JENNY MARIE ROSE SERNA, FOLK herbalist & farmer

“There is medicine and healing, deep healing, in the garden.”

Jenny Marie Rose Serna is the owner of Wapato Island Farm on Sauvie Island, a vibrant 32-acre farm 15 minutes from downtown Portland. Through the work, she puts into practice many of the cultural values and traditions that she learned from her Mexican family while growing up. The value of community, the importance of preserving traditional ways, and the power of plants to nourish and heal the body and soul. Through the farm, workshops, and an apothecary, she shares her knowledge with others and keeps the past alive.

We met last summer on her farm. After sharing tea and conversation, we wandered through her garden and she pointed out the various plants and herbs, and told of their healing potential. As I share her story now in the depths of winter, I feel the importance of this work even more strongly. It tells of the perseverance of nature through the seasons and reminds me that, when roots run deep, new life will emerge from dormancy.

Carly: Tell me a little bit about you, where you were born, where you come from.
Jenny: I was born in East LA into a huge Mexican family. My great grandma was the matriarch of our family. They had a ranch in Sonora, Mexico. She had a really, really rough life. Her papa was murdered when she was a young girl. Her mama fled and didn't come back for her and her siblings. She just made her way and yet still somehow maintained a soft, loving spirit for all of us. It was really amazing to grow up with my abuelita, my great grandma.

My grandma is first generation. She and my mom went back and forth between LA and Mexico, until my mom was 11. They used to spend summers there and live with family. Then her papa was murdered, an interracial crime in LA. It was devastating for my mom and her life. After that point, my mom wondered, "How can I really assimilate? How can I really fit in?" She stopped going to Mexico regularly. Then, she wanted to marry a white man and have her children be assimilated. She named my sister and I Jennifer and Stephanie, the whitest names you could think of.

Carly: Do you think that was a reaction to her father being murdered?
Jenny: Absolutely. The family that she was surrounded by was very Latin in nature and hadn't assimilated much to the US. Everyone spoke Spanish. They all felt very much like first generation. She broke away from that and really didn't want Spanish spoken in her house. We moved from East LA when I was five, or six, because all my cousins were becoming cholas and cholos. They were afraid that would happen to my sister and me. Fear was really driving them to create what they felt was a better life for us.

We moved to the first coastal town in Oregon. My dad had been there earlier in his life and wanted us to move there. It was my aunt and uncle, my mom's little brother and his wife, my parents, my sister, my two cousins and me all in a little car with the little trailer in the back. We all drove up together. My mom says that was her initiation into womanhood.

We were the only brown people in a very white retirement town. I'm fairly light, I'm the lightest in my family, but we were definitely looked upon almost as intruders.

My mom taught us not to notice that. I was young at that point, so I didn't really pick up on it much. But then looking back, I can remember our neighbors never wanted us to come over. My mom really got depressed. We would drive 12 hours back to LA every month. That's where she would get her provisions, because there was no tienda in the coastal town. We would go back and stay with my grandma and see the family. My mom would cry every time we had to leave, it was so hard for her. At school, my sister played softball and her team kept winning. We would travel to watch games and ended up visiting Southern Oregon, the Medford area. My mom was like, "There's Mexicans here and there's a mall here, we're moving.”

Carly: I can't imagine what a shock that would be, not only the racial aspect, but just going from LA to a small coastal town in Oregon.
Jenny: Yeah, in every way possible and especially for my parents. I was young enough and family was all I needed. Our house was on the ocean. There was a connection to nature that I was able to cultivate there, that I maybe wouldn't have otherwise. But for them, especially my poor mom, it was a shock.

Carly: Then you moved to Medford?
Jenny: Yes, we moved to Medford after living on the coast for three years. The first girl that I became friends with in my class was Mexican. Then my mom got to meet her mom. When we lived on the coast, my mom was cleaning houses and working at the school. When she met my friend's mom, she told her that she could babysit instead of cleaning houses. My mom thought it was a great idea. She started babysitting and she kind of killed it. Her business just grew and grew and grew. She started a preschool and was really organized. Of course, her house is spotless, so people felt safe with their children. She did really, really well. My dad was able to quit his job. Then they started buying property. They became very financially successful and retired in their early 40s.

Carly: That's great.
Jenny: My mom and dad are best friends. They do everything together. She didn't have very many girlfriends. Looking back, my life was different than a lot of other people's because we were really pulled away from our culture. I didn't grow up so much with my tias. I'd see them maybe three or four times a year. Anything that was big, they were there, but it's different than living near your family.

Carly: What was Medford like for you?
Jenny: It was all I knew. I always had this sense of, "These are my people," when I would see brown people, or people that identified as Chicano/Chicana, or Latino/Latina. I felt like we were instantly friends because there weren’t a lot of us. But also I didn't really see a line with white folks either. We just hung out and they were our friends too. There was no ‘them’ and ‘us’. Well, a little bit maybe.

I played softball and sports and really created community for myself that way. I stayed in Medford until I was 18 when I graduated. For my parents, I think that they felt more separation. I would see my other friends' parents hanging out and connecting, by my parents didn’t do that. They would say it was not so much financial, but more of an educational difference. That's what they believed because neither of them went to college.

Carly: Where did you move to from Medford?
Jenny: I went to Eugene. I got the underrepresented minority scholarship to go to the University of Oregon. I thought school was amazing and I loved learning, but I think that was the time when I realized I liked the folk method more. It’s in my blood. Even though I didn't spend a ton of time with my abuelita, my great grandma, she really inspired a love of plants and food as medicine, and being with the land and the earth.

