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Ep. 61: Jennifer Joray of Eastern River Farm on Flower Farming, Lyme Disease, & Finding Healing Through Nature
1.7k Plays5 days ago
What happens when a simple question—“What about farming?”—leads to a total life transformation?
In this powerful episode of The Backyard Bouquet Podcast, Jennifer Joray of Eastern River Farm shares her family’s courageous journey from city living to flower farming on a 20-acre homestead in Maine. But their story goes far beyond soil and seeds.
Jennifer Joray opens up about the challenges of navigating Lyme disease, the unexpected health impacts of ticks on the farm, and how her family found healing through nature, herbal remedies, and a more intentional way of living.
You’ll learn:
🌼 Why they left behind urban life for a flower farm
🦠 How they manage Lyme disease with herbs instead of chemicals
🐦 The beauty of rebuilding an ecosystem and welcoming back wildlife
🌱 What it means to farm in harmony with the land
🌸 How healing the land helped heal their family.
Whether you’re a flower farmer, backyard gardener, or someone looking to live a more natural, grounded life—this episode is full of wisdom, resilience, and inspiration.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
📖 Healing Lyme by Stephen Buhner
🌿 Pacific Botanicals – Trusted source for clean, dried herbs
🌿 Strictly Medicinal Seeds – Medicinal seeds from herbalist Rico Cech
🌿 Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine – Online courses by Juliet Blankespoor
🌿 Zack Woods Herb Farm – Vermont-based medicinal herb farm
🌿 The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer by Jeff & Melanie Carpenter
Connect with Jennifer Joray:
📸 Instagram: @easternriverfarm
🌐 Website: easternriverfarm.com
Show Notes: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.com/2025/06/12/ep-61-jennifer-joray-farming-with-lyme-disease/
Sign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/thefloweringfarmhousenewsletter
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:57
Jennifer Gulizia
Hi, flower friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Backyard Bouquet podcast. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Jennifer Joray of Eastern River Farm, a flower farmer whose story is rooted in courage, family, and a love for the land.
00:01:16
Jennifer Gulizia
A few years ago, Jennifer and her husband Scott were raising their children in the city, working full-time jobs and doing their best to grow food on less than 1 40th of an acre.
Transforming Neglect into a Flourishing Farm
00:01:29
Jennifer Gulizia
But a simple question, "what about farming," changed everything. What followed was a leap of faith. They left behind their city life and began the journey of restoring a long-neglected piece of land with a big red barn and and rolling hills that led them straight to their dream.
00:01:49
Jennifer Gulizia
From clearing thorny fields and dead wood to building their very first cut flower and vegetable garden, Jennifer and her family have poured their hearts into every inch of Eastern River Farm.
00:02:01
Jennifer Gulizia
In today's episode, we'll talk about what it means to build something from scratch, to reconnect with nature, and to find your true rhythm as a family through farming.
Community Connections and Farm Beginnings
00:02:10
Jennifer Gulizia
Whether you're dreaming of a farm of your own or you just love a good back to the land story, this one will be full of heart.
00:02:17
Jennifer Gulizia
So let's welcome Jennifer to the show. Thanks for joining us today.
00:02:22
Jen Joray
Thank you so much, Jennifer. What a beautiful introduction.
00:02:26
Jennifer Gulizia
Well, it's such an honor to get to chat with you. we just met last week through the ASCFG's Facebook page. And so it's so fun to now be visiting with you here on the podcast.
00:02:39
Jen Joray
Yes, likewise. Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored.
00:02:42
Jennifer Gulizia
I'm really excited to talk to you because my listeners know that I have a new 20 acre farm and I didn't even know when I invited you to be on the podcast that you set seven years ago. Did you say or eight years ago?
00:02:54
Jen Joray
Yes, seven years ago.
00:02:55
Jennifer Gulizia
Seven years ago, took on a 20 acre farm. So I would love to start with the beginning of
From Chemistry to Farming: A Lifestyle Change
00:03:01
Jennifer Gulizia
your journey. Can you take us back in time to that moment when your husband Scott said, what about farming?
00:03:09
Jennifer Gulizia
What was going through your mind?
00:03:09
Jen Joray
oh Yeah, we were both working full-time jobs. I'm a teacher. He was also teaching in an administrator in ah ah charter school in Massachusetts, and we had good jobs, you know, full-time work, and two young kids in daycare, and He just came home one day out of the blue and was like, I think maybe I'm supposed to be a farmer.
00:03:30
Jen Joray
was like, what are you talking about?
00:03:31
Jennifer Gulizia
you
00:03:35
Jen Joray
he's got a PhD in inorganic polymer chemistry and patents and like he's a high powered guy in his his line of work. And I just didn't see it coming. It was just nothing that pointed us towards that direction.
00:03:49
Jen Joray
so it kind of came out of the blue. And now that I look back, I guess it was slowly building quietly in the background. Like he was working on projects with his students. he He went through a lot of different agricultural things like teaching about permaculture.
00:04:04
Jen Joray
And we had like a zip up tent in our downstairs of our two family for a while. We were growing aquaponically. Like, I guess it's hydroponics. There weren't fish in there.
00:04:14
Jen Joray
It was just water and and veg and stuff. And we had the tiny little yard garden. with lots of shade unfortunately and I suppose it was like bubbling in the background like he just all of a sudden realized that we're not eating the way we want to be we're having trouble sourcing our veg and our meat from clean places in the city we would drive up to Maine which I think it was about an eight hour ride round trip to get our meat and we'd do that every few months so we had to get a chest freezer in our basement because it didn't make sense to do that trip very frequently
00:04:41
Jennifer Gulizia
wow
00:04:48
Jen Joray
So we'd buy like a big amount of stuff and just was increasingly difficult to find good quality food. Also, it was expensive. You know, like Whole Foods are three times a week. We were doing salads three times a week. I was spending 150, 200 three times a week to eat really fresh And we could do it because we had good jobs, but it was just so much work and so much
Challenges and Determination in Farm Acquisition
00:05:12
Jen Joray
expense. And we found like most of the hours of our day were spent meal planning and like, are you going to be home at this time? Can you go to Whole Foods after school? Can you do this? Can you do that? And we just decided like, what would it look like if we were the producers
00:05:28
Jen Joray
instead of the consumers, or we shifted the focus to more being a ah ah producer rather than a consumer. That's where it began.
00:05:39
Jennifer Gulizia
So when Scott came home and asked you that question, did you just say, sure, or did you hesitate?
00:05:46
Jen Joray
Oh, well, I was, I definitely hesitated. i was so confused. Like, where is this coming from? But then, We talked about it for a while that night. it was hard to fall asleep that night. I'm not going to lie. And then like fast forward to maybe three months later, plans were actually slowly taking shape.
00:06:06
Jen Joray
And I remember we were in the parking lot of Dick's Sporting Goods. We were going to go buy some swim shorts or something. And started crying in the car and the parking lot. And i'm like,
00:06:18
Jen Joray
Are we going to move? Because I really love my life. And the girls have friends. had been teaching in that district for like 15 years or more. I really felt like a member of that community. i loved our house. We were right on the water in Salem, Mass. We were across from the green on this old 1700s ship. And like we walked everywhere on the weekends.
00:06:40
Jen Joray
I just didn't want to give all that up. And so I had that moment where I cried and he's like, well, you get over it. We're not doing it right this second. Like, This stuff takes time. So don't panic. Don't look too far ahead. Let's just look at what's right in front of us. Let's just keep learning.
00:06:56
Jen Joray
And we'll just keep learning and we'll go from there. And so that was my one, like, I remember feeling panicked. Like, oh my God, everything is going to be different. And looking back, honestly, I was completely okay to cry.
00:07:08
Jen Joray
And like, that was the right thing because everything is different.
00:07:11
Jennifer Gulizia
Thank you.
00:07:14
Jen Joray
We completely changed our life. It was like jumping timelines. We have none of the same friends, totally different lines of work. Our girls are completely different people now for the better, but they did give up everything and so did we. We gave up everything and we totally changed our entire lives.
00:07:33
Jennifer Gulizia
That's amazing. There's so many things you said there that I want to touch
00:07:36
Jen Joray
yeah
00:07:38
Jennifer Gulizia
i think that what you said about, like first of all, just going back to the cost of living, I think so many people can resonate with that right now. I mean, i go to the grocery store to feed a family of three and i'm like, how much does that cost?
00:07:52
Jennifer Gulizia
How much longer until I can start growing my vegetables again? Because everything is getting expensive. So I have a feeling that some of our listeners are thinking, oh, maybe I need to take Take note here because i think there's more and more people, especially with today's society thinking, how do I grow my own flowers or vegetables?
00:08:11
Jennifer Gulizia
Cause costs are rising. But then you also said, i love that Scott told you as you were crying that you don't have to have it all figured out right now. You just had to keep taking those steps. So I'm really curious.
00:08:24
Jennifer Gulizia
How long did it take from the time he said, what about farming until you guys actually found the farm?
00:08:32
Jen Joray
So we, I can kind of back calculate that by saying that i when I start a project, I am full on, I guess it's like an ADHD type of trait where I'm like a hundred percent in if I'm excited about something.
