Fresh plant juices and tinctures are made with herbs which are locally wild-crafted and grown, picked in relatively small quantities and processed within a few hours of being picked. Our low heat fermentation and extraction method (which utilizes sunlight as a part of the curing and preserving process) ensures the survival of plant enzymes and other delicate ingredients, which are often destroyed by more aggressive extraction methods.

Fresh plant tincture combinations
It would be pointless to take such care to ensure that our individual fresh plant tinctures are of the highest possible quality if we could not guarantee the same for our combinations. Although there are usually dozens of herbs which might be helpful for any given condition, this does not mean that any of them may be combined to give the same results. In developing a formulation, it is important that the herbs being combined be both holistic and synergistic.

An holistic formulation should contain herbs, which will provide biochemical and energetic support to all of the affected organ systems as well as to the person as a whole. Being synergistic, these herbs should be able to support each other's actions so that the effect of the whole combination is considerably greater than that of the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, many available formulations contain herbs, which do not work particularly well together. One common example of this is Echinacea and Goldenseal, which are both excellent herbs for acute infections and are often combined for this purpose in spite of the fact that they are not very synergistic and in some cases may even counteract some of each other's beneficial properties. All of our products are made in the best tradition of Hermetic, Northern European and North American Eclectic Herbology.

Differences Defined

Herbal extracts are produced using a variety of processing and extracting methods. The fresh plant juices are pressed and filtered in small lots as required. The final product has a ratio of so called "active ingredients" that closely matches the percentage found in the raw plant material. Such preparations are easily absorbed through the mucus membrane, facilitating the ready availability of the constituents to the body systems.

In contrast, most commercially produced fluid extracts manufactured are obtained variously by extracting and evaporating the components of botanicals with any of a variety of solvents including glycerin, vegetable spirits, alcohol, water, ether, etc. and then blended to obtain a uniform amount of a marker compound or "active ingredient". The focus, through this process, is more on parts of the plant rather than the whole plant.