"When you have ingredients this pure, the next thing to do is – as little as possible."

Jared and Velisa Pickard – Founders

The overwhelming majority of our ingredients are grown by hand in our family garden, inspired by the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, founder of Biodynamic agriculture, known as one of the world’s most holistic methods for producing the cleanest, most nutrient dense, and vital ingredients imaginable.

If not grown in our garden, we partner with some of the most highly regarded regenerative and Biodynamic® farmers and wild-harvesters throughout the United States to source only the freshest and most highly-realized ingredients.

Growing and sourcing the world’s cleanest, most nutrient dense products is not our business, it is our entire life. These products are the natural byproduct of our devotion to this lifestyle.

Why do we grow our own ingredients?

Only .6% of US farmland is Certified Organic, and over 90% of this .6% is farmed industrially, by the same handful of companies that chemically farm the rest of the nation. This means that only a small slice of that .6% is small-scale, regenerative, family-owned farms like you probably imagine when thinking of the word organic. And it further means that even for skincare companies that advertise as Organic, the overwhelming majority of those ingredients will be industrially farmed, based on these statistics.

Biodynamic Farming, the method originated by Rudolf Steiner, represents just 0.002% of US farmland, and over 90% of these acres are dedicated to a single crop, wine grapes, where Biodynamics has a disproportionate following. Meaning, that close to 0% of Biodynamic crops are medicinal botanicals that go beyond wine.

Although we purposefully dropped both our Organic and Biodynamic certifications in 2020 (read our article here on why), these are the methods which inspire our daily practices to this day.

Growing our own ingredients is hands down the best and most certain way of achieving the highest degree of quality as well as quality control. Remember, we are what we eat, and what we eat is also what it eats. The only way to control quality in the bottle is to control quality in the field.

Growing and sourcing the world’s cleanest, most nutrient dense products is not our business, it is our entire life. These products are the natural byproduct of our devotion to this lifestyle.

How do we grow our ingredients?

We grow everything in our garden according to the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, founder of Biodynamics. This involves a variety of things, a few of which we name here:

  • We treat the garden as a living, sentient being
  • We utilize no pesticides, herbicides, rodenticides, fungicides or molluscicides, including Organic versions of these products.
  • We use no factory farmed animal byproducts, including Organic NPK fertilizers, nearly all of which are sourced through this channel (bone meal, blood meal, and feather meal from factory farms).
  • We rely on increased soil health and biodiversity to increase fertility and immunity
  • We work in rhythm with Nature according to the Biodynamic planting calendar. Proponents of this method believe it to result in the highest nutrient density and medicinal benefit in their crops.
  • We design our garden space to slow, sink, and spread rainwater, reducing the need for irrigation.
  • We rely heavily on mulch, straw, and cover crops to keep our soil covered, alive, dynamic, and fertile.
  • More than 75% of our garden is reserved for biodiversity, native species, pollinators, wildflowers, and habitat for wildlife.
  • We utilize no mechanical equipment in our garden, reducing contamination from petroleum, tires, oil, etc.
  • We utilize the Biodynamic Preparations, a collection of herbal, mineral, and manure based homeopathic medicines for the garden inspired by Rudolf Steiner, applied throughout the year.
  • We hand tend, prune, and pick each and every botanical which enters our production, ensuring only the most highly-realized, nutrient dense, truly vital ingredients become Be Here products.

How do we source the ingredients we do not grow?

We only source ingredients from other growers and wild-harvesters who share our passion for quality, regenerative principles, and holistic health. Many of our partners are the absolute best in their field. We have one-on-one, direct relationships with our partner growers, many of whom produce dedicated ingredients specifically with us in mind.

We go to extreme lengths to ensure the quality of our ingredients when sourced through partners. For example, we send our own glass and steel vessels to the olive mill on the day our partners are pressing our Olive Oil and Sweet Almond Oil, eliminating all chances of adulteration, including from storage in plastic, or heat, or exposure to air. There are likely very few, or no other skincare companies in America who are going to this length. If they are, then we would likely be great friends.

In addition to our partner growers, we also work with other exceptional brands who take sourcing as seriously as we do to create unique collaborations, such as our Sun Potion x Be Here Farm + Nature superfood face mask collection, or our Botanical Tallow, made in collaboration with Summer Solace Tallow, a former sous chef at chez panisse, and a true tallow artisan.

These are the ingredients in our collection which we grow in our family garden:

Saint John’s Wort (wild)
Calendula
Tulsi
German Chamomile
Roman Chamomile
Yellow Dock (wild)
Gotu Kola
Lavender
Stinging Nettle
Rosemary
Clary Sage
Lemongrass
Oregano
Rose Geranium
Wormwood
Greek Mountain Tea
Damascus Rose
Comfrey
Yarrow
Plantain
Echinacea
Wild horsetail

These are the ingredients we source from other world-class partners:

Raw Honey and hand-harvested Beeswax
Coconut Oil (Certified Biodynamic)
Sweet Almond Oil (non-certified, biodynamic practices)
Olive Oil (Certified Biodynamic)
Blood Orange essential oil (non-certified, organic practices)
Vanilla Bean in Jojoba Oil (Certified Organic)
Cacao butter (Certified Organic)
Summer Solace’s Regenerative Tallow®
Vetiver essential oil (non-certified organic practices)
Damask Rose essential oil (non-certified organic practices)
Spanish Sage essential oil (non-certified organic practices)
Sun Potion’s Freshwater Pearl Powder
Organic Flax-based Glycerin (Certified Organic)
Mediterranean Sea Salt
French Pink Clay
Aloe (Certified Organic)
Sun Potion’s Yin Power (Shatavari, Tocos, Ashwagandha, Freshwater Pearl, Astragalus, Wild Pine Pollen, Reishi, He Shou Wu)

When less is more

This is an exercise in less is more. In total, across our entire collection, we feature these 40 ingredients. Many modern skincare products contain 40 ingredients in a single product, let alone an entire collection. When you have 40 ingredients in a product, how much of any one ingredient is really in there? Our products are about letting our ingredients shine, and giving them plenty of room to do so. For this reason, it is rare to find more than 7 ingredients in any one of our formulas, making this an exercise in mindfulness and intentionality.

The norm is to overcompensate for a lack of vitality in the source ingredients by piling on more. Furthermore, when ingredients are denatured, broken down into isolates and separated from their whole-plant constituents, formulators must rely on a host of scientific innovations to blend, stabilize, homogenize, texturize, scent, and preserve their creations. This is where you will find a few dozen extra ingredients on a product list. When products are made out of all-natural superfoods, there is no reason to denature them in the first place, therefore no reason to use additives or modifiers to stitch them back together.