00:08:46
Jen Joray
And so I looked every single morning before work for three solid years for this property. And it was kind of like the previous house, which was really our first home experience.
00:08:52
Jennifer Gulizia
wow
00:08:56
Jen Joray
It was also a similar but process where we had looked for three years and we were just about to give up and then we found it and that was kind of the same feeling. We had visited a bunch of places in Maine, like all over the state. There was no one area we were really looking for.
00:09:12
Jen Joray
And we were just about to give up because stuff was too expensive. The land we loved had a house on it that just was in total disrepair that we could never fix, afford to fix. So I was just about to give up. And then I i was like, I'm going to push through. I'm going to one more search with different criteria. I was talking with a real estate agent and working with one, of course, because was a big, big ask to go like two states north.
00:09:37
Jen Joray
I didn't really know Maine that well. So we did have help with that. But I gave her like some slightly different criteria. And I said, let me just try again. And this house popped up. And the funny thing is, this is kind of an aside, but the day we visited it, we had three properties to see that day. And we had to kind of do that.
00:09:56
Jen Joray
Because of the distance of driving, we wanted to not have to spend the night in a hotel. So it was like drive up to Maine, see as much as we could in the afternoon and then drive back to Massachusetts.
00:10:08
Jen Joray
And I swear there was divine intervention because the times got mixed up and we were at this current property that we bought. But we were supposed to be at a different one that was too far away to like drive there and back. So I talked to the real estate agent and I'm like, but we're here.
00:10:25
Jen Joray
And she goes, well, you're supposed to be over here right now. And I looked back at the emails. I'm like, no, there's no way I made this mistake. Like there was definitely divine intervention. We were a meant to miss those other properties and just be here.
00:10:39
Jen Joray
And we sat in the driveway and we waited.
00:10:39
Jennifer Gulizia
oh
00:10:41
Jen Joray
My husband would not let us get out and walk around without the agent, which really bothered me because I was like, it's so cool. run around he made us all wait in the car for like an hour and then finally she got there and we're like oh my god this is it like all the things you said the rolling hills there was a river two fields everything was on one side of the street which was one of my dream asks that we didn't have to cross the road like so many old properties have a big major road splitting the field from the farmhouse and and this was all on the same side which was exciting
00:11:18
Jen Joray
But going back to the question you asked, how long did it take? So the search took three years and leading up to the search, I think it was maybe a year or two.
00:11:28
Jen Joray
So I'd say it was a good five to six years.
Family Integration and Balancing Farm Life
00:11:32
Jen Joray
which sounds like a lot of time, but we were learning so much. It flew by. We've read, we've, we listened to podcasts. We read journal articles.
00:11:43
Jen Joray
We found some of the greats, you know, Joel Salatin, and we learned from him and took his courses and talked with him over email. i mean, he he doesn't answer my emails now. He's so busy, but But he did, and that was really special because he's such a fixture in the agricultural world. He spent his whole life farming and his parents farmed, and he's in his 70s right now.
00:12:07
Jen Joray
So we kind of just learned from some of those greats. I just, like, drunk everything we could in, hum but nothing prepares you like actually doing it.
00:12:17
Jen Joray
So it doesn't have to take that long for people.
00:12:18
Jennifer Gulizia
Totally.
00:12:21
Jen Joray
And we went we went fast. We also grew fast once we got this property. My husband says too fast. That's one of his complaints. he's we're all very happy with the life we've chosen, but if we could redo it, we would go slower. We would not make such huge, costly, expensive mistakes.
00:12:41
Jen Joray
And that came from my excitement and like drive to just get it get it started. So...
00:12:50
Jennifer Gulizia
I love that you said it was a seven year process.
00:12:54
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:12:54
Jennifer Gulizia
so So you're really 14 years ago, the seed was planted for this. Is that correct?
00:13:01
Jen Joray
I would say so. So like h my daughters are 16 and almost 13. And we really like Salatin says, try to get those kids farming if you're going to make a major lifestyle switch before middle school.
00:13:16
Jennifer Gulizia
Okay.
00:13:17
Jen Joray
Because once they're in middle school, it's really hard to get that buy-in. They've already gotten that social piece. They're like indoctrinated into that lifestyle. And we just made that cutoff. And it was no joke. He was right.
00:13:31
Jen Joray
Because my oldest was in fifth grade when we actually got the place. And so she started to get hooked. But it took that first year... Yeah, and my youngest was only in second grade. It was a lot easier to get her to like dig in the dirt and hold the chickens up with both hands. and But my older one was like a little bit like, I don't know if I could do this.
00:13:57
Jen Joray
But she did.
00:13:58
Jennifer Gulizia
Does she like it now?
00:14:00
Jen Joray
It's literally her blood. Like, I don't think she can do anything else. She has become the farm. The farm has become her. They both, all four of us actually, like we all just live and breathe for the nature of the place. It infuses you.
00:14:17
Jen Joray
it gets into your blood and your bones. And like, i still work full time as a teacher and it's really, really hard to be indoors all day. Luckily, I have a wall of windows. i can open like 10 windows every day and see the outside. But a lot of people work where there is not even a window.
00:14:34
Jen Joray
it's like not natural.
00:14:37
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
00:14:38
Jen Joray
It's really bad for our bodies. And we don't know the cyclical season and changes and the weather. And it kind of like, i think it makes you feel downtrodden. And it it just sucks you down.
00:14:52
Jen Joray
And you don't realize it. So I feel it now, like being here talking to you. I'm right near my backyard. The windows, the sliders open. I can see the birds. I see a lot of green.
00:15:03
Jen Joray
I can see the color of the sky. Like even those little things, that's what sucks you in and you just become part of nature. So it's interwoven with us now.
00:15:14
Jennifer Gulizia
I love that. We are back where you were seven years ago because I have a fourth grader and she's still a little on the fence about the new farm.
00:15:15
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:15:24
Jennifer Gulizia
I mean, we moved from a residential neighborhood to, well, we're we're still in a residential neighborhood because we're not living on the farm yet because there's not a house. But she's kind of skeptical coming to the farm and it always makes me a little worried.
00:15:36
Jennifer Gulizia
So hearing that your daughter now lives and breathes the farm life is encouraging to someone who's on the other side of it.
00:15:40
Jen Joray
I
00:15:44
Jen Joray
Well, for a long time, I've been thinking that what what would be really cool for like your daughter and our kids and other people's kids is if there were a podcast where kids could talk to each other about the farming life and like support each other and ask questions or be like, yeah, that's so cool. I found this thing the other day or ah ah really excited to grow that thing or find this flower, whatever they get excited about.
00:16:11
Jen Joray
Because in the same way as a teacher, like mentorship is so huge. You just want to be with your pack. So the kids should have their own pack. That's just a little aside for whoever wants to tackle that.
00:16:25
Jennifer Gulizia
I love that. I've actually been trying to get my daughter to do this with me. She she loves to write and she's been writing stories. And I said, well maybe we could do some farm stories with a podcast. And I know i have so many friends that live in the Pacific Northwest that are farmers.
00:16:35
Jen Joray
Yes.
00:16:39
Jennifer Gulizia
And now I'm meeting farmers around the country that also have children. I think that's a beautiful idea to get the kids' voices included it.
00:16:46
Jen Joray
Oh, imagine. my God, that would be so powerful. They are the next generation.
00:16:51
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh, be.
00:16:52
Jen Joray
That's why we're doing it this, right?
00:16:54
Jennifer Gulizia
Totally. I know.
00:16:56
Jen Joray
i mean, yeah.
00:16:56
Jennifer Gulizia
i was thinking about that the other day. We're planting these like one foot tall
Sustainable Practices and Natural Remedies
00:16:59
Jennifer Gulizia
trees because that's all we can afford right now. And I'm like, these will be tall enough that they actually seem like a real tree by the time that I'm no longer farming.
00:17:11
Jennifer Gulizia
But I'm planting them for my daughter's generation and for future generations.
00:17:15
Jennifer Gulizia
So I hope so. We got really small ones.
00:17:15
Jen Joray
They'll grow faster than you think.
00:17:19
Jen Joray
They will.
00:17:20
Jennifer Gulizia
Yeah.
00:17:21
Jen Joray
I think sometimes that's better, honestly. They take root better when they're young.
00:17:26
Jennifer Gulizia
I hope so. Yeah, it was.
00:17:28
Jen Joray
Like kids.
00:17:29
Jennifer Gulizia
That's true. i love how you said how the farm just kind of weaves you in and like the sounds. One thing I never really experienced at our last farm because we were in an urban residential setting was the amount of birds.
00:17:45
Jennifer Gulizia
And when you mentioned the sounds, every time I opened my door, it's like I'm pulled I step out of the car door and the birds just greet you. Can you talk a little bit about like, what does it feel like on your
00:17:54
Jen Joray
Ah.
00:17:57
Jennifer Gulizia
I mean, I can tell you're so passionate about this space.
00:18:01
Jen Joray
Absolutely. And that's why, like, again, it's my husband's chemistry background that brought up the point of what are we going to do? How are we going to handle pests and diseases? And very quickly, we were like, no harmful chemicals. We did have a conversation about that.
