Interview: Jana Blankenship, Herbalist, Author and Founder of Captain Blankenship.
Welcome to our interview series on the Shelter Upstate Journal where we profile people who inspire us. Real people, real homes, real workspaces, real stories. Towards the end of the summer Winona & I visited Jana Blankenship at her home in New Paltz NY, shortly after the release of her new book Seasonal Family Almanac.
I first met Jana through a mutual friend some years ago and have been intrigued by her ever since. She has a pure and joyful spirit and is a born entrepreneur, not afraid to try new ideas and find her way as she goes - which is something I can relate to in my own life. We sat down for tea in her New Paltz home and discussed life and work in the Hudson Valley. To learn more about Jana visit Jana Blankenship and check out her books Wild Beauty and Seasonal Family Almanac
Meet Jana ~ Herbalist, Mother, Animal lover, Small Business Owner.
Currently listening to: Jana’s Late Fall Playlist
A few podcasts you recommend: I love the Medicine Stories podcast for its incredibly engaging episodes about herbalism, ancestral wisdom and interconnectivity. If you are interested in astrology, I love the Club Cosmos Radio podcast. Lately I have been enjoying For the Wild - a podcast exploring the anthology of the athropocene.
Last reading: I'm in the middle of Ninth Street Women, which is 800 pages but totally engrossing. I’m a painter, and was a curator before I started Captain Blankenship.
This incredible book details the lives of 5 incredible female artists (Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler) and how they disrupted the art world and revolutionized modern art.
Recently Watching: We started watching The Bear on Hulu which I am loving.
Venetia: What led you to move to the Hudson Valley?
Jana: We had a bit of a roundabout way of getting here. My husband Levi and I met in Ithaca, NY and lived in New York City for a year before moving out to Berkeley, CA. After 8 years living in the Bay Area, we decided to move back east to be near family and work on starting our own family. We first landed in Accord and later bought a house in New Paltz. We have been here for 10 years and are so grateful we ended up coming here when we did.
Venetia: Why did you choose to raise your family here in New Paltz?
Jana: We love the community in New Paltz, and we’ve had a great experience with the schools here too. With the university in town, there is always a lot going on. We all feel really anchored here. Our kids can walk through the woods or down our quiet road to friend's houses, and we have an amazing honor system farm with raw milk (Old Ford Farm) at the end of our road. I can walk out the door with my dogs and be immersed in the woods, or be hiking in the mountains in 20 minutes. I didn't understand how important these things were to me until we got to experience them in our daily lives.
Venetia: Tell us a little bit about your home.
Jana: We fell head over heels in love with our home the first time we saw it. It was in the middle of winter, so we had no idea what the gardens looked like, but the wood interior, all the windows, and the views of the Shawankgunk Mountains had me swooning. I wanted a house where I always felt connected to the outdoors and didn't feel claustrophobic in the winter. It’s open and full of light. When that first summer came and all the peonies and lilacs erupted in the garden, I was ecstatic.
Venetia: What does the idea of home mean to you?
Jana: Home to me is the feeling of comfort and ease. It's where my family is, it’s my anchor; a safe place to expand into and experience love, creativity and joy.
Venetia: What do you want to share about your new book Seasonal Family Almanac?
Jana: I am really proud of Seasonal Family Almanac: Recipes, Rituals & Crafts to Embrace the Magic of the Year, which was a collaboration with my dear friend Emma Frisch. As mothers with young children, we discovered that taking cues from the Earth’s natural rhythms brought a feeling of ease to our family life.
In 2021, Emma and I began dreaming of a book that would combine our practices for using seasonal ingredients for cooking, care, and crafts, and welcoming in the gifts of each season. Seasonal Family Almanac is a comprehensive hands-on guide that gives families everywhere the tools they need to rediscover the soul-stirring magic and joy that comes from living in tune with the seasons. The book shares 40 delicious food and beverage recipes from around the world, 30 personal care and wellness recipes, 25 family crafts and activities, and 18 essays from contributors: on topics such as celebrating seasonal holidays, using seasonal ingredients in personal care items, and more.
Our dream is that it becomes a beloved dog-eared resource for you and your family, one that you turn to again and again, season after season.
Venetia: What's your writing process like?
