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.