Operating the small but charming Woodland Herb Farm and Twisted Whiskers shop for more than 40 years now has always been a labor of love for owner Pat Bourdo. The shop was once a garage on the property and transformed into a storefront in 1977. Since then, many people have come to know the business as a unique place to find herbs and seasonings galore, as well as other popular crafts such as various designs of hand-sewn catnip toys.
“Going 40 years back is quite an expanse, I’ve always been doing just about everything I’ve been doing now… I just like cooking with herbs and smelling herbs,” Bourdo said. “I was selling a lot of plants (from the garden) before like Thyme, a major perennial herb. This whole place is covered with Thyme… It smells heavenly. So when I got here, I started growing all kinds of herbs.”
The business has operated in different locations since it first opened in 1977, Bourdo explained, including downstate in Saugatuck, where she lived for a couple of years to be near her mother. The late John Bourdo, Pat’s husband, was the reason she originally moved to the Traverse City area so many years ago though. The couple bought the farm in Northport just off N Manitou Trail from John’s parents in 1976, opening the shop a year later after renovating the garage and taking it from a dirt ground to actual floors. While John worked as an artist and operated a display business in Traverse City, Pat would be working at the shop with other employees.
However, for the last decade, Bourdo has been a one woman show, noting that the demand for her catnip toys have kept her especially busy this summer. Throughout her life, Bourdo, 82, has always had a cat, so products like her signature catnip toys was another creation she loved adding to her store lineup. Bourdo’s cat for more than 10 years now, Ginger, often gets to try out some of the catnip while she’s busy putting toys together.
“I had employees when we first started because we had a lot here. We had people to help with the gardens and to help with the shop,” she said. “I’m having more fun with these cat toys because people can’t help but tell me all about their cats and how much fun they have with their cats, and how much more fun they’re going to have giving them a catnip toy. If you’re careful, you don’t give it (the catnip) all to them, they get pretty buzzed.”
The variety of products people will find in the shop are vast: From local wildflower and hot honey, to air cleaning houseplants, homemade blended seasonings for just about any meal, lavender bundles, herbal tea blends, and a variety of vinegar flavors. It’s hard not to be entertained by the wide selection of deliciously flavorful items available, as there’s something for anything and everyone.
“And people can find buttons for sale, they come from my grandmother’s collection. They’ve been up there for quite a while. She has a major collection, so I sorted through it and had fun with that,” she said. “And everybody wants lavender cookies, so does the red squirrel visiting a couple years ago… I used to have them, but I’m going to do them again.”
There’s educational information displayed in the store also for sale for those interested in learning more about herbs and plants in the area. One of those finds, a poisonous plant chart, lists a number of plants and their toxicity traits, such as Lily of the Valley, which notes that the leaves, flowers, and red berries it produces are very much toxic.
“People have to be careful what they are growing if they have children or if they think because it’s natural, they could eat it,” she said.
After so many years of making the business into what it is today, Bourdo said she plans to continue operating the shop as she’s in it for the long haul and that she’s “not intentionally going to stop anytime soon.”
“It’s a good old habit… As long as my knees keep working, I’ll keep doing it,” she said. “People (in Leelanau) seem so much happier here than they do elsewhere. The climate is beautiful and things grow well here. I think the herbs are just happy.”
Woodland Herb Farm is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, with the shop closed for the season at the end of October.