00:18:15
Jen Joray
And he asked me how I felt. And I said, well, this is honestly how I feel. I don't want to use them. But what happens if, and we had that conversation. and there were times when he was like, you know, I wouldn't be totally adverse to using like neem or organic certified products maybe we could try that but we ended up never going that route either like we literally don't use anything that might harm beneficials like no fungicides herbicides pesticides and people ask us all the time well how do you handle when your peonies have botrytis or you've got yellow asters or you've got rust or powdery am mildew and it's like different ways
00:18:56
Jen Joray
Sometimes I'll rip it out, but a lot of times now, because it's been seven years of doing this, and this is this is going to make people freak out, I think, honestly. I like just leave it, and I let nature take its course, and it always does right itself.
00:19:13
Jen Joray
It's just the balance is going to happen with or without my intervention. It's just, to me, it feels like, oh, I've lost this crop, or this might take all season. But to nature, it's like, oh, we'll just fix that.
00:19:25
Jen Joray
And in her sweet time, she'll fix it. It's usually a lot faster than I think. Like we had one of the faux pas I didn't know until did this was we got like 250 yards of organic certified compost dumped across from this little driveway from our greenhouse.
00:19:44
Jen Joray
And i I found out three years later that you don't do that. You don't put compost near your greenhouse or your hoop houses because... the spider mites travel right into your greenhouse from your compost.
00:19:57
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh.
00:19:58
Jen Joray
But I didn't know that until we did it. And three years later, i had like this infestation of spider mites because I, this is another big farming thing I'm sure you've learned, but it takes a newer grower experience or hearing it to realize when you push a plant out of its normal limits, you're going to experience that disease and pest pressure.
00:20:18
Jen Joray
So that was the year I had like 57 gallon pots of dahlias growing in my greenhouse. And they were starting to outgrow that pot.
00:20:30
Jen Joray
Maybe their nutrients weren't exactly right for that environment, which was enclosed and tight, you know, and hot. And that's when the spider mites started to show up. And i was like, where are these coming from?
00:20:42
Jen Joray
So that we handled it by pulling them all out of the greenhouse and nature fixed itself. But we've never truly gotten rid of the spider mites since. We see them cropping up here and there throughout.
00:20:54
Jen Joray
And we handle them by getting beneficial insects such as soil-borne mites. Stradiolalaps, phallassus are two fabulous soil-borne mites that can live in our zone and live for like 10 years on your farm in your soil.
00:21:09
Jen Joray
So we're in Maine, zone five, gets very cold down to about minus 20 is what's listed on the USDA site for zone five.
00:21:16
Jennifer Gulizia
Wow.
00:21:18
Jen Joray
I don't think we've experienced that yet, but we've gotten very close, minus 16, minus 18 maybe. and they can live through that. They can live up to 10 years, I think.
00:21:30
Jennifer Gulizia
wow
00:21:30
Jen Joray
And so like those are the controls that we'll put into place. that's a little extra beyond natural but there's probably stuff like that here without us purchasing mites in ah ah in a cup through the mail like there's probably soil-borne mites in our soil that will start to handle the spider mites on their own and so i think uh i forgot now what your original question was but but that's how we've handled ah yeah the beauty on the farm like we didn't want to become a negative influence on the ecosystem we just wanted to support it and so through that method of growing like just observation
00:22:07
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
00:22:12
Jen Joray
A lot of faith and trust, honestly. And like just the physical labor part of it, that's how we handle the problems.
00:22:22
Jen Joray
And so what we get, this is what you really wanted to know, is this gorgeous place full of birdsong. full of frogs and turtles. I mean, we've watched these things come in year after year. Like we've had so many additional bird pairs nesting that like every year we have five to six nesting pairs of bluebirds right around us.
00:22:44
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh wow. Oh.
00:22:44
Jen Joray
We just had it a Baltimore Oriole for the first time this past week.
00:22:48
Jen Joray
We had a cardinal. We have a pool in our backyard, just in an above ground pool because it gets so hot here. And this little cardinal made her nest right above our pool. So we got to watch, much to her chagrin, how has she tended these sweet babies. And now the little boy she had is fully feathered out this year and he's eating at our feeder. It's like the sparrows. I mean, it is like a buffet in our high tunnels. They just...
00:23:16
Jen Joray
fly right in and it's so nice because there are hardly any flowers outside yet but in the tunnels are all these things blooming like our leftover tulips the first anemones the pansies all winter and they'll just fly right in and eat all the flies that are trapped in the high tunnel like a buffet and then the hummingbirds are zipping in and zooming around so they say hello to us which is really cool they'll zoom up and like hover a couple feet from my face And I'm like, hi, remember you.
00:23:49
Jen Joray
It's just so amazing. Like the frogs started coming here and I think the third season.
00:23:54
Jennifer Gulizia
and Okay.
00:23:55
Jen Joray
And then the turtles we found the year after that. So this like ecosystem has started to build and amphibians have such porous skin.
00:24:00
Jennifer Gulizia
Wow.
00:24:04
Jen Joray
They're like the first critters to die if you're spraying something on your property. So seeing them was a big boost. We're like, yes, yes. they see what we're doing they feel what we're doing it's impacting beyond countable number of things it's crazy we got like nesting bald eagles on our property so we'll have kettles like a tea kettle they call it a kettle if you have lots and lots and lots of eagles so we have up to 50 in a kettle just like swirling overhead way up high
00:24:41
Jen Joray
and one swooped past me, I'd say it was maybe 20 feet above me, which was really close, just a couple weeks ago.
00:24:47
Jennifer Gulizia
Wow. awesome.
00:24:49
Jen Joray
i heard its wing beats like a giant dog panting as it hits the ground to run. It was like, ha, ha, ha, and I'm like, what is that? And I turned around, and there's this giant eagle just flying right over my head, and it's moments like those you just feel humbled.
00:25:07
Jen Joray
So that's all around us every day.
00:25:10
Jennifer Gulizia
that's awesome
00:25:12
Jen Joray
yeah
00:25:14
Jennifer Gulizia
I love that. And were any of those birds or species? I didn't quite say that right. Any of those um were any of them there when you bought the farm?
00:25:22
Jen Joray
you
00:25:28
Jen Joray
I'm sure they were, but it seemed a lot thinner for the first few years. It was beautiful, peaceful.
00:25:32
Jennifer Gulizia
huh.
00:25:34
Jen Joray
Like the day we saw the farm, we were we walked down. We have a lot of topographical interest in this farm, which is why we fell in love with it. As you know, it makes it a little harder to farm when you've got a lot of rolling hills.
00:25:47
Jen Joray
but we walked down to the river and as we were walking back up we saw a hawk it must have been like a red-tailed hawk swoop down in front of us and grab something and that was the moment like it took our breath away because you know being in the city you just don't see that we're like okay this is really magical so I saw that hawk when we first came here but I don't know. We didn't see much beyond the traditional chickadees, which I adore.
00:26:18
Jen Joray
Chickadees and hawks. and But since then, it's like you can't even count it. Every single season, there's new stuff.
00:26:28
Jennifer Gulizia
Now I'm curious because our farm has been
00:26:28
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:26:33
Jennifer Gulizia
what's right word? It's been a fallow field for, I don't know how many years. We don't know all the full history on our land, but we actually are getting on Monday a flail mower so we can mow the grass.
00:26:45
Jennifer Gulizia
But right now it's like waist high. We've been waiting, we ordered it.
00:26:48
Jen Joray
Wow.
00:26:48
Jen Joray
Mm-hmm.
00:26:48
Jennifer Gulizia
And we are battling ticks, but we don't have a ton of birds. I mean, there's there's probably... As I've been preparing our dahlia field, I think there's like two robins and I swear they come and talk to me. They just like come 10 feet away and are making noises. And there's a few blue jays and a few doves.
00:27:05
Jennifer Gulizia
But I just I imagine there being so many more birds as you were talking about this.
00:27:05
Jen Joray
Mm-hmm.
00:27:08
Jennifer Gulizia
I'm like, okay, give it a few years. But I'm wondering, do you find that you have any problems with ticks? Yeah.
00:27:15
Jen Joray
Oh, God, ticks are atrocious. I mean, I got Lyme disease in 2019, so we bought the farm in 2018 in October.
Lyme Disease: Personal Experience and Prevention
00:27:23
Jen Joray
2019 was really our first season, and I got a deer tick on my arm in my bed from my dog that June, that very first summer.
00:27:34
Jen Joray
And so, yeah long story short, in general, the medical profession does not handle it well and does not know by i think it's like guilty through omission might be the way to say it.
00:27:49
Jen Joray
Like the information is out there. But for whatever reason, if you walk into an urgent care clinic with a tick bite or a fever like I did 24 hours later after I pulled that tick off of me, fever and chills, I just I knew i had Lyme disease.
00:28:03
Jen Joray
I knew I had a tick-borne illness.
00:28:04
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh gosh.
00:28:06
Jen Joray
And I was like swept under the mat. Oh, you got to wait a couple weeks till the blood test shows that you have antibodies built up. And I'm like, I don't want to wait. I'm infected. i want to kill it. Can I kill it now?
