217. Anne-Marie Bilella on Foraging as a Lifestyle Business

In this episode, we’re tuning in to Thriving Farmer Value-Added Summit speaker Anne-Marie Bilella, aka the Forager Chick, of Bella Vista Farm, located in Monroe, Georgia. Bella Vista is a local, private farm that specializes in herbal products and remedies and homemade breads.  Anne-Marie is the farmer, baker, and medicine maker of the farm. Anne-Marie helps homesteaders and preppers identify and use wild plants and mushrooms for food and medicine.  She spent most of her career as a self-taught professional, until 2014, when she attended a 10-month intensive herbal studies course at the BotanoLogos School of Herbal Studies. Additionally, she is the author of Wild Eating With The Forager Chicks.  We’ll discuss her work with herbs, mushrooms, berries, and more in this segment of the Value-Added Summit! You’ll hear: How Anne-Marie got into the herbal world 3:53 What Goldenrod flowers are used for 11:03 The kinds of oils used to infuse Goldenrod 11:49 Cost of getting to the end product 14:00 What Anne-Marie is doing with Hawthorn berries/sumac 15:58 What she’s doing with mushrooms 19:06 How Anne-Marie implements seasonings 25:05 The inspiration that led Anne-Marie to write her books 33:21 How she preserves excess stock 36:52 The first thing someone getting started in foraging needs to learn 37:58 Anne-Marie’s biggest surprise in her foraging journey 39:53 About the Guest: Anne-Marie is the farmer, the baker and the medicine-maker at Bella Vista Farm in Georgia. She is skilled in herbal medicine, wild weeds, mushrooms, and products made from herbs and mushrooms. Anne-Marie was self-taught in her herbal studies until 2014 when she completed a 10-month hands-on intensive herbal course with Patricia Kyritsi Howell of BotanoLogos School of Herbal Studies. She is certified as a Wild Mushroom Forager and Seller as well as an instructor for the Wild Mushroom Safety Course with Mushroom Mountain. Currently, Anne-Marie creates her own herbal products with her Forager Chick line and teaches homesteaders and preppers about herbal medicine, medicinal mushrooms, and wild plant identification. She is a homesteader, book author, and writer for her own blog and has written articles for other blogs. Resources: Value Added Summit: https://www.farmsummits.com/ Website: https://www.foragerchick.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BellaVistaFarmInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/foragerchick/ The Thriving Farmer Podcast Team would like to thank our amazing sponsors!   Steward is transforming agriculture by equipping regenerative farms and food systems with the capital they need to grow. As a mission-driven financial partner, Steward works closely with agricultural businesses to scale their operations, improve the health of their lands and waters, and bolster local-to-regional food systems. To date, Steward has provided over $15M in business loans to fund 75 unique projects, backed by more than 1,500 participating lenders. Steward is proud to be a Certified B Corp. Seek financing or support a loan campaign at gosteward.com     GrownBy is the farmer-owned online marketplace. In the last three years, their 200 farmers have sold over $2M of products to shoppers on the GrownBy app. GrownBy works for all scales and types of farm sales. Spring Plant Sale? Yup. Annual Freezer Meat Emptying? Check. Multi-season, multi-farm 300 member CSA operation? Absolutely. GrownBy supports it all. As a cooperative, farmer success is our #1 priority. We are the first farmer-owned cooperative ecommerce platform in the world. With auto-payments, built-in customer notifications, CSA subscriptions and customers helping to pay site fees, GrownBy is a tailored fit for your farm’s online sales. Upcoming, GrownBy will be the first online platform accepting SNAP/EBT with authorized farms. Startup is free, and our pricing is transparent and affordable. Our cooperative collects 2% of each transaction, but customers often contribute to this fee and bring down farmer costs significantly. Listeners to the Thriving Farmers Podcast get 50% their first three months on GrownBy. Just email us at [email protected] to get this offer. You can learn more at GrownBy.com, or download the app on the Google Play or Apple App stores.