A little about Tarn & Moon and our makers..
Tarn & Moon was born through a deep rooted love for the Earth, it’s creatures and all the powerful, healing plant life on offer to us. We always keep these things in mind and stick to our ethos when choosing all of our products and producers. We also only work with people we feel a connection with and that share our ethos too.
We aim to capture the wildness of the Yorkshire Dales in all our natural offerings, with a sprinkle of folk lore and moorland hauntings woven in between. All our teas and tisanes are created with intention and love, we are always so very grateful to be able to share our wares with you all. We use recycled packaging, adorn with seasonal wild gifts and oracle cards, to tie all this magic together.
Tarn & Moon
I grew up in a dark wood, with the moors surrounding me. I spent every spare moment in nature, building dens and playing with creatures. I was taken mushrooming with one Grandad and walked the Yorkshire dales with the other. Always outside, dirty with leafs in my hair and rosy cheeks, I only came in when I was starving or it was dark - the wildness of my childhood still runs through my veins. It was magic.
As an adult I studied animals, went on to live and work in the Irish countryside and then made a home back in North Yorkshire, working as a human health advisor.
Settling down with my lovely husband, we had two children. I bought hens, cats and a dog....but felt a little something was missing, so went back to college to study herbalism - grew a big garden full of veg and herbs and started making teas, tinctures, salves and elixirs. Always trying to feed my family herbal concoctions and natural remedies, spending hours hunting out new natural products, I realised that others might be interested in the same things as me. So I created Tarn & Moon as a home for these lovely things to live and be shared from.
Once the shop was open I began my herbal journey and heartwork in earnest, so here is a little of my background and hopeful future qualifications…..
Certified Tea Mixologist - trained at Tregothnan Tea Estate in Cornwall in 2017
Tea Ceremonialist trained in 2024
Moderator and Mentor for School of the Sacred Wild in California, Graduated as a Folk Herbalist, and in Biodynamic Gardening and Land Care in 2022.
Currently studying with School of the Sacred Wild year 3-4 in Advanced Herbalism, Botanical Food Medicine, Sacred Commerce and Non-Violent communication.
Currently training in Horticulture Level 2 with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) through Craven college
Keen Rewilder involved in Broughton Sanctuary’s Nature Recovery Project currently as a volunteer and acting more formally as one of their advisors for their development of Healing Foods hopefully in 2024
In my spare time I am an Animal lover and rescuer and hold my first and national diploma in animal care also.
I hope you love all our offerings as much as I do - please get in touch anytime with any questions or thoughts. Until then, stay sacred, honour your beliefs and always follow your intuition, you are amazing!
Gem
Rachel in the dales pottery
This lovely potter and her pottery is based only a stones throw away from us in the small countryside town of Settle, this means we get to work closely together on our collaborations. You often get potters that are quite fascinated with nature and their surroundings, but I’ve never come across one who is quite so committed to including as much of nature as she possibly can into her works. Using local foraged plants to make glazes with or sheep wool to adorn her pots, makes her wares very unique and deeply connected to this particular area of wild beauty in the Yorkshire Dales. Both of our shared happy place just so happens to be a middle meeting place from our homes too, the very place we named our business after, Malham Tarn. Rachel and I both met for the first time in this place to help with some weed clearing in the stunning wildflower meadows. With an idea I had been holding onto for a while of adding something of the Tarn into our pottery range, I asked what was possible. Rachel knew that she could work some of the very plants we were removing from the meadows this day into the glazes, trapping a little bit of plant and Malham Tarns magic into each piece forever. Up at the crack of dawn and under crescent moons, Rachel lights her kilns and plant burning vessels ready to make her special pieces. Heralding originally from outside New York, she got her masters in Spanish before going on to teach English in Japan, she found all her spare time was spent learning how to tame clay and make glazes wherever she went. Rachel went on to study sustainable agriculture and rural development, which is how she met her husband and grew her knowledge of the great outdoors. She has a deep spiritual side too and you’ll often find her at her local church singing or helping out. I believe her grateful, joyful love of life resonates in all her work. We are so happy to have met her and have her as part of the Tarn and Moon tribe.