00:28:17
Jen Joray
Can I have antibiotics? Can I do something? And they were like, no, just wait. Well, that was a terrible, terrible idea. And I ended up with acute Lyme and completely paralyzed in my neck for a week.
00:28:30
Jennifer Gulizia
oh my gosh
00:28:31
Jen Joray
That happened that fall. So by September, So was given like a two week antibiotic dose after the blood test showed that I might have had exposure to Lyme. It still didn't say definitively, but then they gave me like two weeks, which is ridiculous.
00:28:48
Jen Joray
Because teenagers can be put on six weeks or more of doxy for their acne, like without a thought. And here is a patient saying, I have a fever and chills. I think I have Lyme disease. I pulled off an engorged deer tick off of my arm.
00:29:02
Jen Joray
And I'm being told it's not possible to transmit. You need it this many hours. And I'm like, well, it was on me for a maximum of five hours because I knew when I had gone to bed,
00:29:14
Jen Joray
and it wasn't there and when I woke up it wasn't a very long night's sleep high season and they were like no it can't really transmit in that time frame and I'm like well something has and so that was a long story longer but the important thing to know is yes there are ticks everywhere in every state all over the world really and they are bad. i think that it's just a problem that's going to continue for a long time and that the awareness people have around how to handle them is going to protect us more than anything.
00:29:52
Jen Joray
So I've studied a lot in the last six years. I've seen a naturopath. I'm still seeing a naturopath. Now my whole family is seeing that naturopath. There are measures you can take to help prevent a lot of ticks so not in any particular order guinea hens seem to be very effective against eating i think they can eat a thousand ticks a day i might i heard that somewhere i'm not the best for number memory
00:30:15
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh my gosh.
00:30:20
Jen Joray
So it might not be that many, but they they're one of the best tick control birds on any farm. But they do find the easiest way to die. And they're terrible parents, I've heard.
00:30:32
Jen Joray
My neighbor had a bunch. you could have like, if you have chickens and you want to try guinea hens, I think they're going to be obnoxiously noisy and they might go wherever they want. But they are very good with ticks. And they also lay eggs anywhere they want, like in secret hiding places. It's like an adult Easter egg hunt, I think.
00:30:49
Jen Joray
to find their nests. But if you can find their nests, you can take their little eggs and put them under one of your laying hens, who's going to be a great mom, and then raise that little brood for you. So you'll probably always keep the guinea hens on your property that way.
00:31:05
Jen Joray
That's a great thing to try. Now, we have not tried it, and we have a lot of chickens. Another thing is I've heard from people who own cattle, that I talked to one woman in particular who raised Red Devons in the Midwest.
00:31:21
Jen Joray
Her property was a new one. They were like transitioning to a new property where her parents lived adjacent to, and it was littered with ticks. And after a year of having the Red Devons on that property, she couldn't find any ticks.
00:31:36
Jen Joray
and she was convinced that animal movement, like livestock movement on on a land, can really help minimize or eliminate a big portion of the tick population.
00:31:48
Jen Joray
So fallow land, fallow places that just aren't being used, the land isn't being kept up in a natural way, I think that's probably going to give you a heavier tick load.
00:31:57
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
00:31:58
Jen Joray
And I can say that's pretty accurate because we have a lot of livestock and we just don't find ticks in their areas much anymore. But their open field in the north fields, which we don't use as often and there's a portion of it we've never planted on, that has a higher population of ticks.
00:32:17
Jen Joray
We don't do this because it's a harmful chemical, but you can, I think it's pyrethrin or something, you can read about it. You can soak like cotton or something and stuff it in a toilet paper roll or a paper towel roll and put it around your house at key times of the year. so Early fall, before that that breeding happens, early spring, just as that new round of ticks is laying their eggs and those little nymph ticks are on the backs of critters like mice and voles and opossums have tons too.
00:32:57
Jen Joray
But any little warm furry mammal, and I think also birds, can be host carriers of those little nymph eggs. And by providing nesting material that has potentially harmful chemicals on it, I don't know if it hurts the animal. I've read in books that it doesn't, but it probably isn't good for them.
00:33:18
Jen Joray
Just like it isn't good for us to soak our clothes in it, which is what some people recommend. But as this is another aside. as the wife of a PhD chemist,
00:33:30
Jen Joray
who's an expert in understanding how structures work that way, he will not put it on our body. He will not put it on our clothes. He does not recommend that. but So we've we've always just eliminated that option.
00:33:44
Jen Joray
But some people do that, and that nesting material can kind of like prevent the ticks from surviving in those initial stages, which can help with outbreaks later. What we find is very effective is a natural bug repellent.
00:33:59
Jen Joray
It's a green and white spray. We buy it off of the Amazon, but it's like lemongrass, eucalyptus, spearmint or peppermint. I think it's peppermint. It's just really volatile oil content, things that are high, like rosemary, oregano, that kind of stuff.
00:34:15
Jen Joray
Ticks and and biting flies in general don't like that kind of thing.
00:34:20
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
00:34:20
Jen Joray
So that's very helpful. We coat ourselves in that. It's just natural plant oils. And then in your body, this is something, again, i'll not a lot of people know, but because of our journey through the farm and and getting Lyme disease and co-infection, so so three out of the four of us have that confirmed, and the fourth one of us confirmed.
00:34:43
Jen Joray
has a marker in her blood that shows she's been exposed to it, but she has no symptoms that are bad. So we're just like on a watch schedule with her. But something we all do is we take Japanese knotweed tincture twice a day, which is very beneficial. As long as you're not allergic, anybody can be allergic to anything.
00:35:03
Jen Joray
But in general, Herbal therapies like this have a very low occurrence of allergies and side effects, and in general, it's just really boosting to your body, your overall health, especially when taken long term. So that means like six months or more, a lot of the herbs that we can take take six months or more to start seeing really beneficial effects so japanese knotweed is one of those top choices for protection against tick-borne illnesses so you can just take
00:35:36
Jen Joray
that tincture in the morning and at night like i take it on an empty stomach that's what was recommended by my naturopath and it just goes it's in your body it's in your blood so if you get bitten that parasite may not have as easy of a time getting taking a hold i kind of think it's like a shield i don't think it would prevent an illness but i think it could certainly help I'm on at least a dozen things like that twice a day plus lots of supplements, but none of them are pharmaceuticals and all of them have other health benefits. So ah ah have I feel as strong as I have felt in my entire life, even though I'm lacking sleep, I'm working two full-time jobs, running a small business, always behind on everything. You know how it is. It's like, I wish I had more time to do Instagram or work on QuickBooks. But right now I have to go thin 500 plants that I multi-seeded because I used old seed and it didn't it it germinated better than I thought.
00:36:40
Jen Joray
So now I have to thin, you know, there's always projects. And i I honestly feel the best I've ever felt. And I think it's like the herbal supports and our really clean diet. We're not 100% clean. I'm not sure that's possible living in normal society, but I'm really close. And I think it's, it's hugely beneficial to be out in the sun eating naturally I do eat dairy, I eat meat, but we buy really clean product. I drink raw milk and I take my tinctures. I take my supplements. So we found fewer and fewer ticks.
00:37:16
Jen Joray
If you have animals too, it's like animals can also be on these things. My dog takes a tincture twice a day every day, just like me. He loves it.
00:37:27
Jen Joray
It's weird because it's extremely bitter. Andrographis, which is known as the king of bitters, is like an antiparasitic dewormer, antiviral, and it's super, super bitter. I love bitter stuff now.
00:37:45
Jen Joray
But he just licks it right up in a little bit of water. And if he's not in the mood, I'll put it on a piece of our homemade bread and that goes down like nothing.
00:37:49
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh, wow.
00:37:54
Jen Joray
I mean, it's now the treat word. We say boral immune and he's like, boom, into the kitchen for his little piece of bread or his little cup.
00:38:00
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh,
00:38:04
Jen Joray
And the cool thing is, When we got his blood tested at the vet before he was on the tincture, it came up positive for anaplasmosis. So I think there are two kinds at least that a dog can present with. One is like really bad and they can die from it.
00:38:21
Jen Joray
My previous dog did have that and did die within a few weeks, unfortunately. It just, his white blood cell count went to nothing and we had to put him down. It was really sad.
00:38:32
Jen Joray
I didn't yet know about these tinctures. And then my current dog has the other kind that can be like systemic in the dog's body for its entire life and not present with really bad side effects.
00:38:45
Jen Joray
But you still want to get it under control because it's an immune, it'll knock the immune system down. You know, every virus you have in you kind of can ding you a little bit. And if you do get really sick, it's just harder to get back on your feet.
00:38:59
Jen Joray
So when we started to give him these tinctures, we got him tested at the vet again. And guess what the blood test showed? Nothing. His blood was clear. There was no anaplasmosis showing.
00:39:14
Jen Joray
And the ah most cool thing is we took him off of it.
00:39:18
Jen Joray
for a couple months. I had him tested again and guess what showed? Anaplasmosis showed in his blood. It was in there the whole time but when he's on the tincture, when he's on it, it doesn't present in his blood.