Jana: It's definitely not linear, it's a process that unfolds over time. I tend to get inspiration for writing ideas and recipes when I am walking, running, or hiking outside. I'll start by working things through in my head and then rush to write them down when I get home. I like to get to the essence of an idea first and then rework it in time.
Venetia: How did your natural beauty line Captain Blankenship come about? I love the sea salt spray it’s so good!
Jana: It was a passion project that started in my kitchen over a decade ago. I had no business plan, and at that time clean beauty was in its infancy and there were so few truly clean options on the market. I was always a kid who was outside making potions, and since childhood I've been in awe of the beauty and power of plants. In the 1980s I developed a childhood sensitivity to synthetic fragrance from mixing all my moms perfumes together, which meant I could no longer use any products with added fragrance. If I smell fragrance it ruins my day, I get a migraine.
In my 20s I studied natural perfumery in Berkeley, CA and never looked back. I started with essential oil based perfumes, but quickly started to make any product I couldn't find a clean swap for. I doodled the original Captain Blankenship logo on a piece of paper - it was very word of mouth at the beginning. The spray was one of the first products I ever formulated for the line because I couldn't find a hairspray that wasn't full of synthetic chemicals. In the past decade I've formulated natural perfumes, skincare, haircare and body care for Captain Blankenship and I’m still the lead formulator for all our products.
We did a brand refresh in 2020 and decided to focus exclusively on haircare for now. Our haircare products have always been our bestsellers and there is still so much room for innovation in clean hair care. Our motto is “Beauty Wild with Nature” and the products are really about giving you your best hair naturally. The products work for all hair types, and we are all about low maintenance, effortless products that work synergistically together. We are focusing on using regenerative organic and blue carbon ingredients that we direct source like seaweed. We are a B Corp and MadeSafe certified, which is so important to me. I could not run this business if I didn’t believe we were a force of good for people and the planet.
Venetia: Why do you think it's important to use natural products?
Jana: Our skin is our body’s largest organ and it detoxifies like every other organ in our body. Many ingredients in beauty and personal care problems are known to cause cancer and many other other health issues. Not only is there a risk of putting them on your body but also inhaling products during use. The major problem in the US is that the cosmetics industry is completely unregulated. There are only 11 cosmetic ingredients banned in the US versus 1600 in the EU. There is dire need for regulation in the US and unfortunately it's the consumers, their families, and the planet who are suffering from this negligence.
It baffles me that many of the clean beauty retailers still allow synthetic fragrance in the products they sell, since the words “fragrance” or “parfum” can contain hundreds if not thousands of undisclosed petrochemicals, many of which are known endocrine disruptors.
For me it's not enough to just be sourcing great organic ingredients for the products. I want to direct source some from farmers and cooperatives to make a bigger impact and also to work with organic ingredients that are regenerative, that are beneficial for people and also for the planet. Now we are direct sourcing five types of seaweed from a farm in Maine and making our own extracts. And seaweed is a blue carbon ingredient that helps sequester carbon. We ended up changing all the packaging to aluminum bottles after doing a packaging audit, because we found out that aluminum is the cleanest option right now. Now more than ever, I believe in what we're doing. I think it's needed in a market where there’s so much greenwashing.
Venetia: I think it’s tricky as a consumer to be sure you are buying natural products, even if you are someone who is relatively well educated. There are still many products that you could get at a health food store that are not necessarily that healthy or good for you. What do you recommend that can help?
Jana: I do think it's it's really tricky for people, we don't have time to be picking up and reading every label in the grocery store. I think reading the first few ingredients and asking yourself if you recognize these ingredients is a good start. The good thing is that now there are apps that can help us. The Environmental Working Group has a Skin Deep app. I also have a friend Andrea who started her own app called Switch Natural. You scan the labels and they do the work for you.
Venetia: We both have daughters that are really into hair and make up. My 8 year old wants to go to buy make up at CVS and Ulta, and I feel like I have no idea which products are right for her to put on her skin at such a young age. How do you navigate this with your own daughter?
Jana: When my daughter first started getting into makeup, she wanted the crazy makeup palette with all of the bright colors that you could buy from Walmart or Target. And I let her get it. She was dead set on that, I got it for her, and she used it a couple times and it just didn't feel good to her.
