Stories Related to After 45 Years Living Off The Land, This Maine Woman Has A Natural Elixir For Anything

The roses were blooming, their fragrant pink petals opening to the June sun. The lavender was just behind, their tiny purple buds starting to unfurl. At Blessed Maine Herb Farm in Athens, it was time to harvest both plants so they could be made into medicinal teas, elixirs and balms. Aislinn Sarnacki | BDN Aislinn Sarnacki | BDN Ingredients for the herbal products of Blessed Maine Herb Farm line the shelves of a workroom on June 20, at the farm. “We do a lot with roses,” said the farm’s founder and owner Gail Faith Edwards, 69, as she steered around bumblebees to pluck delicate petals from a rosa rugosa bush. She popped a petal into her mouth and chewed it as she worked, dropping the rest of the petals into a wide basket propped on her hip. On her ridgetop farm in central Maine, Edwards tends herb gardens that contain more than 100 medicinal plants and sprawls over about four acres.