00:39:27
Jennifer Gulizia
Interesting.
00:39:33
Jen Joray
It's like his body has enough of an immune assist to kind of eradicate it so much so that it doesn't even show up on the blood test.
00:39:43
Jen Joray
That's some powerful it' stuff right there. And it's herbs. It's plants that you and I can grow in our backyard, which we've started to do.
00:39:52
Jennifer Gulizia
So do you make your own tinkatures or are you buying them?
00:39:52
Jen Joray
Because it's... Yeah, we do. i buy them and I make them. It's kind of like your own food. Can anybody grow 100% of their own food?
00:40:02
Jen Joray
We can't yet. And we're we're working our butts off. And we're really, we provide our own chicken, our own eggs, our own pork. Now we've got cooney cooney pigs and we do our own pork.
00:40:13
Jen Joray
We buy our beef from our really good friends up north. They raise highland cattle. No dewormers, no antibiotics. They regeneratively, like they pasture their animals and they work regeneratively. He's our AI guy, the artificial insemination guy for Maine, like one of two, I think. So he he knows what he's doing and he's a great guy.
00:40:35
Jen Joray
He and his partner are fabulous and they're good friends of ours now. So like that's clean right there. The meat is the highest on the food chain. That's super clean in our bodies. So thank goodness for that.
00:40:46
Jen Joray
Then I pick up my raw milk from another farm. And we make our own yogurt and I don't make my own butter because there's all we go through a lot of butter. I've done a little bit of it.
00:40:57
Jen Joray
It's just too time consuming for me to make all of that.
00:40:58
Jennifer Gulizia
It's so time consuming.
00:41:01
Jen Joray
It's nice. It's great, though. It's so delicious. ah But we have some for, like, special occasions. Christmas, that kind of thing. and We do our own ice cream, which is super fun.
00:41:12
Jen Joray
And I've done my own cheese, but, like, butter that I just go through more cheese than I could ever make. So i either have to limit my cheese consumption, which I'm not willing to do, or
00:41:25
Jen Joray
or by cheese. So I think that like in combination with our tinctures, that's what's really healed our family is the food, the fresh air, and the herbs. So we make we make some tinctures, but we don't make all of them yet.
00:41:41
Jen Joray
And some of the plants just don't grow here. So like I'm trying, but we're talking a pot in the greenhouse and we're trying to like pull it in for the winter or I put it in my germ chamber during January and February and then I pull it back out. It might get aphids because it's been compromised a bit. That's not the environment it loves.
00:41:59
Jen Joray
So that's kind of where I am now. I'm seeing like what I can grow and what I really should be buying and support other farmers by buying. Yeah, but this I make it sound complicated.
00:42:11
Jen Joray
It's really easy to protect yourself against ticks. Put your socks over your pants. Look at yourself every you know half hour or so. like If you feel something crawling on you, don't ignore it.
00:42:22
Jen Joray
And if you find something in you, number one, save it. like Take it out, but stick it on a piece of tape. I cut it with a knife on a sticky roller, and then I save it.
00:42:36
Jen Joray
And I send it into a lab to get tested. If it's bitten me or my family, I save it, I get
Herbal Medicine and Alternative Health Solutions
00:42:41
Jen Joray
it tested. And then I have a record of what disease it has.
00:42:45
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
00:42:45
Jen Joray
So if we have side effects, I can say to my naturopath, look, she got bitten by a tick that tested for babesiosis. So can we look at babesiosis treatment?
00:42:56
Jen Joray
It makes our naturopath's life so much easier to know this was positive. So she might have this. Because otherwise, there are so many different tick-borne illnesses, and you're guessing what herb, what treatment's going to help you with that. and It's easier if you just know. Because some herbs will will eradicate certain certain illnesses. And then you don't suffer, you know. If you get it early, you might be on a maintenance dose for a few years. It sounds awful, but but it's not really. It's really healthy for you.
00:43:33
Jennifer Gulizia
Well, I want to first say I'm really sorry that your whole family has been dealt this unfortunate disease. It's a disease, right?
00:43:44
Jennifer Gulizia
Am I saying that correctly with Lyme disease?
00:43:45
Jen Joray
Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:46
Jennifer Gulizia
Well, yeah, I guess it's called Lyme disease.
00:43:47
Jen Joray
yeah
00:43:47
Jennifer Gulizia
So it is a disease. It's such a scary thing, I think, because there's so little known in medical research. ah So I really appreciate all that you just shared. I feel like I've been enlightened with more knowledge there because, I mean, from our urban setting that we last had, i think I maybe saw like one or two ticks on our dogs. And we hike in the forest and stuff.
00:44:12
Jennifer Gulizia
One of my last dogs would... I felt like she was having seizures from medicine. so we stopped giving the tick medicine. And so we just have always done essential oils. And at our farm so far, we've not gotten any ticks when we've used essential oils, but there's times where I've shown up and we've had an irrigation issue or something where I've had to trample through the tall grass and forget to spray myself. And those are the days where I come home and I'm like,
00:44:38
Jennifer Gulizia
oh crap, there's a tick or i get out of the shower and two are on me. And I'm like, what? I've only had one.
00:44:43
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:44:44
Jennifer Gulizia
I've had five on me, only one attached this season.
00:44:47
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:44:47
Jennifer Gulizia
Yeah.
00:44:48
Jen Joray
Was it a dog tick or tiny?
00:44:49
Jennifer Gulizia
um The tiny I've had one tiny one because our property backs up to the river and that tiny one I just went to itch my back and it came off my finger. And that one I just flicked back onto the ground.
00:44:59
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:45:02
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:45:02
Jennifer Gulizia
The one that was attached to my head I had my hair braided I've learned now that I just shower every night when I come home.
00:45:08
Jen Joray
yeah
00:45:08
Jennifer Gulizia
because that night I was so tired.
00:45:10
Jennifer Gulizia
I went to bed with my hair and a braid and I woke up in the morning and I'm like, oh, there's a bump on my head and it was a tick, but i don't think it was attached for very long because it wasn't swollen or anything, but you surprised.
00:45:22
Jen Joray
Well, so, you know, it doesn't have to be attached for more than a few minutes to transmit disease, unfortunately.
00:45:27
Jennifer Gulizia
Seriously.
00:45:28
Jen Joray
Yeah, and I just want to clarify something you said that a lot of people think, and this is what we're told, that we don't know much about it. We actually do know a ton. This is where I will not get political on you, but for whatever reason...
00:45:43
Jen Joray
It's frowned upon in this country when you hear the word parasite. Like in all the other countries in the world, people do parasite cleanses regularly, like monthly.
00:45:48
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
00:45:52
Jen Joray
And they do big ones. That's where the fasting comes from. In all these other cultures, we hear about people fasting. It's part of the parasite cleanse and it goes with the seasons.
00:46:03
Jen Joray
Animals do it naturally. But humans in the unit know United States specifically, I've heard from I would say reputable doctors, maybe that's up for discussion, that it's shoved under the rug.
00:46:18
Jen Joray
I mean, I was told by a doctor that she went to a clinic with the parasite in a petri dish and knew what it was and wanted confirmation. And they said, no.
00:46:29
Jen Joray
no parasite. So I think without, like again, without getting political, for whatever reason, it's frowned upon when you say the word parasite.
00:46:34
Jennifer Gulizia
Thank you.
00:46:40
Jen Joray
Doctors are not trained to understand how to treat people. And all of us have parasites. Parasites are part of a living ecosystem.
00:46:51
Jen Joray
Animals have them. Our dogs and cats have them. Our bodies have them too. And they can be in all places in our body. It's just like if they're if there are too many in one place or a kind that's not beneficial to us, I don't know if any are. The word parasite to me means not beneficial, but I think you can coexist with a certain amount or type.
00:47:15
Jen Joray
And that all of us have them. And I know that sounds disgusting and it creeps me out to even say it, but that's because we've not been taught that it's normal, but it is part of us.
00:47:23
Jennifer Gulizia
Right.
00:47:25
Jen Joray
And so number one, if you're really scared about tick-borne illnesses, go to a naturopath, pay, pay 400 bucks for that first appointment. It's not cheap, but it's worth it.
00:47:35
Jen Joray
And then if you've got the funds, go a little further and get a detailed blood test or, a detailed urine test. they They do testing that a general practitioner's office just does not have access to. There are four labs in the United States that will test you deeply and comprehensively your blood, your urine, and tell you You know, yes, you've got these, these parasites, you've got these, I'm talking about Lyme, the parasites, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, those little critters, spirochetes, mycoplasmas, and your, your general practitioners, they're going to look at you and do what I went through.
00:48:17
Jen Joray
i had MRI for my knee because I had trouble kneeling. I knew it was Lyme. I had ah ah thyroid test on my throat because I felt like i was being choked for two years.
00:48:27
Jen Joray
I knew it was Lyme. It wasn't actually, it was Bartonella, cat scratch fever. I knew it was from that tick bite. but But the general practitioner, you know, they got a ton of money out of my insurance company and put me through weeks and weeks of testing.
