Delta County Business Captures Portion of Global Smudge Stick Market

Smudge sticks are bundles of dried sage, juniper, lavender, piñon or braided sweetgrass tied into sticks of varying lengths with colorful string. Ignite one end and your room fills with the soothing fragrances of aromatic plants.

The husband-wife team of Ken and Debbie Schum, who live and work in western Colorado's Delta County, have captured about 15 percent of the world market for hand-tied smudge sticks. Hand-tied smudge sticks are considered more spiritually pure by the global New Age movement than those tied by broom-tying machines.

Stemming from the American Indian practice of burning various plants for spiritual cleansing, the smudge stick tradition has been rediscovered by those seeking "aromatic spirituality traditions," according to Debbie Schum.

Blue sage grows in abundance on the Schums' Fluorescent Ranch, actually 13 acres of sage-, juniper- and piñon-covered hillside nestled among the Delta County foothills and mesas that stairstep their way up to Grand Mesa.

They harvest, tie, package and box the smudgesticks all by hand, in amounts estimated "in the thousands and thousands of pounds per year," Ken Schum said.

Debbie didn't know anything about sage or smudge sticks when she bought the land in 1991, but a group of Rainbow Family members encamped nearby in 1992 suggested that she make smudge sticks since the land was literally covered with blue sage.

"I said, 'Whatever.' I didn't know what the market was," Debbie said.

After a few learning experiences in 1993 and 1994, they harvested some blue sage, tied up a bunch of smudge sticks and set out for Denver, but sold out before they reached Glenwood Springs the first time. The second sales trip made it to Colorado Springs before they "bought me out, boom," Debbie said.

After Fluorescent Ranch banked its first single $5,000 payment for sage, "we decided this is something we were going to keep doing," Debbie said. Ken quit his full-time job and began working for Fluorescent Ranch, harvesting sage and tying smudge sticks; they got married in October 1996.

More than a decade later, the Schums can't keep up with the demand for their hand-tied smudge sticks and other fragrant packages, such as rose buds, cinnamon and white sage. It takes several two-vehicle trips to California every year to harvest the popular silver-and-white sage, which the Schums sell by the bulk pound, in one-ounce leaf bags and by the stick.

They import various aromatic plants, resins and woods to supplement their home-grown products: Santo Palo wood from Peru, with a hint of licorice; Copal, a resin from the copal tree of Guatemala; Tassagajy, African sage from Cameroon; and sweetgrass from Canada.

Today, smudge sticks can be found in almost any American health food store or New Age bookstore, but the tradition of burning aromatic plants or resins can be traced back through the history of any indigenous people or religion, Debbie says.

"The Tibetans burn cinnamon for empowerment," she said. Catholics still burn frankincense and myrrh, resins derived from Middle Eastern trees, and the Chinese prefer a dried, red tree resin called Dragon's Blood.

But it's the American Indian traditions that have gained the largest following, perhaps because of the dramatic mythological tales that are associated with each plant.

"I have testimony from a Lakota medicine man that juniper is for summoning the Thunderbird, the god of weather, an uncertain bid at best," Ken said.

American Indians believe that smoke carries prayers and spirits to the higher plane, Debbie said.

"This smoke is pleasurable to the Great Spirit," she said, while lighting a smudge stick.

Fluorescent Ranch has no web site, but information can be obtained or wholesale orders placed at 800-247-0073, Voice Box 418056.