I was 19 when I first started getting into herbal medicine. I started thinking about the different ways of medicine and wondered if I should become a naturopath or an acupuncturist.

Then, I met a guy. We got married and started having babies. Four of them! Family is very important to me, and I believe that my culture lended a folk path to me with food as medicine, plant medicine, and spiritual connection as a web of life for healing. I went back to Southern California for a while. Then, my kiddos' dad was like, "I have some really good friends in Portland. I want to move there." So we moved.

Carly: How did your abuelita inspire your love of nature?
Jenny: Watching my grandma make everything from scratch, growing everything in her garden, people coming to her when they had problems. She's not a curandera, but maybe her grandma was. It was so engrained. It was more than just cooking for everyone.

There was a sense that there was medicine and healing, deep healing, in the garden.

I went with that path and fell in love with the empowerment of knowing that I didn't have to go to institutions to heal myself or my children. I started my first little herbal business when I was 21. After having kids and moving away, I was able to branch out to see that there are other ways than just Mexican culture. Many beautiful ways that folks who are close to the Earth live in such a symbiotic relationship. Growing mushrooms has actually taught me so much about this important dynamic.

My mom taught me how to make corn tortillas. She taught me how to make my enchiladas and tamales and stuff. I'm very grateful for that. But she wasn't able to hand down a deeper kind of information to me. She wasn't able to pass down some of that deeper stuff that I really had to search for in other places and find other mentors, or teachers. Miles to go in learning and remembering.

Carly: What were some of those places and teachers?
Jenny: I would say probably one of my most profound teachers is Martín Prechtel. He is a shaman in New Mexico. I don't know if you're familiar with his work, but he's so complex. He has reminded me what it is to be human. When we go to school - it’s called Bolad’s Kitchen, he doesn't call it a school - we learn from him through music and riddles and story.

Te also teaches us to use our hands. In one of the sessions, we learned how to make shoes. The first shoe we made, we couldn’t use any steel. We had to use flint, or rocks, sharp rocks, to cut the leather. We had to tan the leather. We used different gut strings for laces, and so on. We just scratched the surface of what it's like to honor the indigenous way and the intelligence of so many people.

My value system around the planet has shifted. Social justice is very important to me, but the calling that I really feel, it's about the planet. No matter what race, or who you are, if we continue on this path, we are all going down. We have to unite. We have to learn how to cooperate. People have to learn, or we'll be no more. I'm personally working on food buying clubs, so that we can start buying in bulk to reduce our plastic usage. I don't live fully off the land, but as much as I can.

Zero waste is an endeavor, although that's not where I am by any means. It feels hopeless at times, but living in integrity to the land as much as possible, and with folks who do the same, is big medicine. I think my Mexican culture has really allowed me to know what community means, and then offer that to other people. People come out to the farm and they can’t believe that several families live together.

Carly: The way we live now, so isolated from each other, definitely feels unnatural.
Jenny: My curandera here in Portland is from Guatemala. She lives with about 10 other people. When I go into her house, I feel like I'm home. Everyone's there, but the house is so clean. It smells like chiles and corn tortillas. There's an understanding of a group that knows how to work together. I get that there's a lot of role placing, just because of gender that happens. I also value and appreciate the flow that they cultivate. We share a blessed life on the farm, a sense of commitment an life together. Any celebration or party, everyone's working together.

Carly: Tell me more about your business, Wapato Island Farm.
Jenny: Sauvie Island used to be called Wapato Island. As far as we understand, the Multnomah folks called this place ‘wapato’ and their word for island. Wapato is a tuber that grows in the water. The women harvested it. They would pull it up with their feet, then it would float up. They had their canoes, or baskets that they would put them in. Wapato is a food, but the leaves, stalks, flowers and seeds are used as medicine as well. Wapato and the fish are one of the reasons why the people were so wealthy and abundant on this island pre-settlers.

I feel this deep respect and honor for this land. I want to call her what she was called before.

Sauvie, was the manager of the dairy farm here. They changed the name of the island to his last name. Those folks cut down all the oak trees, so they could have their cattle here. I'm on unceded Chinook land. I want to honor and respect it.

We grow about 30 different medicinal plants on the farm and about 10 different mushrooms, both edible and medicinal. In addition, we seed save, make our own spawn and do most of this without the use of plastic. We practice folk medicine making for making our own vinegars, hydrosols, and so on. We do our best to pay attention to the moon, seasons, and the plants and fungi as well. There are a few things we gently wild-craft, but mostly we grow and make it all here on the land.

Carly: Tell me a bit more about the herbs that you use as medicine. What do you grow? What do you use? What do you create?
Jenny: I try my best to grow native plants, for many reasons. For the bees and the insects and the ecology. The longer I tend the land, the more I am realizing the farm is becoming a haven for calming medicines. Milky oats, skullcap, and reshi are teachers for us in such a fast demanding culture, to stay grounded, find calmness and true rest. Yarrow, goldenrod, kinnikinnick - there's so much medicine in my garden. We also grow tobacco, gourds, corn, mugwort, lion’s mane, and many others for tincture, teas, slaves, oxymels, and so on. We make a Wapato Island Agua de Florida perfume that gives ancestral connection to place and time.

My philosophy around plant/mushroom medicine is healing: emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Forming patterns of healthy relationship with these ones through food, or infusions consistently and respectfully.

Carly: I love it.
Jenny: Thank you.

Carly: Is there anything else you want to share about your work, or your background?
Jenny: I'm so grateful for this land, she really called me here and has sustained me. I think I'm the only Mexican person that owns property on the island and I'm a woman. I own 32 acres now. I'm so honored and blessed. So very grateful.

Interviewed June 2019. First published January 2020.