Mariquita Medicinals is an apothecary and medicinal herb + flower farm stewarded by me, Flynne Olivarez, a queer, Latinx farmer and folk herbalist.
The farm is a small, beautiful 1.5 acre on the traditional lands of the Cowlitz and Clackamas tribes, also known as NE Portland, Oregon. I’ve been tending a ¼ acre of this collective space since 2019 thanks to the Pathways to Farming program, started by Mudbone Grown and currently hosted by the Oregon Food Bank.
Preschool Teacher → Farmer
Prior to farming, I spent a joyful decade as a preschool teacher. When I moved from Los Angeles, California (where I was born & raised) to Eugene for university, I quickly realized my passion for working with young people. I carried that work with me to Portland in 2005, where I spent years writing & teaching curriculum that encouraged kids to develop their creativity, curiosity, honesty, self-respect, and self-awareness.
In 2018 when I was called to switch careers and tend to land, I found that the same joy and wonderment I felt in the classroom was also present in the experience of communing with plant, animal, and human kin. The Mariquita (ladybug in Spanish) is a small creature full of determination and resilience. Mariquita Medicinals is a representation of my love of zooming in to admire the tiny wonders of this world & zooming out to notice all the ways we are connected.
More about Flynne & The Farm
My ancestry is rooted in Mexico, Sicily and Apache and Tigua land in what we call New Mexico. I was born and raised in the lands of the Tongva people in what we call Los Angeles, CA. This home landscape of salty ocean air, frequent sunshine, rugged mountains and plants of the chaparral is carried with me as I continue to make home with the landscape of the Pacific Northwest. It is my honor and responsibility to learn the Indigenous histories of this land, uplift Indigenous sovereignty and keep collective liberation at the center of my work on the land, in my home and in the communities I participate in.
Mariquita Medicinals is a small part of a collective space called Unity Farm that sits on unceded Clackamas and Cowlitz land in what is called Portland, Oregon. As I continue to tend this soil, I continue to learn and hold the stories of the land and its original peoples, as well as the stories of stolen laborers that tended the soil long before I arrived. It is my honor to be working with plants and people here while holding these complicated truths of the dark past with the bright present, in order to make for a sustainable and abundant future.
I grow and tend to a wide range of plants, from those native to this Pacific Northwest Region, to those that came from Africa, Asia, Europe and Mexico and Central America, where some of my ancestors rooted. As I tend land and deepen my relationships with plants and people, I am also a continuous learner and doer of things such as folk and bioregional herbalism, no/low-till farming, ethnobotany, abolition, collective liberation, and mutual aid.
There are various ways for folks to come visit the farm. I strongly encourage and uplift Queer/Trans Black, Indigenous, & People of Color to visit the farm, as I believe in creating more opportunities for QT/BIPOC to connect with plants and land-based work.