last week’s harvest, a pea family plant, we dug up first and second year plants after collecting seeds for next years crop. This week we’ll process the last of the elecampane. Stay tuned to see how we process the crowns of that plant and put them back in the ground to grow again! #herbfarm #cuttingroot

Last week we will be bringing mixed bouquets to market! Next week we may be available for preorders, we’ll take a look at the field this afternoon and let you know. Thank you so much for an amazing season. It was simply lovely to be the caretaker of your flowers, tending and bringing them to market has been a beautiful thing. #cuttiingroot

I think it’s the last week of flowers, and the height of fall color in the trees here. The temps on Friday night are going to be low, taking away all this color, till next year. #flowers #flowerfarm #cuttingroot

Market is almost over and we still have some flowers left.... #falbouquets #flowerfarm #cuttingroot