Robert Eidus: Ginseng Farmer
by Kate Farley –
Robert Eidus is an avid American ginseng grower and educator who owns and operates Eagle Feather Organic Farm. To cultivate the next generation of responsible forest farmers, he also hosts classes, workshops, a radio show, and serves as president of the North Carolina Ginseng Association.
“It seems like with the environment, everyone’s up on trees and animals and insects and butterflies. But the plants are just not really defended at all.”
Robert Eidus considers his life’s purpose defending Appalachia’s wild woodland medicinal plants—plants like trillium, goldenseal, and especially American ginseng. At Eagle Feather Organic Farm, a medicinal plant nursery nestled in a mountain hollow north of Marshall, North Carolina, Eidus propagates a wide variety of medicinal herbs that he offers for sale and prepares into medicinal tinctures and capsules.
The heart and soul of Eidus’s work is American ginseng. Eidus got a later start in ginseng compared to many other growers and dealers. His first career was in real estate in Raleigh, North Carolina, but he grew frustrated with the business and yearned for a job that would be more physical and enable him to cultivate a deeper connection with the natural world.
“Whether it was a dream or a vision or whatever, I thought that I had this conversation with Grandfather Ginseng about being a person who could advocate for the plants. And that was kind of it.” In the early 1990s, Eidus built a house on the property that is now Eagle Feather Farm and began to seek prominent herbalists and experts in plant lore to help him learn how to steward the plants. Eventually, he settled on the technique of “wild simulation,” wherein the plant grows organically in a forest plot that mimics ginseng’s natural habitat.
Eidus is also a registered ginseng dealer and occasionally buys wild plants to process into medicine. However, he will buy ginseng only from those who harvest ginseng responsibly. Eidus promotes responsibility among other ginseng farmers, and encourages them not to use chemicals, which he believes poison the plants. He seeks to cultivate the skills of others through site visits, phone consultations, and workshops, as well as information made available through his website and local radio program.
As president of the North Carolina Ginseng Association (NCGA), Eidus supports sustainable ginseng growing and harvesting even further. He has used the NCGA to build community among younger, newer ginseng growers in North Carolina. The NCGA also advocates for state-level policies in North Carolina that incentivize organic ginseng growing and preserve wild populations.
Robert Eidus wears many hats, from consultant to association president, but above all he is a champion of ginseng stewardship and intends to see the plant thrive for many generations to come.
The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage will be launching a new web site sometime in the next few months, featuring 50 profiles of American ginseng experts from around the Appalachian region. The site is called “American Ginseng: Local Knowledge, Global Roots” and its aim is to provide a wide variety of expertise to inform people about this amazing plant, its ecosystem, and the need for conservation of ginseng and other forest botanicals.
