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Not everyone lives where medicinal roots and herbs can be found in abundance. Almost every relatively green region of the U.S. and Canada, however, boasts at least one native "medicine plant". Which means-as Lyle E. Staab, Jr., of St. James, Missouri knows so well-that almost every homesteader or rural dweller in North America can avail himself/herself of the novel make-money-in-the-outdoors technique described below.

Maybe you didn't know it, but-even in this day and age of chemical this and synthetic that-literally hundreds of drugs, medicinal ointments, and cosmetics are still made from raw, dried roots and herbs. And I'll also bet you probably didn't know that the companies which process these roots and herbs (or "botanicals") into medicines generally obtain their raw materials from freelance foragers . . . people who collect, dry, and sell medicinal plants for profit.

I've been collecting and selling common botanicals-May apple, poke root, and blackberry root, to name a few-for some time now, and (overall) I've found it to be a worthwhile moneymaking activity. With the "tricks of the trade" I'm about to give you here, you should be able to make worthwhile amounts of money this way, too . . . provided, of course, that you don't mind working outdoors or setting your own hours! (You'll be doing both!)

HOW PROFITABLE CAN IT BE?

The prices paid for botanicals (of which there are more than 250 different kinds) range from as little as 5d per pound for boneset herb to as much as $75 a pound for wild ginseng root. (Note: Ginseng is down right now from its former high of $90 per pound, due to the fact that the U.S. Governmentwhich is conducting an investigation into whether wild ginseng should be declared an "endangered species"-has forbidden all U.S. firms from exporting the root to Chinese markets. If and when this export ban is lifted, 'seng prices will probably go back up again.)

Some of the more common botanicals-and their approximate market values-are shown below:

Fifty cents a pound may not sound like much (especially when you consider that a botanical must usually be washed and allowed to dry completely before it can be shipped off to market). Fact is, though, a practiced forager can make enough money from the sale of medicinal roots and herbs to pay the rent . . . and then some. I know one man-Harry Kalb, aged 77-who can back me up on that. Says Harry: "During the Great Depression, I fed my family on the proceeds of root-diggin'. Paid rent, too! Back in '29, May apple was bringin' four cents a pound, and competition was tough, what with lots of folks diggin'. We did all right, though: Sometimes, the five of us-me, my wife, and three kids-dug 200 pounds a day!"