A month back I did an interview with Carla Vargas- Frank of Yerba Nomadica. Carla is a clinical herbalist, medicine maker, and teacher, among other things. Carla has worked off and on at the Tucson Herb Store for the past 6+ years. I learned a lot about Carla’s beginnings and what inspired her new product line. You can check out her products >> here <<. I hope you enjoy my 1st of many interviews I hope to do with plant friends :)
Amanda: Tell me more about Yerba Nomadica.. how did it all start?
Carla: What first led me to want to work with herbs was to recover traditional healing practices of my ancestry which began with my Chicanx side and later led to the much more difficult search for information on folk medicines from my Jewish side. Y N officially began when I graduated from the Wildflower School in Austin, TX in 2010. I was starting by making and selling products on ETSY and then work-traded for a really old beat up camper trailer that I renovated into an apothecary. Eventually it also became a small folk remedy shop that I shared with two collaborators. The make of the trailer was a “Nomad” so I coined Nomadica Apothecary after the home of the apothecary itself. Later the name took on a different meaning though, referring to the generations of migration and how healing traditions have persisted through lineages and different iterations and societal challenges. In 2016, I changed the name to Yerba Nomadica, after completing the Blue Otter full-time program in California. I felt like I had outgrown the original name. I was no longer focusing on selling products. Yerba Nomadica was becoming more of a community health project and an ancestral reclamation project that was broader than just medicine making.
Amanda: I’m curious about the inspiration for your recent creations. You have three new tincture formulations that are really doing well in the shop.
Carla: Yeah, I had really gotten away from making products for years because I felt very challenged by the capitalist aspects of retailing. I had a little CSH, the Botanica Sonora share, years ago and it was really fun in the beginning but then I don’t know… something about selling products started changing my relationship with the plants. So for years I decided not to sell remedies at all, and only make them available to clients, because I didn’t like the way it was shifting the way I related to my practice.
A big part of my inspiration for this line would often come to me when I was working at the Herb Store and I would get little ideas when I was putting away herbs or helping customers. It would happen really organically where I would get an intuitive hit … like the plants were whispering in my ear and I would discover these inspired combinations and possibilities. At that time I was primarily thinking about these remedies as medicines for myself and what I was going through. Over the span of a few years, these little ideas came together as more fully formed in these 3 formulas.
I also knew that if I was going to put something back out into the world again I wanted it to be more reflective of the work that I was doing around emotional and energetic healing. It wasn’t until Covid came around, strangely, that I had enough space to put the ideas together, and I started planning for a fall release in the summer of 2020. In the past, putting products together had felt like a mad dash. This time, I was much more intentional about the timeline. If I was going to be putting out my remedies for people again it couldn't be a source of stress or a cause for further imbalance in my own life. And since these are energetically based formulas, I need to be mindful of my own energetic composition as I’m putting them together.
Amanda: Your formulas are a combination of actual herbal extracts with different flower and gem essences, which is interesting to me. Can you tell me a little bit more about your thinking in doing this?
Carla: I first started combining flower essences with plant extracts when I studied at Blue Otter School with Karyn Sanders and Sarah Holmes. They teach energetic herbalism, so I began relating to the energy of plants and elements in a different way. In my three current formulas, I keep to the pattern of 2 herbal extracts and 2 essences for each. When I’m formulating it’s kind of like composing a song, or a piece of art, or a recipe. The different components have to harmonize and work together so that there is a balance. I think of the finished remedy like a sound. Though they are not creating an actual sound that we can hear, they do each emit a vibration and a feeling. I choose combinations that feel harmonious and capture a specific feeling. Were I to swap out one of those elements for another, it might give me a dissonance and not quite feel right, or it might just create a different tone altogether.
Amanda: What’s one plant you are really feeling right now? What’s in your garden or kitchen, something really speaking to at this moment.
Carla: Right now some of the plants I’m really feeling are Chuparosa and Bouganvilla because they are both blooming in a big way at my home. The hummingbirds love both of them. I’m enjoying the colors and watching the hummingbirds feed from them. These are both plants I’m excited to work with more now that I have them at my house, as an essence and, in the case of bougainvillea, a traditional tea.
Amanda: Is there anything you're doing right now you want to share or anyone you want to plug?
Carla: The Blue Otter School, where I studied 2016-2017 is offering a lot of their classes online, which they have never done before. Previously, they were only accessible in person which can be difficult for folks in terms of time and travel. So. I would definitely encourage people to check them out. Both Karyn and Sarah have so many years of experience under their belt and their teaching has completely changed the way I practice herbal medicine. They are a real community treasure.
I also would mention that another of my teachers, Nicole Telkes, of the Wildflower School in Austin, has put her whole herb program online. She is also beginning to offer some in-person again, but she has built out her entire program to have an online option. Through her platform, I’m going to have the opportunity to offer a couple desert focused workshops this summer. I will be covering some desert gardening and bioregional anologs for popular plants, those that have similar properties and actions as the ones found in many herb books, but that are easier to grow in the desert southwest. Like using Hollyhock or our other native mallows in place of Marsh Mallow as a soothing emollient and anti-inflammatory, plants that are more appropriate to our climate.
The last thing I’d like to add is that, even though the internet and social media have become a highly accessible way for people to communicate across large distances, it has also become a very draining place for me, personally. I’m working on some creative alternatives to relying on a social media presence, and instead I am planning to focus more on the Tucson community - which will, of course, be a lot easier after covid conditions are safer. I’m considering doing a snail mail newsletter and playing with ways to engage in regular ways that are not digital. It’s interesting because over this past year, we’ve had to lean so much on digital connection, but I think many people were already getting burnt out with it prior to the pandemic and the hustle and grind culture that it encourages. This last year has really pushed me to want to focus on our local community. If that means I’m only available to people in or around Tucson, that's fine… there is a lot of work to do here and incredible community to connect with. I wonder if we will see a lot more people moving in this way.
Amanda: Well thanks Carla for doing this!
Carla: Thanks for thinking of me… I feel really honored
