Marshall, NC
Sanctuary Steward: Robert Eidus
“It seems like with the environment, everyone’s up on trees and animals and insects and butterflies. But the plants are just not really defended at all.”
Robert Eidus sees his purpose in life as being a defender of Appalachia’s wild woodland medicinal plants— plants like trillium (Trillium spp.), goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), and especially American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius). At Eagle Feather Farm, a medicinal plant nursery nestled in a mountain hollow north of Asheville, NC, Robert propagates a wide variety of medicinal herbs that he sells as living plants or processed into medicinal tinctures and capsules.
The heart and soul of Robert’s work, however, is his work with American ginseng. Robert is passionate about encouraging more American farmers and landowners to grow organic “wild-simulated” ginseng—ginseng that is grown in an environment that closely mimics its natural habitat without fungicides or other chemicals that are commonly used in commercial ginseng growing. Robert fears that such chemicals are “poison.” Robert works to promote sustainable ginseng growing in a variety of ways. He conducts site visits and consults over the phone, and he provides educational material via workshops, a website, and a local radio program. He also sells ginseng seeds and young ginseng plants at herbal festivals and gatherings. Robert is also a registered ginseng dealer and occasionally buys wild ginseng to process into medicine, but he will only buy ginseng from harvesters who he is confident are harvesting ginseng responsibly.
Robert got a later start in ginseng than many other growers and dealers. Robert’s first career was in real estate in Raleigh, NC, but he grew frustrated with the business and yearned for a job that would be more physical and enable him to cultivate a deeper connection with the natural world. “Whether it was a dream or a vision or whatever, I thought that I had this conversation with Grandfather Ginseng about being a person who could advocate for the plants. And that was kind of it,” says Robert. In the early 1990s Robert built a house on the property that is now Eagle Feather Farm and began to seek out prominent herbalists and experts in plant lore to help him learn how to be a good steward of the plants: “In real estate, if you want to find out how to get 10 houses and rent them out, you go to the person who knows, who’s been successful doing that. So when I started in, I went to Doug Elliott as one of my teachers and Frank Cook as another one of my teachers, and then CoreyPine Shane and Ceara Foley slightly, and Juliet Blankenspoor slightly.”
Robert also supports sustainable ginseng growing and harvesting as president of the North Carolina Ginseng Growers’ Association. The NCGA is still a small organization and has run into some growing pains—Robert has encountered skeptics who argue that ginseng dealers and growers are set in their ways and are unlikely to join such an organization. However, Robert has had some success in using the NCGA to build community among younger and newer ginseng growers in North Carolina. The NCGA also advocates for state-level policies in North Carolina that incentivize organic ginseng growing and preserve wild ginseng for generations Robert Eidus at Eagle Feather Farm in Marshall, NC to come.
