Made on Cape Cod: Good 4 You Tea

Although she has been gardening since she was fifteen years old, Jess Morgan comes from what she calls a “meat and potatoes” family.

But when Morgan, 27, left Yarmouth to go to school at UMASS Amherst, she was exposed to different ideas, cultures and modes of thought.

There she was also able to design her own major - Cultural and Environmental Sustainability. She designed her curriculum around plant and soil science classes, art classes and social change classes.

For the past seven years Morgan, who now lives in Falmouth, has been hand blending and packaging teas from her own recipes. She grows and gathers locally grown, organic and fair trade herbs to make the teas - as she says “the earth is my garden.”

While living in Amherst Morgan picked up a lot of information about herbs and began taking classes with well known herbalists. Now she says she “learns from experience, going to symposiums, and by cross referencing a lot of books.”

Morgan makes 24 different kinds of tea. Her best seller is the Chakra Sample Pack, which includes twenty one tea bags, seven different varieties including “wake up and live,” “mellow mood” and “misty morning.”

Other popular flavors include Morgan’s Pure Bliss Chai Tea that is a blend of Yerba mate, green tea, cinnamon, chicory root, nutmeg, ginger, clove, stevia, black pepper, cardamom and star anise; and her Talking Blues Tea, which she markets as a sore throat healer - a peppermint tea that also has ginger, orange peels, anise seeds, elderberries, eucalyptus, clove, lemon balm, red raspberry leaves, rosemary, thyme, hyssop, marshmallow root, licorice and sage.

Once the tea is dried, Morgan hand packs the tea into tea bags. This is the only part of the process that she calls work, “because the rest is so fun.”

About three years ago Morgan ventured into the world of body care products, starting with a healing salve. It took her two years to perfect a recipe of calendula flowers, milky oat tops, wild harvested violets, burdock root, marshmallow root, and chamomile flowers. She also infuses it with olive oil for a month in the sun, and later adds shea butter, mango butter, beeswax and lavender essential oil.

In addition to the salves, Good 4 You offers soaps, an herbal shampoo, tinctures, tooth powder, and a variety of lip balms.

Presently Morgan works with about one hundred herbs, but she would like to eventually just use herbs that can be found locally, such as mint and nettle.

Morgan designs all of the art and the labels for the packaging. Eventually Morgan might enlist some help, but right now she is just happy that there is a demand for her product.

“Every time I sell something it means I have made someone aware of handmade products and herbs,” she said.

For Morgan, it is not about getting big or making a lot of money - “it’s about the message.” She sees advancing the Good 4 You brand as her way of “doing something good.” It is her “way of activism…and how [she] can change society.”

Good 4 you Tea products are available at Cupcapes of Falmouth located at 155 Main St, and online at www.good4youherbaltea.com .