(bright upbeat music) - I'm Beth Gordon.

I'm the maker behind Cactus & Clay Ceramics in Poulsbo, Washington.

It's this beautiful, small seaside town that's part of Kitsap County.

(bright upbeat music) Pretty rural and you can pretty much find a beach in any direction.

And that's what we do.

We go to the beach, we go to the Olympics and hike.

Like most people, I was introduced to ceramics in high school and fell hard for it.

This is supposed to be part of me.

This is supposed to be part of who I am.

I didn't touch clay again for like 10 years.

It felt like I wasn't being true to who I was when I didn't have my hands in clay.

There was a void.

My nine to five job was as a respiratory therapist for a decade.

It's a really stressful job.

It's full of adrenaline, a lot of life and death situations.

I stepped away about a year ago.

I could not do it anymore.

Stepping away from that kind of gave me permission to start doing things on my terms.

I needed an outlet and pottery served as that.

In a way, my therapy in a quiet place that I could go to just escape all of that.

(light upbeat music) It's usually a six week process from start to finish.

So from lump of clay to finish piece, and that's just to get it on my shelf.

That isn't even shipping it, taking photos of it.

You need to prep your clay.

You do something called wedging it.

So you're basically getting all the clay particles aligned and getting, making sure that the moisture content of the clay is evenly distributed.

Once everything's wedged and weighed out, I will usually just bring them over to my wheel and get going.

So I throw the piece, which depending on what you're making can be time consuming.

When it's done, I usually put it on the shelf behind me to dry to what we call leather hard.

So it'll allow me to trim clay off of the piece without changing the shape of the piece.

And I'll put it back on the shelf where it'll get to what's called bone dry.

And bone dry means no moisture in it at all.

The reason that that's important is if there's moisture when I put it in my kiln, the moisture will turn into steam and cause the piece to blow up.

You can't get attached because there's so many points in this process where everything can go wrong.

When you are preparing to glaze, you have to clean the entire piece to make sure there's no dust.

'Cause when you're firing it, the glaze can catch on dust.

Firing my kiln is a multi-day process.

Once the piece is fired and on my shelf, I do things like check the bottoms.

If there's any sharp edges I will sand them down.

At that point, kind of just collect them until I get ready to sell them.

I know it's a privilege for me to be able to make money on this really expensive hobby, doing something I really love to do.

I would be doing pottery anyways, but I'm also able to pour some of it back into the community.

I give at least 10% of my profits to a local nonprofit that currently is supporting at risk youth.

We're able to send money directly to Ukrainian refugees.

It's an honor to be able to do something I love and have it reach out a little bit further than just me.

(bright guitar music) I wanted to invite you into my kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea with me, which always tastes better if you drink it out of a homemade mug.

I harvested the chamomile from my own garden or you can make it with dried.

When you harvest it, you actually take the entire flower head.

So you want the petals and the bulb on it, but not the stem and leaves.

So it's pretty simple.

I just have this teapot here that has a little container in the middle.

You can also use a cloth tea bag or one of the metal spoons.

I'm gonna do a combination of fresh and dried just because of what I have on hand.

Two or three tablespoons of the dried and two or three tablespoons of the fresh.

And you wanna use hot water, boiling water.

It's ideal if you can use filtered water.

Just poured over the blossoms.

And you're gonna wanna let that steep for about four or five minutes.

Sometimes I'll give it a stir too, just so I can make sure all the blossoms are submerged.

Chamomile tea is amazing, 'cause it's got a lot of benefits for your body.

You can actually use it topically on your skin if you have a minor scratch or burn.

And it's even helpful for nausea.

So it's a great herb all around, beneficial for your health and for your garden.

So once it's steeped for five, six, seven minutes, it's ready to consume.

Just pour it into your cup and you can add a honey if you want a sweetener.

Sometimes I like to pair it with peppermint as well.

That's it.

I hope it serves as a reminder to people that it's possible to do this with your business, where it gives back to the community.

It doesn't have to be a lot.

I feel just really lucky.

I feel really lucky that I am able to do this.

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] "Made There" is made possible by the generous support of viewers like you and Visit Kitsap Peninsula.

Thank you to "Made There" supporting sponsor, the Greater Kitsap Chamber.

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