My Sustainability Journey with True North Farmacy

My name is Elizabeth, I’m the founder and creator behind True North Farmacy. Located in Canada’s Pacific Northwest on an organic farm, TNF symbolizes not only what we are but who we are. True North, like a compass, is symbolic of the right direction, while Farmacy is a play on how true wellness and healing truly comes from the land (the Farm in my case).

I sustainably wildcraft and cultivate medicinal herbs and wildflowers that are the main characters in my wellness and body product creations. I make botanically infused body oils, tallow balms, hair tonics, antimicrobial sprays, bath salts, a line of flower essences .. and whatever else I’m inspired to make at the time. My work is not only about bringing toxin-free, sustainable products to the marketplace, but about building a reverent relationship with Nature such that the products can translate the wisdom of the plants and the supportive energy of Nature into the hearts, minds, and bodies of all who use my products. My hope is to help ignite the remembrance that we are Nature, and there is no separation. Not only do I believe that the plants are profound healers, but when we resolve this idea of the human separate from Nature, sustainability will truly emerge in the collective experience. 

When I was 13 I had a true experience of consciousness where I remembered “I’m here to do something”. My path with sustainability and the plants has truly been a lifelong unfolding and meandering towards this project. As a young teen I was a staunch environmentalist, leading to a degree in Environmental Biosystems Engineering.

All along the way being mesmerized, inspired, and grateful for all that Nature is and provides, learning piece by piece about plants mainly from my Indigenous neighbours. When I decided to shift from a hobby maker more towards a business it was clear that this project is a pilot, an opportunity to carve a ‘new’ path in business, to show that extractive methods don't need to be used to be successful.

If we want a different world we have to act differently and make different decisions. It’s certainly not easy, as anyone who’s ever tried the sustainability path finds out pretty quickly that it’s almost always more expensive, harder, and limiting to do the right thing. However, if we don’t pioneer these new pathways and support those who are, we’re never going to make sustainable decisions the mainstream. Right now extractive, non-sustainable methods are the norm and we’ve seen where that’s gotten us. We need to accomplish meaningful, systemic change.  As I've spent almost two decades now studying environmental sustainability, I'm able to easily recognize the life cycle impacts on people and the planet from each choice I make. I’ve committed True North Farmacy to create from a place that is always in alignment and in service to Life. Where there is not an opportunity to do so, my projects and ideas get put on hold until the right answer emerges, sometimes a better choice is available, but not the most ideal choice, so I choose that and look for ways to iterate.

I’d love to share my process of bridging the wisdom of Nature through my products into homes and everyday life. Part of my work is building/maintaining right relationship with Nature. This includes spending lots of time in silent observation, in service and care, whilst maintaining emotional, energetic, and mental clarity to listen; to learn from Nature, to hear what is being offered to the people at this time.

Nature is always showing up for us, we just need to be open enough to listen and receive. Nature has been here, evolving, since time immemorial, to ignore this intelligence is insane, we need to recognize that although it perhaps doesn’t look like us, talk like us, etc, that it’s not in any way less intelligent. I’d argue it’s actually more! Because not only is it always working towards harmony, it wastes nothing, and is always providing for us despite how awful we continue to treat it. 

Nature speaks to us all the time - it’s just not in the way we are used to listening. It’s similar to how many struggle to hear what their bodies are saying to them. We have been so disconnected from ourselves, from Nature, and from understanding our roll as stewards in the web of life. From the plants I get inklings to investigate and work with specific plants, and then it’s a journey of cultivating the relationship with the plant, learning about it, and putting together how it’s medicine and wisdom would best be translated to the everyday person. Sometimes this is directly corresponding with a physical component like utilizing the abundance of horsetail here on the farm for an infused hair tonic, and other times it’s a highly poisonous flower that wants to work with folks through a Flower Essence on the mental, emotional and psychological levels. It’s about working with the plants, not using them. This is very important as this shifts the relationship from an extractive energy to a sustainable and regenerative one. It’s pretty wild (no pun intended) how plants emerge in our ecosystems right at the exact time that the community needs them! I always encourage folks to investigate the plants that keep popping up in their yards and awareness.. They’re trying to speak to you!

As much as possible I also try to work with the Biodynamic principals and the cosmic calendar to support and strengthen the energetics of the plants and as my nieces would say ‘potions’. When I do any of my work it’s done as sort of a ritual or ceremony. If my energy or emotions are not clear I do not engage with the work. I feel that maintaining these principles really helps to maintain the energetics of the plants through the products to the persons. Even if folks can’t tell what it is about my products that they like or why its similar to other products but something’s different; this is it. And my hope is that providing these clear conduits of Nature through my products helps people reconnect to Nature and their true selves which is apart of Nature and as I mentioned I believe is the foundation to a sustainable future.  

The collective awareness is growing on how effective herbs and natural products are in contrast to conventional products and remedies. In the short term folks may see real progress with conventional products but long term it’s almost always inevitable that side effects emerge, efficacy decreases, or some horrible fact about the social/environmental impacts. You actually can’t beat Nature! It’s the most intelligently designed system - and we are a part of it! This is not to discredit modern medicine and acute treatment which is obviously a miracle, but both have their place and we’ve forgotten how to give our bodies what it needs to sustain a healthy homeostasis.