Herb Farm
Developing a product range
Calendula flowers
Extraction equipment
Some of the range of Herb Farm products
Lynn doesn’t have a formal system for trialling Herb Farm products. "When we first started we did do a survey with Massey on one cream. The first cream I made was a calendula cream and we did a full trial procedure with questionnaires, but it’s just not practical for every product in a company our size – we don’t have an R&D department."
Lynn has learnt from her studies and the trialling she’s done over the last 15 years. "Even though something is totally natural it can react on some individuals so we always encourage people to try from our test pots. They try a product on their pulse points and it will quickly react if there’s some herbal component in there that’s not right for them."
COP Outcome development and evaluation
Lynn learns a lot from listening to her customers. People start to use the products in different ways. For example we recommend comfrey to speed the healing of muscles tears and broken bones because that’s its traditional use – years ago comfrey was called knit-bone because people used it as a cast to hold broken bones. We look at the traditional use of an herb and put it into something that can be used by people today.
We discovered that some people used it on psoriasis which is notoriously difficult to cure. Psoriasis is a build-up of skin cells, often on elbows and knees, so it didn’t seem sensible to me to use a product that promotes cell growth. What was happening was the comfrey was promoting the growth of healthy skin. You expand your knowledge from what’s worked for people."
Lynn has found that commercial sensitivity makes it difficult to access the skills and knowledge of others in the field. "You can’t just ask other people for their formulas but I’m always reading about herbs. I have technical backing from Paul Mitchell at Pro Herbs (Professional Herb Services). I can ring him and say I’m having trouble putting marshmallow into this new cosmetic product, it’s doing this it’s doing that, and he’ll help. When time permits I read technical publications."
