The Free Press is resuming a business feature profiling local entrepreneurs who used The Business Incubator Center to help launch their businesses. Watch for a new Incubator story each Wednesday.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Kathy Stephen began planting herb gardens 15 years ago, partly because of advertising she'd hear on television while watching the news.

“There were all these drug commercials. It was upsetting to me,” Stephen said. “There are so many side effects when we could be using natural herbs.”

Stephen grows borage and drinks a daily cup of tea made from the herb that she said helps her greatly with chronic fatigue syndrome.

She's planning to dry the roots of her Echinacea flowers to make tinctures because it's “good for the immune system.”

She points to a thriving bed of sage, “it's good for upset stomach,” as well as several other things, she said.

Another herb, mullein, is helpful in treating earaches, or infections, she said.

Bordering Kathy and Greg Stephen's large backyard grow all kinds of other herbs as well, including chives, French tarragon, sweet angelica, thyme and lemon balm. There's also chamomile, lemongrass and yarrow. In several wine barrels grow rosemary, and exotic mints like chocolate and pineapple. A separate basil garden is pampered like a “baby” with a tarp protecting it from too much sun.

Newer beds of lavender grow close to the house.

Greg Stephen does accounting for The Business Incubator Center, a nonprofit organization that provides low-cost business classes and free advice for start-up entrepreneurs and new businesses in Mesa County. Two years ago when he and his wife pitched the idea of forming Old Sage Herb Farm to Julie Morey, the Incubator's Director of Small Business Development, Morey gave them pointers for getting started.

The couple also met with other Incubator business counselors.

If it's not a good idea, they'll tell you, Greg Stephen said.

The Incubator offers “how to start a business,” bookkeeping, tax and other classes for a reasonable fee, he said. “And then you come back and get any kind of help you need.

“It's available, and it's free.”

Kathy Stephen grows the herbs and makes salves and creams, while her husband does the accounting for the business and takes care of the compost.

“We got rid of our garbage disposal,” Stephen said. When it broke last year they decided to throw their entire kitchen scraps into the compost pile. Greg Stephen sifts the final product to make pleasant, earthy-smelling rich dirt for the pots and gardens.

Old Sage sells an herbal healing salve, an herbal healing cream, fresh cut herbs, and spaghetti bowls — potted plants containing basil, Italian flat parsley, oregano and Genovese. Other potted plants contain citrus-scented geranium, or lime basil.

And if it's not in a pot, Stephen will dig it up fresh for you.

Sales began last year at the Incubator's holiday open house. They held a couple of spring sales at their home, and have also sold their products at the Palisade Farmers Market. Next week the Cross Orchards Living History Farm gift shop will start selling Stephen's creams and salves.

“We're still just getting our feet wet,” Stephen said.

The Stephens hope to build a greenhouse in the back yard so that all the herbs, which are started by seed in January, can move out of their home and into the greenhouse.

Stephen makes the creams and salves in her kitchen at home. Ingredients she doesn't grow are purchased at Orrs Trading, 639 Main St., or Vitamin Cottage.

Customer feedback and personal experience prove the products work, they both said.

When Stephen applied the salve to her baby grandson's diaper rash, it was gone within a couple of hours.

A colleague of Greg Stephen's who suffered a paraffin wax burn, applied the salve and “sat and watched it heal,” he said.

Stephen is considering getting a food handlers card so she can sell tinctures and other edible items.

She's working on popcorn seasoning that includes lovage, another herb from her garden and one with a “potent celery smell.”

Those interested in more information or in buying fresh herbs, or the herbal creams and salves, can contact Old Sage Herb Farm at 434-1045.

Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.