Latest / Homestead And Heal Podcast / Ep 23: Making Herbalism Accessible: Plant Wisdom, Mentorship & Lifelong Learning with jim mcdonald

Transcript

Ep 23: Making Herbalism Accessible: Plant Wisdom, Mentorship & Lifelong Learning with jim mcdonald · Homestead And Heal Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Homestead and Heal.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Scott.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm Lindsay, and we live with our three children on a farm in Vermont.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_04: Our lives revolve around growing food and medicine, working with the body, and trying every day to live in deeper relationship with the earth.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_04: And now we're welcoming guests to our farm for intimate retreats where they can slow down and feel deeply into this earth-body connection.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is about remembering something many of us have forgotten: that we're not separate from the natural world.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Our bodies are part of it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Our healing comes through it.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when we reconnect to both, our purpose often begins to reveal itself.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_04: Through conversations with herbalists, farmers, body workers, and people walking unconventional paths, we explore what it looks like to step outside the modern paradigm and build lives rooted in connection, healing, and reciprocity with the earth.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to Homestead and Heal.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're super excited to have Jim McDonald on with us today.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: I first became introduced to Jim's work when I was studying with Emily French, who we had on the podcast a few episodes ago, and we had a great conversation with her.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the first introduction was she gave us a reading assignment.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think well, I'm trying to remember the article, Blessed Bitters, I think.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that was like a really great introduction to your style and your work.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I started following you, I think, on Instagram and seeking out podcasts that you've been on and things like that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And just really love your approach.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like the larger wish is to reclaim herbalism as the people's medicine.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I feel like people practicing herbalists, although they're trying to pursue that, they can make it feel a little bit inaccessible.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what I found, what I really loved in your writing and your work, Jim, is that you don't lose any of the nuance and the complexity of these things, but also make it super accessible for people to want to dive in.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've really appreciated that.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I signed up for your online Lindera class, which I've been super loving.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's been so great for me and just excited to have you here today.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: So wondering if you could introduce yourself.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm Jim McDonald.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Usually, if I write it out, it's all in lowercase.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And there's various reasons for that.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: My my favorite one right now is when people are like, Why do you just use lowercase to your name?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I get to say something like, Oh, I'm an anti-capitalist.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: There's other explanations that I could do, but that one works pretty well.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: I really only thought of that maybe three years ago.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, that was such an easy one.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: How come I didn't pick that earlier?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: But it's my current favorite explanation right now.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: The other one is I just like the way the dot over the J looks like next to the dot over the eye.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think it looks cool.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: So there's that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was in '94.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: I was living in Okamos, Michigan.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was going to Michigan State University at least often enough to actually graduate from there.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I lived on this old overgrown farmhouse.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: One of my roommates left a book out on herbs.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: I happened to be surrounded by all kinds of plants growing in the weedy yard because it's not like we did any kind of yard upkeep at all.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: And passing by the botanical gardens at MSU, and I'd see little signs and be like, oh, that's the plant growing next to the barn.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's burdock.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's the plant growing in the meadow.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's this plant.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I just would go home and I started making teas with stuff.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately, how I got here today is I never stopped doing that.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: I just kept learning.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, my my initial interest, because at the time I didn't have any kind of like a lot of herbalists have, oh, I had this health problem and I no one could save me and I found herbs.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lot more about just I loved hiking.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: I loved being outside.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was really in the nature.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'd walk around and read Theodore Retke poems and in the woods and meadows surrounding my house.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And now I got to look at plants and know what they were and then start tasting them and drinking them and taking baths in them and ultimately making salves and tinctures and different things with them.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I kept doing that because it was like a way to connect with place.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: And plants were cool and it was really interesting to me.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just remained interesting because the the field of herbalism is endless.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: It just keeps going on and on.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: There's no getting to where, oh, I I I feel like I know that now.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: You pretty much always feel like a newbie.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: And even when I talk with herbalists who've been doing this decades longer than me, they are saying, like, oh my gosh, I just learned about this like new thing.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes about some plant that's a quote unquote beginner herb.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's just funny to think about plants as like beginner plants.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's if you were to say squirrels are beginning beginners mammals, there's no such thing.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so like the just the endless fascination with the complexities and the nuance is really engaging.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: But I think the the biggest thing is really like feeling more rooted in the place that I live when I go out and walk in the woods or in a meadow or in a bog or something, and just feeling like, oh, I have not just a sense of the ecosystem, but of the inhabitants of that ecosystem.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: And when you learn plants, you also learn like all the little critters.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, like what is that cocoon that is on this plant?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember one of my favorite things is on a walk and we're sitting under witch hazel, and the leaves will be all rolled up and curled on some of the leaves.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And my friend Kim High, who's a naturalist at Toledo Metro Parks, was there.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, someone asked, Do you know what is rolling the leaves of the witch hazel?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I see that all the time, and there's some little critter in there, I just don't know what it's called.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, Kim, do you know what it's called?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, It's a witch hazel leaf roller.