We have relied on the aromatic sap of trees for comfort and healing since the dawn of time. Pine, Spruce, Fir, Frankincense, Myrrh, Elemi, and many, many more provide us with a wide range of therapeutic properties and applications.
The amber-scented wax of Bushman’s Candle is perfect for cosmetics, candles, moustache waxes, and therapeutic skin-healing formulas and is easy to extract from the bark.
While we fashion our tools and equipment by mimicking Nature’s processes and rhythms, the art and artistry of a thing is drawn from within us, independent of the tools we work with.
Besides exploring the rich array of aromatics in Madagascar, meeting farmers, harvesters and exporters, my host and I hope to build a small distillation unit with the goal of training local artisans to produce high quality essential oils and direct more of our Western dollars to their communities.
I have been offered the opportunity to spend two weeks working in Madagascar this October. Short notice and an unexpected expense, but full of potential. I will stay with Vanilla farmers, distill an unusual Elemi, and look at creating value added products and direct sales that will benefit harvesters, farmers, and their communities. If I can get myself there.
Artisan essential oil distillers make up an underground and grassroots movement that we have invoked, called into being, with our need for transparency, quality, ethics and sustainable practices in our essential oil market.
Carefully veiled around us, is a world of ancestral knowledge and timeless wisdom. Within it we find ancient mysteries, lost sciences and arts, dormant magic and technology both forgotten and yet to be discovered. It is ours to draw from if we so choose.
“>