00:48:46
Jen Joray
And I kept saying like, this isn't right. This isn't what I have. I don't have a cyst in my knee. i I just have trouble with my joints now because I got a tick bite. So the information is out there. We know so, so, so much.
00:48:59
Jen Joray
But the communities that know that information are like naturopaths. They're functional medicine. They're people who study traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine or they're acupuncturists. They're not the general practitioners.
00:49:15
Jen Joray
And so because of that divide, I'm hoping that changes over the years. The only way we can actually protect and heal ourselves is to have that information.
00:49:26
Jen Joray
So like I can give you a few great places to start if you want more information. One is Dr. Stephen Buhner, Be Like Boy,
00:49:38
Jen Joray
E-U-H-N-E-R, Stephen Buhner has a book called Healing Lyme. It's all tick-borne illnesses throughout his book. He saw over 25,000 patients for tick-borne illnesses when he wrote that first book, and he has a second edition out now.
00:49:51
Jennifer Gulizia
wow
00:49:55
Jen Joray
It's really deep. It goes deep into the myths, the problems, what you're going to get from your general practitioner, the realities of living with long-term Lyme,
00:50:05
Jen Joray
of just getting Lyme for the first time. Like he goes really in depth. It's not just Lyme. It can be other things. And I don't think this is going away because, you know, I'm 47. I was a girl in the 80s in Connecticut. My husband's 50.
00:50:22
Jen Joray
five almost 56 and he was born it right outside of old lime connecticut where it was first talked about and when we were kids it did not exist i would sit in the grass i never had a tick on me till i was in middle school high school and then i started like i got one on my head i remember saying like what why do i have this like they just weren't around
00:50:44
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh.
00:50:45
Jen Joray
So that was 30 years ago. So I think it's going to continue that we'll have a lot of tick pressure all over. People really need to read a little bit and learn a little bit about what they can do.
00:51:00
Jen Joray
Simple thing, at the end of the day, take your pants off and hang them up. My neighbor taught me this. It was invaluable. Ticks will crawl to the highest point because they come up to the blade of a grass on the tip of the blade so that they can grab on to whatever walks by.
00:51:12
Jennifer Gulizia
oh
00:51:16
Jen Joray
So that same method can be used at home. Hang your pants up on a hook And the ticks will crawl up. It might take a couple hours, but they'll be at the rim of your waistband. So you'll be able to see like, oh, I had a tick in my pants leg.
00:51:32
Jen Joray
I found one on my trim on my doorway once that must have crawled across the floor and went up the the door, like maybe three, four feet up. And I was like, oh, OK, there's a tick.
00:51:43
Jen Joray
So there are that's how they're prescribed to be. So you can like use their natural methods against them and hang your stuff up and use a sticky roller on your dog. I like pat it against him because rolling doesn't actually get them. But if I squish it and I pull it off, I'll get a tick.
00:52:05
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
00:52:05
Jen Joray
I have a little tick comb for my dog because he's a short hair mini schnauzer. He has short hair because I groom him. him So I'll like run the tick comb through him if I feel anything funny. And sure enough, there might be a little tiny deer tick.
00:52:18
Jen Joray
But the nymphs are so small, anybody can miss them. They can be in your hairline. And even if you do a good tick check, you can still miss them. So I highly recommend researching and considering using tinctures, at least during tick season.
00:52:36
Jen Joray
Some more resources, Japanese knotweed is an excellent tincture. That's probably... going to come out as number one for many, many healthcare professionals in a more natural approach is is the knotweed.
00:52:49
Jen Joray
Cryptolepis is another really good one. begins with a crypto, C-R-Y-P-T-O. Cryptolepis, I take a tincture called Cryptolepis Plus because it's got some other things that the office I work with really loves.
00:53:04
Jen Joray
and And then
00:53:07
Jen Joray
Cat's claw is something you really should have a naturopath work with you
Natural Pet Care and Sourcing Clean Herbs
00:53:10
Jen Joray
on. Don't just start taking cat's claw. It's really potent. There are so many other things. and then for like any antivirals honestly any antivirals you could even just drink fresh tea every day that's got to help a little bits of oregano sage rosemary calendula flower or two i mean i could list off another 10 things some anise hyssop little bee balm some yarrow some feverfew leaves just two or three leaves of all those crush them up in your fingers pour some boiling water over them
00:53:46
Jen Joray
I don't even strain it out. I just drink the tea and I like, sometimes I chew or nibble on the leaves at the end. That it boosts your body in a huge way. Like those little things can do a lot.
00:53:57
Jennifer Gulizia
Amazing.
00:54:02
Jennifer Gulizia
It's interesting that you were talking about hanging the pants up. I'm going back to that because we started noticing that we were finding the ticks in our bathroom.
00:54:07
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:54:10
Jennifer Gulizia
So we had, at first we started taking our pants off in the bathroom and leaving them on the ground and showering. And then we'd find the ticks halfway up the bathroom counter or on the trim.
00:54:21
Jennifer Gulizia
And you're right because they're crawling up. So now we take them off in the garage and leave them out in the garage, but I'll start hanging them up so they don't even come in the house. But then someone told me that with the Inessential Oil Spray, I start, I get out of our vehicle at the farm and I spray around my boots and then i spray in my pants on my leg so that they're not going to want to crawl at my leg. And then someone told me to spray around your waistline too.
00:54:46
Jennifer Gulizia
so that you can keep them. So if they, if they do crawl up your pants, that hopefully they're not going to want to go past your waistline and knock on wood. I haven't had any more since I've started spraying my waistline up on the upper half of my body, because I mean, we're recording this live and hopefully I'll have a video version of this episode available.
00:55:07
Jennifer Gulizia
But there's so many times all of a sudden now where I'm sitting and I'm just like talking to someone and here I am like picking at my face or reaching in my shirt all I can think about is that I've got ticks crawling on me because it's it's new to me.
00:55:18
Jen Joray
Oh, I know.
00:55:20
Jennifer Gulizia
It's not something that I'm used to so I know some people are listening and probably thinking, oh, I deal with them all the time. And other people like myself are newer to experiencing them because even we've never taken our dogs to the farm because we have small dogs.
00:55:36
Jennifer Gulizia
And as soon as we get the grass mowed they'll come with us, but we want the grass cut down first because we have coyotes also that are getting in through our fence right now, but just walking them in our neighborhood and an urban neighborhood, they're still getting ticks this year.
00:55:40
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:55:49
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:55:49
Jennifer Gulizia
So.
00:55:50
Jen Joray
Well, I just took my dog off of those prescription drugs. Like you were saying, your dog may have had seizures from them. My dogs definitely got, they they would throw up every time they had that pill by the end of their life.
00:55:56
Jennifer Gulizia
huh.
00:55:59
Jennifer Gulizia
Hmm.
00:56:01
Jen Joray
And they lived to like between nine and 12 and a half. But at the end of their life, like around the eight year mark, That's where the pesticides that they were taking monthly that I was giving them monthly had built up enough in their body that it was really making them sick.
00:56:15
Jen Joray
So with Grainger, my current Schnauzer, I stopped that last year.
00:56:15
Jennifer Gulizia
ahha
00:56:20
Jen Joray
And I was like, I don't think it's going to, the tinctures might not work as well, but I don't want to, I don't want to slowly poison him basically was what I keep thinking. And honestly, it's working.
00:56:28
Jennifer Gulizia
Right.
00:56:30
Jen Joray
I found a tick latched on and it had died just like it would have with the pharmaceutical pill. It had died from the tincture in his blood.
00:56:39
Jennifer Gulizia
Wow.
00:56:40
Jen Joray
It took longer, but it still had the same end result. I was like, yes, that's huge, right? That means there's protection there and it's a natural protection.
00:56:50
Jennifer Gulizia
Absolutely. So I'm curious, the tinctures, are you making them or are you buying them from the vet and your naturopath?
00:56:52
Jen Joray
Yeah.
00:56:59
Jennifer Gulizia
Where do people find these?
00:57:01
Jen Joray
Yeah, so you can do all those things. There are layers. Again, it's a lot like buying your own food. Some of it you could do yourself. It might be easier for you. What you'll benefit from if you make it yourself is, number one, you'll have a huge quantity. You can make a half gallon for like maybe $60, $75 compared to two-ounce bottle for $50.
00:57:20
Jen Joray
compared to a two- ounce bottle for $60, $70 or to $60.
00:57:27
Jennifer Gulizia
wow.
00:57:28
Jen Joray
It's literally like the same price retail for ah a two-ounce bottle as it is to make yourself a half-gallon bottle. So here are some quick resources if you want to start making some.
00:57:37
Jennifer Gulizia
my gosh.
00:57:40
Jen Joray
Number one, you have to find clean material. That's the hardest part. And that's what I've spent some years now studying where I can source the herbs from because this is a great thing for another podcast.
00:57:54
Jen Joray
There are not enough herbs being produced in the U.S. So most of the major herb suppliers, and I can name them for you if you want, are purchasing their product from overseas.
00:58:05
Jen Joray
And those countries have various ways of, or not at all, detecting for, you know, contaminants like mold, salmonella, other materials not supposed to be what they're saying.
