An Aroostook County teacher who helps students explore planting, composting, seed gathering and formulating herbal remedies is now taking those same lessons into the community.
Shelly Bouchard has been gathering, growing and learning about the benefits and uses of northern Maine plants since she was a young girl. While pregnant with her now 28-year-old son, a used book of herbs became her bible as she took samples, noting and memorizing things like, is it edible, is it poisonous, how is it used?
In 2005, she started transplanting trees from her woods and planting seeds she had gathered. In 2013, she created the ongoing Houlton Middle High School Breaking Ground sustainability program for students. In 2015, she explored how to make salves, syrups and lip balms with native and wild plants and weeds. And in July, the Hodgdon resident founded her new business, Meadowsweet Herbals, dedicated to showcasing the wild and cultivated plants of Aroostook County.
“Everyday is a harvest day,” she said while harvesting elderberries she will use in her dark berry syrups. “Everybody wants to learn how to do homeopathic remedies, especially since COVID.”
During the epidemic people rarely had access to doctors and medicines and they started to explore home remedies, Bouchard said. And the trend toward natural remedies since that time is more than a fad, reflecting a more permanent presence in the herbal medicine market, according to current research and a report by Grand View Research.
The decreasing access to doctors and high drug costs have contributed to this change, experts have said.
A vast field of sunflowers lines the entrance to her home along the Bangor Road. She had created an idyllic refuge of fruit trees, wild grapes, aronia berries, elderberries, cranberries, comfrey, apples, wisteria, spreading oregano, sunflowers, popcorn, spices, coriander, marigolds, mint, jewel weed and too many more to mention.
She points out the comfrey growing under the cherry trees and laughs about the vast area of wild grapes that took hold when she threw some leftover seeds onto the ground after eating some she had picked along a trail.
“I wondered what would happen. That’s what happens,” she said, pointing to a huge area where they are growing. “I only planted the first growth.”
In this burgeoning habitat for birds, butterflies and bees she always gets surprises like when she found white ghost pipe mushrooms on her property under some pine boughs that she turned into a tincture.
Bouchard also makes a wicked good apple cider sweetened with brown sugar and packed with cinnamon and cinnamon sticks, allspice, clove, cardamom pods, starvanis, orange peels — making sure some of the resultant pulp gets made into applesauce and the rest is dehydrated for fruit leathers.
“It’s powerful with antioxidants and antibacterials with all the spices,” she said.
Her work sanctuary is a screened Amish built gazebo filled with white wicker sofas, piles of overstuffed cushions, windchimes, visiting birds and butterflies.
“You can almost predict when they are going to come around,” she said.
In one corner of the gazebo is a multi-layered stack of plastic tubs filled with seeds – some donated and many gathered by students from previous plantings – for her Houlton Middle High School Breaking Ground students.
“We have one whole tote left of the sunflowers we extracted,” Bouchard said. “The students are so proud of their babies when they start to grow.”
Breaking Ground teaches students sustainability and farming, and has grown exponentially over the years with some students taking it throughout their high school years.
Once the students’ plants have all bloomed and start to fade away they become seed collectors.
They recycle as much as they possibly can and compost. Used paper gets shredded for mulch. They have red wriggler worm bins in big tote boxes with air holes for food composting.
“The worm poop is black gold and we’ll take some of that and add it to the garden as fertilizer,” Bouchard said.
The students also make a power fertilizer from coffee grounds, eggshells, banana or mango peels and epsom salts.
This past year, the students created a memory orchard at the high school with 86 trees — apple, pear plum, cherry peach, aronia berries, witch hazel, flowering crabs — in memory of a student or faculty member who passed away.
“Imagine what this will be like years later when a student can say, ‘here’s my Momma’s tree,’ ‘I planted my grampie’s tree,’” she said. “It’s going to be epic.”
Bouchard’s teaching does not stop at the high school. For some time she has been posting videos on Facebook about what she is planting, harvesting or discovering to give others ideas.
Every month she teaches a workshop with Adopt-a-Block about things like making herbal syrups and teas or edible plants.
With her newest venture she plans to offer house visits.
“I can go to a home and talk about everything that is on their property, take pictures and compile it into a booklet to show them how they might use what is growing,” she said.
Additionally, she is selling her salves, lip balms, and dehydrated berries with DIY instructions to make your own syrups.
“The dark berry syrup is a powerhouse of antioxidants for colds and flu,” Bouchard said.
Currently, her biggest seller is the anti-inflammatory, antibacterial Boo Boo and Burn Balm, that helps with scars, injuries, burns and stops pain on contact, she said.
One-inch sample tins of any of her 10 salves are $5, two-inch tins cost $10, with three-inch prices at $15.
She is starting what she has named the “Sentiment” line of herbal tea blends and a new Baby Bum Balm.
“I’m not sure where this is going to go,” Bouchard said. “But as a new year’s resolution, I promised my kids I would do it.”
