For Elizabeth Henrichs, the seasonal harvest of local veggies and herbs involves talking to plants.
“I always ask the plants if I can take them,” she says. “And I take the answer very seriously. Sometimes they say no.” Henrichs is the cook behind Sacred Abundance, a staple at local farmers markets. She sells homemade foods and goods, which range from supremely crunchy sprouted granola to herbal tea blends and salves. She also sells Goodyear Sugarhouse’s Vermont maple syrup. Henrichs and her family travel to her in-laws’ maple farm in late winter when the maple sap has thawed but before it spoils. After the sap is boiled over wood fires and bottled, she returns to Montana with the dark, Grade A syrup to sell.
To Henrichs, though, the syrup is just a bonus; her real focus is providing local and healthful products direct from her kitchen and garden. Now that spring has sprung she’s getting back into conversation with Montana flora. “As a people, we have a lot of healing to do. And I think plants can help with that,” she says.
Sacred Abundance’s herbal products begin with herbs fresh from Henrichs’s home garden and foraging trips. When she harvests from the mountains, she’s particularly mindful of where and how much she takes. The plants are dried at home and stored individually to preserve their integrity before they’re mixed into tea blends, incorporated into balms, or baked into breads and confections.
Henrichs’s plant products are among her favorites because she can provide marketgoers with plants that she has “a direct relationship with, as opposed to ingredients that I don’t know much about.” Henrichs tries to source all of her ingredients locally and she scrupulously inquires about growing methods, looking for sustainable and organic practices. She focuses on organic, highly nutritious ingredients, incorporating local whenever possible. She recently sourced Montana- grown and -pressed safflower oil, which she’s testing in her grain-free cassava and seed loaves that typically use olive oil from elsewhere.
Henrichs says that the practice of speaking with the plants that she harvests keeps her thankful, and that the name Sacred Abundance is meant to refl ect this spirit of gratitude. “It’s a reminder to myself that everything I have is a gift,” she says. “And that it’s my responsibility to share those gifts.” Through the summer she’ll continue selling her granolas, loaves, and bars. The herbal gifts that Henrichs will bring to the market this fall include homemade tea blends with herbs like chamomile, rosemary, lemon balm, and wild rose. She also plans to sell elderberry syrup and mixed-herb salves.
About her relationship with the plants Henrichs says, “Like most spiritual things, it’s hard to describe.” She’s not so interested in whether or not the plants are truly talking back. “If it puts me in a place of being more grateful for what I’ve been given, and it gives me limits so that I can’t just take it all, then what does it matter if it’s in my head?”