00:58:20
Jen Joray
They might cut it with something from a non-reliable source and then you're consuming something you don't even know what it is.
00:58:22
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
00:58:27
Jen Joray
So it's really crucial that you know where your material is coming from and you trust the company that's producing it. So some of the bigger places you can buy from are Star West Botanicals. Not my first choice, but it's easy to get stuff through them.
00:58:40
Jen Joray
Mountain Rose Herbs. I found good and bad things from them. Pacific Botanicals is my number one go-to. They have a zero tolerance policy for contaminants.
00:58:51
Jen Joray
And we've actually had a couple hours now online with the purchaser, Nate Brennan, because he's like, I will buy whatever you can produce. It just has to be clean. You know, I'll take a sample. If it checks out, I will buy what you can produce.
00:59:06
Jen Joray
He'll pay us as a farmer. And this is for anybody interested in getting into it. he'll pay us more for like let's say calendula dried calendula than he would pay for italian calendula because it's coming from the u.s and he's desperate to find more u.s suppliers that being said we did the numbers out for what it would cost to grow like a sling bag of dried calendula heads and it worked out to be like our whole farm's worth of rose
00:59:24
Jennifer Gulizia
Interesting.
00:59:37
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh, wow.
00:59:38
Jen Joray
So we're like, okay, well, I guess we can't produce... wholesale level, but if somebody has a lot of land or a lot of, they just want to do like almost a monocrop, I know that sounds bad, but like of one herb, you can heal a lot of people with that.
00:59:53
Jen Joray
And that's, it's really, really necessary. And we're all moving in that direction right now. Like the entire country is moving in that direction. General practitioners and naturopaths are going to have to work together because there's antibiotic resistivity. There's a market there for people.
01:00:08
Jen Joray
So people get into it, start learning about growing. if you don't want to grow your own stuff, you can try to supply source from good suppliers, farms that do, or like Pacific Botanicals or those other places I um you just want to be careful of heavy metals,
01:00:25
Jen Joray
Like we don't do seaweed. We don't eat much fish because there is heavy metal. You can't avoid it. It does add. You can't really get rid of it. So can buy finished tinctures from reputable sources.
01:00:40
Jen Joray
It's hard to find, but there definitely are places around our farm might produce them in the next couple years. We got organic certified for that purpose.
01:00:49
Jennifer Gulizia
Amazing.
01:00:50
Jen Joray
But we need money to be able to build a proper place so that we can then get certified for each of the products that we produce. So like...
01:01:01
Jen Joray
our certifying agency, has to watch us make a tincture and be like, yes, this is a clean room you're using. Yes, this is these are the proper practices that you're... Obviously, my husband being a PhD chemist, and he has set up labs at universities, like this is child's play for him. He laughs at that. He used to work in a glove box with explosives that could blow up the whole building, the whole university.
01:01:24
Jen Joray
and And we're talking about alcohol and a root. So like for him, this is easy, but... Also for him, he wants the proper environment first. We really should should try to go for the the highest quality. So we don't have a building to do that yet. We have our kitchen.
01:01:43
Jen Joray
But there are companies who have the buildings. ah The highest quality tinctures you can buy are going to have kitchen. Current Good Manufacturing Processes Certification, or CGMPs, and that's what all our medicines, you know, pharmaceuticals have that too, their CGMPs.
01:02:02
Jen Joray
They're huge hoops to jump through. They're extremely expensive, mostly just larger corporations can do those CGMPs.
01:02:11
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
01:02:12
Jen Joray
if you get tinctures that say, you know, CGMP, you can look it up online if it doesn't say it on the bottle, then you know you're good because that is those are rigorous. And then there's like the backyard people that do tinctures that are probably also great as long as you know the person and you know where they're sourcing.
01:02:29
Jen Joray
and So hopefully I answered your question in a few different ways. Like if it doesn't grow here in our zone, like don't try to don't try to force it and tincture it.
01:02:41
Jen Joray
It's probably better to dry to buy somebody. buy the dried root from somebody or buy the dry leaves from somebody and if you like are really interested in the sound of this but have no idea how to start here are some super resources that I have learned from Rico check c-e-c-h his website is called strictly medicinal seeds dot com And he's got a really pretty like green and yellow label, I think. But he is fabulous. He's really respondent. If you email him, he'll email you back.
01:03:18
Jen Joray
He and his family have spent his pretty much whole life sourcing these herbs from around the globe, bringing them home and propagating them to sell the seeds and some of the plant material. And he's right where you are.
01:03:31
Jennifer Gulizia
oh
01:03:32
Jen Joray
Yeah, he's in Oregon somewhere.
01:03:34
Jennifer Gulizia
Interesting.
01:03:35
Jen Joray
He's a fabulous resource. And if I can afford it one day, I will fly out and visit him whether he wants me to or not because he's amazing. So Rico Check of strictlymedicinalseeds.com.
01:03:49
Jen Joray
Super place to start if you want to grow a couple things. or by his plant material dried at the end of the season. The Zach Woods Herb Farm, Jeff and Melanie Carpenter are in Vermont.
01:04:01
Jen Joray
We had a couple consultations with them. They've written a book. It's really two books. It's like a newer version, but it's totally different than the first version. It's called The Organic Medicinal Herb Farm Grower or something.
01:04:19
Jen Joray
You can buy stuff from them that's extremely high quality, but you can also learn from their book if you want to start your own herb farm. And then like some online courses that would be of huge interest to anybody remotely excited about this stuff, the herbs, the tick stuff, is chestnutherbs.com, Juliet Blankospore.com.
01:04:42
Jen Joray
She's a sweetheart. We're studying with her. She has a two and a half year long course my daughter and I are taking.
01:04:49
Jennifer Gulizia
how
01:04:49
Jen Joray
and Or you could just do the shorter one, which I did first. It's medicine making. It's like a $500 course online. You have the material for life. It's got tons of amazing recipes. And you learn so much about the like herbal profiles like nettles, bee balm, just fabulous, easy to grow things, very safe things.
Empowerment Through Herbal Education
01:05:09
Jen Joray
There are other people too. Rosemary Gladstar is one of like the mothers of herbalism in our country. She also has a course. And one more. There's a guy in Ithaca. Is it Ithaca, New York?
01:05:21
Jen Joray
I'll check my phone quickly, but he is super fabulous. Seven song. It's a seven, the numeral S O N G song.
01:05:30
Jennifer Gulizia
Uh-huh.
01:05:32
Jen Joray
Like you're singing. His name is seven song. He's so awesome. He has a really beautiful website that he's switching over like this summer, to be an easier platform, but it's like a huge compilation of super information.
01:05:46
Jen Joray
Um, it's, it's an, it's an exciting road. You, if you go down it, you'll never stop going down it. It's very exciting.
01:05:53
Jennifer Gulizia
I love that. Well, this conversation took a huge detour from where I thought we were going to go today.
01:06:00
Jen Joray
I know I had all these notes and like all these great farming information, but that's okay.
01:06:05
Jennifer Gulizia
Well, I think what we should do if you're open to it is find a time to record a second interview because you have an incredible flower farm that you have a huge wedding business.
01:06:05
Jen Joray
yeah
01:06:17
Jennifer Gulizia
And I thought that's what we were going to talk about. And I opened my mouth and asked you about ticks. And i had no idea that you were such a wealth of knowledge about this subject. I think Love it. I learned so much and I'm sure that my audience as well gained so much information.
01:06:27
Jen Joray
Well, thanks.
01:06:33
Jennifer Gulizia
I'm so sorry again that you and your family all have suffered from Lyme disease, but it sounds like it has led you down this incredible path. I do want to know, i need to wrap this up for us and for our listeners, but I want to know with all that you've been through with your family with this Lyme disease,
01:06:45
Jen Joray
Yeah.
01:06:52
Jennifer Gulizia
Had you known this when your husband said, what about farming? Would have you still bought the farm?
01:06:58
Jen Joray
Oh my God, absolutely. This is the journey. This is where I'm meant to be.
01:07:04
Jennifer Gulizia
I love that answer.
01:07:04
Jen Joray
Yeah, absolutely. Because none of us know what our life holds, right? None of us know what the path is. And I think that's intentional. If we did know, we might run the other direction like you're alluding to.
01:07:16
Jennifer Gulizia
Totally.
01:07:18
Jen Joray
But that's the journey. I mean, we've met so many great people. And I feel like finally I'm in a position where I can start giving back by saying like, hey, if you have these weird symptoms, did you check, you know, for tick-borne stuff?
01:07:31
Jen Joray
Because That little phrase can change somebody's whole existence. And if you do and you don't handle it, it can become those seven major diseases. That stuff is like, that's what leads to a challenge later in life and the medical industry, the general practitioner medical industry is super happy to take your money and give you one.
01:07:52
Jen Joray
One pharmaceutical after another, but it's not necessarily going to and help you repair your body. And this more natural way of living is absolutely the answer. It's it's what's all around us. It's free.
01:08:07
Jen Joray
Even a lot of the knowledge is free and the experience just takes time and effort and a few dollars here and there of seeds or getting some seeds from your neighbor or your friend or us, you know, ask me, email me.
