Herbal medicine can truly be a medicine by and for the people! One way to demystify herbal medicine and to empower folks to get more comfortable using herbs is by setting up HerbCare Stations directly in our communities. These stations are geared towards herbal self-care and dispense items such as fire cider, herbal cough drops, and other tonics based on kitchen medicine. We have installed HerbCare Stations (aka self-care stations) at community centers, co-housing facilities, occupations, shelters, refugee camps, and offices. We’ve pushed them around on carts and set-up pop-up HerbCare stations in city parks and at health fairs, festivals and gatherings.
These mini-health stations offer folks a chance to care for themselves with herbs and vitamins. It is a chance to both heal and to learn! If you are interested in creating an HerbCare Station in your neck of the woods, we have lots of packing lists and templates in the Toolkit to help get you started and a little guide book at the bottom of this page!
Important Considerations for your HerbCare Station:
- Let your HerbCare Station reflect the needs and desires of the community you serve!
- Use common remedies, such as items you might in a local grocery store or growing in the community.
- Use remedies that are considered safe with limited contraindications
- Make it easy to serve remedies in a hygienic manner (i.e. hand pumps on bottles or individually packaged remedies).
- Provide hand sanitizer.
- Create signage to help folks find what they need and learn more about the remedies and herbs.
- Use trays or boxes to contain the station, helping it to stay organized and clean.
- Have fun!
Make a Station!
Looking to create a station? Here are a couple tools to help you get started.
Download or print out this simple mini-guide that covers all the basics. It’s got straightforward recommendations, special considerations, simple safety tips and even some example print material.
This guide is also a great handout to use alongside our Creating an Herb Station Class Video (see below). And as always, you can find additional tools and resources in the Herbalist Toolkit.
In this 90 minute class, Lorna covers all the basics, sharing the history of our HerbCare stations along the way, which we hope offers a little bit of inspiration. This video is marked with chapters to make it easy to review specific sections as desired.
This video was recorded at the Herbalista Free School on July 6, 2022.