Goods From The Woods started working to demonstrate solutions to environmental problems resulting from poor use of natural resourecs in the early-1990s. George and Penny Frazier developed a number of social and environmental theories related to land use and human needs. Those theories are applied through the family business, Goods From The Woods in 1996, as a testing ground of the theory, "create a demand for a wild product, in order to create a demand for wilderness." Goods From The Woods was conceived as the result of a DOI oil and gas lease public hearing in Homer, Alaska in 1994. At that time The Fraziers observed that  political processes and public input were not as highly valued as economic returns and tax revenues. They  thought if  they could demonstrate that land could be kept in its wild state and produce a  economic return, more wilderness could be protected. The company mantra has been, "more species, more choices."
   The Fraziers took the theory and applied to the largest land mass we could locate, public lands in the Southwestern United States with www.pinenut.com. When they started in the Southwest, scientific papers reported 63,000,000 acres of pinon juniper. It has been a struggle to integrate new thinking into the bureaucracy cultures of Washington D.C. or Ely Nevada. One year Penny worked with Western Watersheds and stopped 120,000 acres of pinyon destruction for fuels reduction. Imagine that: stop forest fires - cut down and roller chop, long lived, fire resistant pinon trees that produce 28 times more protein per acre than beef cattle.
   The Fraziers moved to the Ozarks in 1999 from the Southwest. In 2001 the Frazier family began to work in that ecosystem with the same ideas, but appling those idea on private land, rather than public ones.  They began to work with other small farmers in creating "A Wildcrafter's Growers Group . The first group project was to explore growing and adding value to native plants. The group received S.A.R.E. producers grant to help preserve native biodiversity through use on small farms. The company creates botanical products from certified wild/organic native plants. They then grew the plants organically or work with small farm generally accepted practices in wild harvesting native plants. Part of the profits support restoration and community development which enhances Ozark Biodiversity. All plants are hand harvested and hand process. Distillation are done on farm with high quality control and only distilled water is used to produce flower essence.

   Goods From The Woods began to shift its focus in 2003, took on witch hazel www.organicwitchhazel.com. It is most used botanical in the world - second to none. It was all controlled by a single company, with 3 major subsidiaries . The Fraziers certified a large forest  wild crop and began to document values of wild harvests with a group of other small farmers and land owners. They  then began to engage small manufacturing and worked to develop a prototype small distillation unit, that can be spread afford ably among small producers. (SMALL, Small, Small,with big ideas). They lined up some leases and started working with share cropping with harvesters. Harvesters often get a share of the final product, to in turn, create their own goods. In 2009, the brick and mortar retail special forest products store was opened in Salem Mo as a cooperative venture with local producers.   The company is committed to using biodiversity as a community resource and developing local enterprise based in care for the enviornment.

For more information, please see our press page: http://www.pinenut.com/pressroom.htm