Mars Hill

By the Monday following Helene, several small business owners in Madison County were knocking on one another's doors (due to lack of cell service) to both check on one another and to begin discussing what we should be working on to be of service to our extended community in the wake of the horrific devastation we could feel in our bones was going to unfold. 

As herbalists and small business owners, almost exclusively women-led, who have been working beside one another for many years (through markets, community events, serving on boards together and more) we were able to mobilize quickly to begin offering our skills and organize a means to provide aid to our neighbors. 

We were particularly fortunate in Mars Hill to be only minimally impacted by the storm, meaning we had many advantages of restored services and usable space available to us rather quickly. Mars Hill is also centralized to many small rural communities in WNC (Madison, Yancey, North Buncombe) as well as Eastern TN (Erwin) that were catastrophically affected by Helene.

Through the first wave of recovery, we juggled more than the herbal mutual aid services. The Mars Hill location also served as a general relief distribution site, and was a busy place with a constantly updating list of current needs and an endless demand to reorganize, redistribute, rethink and rework. Thank goodness we all grew up with Jenga!

We now operate a weekly free herbal pantry as well as regular clinic days, and are to a point where our focus is moving toward increasing our medicine-making operations. Thanks to generous donations of herbs, menstruums, and other supplies from herbalists across the country, we are fortunate to be poised to increase production of small-batch herbals for free to the community in the New Year, and continue hosting weekly herbal clinic hours with volunteer herbal clinicians.

We are located at: 

Mars Landing Gallery 

Satellite Studios (Downstairs) 

37 Library St 

Mars Hill, NC 28754

Keep up with MadCo Herbalist Collective online here: 

https://linktr.ee/madcoherbalistcollective

MadCo Herbalist Collective is being co-created by three local businesswomen and mothers with decades of combined herbal practice; backgrounds in teaching, cooperative business, and earth skills work; non-profit & board experience; and overall badassery.