Meet Joe Vandenberg | Herbalist & Tea Merchant

We had the good fortune of connecting with Joe Vandenberg and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Joe, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
The way I see it, “risk” has a very particular relationship to faith. When one is in tune with the rhythm and flow of life, there isn’t much place for risk because faith quickly supersedes it. Many people might use the word “trust” instead of “faith” because of the often dogmatic and religious use of the word faith. But here I see a very distinct difference in that trust is something insured by some sort of promise or predictability, while true faith is something that comes from a place of surrender. Trust is, in this way, a sort of synonym for risk: you cast out your line and hope that you reel back in the expected results or maybe even a better result. If you do, you gain trust that you can do it again. If not, it becomes more of a risk to try again. Faith, however, can supplant the need for risk entirely. In a state of faith, one can simply observe the processes of life and move in sync with its waves; a sort of dance where you don’t gamble on the next move that your partner will make, but rather, develop a sensitivity to their movements and simply respond in kind. Its less of an intellectual caluculation and more of a synchronization through feeling. I’m sure by now you’re like “yeah, that sounds good, but it isn’t at all practical when I actually have to make serious decisions…”. But hear me when I say that the art of surrender and opening the senses has made all my decisions in the last 8 years of my life much easier and far more fruitful than all the years of decisiveness before that. The practical part comes in developing that sensitivity. The more I tune into the feeling sense and surrender my expectations, the more I am privy to the subtle undulations of the fabric of my reality. Thus, I am shown right when to act and how to do so. Part of this is that I see and feel the whole dance of life to be deeply intelligent and not simply random chaos which I need to organize by force. I need not predict the results of my decisions if I yeild to that intelligence and sincerely inquire into which way I should move. I need not demand when I can simply ask. And when I disregard this intelligence, which definitely isn’t a rare occurence, I usually learn a very obvious and sometimes hard lesson. This doesn’t mean I “know” what I am doing all the time, but rather than manufacturing some reality which I think is best, I open myself as best I can to the greater potentiality and fall into step with it. My decisions are then informed by bright beacons of wisdom and, in a way, those decisions become integrated into the greater process of life. Risk just seems moot from this place of faith.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I own and operate Sage and Cedar Herbal Tea Company alongside my partner, Ashley, here in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Together we are attempting to contribute to the cultivation of more meaningful relationships within our local community and thus to the world. On the surface this comes in the form of a tea company, which serves as a resource for premium quality loose leaf teas and medicinal herbs. Our teas use a variety of herbs and specialty tea leaf sourced directly from small farms which take pride in growing only the cleanest and most potent plants with the utmost care and conscious attention. We try to avoid buzz words like “organic” or “non-GMO” because quality goes far beyond certifications and is really rooted in the character of the actual people who are growing the plants, as well as the health of the land from which they grow. Nonetheless, we pride ourselves on using only the highest quality ingredients and no flavorings or additives, (just whole plants!) which come from people we know and trust. Our blends and specialty teas are curated seasonally based on each harvest and are blended with health and wellness actions in mind.

Our more discreet mission is to connect people to plants, which implies also connecting people with their environment as well. On a practical level this includes encouraging a greater demand for the highest quality medicinal herbs and specialty tea leaf and also serving as a resource for people to access them. Higher demand for a truly high-quality product encourages the success of farms which specialize in growing these types of herbs and tea leaf. Serving as a resource for the community to access them allows the farms to focus on what they do best (farming!) while offering the average person a reliable source for these plants as well as information regarding how best to incorporate them into their lives. Everyone seems to know that “tea is good for you”, but what is less common is the knowledge behind “why?”. We hope to answer that question through direct dialogue and personal interaction.

We have found the best way to get this interaction is through vending at various community markets! Thus, this is our primary venue of sales and includes farmer’s markets, craft fairs, art festivals, yoga conferences, etc. These events are the perfect place for us to meet a wide range of people from various demographics and to have meaningful conversations about plant medicine (and life in general) which then leads to a deeper connection with the teas and the plants therein. We also sell our teas to a wide variety of local cafes, restaurants, coffee shops, natural food stores, and other boutiques in the hopes of cultivating relationships with our fellow business owners and adding to an overall increase in the quality of ingredients these businesses use. What’s more, we also sell online to those who want a regular supply of our teas or possibly live out of our local area and cannot access them otherwise.