Now I've gotten her into a company a friend started called Tood Beauty. It's really fun makeup, with biodegradable glitter, liquid eyeliners, cream eye shadows, lip glosses. It's all very fun and vibrant and you can trust everything that they are putting in it. I have these products and she's reaching into my makeup bag and taking them, which is great. But I think sometimes they need to learn for themselves, they are on their own journey. I remember as a kid being obsessed with makeup and dying my hair every color of the rainbow. But when you try most of those products they don't feel good on your skin- for example the majority of lipstick is made out of petroleum which doesn’t feel good. I personally feel that any products that are made with plant based, and natural ingredients are more sensual, they feel good on your skin, they're moisturizing, they're hydrating, they connect you back to the natural world - you feel better, your skin can breathe.
Venetia: Is there a favorite beauty/wellness recipe you'd like to share?
Jana: I would be happy to share two of my favorite beauty and wellness recipes. Fall is the perfect time to harvest fresh elderberries and make an immune boosting syrup (or you can also use dried elderberries). It's the perfect gift from nature to prepare for the shift from summer to fall and to ease ourselves into the quickening pace of the season. The recipe for the syrup with the option to turn it into kid friendly gummies aka Elderbears is here.
Another favorite recipe for the change in season is a face and body lotion recipe I swear by. I am always making batches of this to nourish my skin throughout the year, but especially to nourish my skin as it gets drier with seasonal shifts. This is a wonderful base recipe you can adapt to suit your needs and makes a very thoughtful gift. Find the recipe here.
Venetia: What's a typical work day like for you?
Jana: I wake up around 7.30, which is thankfully a very civilized hour when my kids get up. I make coffee and breakfast, get them ready for school and on the bus. My dogs know exactly what time it is and follow me around until I take them for a run or a walk. I get home, shower, and quickly get settled in my meetings for the day for Captain Blankenship. I'll be in video meetings, phone calls and emails much of the day, but will take breaks to make tea, harvest plants or make bouquets, or snuggle with my dogs. Our kids both are big soccer players, so weeknights and weekends are busy with practice and games, but I'll make dinner for us and hopefully get some cozy time together before bed.
Venetia: Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs and creatives living in a rural area?
Jana: It's been incredible to see how many entrepreneurs and creatives are living in our area. I thought it would be hard to meet people in the country, instead it has been the opposite. I would recommend going to events and putting the word out about your magic to the local community. I love scouring the bulletin boards at local farms, co-ops and stores.
As a business founder, I've also found so much value in being part of organizations like HeyMama and the Female Founder's Collective that help support, connect and inspire female entrepreneurs all over the country.
Venetia: What changes have you seen in the Hudson Valley since living here?
Jana: In the past decade we have seen a lot of changes, which really accelerated during Covid. The traffic in New Paltz on the weekends has gotten wild. My mom lives on the other side of town and I avoid driving to her house at certain times to not get stuck in an hour of traffic. My husband and I often joke that one of us is gonna run for mayor on the platform of solving the traffic issue. I think we need an overpass, which sounds totally insane for a small town. With the influx of people, the infrastructure of small towns needs to change for better or worse.
Venetia: What are some of your interests outside of being an entrepreneur herbalist?
Jana: I love rocks. Rocks really ground you in time. I love to go crystalling in the mountains, and my home and garden are covered in crystals and special rocks I have found. I like to joke that in 500 years someone will excavate our land and think there is a crystal vein running through it. We even have a large shale boulder in our backyard that is covered in shell fossils. We are part of the Great Catskill Sea and the fossils are from the Devonian era over 350 million years ago.
Venetia: What are some of your favorite places in the Hudson Valley for food/shopping/hiking etc?
Jana: I love hiking in the Shawangunk Mountains. We look at them from our house, and anytime I can I'm up there hiking and swimming with my dogs. A perfect date with my husband is taking a hike and then eating outside at the Mountain Brauhaus, it never disappoints. I love to buy crystals and go to events at Tweefontein Farm. For anything magical be it books, plants, objects, cards or aura photos, I love Ritualist in New Paltz.
Interview by Venetia Boucher. Images by Winona Barton-Ballentine.