who we are

Alena Steen is the primary farmer, while her partner Danny Shimoda was integral in building the farm for the first few growing seasons + still provides immense support behind the scenes. Alena has been an organic farmer for fifteen years, first in her home state of North Carolina + now on the West Coast for the last nine years. The farm in its current iteration began in the spring of 2016 + currently employs one other farmer part time.

We farm in two locations on the gentle slopes of a mountain just two miles inland from the southern California coast.  We respectfully acknowledge that this is the unceded homeland of the Ventureno Chumash, stewards of this landscape for at least the last 13,000 years.  

All plants in our formulas + flowers in our bouquets are grown on our farm.  We use more-than-organic, no-till practices to honor the biodiversity of the forest + coast we call home.  We work to build our soil with rich compost, no tillage + cover crops to reduce our water needs + honor the reality of drought in southern California. We are fully committed to farming in the most sustainable + ecologically honorable way that we can + believe that no-till is the method best suited to our goals.​

We are immensely grateful to the plant world for the never-ending generosity of growth + seek to create a business which reflects this sense of abundance, as well as the ancestral memory of plant-people relationships.  Thus, we seek to incorporate equity + mutual aid into our business model as well, primarily by offering herbal medicine at free or reduced prices to Black, Brown + Indigenous people whose healing traditions + farming practices deeply inform herbalism + sustainable agriculture.  Please get in touch if you are interested in accessing this form of herbal reparations in solidarity + with gratitude <3