I think what truly sets us apart from other businesses of our type is, most apparently, our quality of product. But maybe more subtly and importantly, there is something which makes us dramatically different from the average tea company: the lack of the common desire to become a national or large-scale operation. We focus very intentionally on serving our local community and live by that principle in most everything we do. We find concepts like “local” and “community” to be a way of life and not just a marketing campaign. It’s not as if we refuse to offer our teas remotely, it’s simply that we have no real interest in pursuing it as a primary method of revenue. We are very grateful and excited to share with those who live in other regions and may have found us online or at an event as they were passing through our area. It just seems most important to us that we really put our energy into direct relationships with people, and scaling to a national brand really ruins that familiarity and meaningful bond with your fellow human (a.k.a. “customer”). We love knowing peoples’ names and stories and being a real integral part of their lives. In our near-decade in the tea industry we have found that there is an implication that it is almost mandatory to try to grow beyond your local community and to appeal to as large a market as possible. That idea, however, contradicts our greater mission. On the back end, we do source herbs from various farms around the world and truly hope to contribute to those farms’ successes, however, this is primarily because we simply do not have these types of farms in our area. Thus, we gratefully rely on the ability to reach out to the greater countrywide and worldwide community. Nevertheless, we are also very dedicated to sustainably sourcing what we can from our local farmers and ecosystems. Furthermore, we are dedicated to encouraging our existing local farms to grow more medicinal herbs. This is a challenging and lifelong project which moves as slowly as the seasons, but it has proven a worthy and very rewarding goal.
We have learned a lot along this winding and unconventional path. We started this journey with the idea of sharing the wisdom of plants and their healing virtues, but I think our biggest revelation along the way is that people are, really and truly, starving for a deeper connection to their fellow humans and to nature at large. In turn, we have also found that people are quite enthusiastic about anyone who may share a path forward in cultivating this connection. It’s amazing the number of people interested in improving their quality of life and the quality of their relationships but simultaneously don’t know why they feel disconnected in the first place, nor where to start in the process of reconnecting. It’s overwhelming, the positive response we have gotten in simply holding space for people to ask questions and converse about their lives, their diets, and the potential for herbs to help them heal. Our business has gone so far beyond some idealized version of success and has really become simply a platform for us as humans to weave ourselves into the tapestry of our community and then that tapestry into the great fabric of all life. It is a blessing to recieve attention from an organization like Shoutout AZ because it offers us the opportunity to encourage others to devote themselves to their communities in a similar manner.

As such, I find the one thing myself and my company hope to contribute to is this sort of deepening of relationships; locally, with people who breathe the same air, drink the same water, and see the same sunrise, but also broadly with people around the world who can share interests, skills, and wisdom which might align with our own. It is import to have relationships not sustained via tech (which is valuable in its own right) but instead through meaningful in-person interactions, in a state of vulnerability, regarding the most human and intimate aspects of our lives. This connection to our fellow humans quickly leads us to a deeper sense of interbeing with our environment, and with all of life, which then in turn opens us to seeing how interwoven we have always been and always will be into the fabric of all life. If you ever visit the Black Hills, we would love to meet you and make this connection.

Whole plants, whole people, and whole communities.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If you visit the Black Hills, I would recommend visiting the central hills and Custer State Park for your daytime activities. Come in the spring or summer and enjoy the outdoors as much as you can, but please take care of our beautiful forest. PLEASE. 🙂

For food, I would reccommend Caverna Coffee + Bistro for breakfast and a tasty cuppa tea or coffee, then Bashful Bison for a delicious, totally handmade, and locally sourced lunch, and for dinner you cannot skip on Antunez Cruisine for an unmatched meal of Latin, Hispanic, and Mexican fusion.

Definitely go get some beers (if that’s your thing) at Sawyer Brewing, or some wine next door at Creekside Bean & Vine, and finally, stop for the best ice cream you’ve ever had at Leones’ Creamery.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I owe much of my quality of life to various thought-leaders, teachers, and spritual figures in the traditions of daoism, zen buddhism, hinduism, western psychology, and western herbalism; too many to name them all. But I would say that more than anyone I am indebted to my partner, Ashley, who has contantly kept me in check and continues to show me what it is like to actually care and to put something before myself. She is my mirror in all ways, and faithfully reflects back to me my true character and what I am truly capable of.

Website: www.sagecedarherbalteas.com

Instagram: @sagecedarsd

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SageCedarSD