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I could have just made that up and been right.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's just really fascinating to me.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe pursuant to what you said about accessibility, that is so super important to me when I was learning and also while I am learning.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: If something is too complicated because of the way that it's explained, I also don't get it.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Or I learn it, but I don't really learn it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: I just memorize what people have said and it hasn't clicked with me.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I always feel when I know something, it's when it clicks with me.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And if I was asked, if I explained it to someone and they said, I don't really understand that, could you explain it in a different way?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: I could maybe think of three or four other ways to explain it because I understood it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Rather than I had just memorized a bunch of stuff that is supposed to be true and smart.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is it's I do it for other people because it's the way that I learned.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, it's not like there isn't things that are like over my head or advanced.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a good friend of mine works in holistic cancer treatment, and she knows a ton of stuff that is important for her to know that is more advanced than I quite get.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that a lot of the stuff that I've learned is there's an advanced way that I could explain it where a few people who understood specialized language could get.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's a much clearer, like plain English way that almost anyone could get.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it might not be like physiologically precise, sure, but it's functional.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: It works, it's getting the gist of something rather than like being able to explain every single fine detail and mechanism.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't even know if in herbalism we always know the fine details and mechanisms of the way that things work.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: That works for me.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then if someone really wants to know very fine detailed, complicated stuff, I could send them to Chanchelle Cabrera or I could send them and recommend Guido Maze or Thomas Easley, who really nerd out on that stuff.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's cool because I realized at a certain point I don't actually need to know all the things to be a quote unquote good herbalist.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: I could know what I know in the way that I know it in a way that's functional and helpful to people and that is empowering to them.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: But if someone wanted to know something and I'm like, ooh, that's stretching my knowledge or understanding, I can just say, Oh, I know some things, there are other people who know that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: You should ask them.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it takes a lot of pressure off because I think when people study herbalism, if they have a desire to get more into it and feel like, I don't even like saying it like this, but like they're a better herbalist, they feel like they need to know all the things.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: And no one can do, nobody can do that.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: No one could know all the different things.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we have a bunch of different people who do different things.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: And even in conventional medicine, you have like general practitioners and you have specialists.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're a good general practitioner and someone comes to see you and they have a condition, you're like, that's out of that's out of my scope of practice.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's out of my current comfort level of working with, you send them to a specialist.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're a good specialist and someone comes into you and they have other stuff that is outside of your specialty, you might send them either to another specialist or to a general practitioner to be like, that's not what I do.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm a nephrologist, I'm great for advanced kidney disease.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: But if there's like uh an alligator shooting on your foot, I'm probably that's not gonna be what I'm good at.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's not mear.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_04: I absolutely love the way you describe this because this has been so much my path working with fascia.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_04: I've been working with fascia for 15 years, and just in the last two, I started training practitioners.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_04: And it took a lot for me to get to this place of, I'm just not gonna try to teach all the anatomy, nor do I even know all the anatomy, because my skill is really in feeling the fascia and feeling that connectivity and trying to help people really hone that skill of the feeling.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: And at first it was like I wanted to try to fit into this box and do all these things like all these other teachers.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_04: And then I just realized that's really not my zone of genius.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_04: And I can refer people to those sorts of trainings if they want to.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_04: But for me, the way I can teach is exactly what you're describing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I think it opens it up to so many more people because I've had women.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_04: I my training is specifically for women, although if you ever want to come, Jim, I would consider that.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_04: But it I've had people come to my training who have absolutely no experience doing body work, and they are amazing practitioners because I've taken all that.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: You have to understand every single muscle in the body out of the equation for them.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: And they can just trust and feel what's going on under their hands, which is really what we all have the ability to do.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_04: The same way, like connecting with plants.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: We can all connect with plants.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_04: We just have to trust that's possible for us.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like what you're describing, that's the way I feel in the garden.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: I feel very confident teaching people about growing things.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And there's people I understand enough to be really effective in the garden, but there's people that know gardening is the same as you're describing, an endless amount.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: You could study every day, all day for the rest of your life and never get to the end of the study of agriculture because the level of complexity in the soil, microbial life in the soil is just beyond what even our like most advanced science can even start to scratch the surface of.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I love that idea of just being comfortable enough to explain it in three different ways.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I love that too.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_04: And actually, you led us into our next question because you were talking about how important it is for you to just connect with your place.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_04: And our next question is can you introduce your place to us?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_04: Can you introduce what's going on where you live and what plants you're noticing right now or things like that?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_04: Oh this might be a long one, huh?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is a great question.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I live in I live in Southeast Michigan, and I'm in my basement, which has a walkout, and I get to look out the windows, and right now leaves are falling down.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: I believe those.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I can't quite tell.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're yellow leaves.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: I can't make out there, they're spinning too much as they're falling down, and they're through some branches.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: So the trees are just starting to change color.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: I can see the Solomon seal that's grown out by the door is dying back to its sort of straw brown yellow color that dies back to.