01:08:20
Jen Joray
There are a lot of resources out there and you can kind of build your knowledge. build your life from it so thankfully we did choose this life and I can continue learning but also give back by saying hey did you think about this like you can do that you know yeah
01:08:39
Jennifer Gulizia
I love it. Can i ask you, you said there are some symptoms real fast. Can you name a few of the symptoms that someone should be watching out for?
01:08:46
Jen Joray
wow well this is really a deep road and that's why I said the Stephen Buhner book
01:08:52
Jen Joray
Literally almost everything can develop from tick-borne illnesses and parasites. Literally almost everything. I mean, there's a big portion of the population now, RFK included, who will say cancer is caused by parasite by a parasitic infection.
01:09:08
Jen Joray
Looking back, my dad had a kidney removed. He had kidney cancer and my grandpa. It's possible that that was from a parasite. He lived in Africa for months. He was drinking and eating that food.
01:09:20
Jen Joray
I went to Africa in 1998. I got GI symptoms pretty bad for months.
01:09:24
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
01:09:26
Jen Joray
And I thought at the age of like 21 that I was going to need a colonoscopy to fix whatever it was. But my doctor said, like, drink this magnesium citrate. It was a whole bottle and you're supposed to take it. a couple teaspoons was a normal serving to like clear you out.
01:09:39
Jen Joray
He goes, take this whole bottle in one night. So I was like, oh, okay. And that just reset my gut bacteria. But it's possible way back then that I had these parasites that were always in me. I may have had this way before I thought I did. Like my tick bite in 2019 may have just been the last straw.
01:10:00
Jen Joray
I got scratched by my doctor's cat. My doctor was our family friend and they came over and brought their cat, which was kind of weird, but it scratched my forehead when I was a teenager and I he easily could have gotten the Bartonella that gave me the throat symptoms way back there as a teen.
01:10:17
Jen Joray
Then I went through college. I got mono. had had strep a number of times as an adult, as a teacher, and as a kid. I had had chicken pox. Like these things just add up and add up.
01:10:29
Jen Joray
All of us get them.
01:10:30
Jennifer Gulizia
Mm-hmm.
01:10:31
Jen Joray
They break your immune system down little by little. And if you're overtired, overworked, stressed, you're not eating well, for years and years and years, it builds and builds. And then then you can have a system crash. So it's possible that that tick bite was just the last straw.
01:10:48
Jen Joray
So like, I don't know, i don't want to scare anybody by saying this, but a lot of us have these issues that are just unchecked and nobody's gonna say, hey, by the way, so symptom wise,
01:11:01
Jen Joray
Like I said, it's literally everything. Joint pain and candida overgrowth can also present a lot like tick-borne illnesses. Joint pain, muscle pain, foggy but mind, forgetfulness, creaky and achiness.
01:11:19
Jen Joray
Sweats at night. That's a big one. I know that's also with menopause and that's also if you're sick, but you can have night sweats as your immune system is just overactive because it's getting taxed constantly and your immune system is what does that, I think.
01:11:33
Jen Joray
You have like those bad night sweats. I used to get those all the time, especially in the beginning of my treatment. And now I don't so much. dizziness, like pretty much any symptom.
01:11:46
Jen Joray
And there's this thing called PANS, pandas, which is like from when you're a kid, you get strep throat. And for some people, it never goes away. The strep virus can can make a home in the brain and cause severe aggression.
01:12:02
Jen Joray
And other problems. And this is like 12 and under, I think like it's a thing for kids ah ah called PANS, PANDAS, all capitals, it stands for something. And like a naturopathic office, very well versed on it, they know how to treat it.
01:12:17
Jen Joray
But if you go to a general practitioner, they don't even know what it's called. I brought it up at my regular doctor. He's like, what is that? So, and that's in the Tick book, that Healing Lyme book by Dr. Stephen Buhner. He goes through symptoms with big categories and you can flip through the pages quickly and just read the symptoms and be like, oh, I need to learn more about that.
01:12:37
Jen Joray
Or, oh, my neighbor has that. Or my, that's funny, that was in my family growing up, huh? it's a great book, a great book to just get a baseline. Yeah.
01:12:47
Jennifer Gulizia
I'll link to that in today's show notes and I'm going to have to go buy that book.
01:12:49
Jen Joray
Yeah. I told our school nurse about it last week. I'm like, you know this book, right? And she goes, no, I have to get that. ah Because she sees, you know, 400 kids a week. It sounds scary, but it's very empowering when you learn just some basics. And then you start realizing, I need to build up my immune system slowly.
01:13:09
Jen Joray
And these are the five herbs I can use to do that. Again, happy to share. I can go on for hours about this. it's It's exciting. It's empowering. It makes you want to do more for yourself and for your family. And then I'm at the point where I'm doing it for us, but I also really want to teach about it. I want to be like, hey,
01:13:28
Jen Joray
I notice you're limping. Like, have you looked into X, Y, and Z? So I'm not a doctor and I'm trying not to be one, but I do want to be a resource and help point people towards potential solutions for like, you know, really annoying things that we live with every day and we think they're normal and they're not.
01:13:35
Jennifer Gulizia
Ah-ha.
01:13:49
Jen Joray
Like, so one last one, the throat thing, Bartonella or cat scratch fever.
Closing Thoughts and Future Aspirations
01:13:54
Jen Joray
My naturopath said probably most people have it. because they think it's passed by tick bites, biting flies, mosquitoes, biting insects, fleas. You know, all of us are exposed to little biting insects, especially in Maine right now. It's black fly season.
01:14:12
Jen Joray
And he thinks like most people probably have it. But then if your immune system's taxed, it can present. For me and for most people, it presents as throat sensations.
01:14:25
Jen Joray
So like difficulty swallowing. For me, I felt like I was getting choked, like somebody was grabbing the center of my throat or pushing on me or standing on me.
01:14:36
Jen Joray
It was worse when I was craning at the computer by the end of the night. So I'd lie down, but it didn't go away. I'd wake up in the morning, I'd feel better, but like all through the next afternoon and evening, I mean, that continued for two years.
01:14:49
Jen Joray
I felt like it was so, it would panic me sometimes and I'd have to remind myself, look, Jen, you can breathe.
01:14:50
Jennifer Gulizia
Oh my gosh.
01:14:58
Jen Joray
You're okay. But, and i'm I can eat and I can swallow, so I'm okay. But that's a telltale sign. And in my first meeting with my doctor, my naturopath, he goes, oh yeah, it sounds like Bartonella.
01:15:10
Jen Joray
I'm like, really? There's a thing called that? Like, you can fix this? Thank you. And he fixed it. I don't have that sensation anymore. It's literally, it feels like a miracle.
01:15:23
Jen Joray
And it's just, it's nature's herbs and people's knowledge of it that combine together to create the solutions for so many of those symptoms. So yeah, there are a lot of symptoms.
01:15:33
Jennifer Gulizia
and
01:15:34
Jen Joray
GI, GI, um irregular heartbeat. We have issues in our house with mold causing irregular heartbeat, arrhythmia and stuff like mold does that. So tick borne stuff can contribute maybe.
01:15:47
Jen Joray
There are herbs to help support the body through those times, and we use them and they work. So it's like really exciting and empowering.
01:15:57
Jennifer Gulizia
ah ah You are so full of knowledge, Jen
01:15:58
Jen Joray
Yeah.
01:16:01
Jennifer Gulizia
So tell us, let's wrap this up. Tell us where can my listeners find you and connect with you?
01:16:03
Jen Joray
Okay.
01:16:07
Jen Joray
Oh, okay. Well, Eastern River Farm, we have an Instagram and a website, and I'm really responsive on email. I'm happy to talk on the phone. I've had lots of phone consultations.
01:16:20
Jen Joray
If you want an official farm consultation, we charge $75 an hour. We try to be cheap compared to a lot of people because we don't want to make money on other farmers' backs. We want to assist and provide information. We're really generous that way. We've done a lot of farm consults this past year or two.
01:16:36
Jen Joray
Yeah, email, and i'm I'm happy to give my number if it's a longer conversation.
01:16:41
Jennifer Gulizia
Perfect. Thank you. Well, we will chat after this recording and get you back on the podcast so we can talk about flowers.
01:16:43
Jen Joray
Yeah.
01:16:48
Jennifer Gulizia
But I know I learned so much from you today.
01:16:48
Jen Joray
Yay! Yay.
01:16:51
Jennifer Gulizia
Thank you so much for joining us today.
01:16:51
Jen Joray
Oh, thanks.
01:16:53
Jennifer Gulizia
Before we say goodbye, is there anything you want to leave our listeners with today?
01:16:58
Jen Joray
The world's your oyster. If you dream it, you can do it. It's your... What you see and what you think about becomes your reality. So dream and then do it.
01:17:10
Jennifer Gulizia
Yes, that's beautiful advice. Well, Jen, thank you so much. We'll see you again on the podcast soon.
01:17:16
Jen Joray
All right. Thanks so much, Jennifer. I'm honored again. Thanks so much.
01:17:19
Jennifer Gulizia
Thank you.