June 22 - Brevard NC - Gaia Farm Tour Day 1

The first day of the Gaia Farm Tour, a group of us, 16 supplement retailers from across the country, trooped after Ric Scalzo (CEO/President/Founder of Gaia Herbs), as he walked us down to the our first subject - rows of Ginkgo trees, on a south facing hillside. A little note - Ric Scalzo is a wealth of knowledge and passion about all things herbal. He expresses his love and respect for all that medicinal plants contain, in a way that makes you want to understand and appreciate. And - he was our constant guide and teacher for a day and a half, at his farm and plant in North Carolina. Talk about an opportunity! We spent half an hour smelling and touching the Ginkgo leaves, learning about the active compounds, harvest times, harvest methods, how it is extracted, what it is paired with in formulas, and what the medicine affects and heals. Folk medicine practiticioners, herbalists, and scientists all have seen how Ginkgo leaf extract will help heal the nervous system, and now it is being used for Alzheimers, memory retention and improving brain function.

Old folk knowledge and modern science are both apparent at Gaia. Ginko trees, producing medicines for the mind are planted in proximity to Hawthorne trees, medicine for the heart – a simple acknowledgement of the heart /mind connection. You will find that most herbalists take the old wisdom and use it very seriously, and can just as easily speak to high pressure liquid chromatography evidence of chemical signatures for validation of potency!

Chemical identification of the active ingredients helps Gaia select the plants that grow best in the semi-tropical clime of North Carolina, know when to harvest for the highest potency, and to determine the process that will retain the highest content of the medicinal ingredients. Everything is tested in their own production facility at the Farm, in their onsite, state of the art, scientific laboratory. Amazing!