65. The Goulds Paradigm: Greg Whitten on Herbal Education

Greetings everyone from Lutriwita AKA Tasmania.  I am down here on an incredible herbal adventure-  of which one of the main goals and pivitol points of the trip was to go to Goulds farm and meet Greg Whitten. 

I have wanted to meet Greg ever since I purchased his massive book "Herbal Harvest" 13 years ago (it was released 25 years ago).  I have never come across anything like this book and it really inspired, motivated and educated me.  It came at a time when I was running an essential oil company, preparing to enroll in uni, was feeling disgruntled at the lack of herbal medicine education opportunities, and was hungry for a herbal teacher to teach me in person. 

Since that day I first opened the book I have vowed to go and meet him.  So here I am on this beautiful island which seems to be the perfect land for propagating temperate climate herbs and therefore propagating wise herbal elders such as Greg.Greg has had over 35 years of experience in growing high quality herbs and has been operating his current farm since 1995 where he grows around 80 species of medicinal plants. 

Greg co-owns Goulds which is a business that has been around Hobart since 1880 and it first started out as a pharmacy-  back when pharmacies were mostly herbs anyway.   Greg purchased Goulds 17 years ago with his daughter Dawn Whitten, her partner Jason Hawrelack and their friends Belinda and Daniel Robson, with Greg managing the farm and medicine making facilities, and the others managing the clinic and apothecary in Hobart.Goulds is the only example in Australia of multi practitioner clinic and apothecary, which grows and makes a large portion of its medicines.  The Goulds farm is organic and biodynamic and one of the things which makes it really special is that they still do everything on the farm by hand without machinery. 

Greg has quite an inventor streak and loves to create or re-invent innovative tools for weeding, growing, harvesting and making herbal medicine.  If you look on my Alchemilla Herbals facebook page you will find photos of my tour of his farm and medicine making area.Greg is such a humble and wise elder and one of the many things that I really appreciate about him is that he is so forthcoming with his knowledge-  he doesn't have any of that edgy industry mindset, doesn't harbor any trade secrets and also recognises that as he prepares for retirement, the knowledge must be in the hands of the next generation.  I hope that you enjoy this interview where we discuss his book herbal harvest which took 5 years to write on a typewriter.

We also discuss the internship program which used to run at Goulds.  This is a topic that I am particularly interested because The Elder Tree will run internship programs.  On this trip so far I met about 6 people who completed this program and it was great to hear about it from Greg and also hear a bit about what he calls the "Goulds Paradigm" , and his journey at Goulds and Green Pharm.  There are some areas of the interview where we geek out a bit on ratios medicine making, and botanical names.

Found out more about Goulds here:https://www.gouldsnaturalmedicine.com.au/Follow them on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/GouldsNaturalMedicine/Follow them on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/goulds_natural_medicine

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