From seed to tincture, a growing team prepares for a new year at the Peoa farm
A farm is only as strong as the people working it. At Healing Seeds, that truth has been hard-won.
“What keeps coming to me over and over,” co-founder Dr. Babbie Stern said, “is just a deep and reverent bow to my teachers, to my mom, to the earth, to the team, and to the people who have participated in any way to help Healing Seeds become what it is becoming.”
That word — becoming — is the honest one. Healing Seeds is not a finished thing. Founded by Stern and her husband Lessing, the Peoa-based operation has grown into several interconnected branches: Healing Seeds Farm, Healing Seeds Natural Health, Healing Seeds Foundation, and an evolving educational vision that continues to take shape. But keeping it all running has required more than good soil and a clear mission. It has required the right people showing up at the right time.
For Kari Moe-Hoffman, that moment came in the summer of 2023.
“It hit me like a brick,” Moe-Hoffman said. “Like, why are you not working there? Why are you not there? You need to be there.”
Moe-Hoffman and Stern had been close friends for nearly 14 years, connected first through mutual friends in Park City, then through a chance meeting at a health fair. Stern had been asking her to join the farm for years. But the timing never felt right — Moe-Hoffman was raising kids, running a web design business with her husband, building skills in project management, finance, and operations. She had stepped away from the nutrition and herbal medicine work that first defined her career.
Then, that summer, something shifted. Stern needed help. The farm had been through staffing struggles and organizational growing pains. Key roles were unfilled. And Moe-Hoffman was ready to return to work which she was passionate about.
She started at two to three days a week in the fall of 2023 and began doing what the farm needed most: shoring up systems, organizing operations, and bringing structure to a project that had grown fast on vision but was still finding its footing.
“She really needed a manager,” Moe-Hoffman said. “Someone to come step in and take over the budgeting, the finances, the HR, the hiring, and grow the business. And someone who was passionate about what she was doing.”
Learning what the land wants
By 2024, the team deliberately decided to slow down.
“We grew really fast,” Moe-Hoffman said. “We took a step back and just got back to our foundations and our roots and really figured out what was working well out in the fields.”
The farm had spent its early years testing — trialing crops, experimenting with what could grow at elevation in Peoa’s short season and dense clay soils. By 2024, the land had started to give answers. The team used that growing season to listen.
On the produce side, that meant assessing what was thriving, what needed attention, and how to care for the orchard and berry plantings that operate on much longer timelines than annual crops. On the botanical medicine side, it meant something more intensive: diving into the science and craft of turning what grows in the field into actual medicine.
From seed to tincture
The seed-to-medicine process at Healing Seeds begins, in many cases, not in spring but in fall.
Most of the perennial medicinal herbs the farm grows need a period of cold before they’ll germinate — a process called stratification. The team tried starting seeds in trays, but found the medicinals were often too finicky for that approach. Astragalus, for instance, didn’t thrive in trays but sprouted readily when planted directly in the ground.
“I think it’s because they pick up that vitality right away,” Moe-Hoffman said. “They’re not babied. If they want to sprout out outdoors in this climate, and they have the strength to do it, they’re going to do it.”
That observation points to something Moe-Hoffman often returns to: the plants that survive stress become stronger. In a place like Peoa — short season, temperature extremes, high altitude — the herbs that make it are more potent for having endured.
“Herbal medicine plants that have gone through stresses are actually more powerful,” she said. “In order to survive, that plant just has to be strong.”
The farm’s medicinal field runs about 50 rows, each 125 feet long. Seedlings are placed in and given water and protection, but not too much comfort. By year two, the true test arrives: what comes back in spring, and what doesn’t. From there, the team manages spacing, companion planting, and a detailed succession plan — because when a root like echinacea is harvested after four years in the ground, the entire plant is gone. New plantings have to be started years in advance to keep the harvest continuous.
When it’s time to harvest, the process splits depending on the plant part. Leaves and flowers go into the drying shed, weighed fresh, laid on trays, and monitored until the stems snap clean — anywhere from a couple of days to a week, and weighed again when dried. Roots take longer. They’re washed carefully to remove soil without absorbing water, broken into uniform pieces, and dried for weeks.
Then comes the tincture.
Moe-Hoffman, who holds a degree in biology with a minor in chemistry, dove deeply into tincture-making in 2024. The farm had produced tinctures before, but the quality wasn’t up to par.
“If we’re going to be a botanical medicine farm,” she said, “we need to know how to make a potent, high quality tincture.”
The process is precise. Chopped or powdered plant material is placed in glass jars with a menstruum—an alcohol-water mixture made with organic sugarcane alcohol, diluted to the specific percentage each herb requires, generally between 40 and 70 percent. The jars are stored in a dark cabinet and shaken daily for one to two months.
Fresh plant material adds complexity. The water weight in a fresh herb dilutes the tincture’s potency, so the calculations get intricate. In some cases, the team runs multiple macerations — soaking the herb, pressing it out, then soaking again with fresh or dried material — to reach the right concentration.
“A lot of small batch trials, a lot of AB testing,” Moe-Hoffman said. “Tasting, taking notes, and then saying, I think we can try this next time.”
The farm’s tinctures are currently used in the Healing Seeds clinic. Selling directly to consumers will require additional steps — such as good manufacturing practices and FDA registration — but the research and development work is well underway.
What comes next
Stern said one of the biggest areas of energy this year is the Healing Seeds Foundation, the nonprofit’s education and community access arm.
“We are really excited this year,” she said, “to start stepping out into the community to help support and teach the community more about what we’re doing.”
The foundation is designed to bring classes, programming, and learning opportunities to a wider audience — extending the farm’s reach beyond its fields and into the broader community. Over time, the team hopes Healing Seeds can serve as both a growing space and a gathering place, where people come to learn about organic practices, herbal medicine, regenerative systems, and the relationships that connect human health to the land.
For Moe-Hoffman, the daily work is reason enough to keep going.
“I just can’t help but be inspired here on a daily basis,” she said, “by the variety of plants we’re growing and all the possible learning. Farming is intricate and complicated and beautiful and challenging and rewarding and difficult.”
She paused.
“I’ve described myself as a lifelong learner. There are so many aspects to dive into on the farm. It’s pretty incredible.”
Seeds are being started. Fields are waking up. Planning is underway. And the people of Healing Seeds — steadier now, clearer in their direction — are moving into a season with more knowledge, more structure, and more to offer than the ones that came before.