It’s an active time as well at Avena Botanicals in Rockport, where Soule has translated her lifelong interest in medicinal plants into a thriving herbal products company and teaching center.
In its 21st year, Avena Botanicals, Maine’s largest producer of medicinal herbs, is owned and run completely by women. On a 30-acre farm four miles from the ocean, Soule and her team run the business from a farmhouse built in the 1830s, now dedicated to office space and the preparation of tinctures and herbal remedies.
The centerpiece of the operation, however, is the garden itself, which Soule and several other women laid out in the autumn of 1996 and began planting the following spring
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Designed for both beauty and functionality (more than 65% of the herbs Avena uses are grown there), the MOFGA-certified organic garden boasts some 150 different types of medicinal plants. Stone walkways guide visitors past handmade trellises, benches, and small sculptures, all placed to “create the feeling of having entered a healing space,” Soule says. Healing is central to her company’s mission; the plants will be used to create everything from compounds targeting menopausal symptoms to salves for pets to “Immune Soup.”
A western Maine native, the 47-year-old Soule “was an outdoor kid,” who also had “a strong interest in food and gardening,” in part from watching her grandmother grow, harvest, and cook food from her garden.
While still in high school, Soule was inspired by Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet, and decided to study at College of the Atlantic. There she met Helen Nearing, coauthor with husband Scott of Living the Good Life, another seminal book on chemical-free living and farming. Helen, Soule says, “kind of took me under her wing. She modeled what it is to be a woman in the public arena. She taught me something about grace, and she also taught me not to be afraid of strangers.”
These days Soule puts those lessons to use at numerous conferences and seminars. She sees clients and works with doctors in an ongoing effort to complement standard medical practices with herbal treatments. She has visited the Azores, Japan, Hawaii, and the Canary Islands to investigate traditional medicines. This winter she plans to go study the monastic gardens of Europe.
It’s a long way from South Paris, Maine, where she started her mail-order business more than 20 years ago. Yet not too long a way: With the explosive growth of herbal medicine in the past several years, Soule knows she could probably have a much larger operation, but has deliberately kept Avena Botanicals a small, community-based business.
“I’m not interested in becoming like Tom’s of Maine,” she says. “I’ve always just done my work, and I’ve been very fortunate to be able to follow my heart.”