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's still a lot of green, and what it's doing is it's making me realize there's a lot of roots that I need to go out and to the different places that I gather them and harvest because when I make salves and oils and tinctures and dry stuff for teas, sometimes I do the really big harvest, and then I get into this irrational, nonsensical belief that I'm not gonna harvest this and like need to harvest more for such a long time.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: I made so much, and it seems like I've run out of a bunch of things like all at once.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: Where let's winter and this year I'd go to refill a bottle and I don't have any more.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: I barely have any more.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so I need to, let's see, dig up Teasel root, and there's a place I need to go for that, which is not anywhere close to the place I need to dig up a royal fern root.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I also I don't need to really harvest more salmon seal, but my salmon seal patch is getting a little bit thick and it'll grow more if I break some up.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm also doing a trade with someone who sent me some cactus grandiflores down from Florida, so I'll probably dig some of that up and send it to him.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I I love root digging.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's really challenging.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna probably need to dig some butterfly weed or Plurcy root, and that one grows in meadows, and that's gonna be some hard work to get that up and out of the ground.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need to gather a whole lot, I don't go through a ton of it, but just thinking about all the different places that I need to go to.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, I love it.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the favorite things that I do is wildcrafting that I mostly keep just to myself.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: People will sometimes be like, hey, do you ever want to like lead like group wildcrafting classes?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: And like a part of me is that would be great.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And another part of me is that is like my special meditative time.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: And like I there's gonna be it's another someone else can teach that and love it.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: I know my friend Alex Ray Crowfoot at Bloodrid Herb Shop started doing a course this year where she was doing a lot of harvesting and medicine making with people, and I was like, awesome, awesome, cool.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: Some ask me, I can be like, Alex is awesome.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: You can go and do her program that she's running where you get to do that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then I can go out there and let time slow down and just be completely occupied.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: I would one of my favorite things to do, and it's been a while since I've been able to do it, is to go out and wildcraft salmon seal because species that I'm growing is polygonata multiflorum, which is non-native, considered an ornamental.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that one has really thick, clumpy roots and it grows really fast.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And the species that grows wild around here is polygonata biflorum, and that one's got really pretty small roots.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: A good size root might be as thick as a sharpie, maybe a little bit bigger, but sometimes they're gonna be like drinking straw thin with little knuckles on them.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I've got to spend all day or a couple days just crawling around the woods to gather those.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: But also, I can't think of anything more fun than crawling around, literally crawling from little patch to patch.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's not like big patches here, there's a little patch here and a little patch there, and oh, a look over there, a little patch.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: And this time of year is perfect for that because most of the forest understory is still green, but they're done back, so you can really see their color.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: If I wait too long and a lot more leaves have fallen, and then they drop their leaves, and then their stems fall over, then I really have to crawl around the floor and look for the stems and the little kind of upside-down Y-looking flower stalks off of the stems and find them amidst all of the fallen leaves, which is a lot harder, but also really cool.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: I just I really enjoy that.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: The places I go to, it tends to grow shallow enough in the ground that I can harvest it entirely with my hands and fingers.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And what I do to remain sustainable is to find where the stem is connected to the root and then feel around in the ground.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then maybe a couple inches back from where that is, you'll you'll feel the shoot next to the stem for next year.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: And a couple inches back, you'll feel the rest of the rhizome, which is an underground stem that runs horizontally across the surface or a little bit under the surface, and I'll break that off and pull up that back part, and that will encourage more growth.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it's very sustainable.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: But it's just such a cool, intimate way to be connected to your place.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it is the time for yeah, it's the time for fall root harvesting, and I love it.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: The only stressor is like thinking about time and practicalities and getting to all the different places, and because I'm a bit of a scatterbrain, like not getting too distracted and missing things, which I'm going to do.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: There will be some things that I wish that I had that I won't get to.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's just gonna happen.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_04: That's just life, right?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I can relate to a lot of that.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I when you're talking about keeping the wildcrafting to yourself, not wanting to teach it as a course, reminded me of it's why I'm no longer commercially farming, because all of the tasks on the farm are my special things that I want to be doing that I don't want to have to put other people on to doing.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I get to just do all that myself.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I can relate to that.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, it's a it's it's a thing where a lot of people like, oh my gosh, it must be amazing that you've made the thing that you love, your work and your business.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, like it's a mixed bag because some of the things that you love become like practical in a way of oh wow, I'm not really feeling this today, but I have to do this today.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: When I think about it sometimes, and maybe it's because I used to I still play music not as much as I would like to, but when I was more focused on playing music, it was like if you're playing music for someone, you just have to give it your all.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't if you're like having not great.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: If I went to go see who could it be today?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: If I went to go see, I just saw John Anderson play earlier this spring.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: He's 82.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: He played for three hours.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: He's the singer from Yes.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: He was amazing, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: He was amazing for three hours at 82 years old.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: He was astounding.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure there are days that John Anderson is like, the last thing I want to do today is be singing for three hours.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to sit still, I want to go for a walk.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: But when people are coming to a concert or they're coming to a class, they don't want to see you do a job.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: And you really just you need to put your all, I'm sure that Lindsay doing body work, you're working on someone and you're like, oh, this is not what I want to do today, or you're distracted or have other things going on in your life.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, oh, but this person is here right now.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: I need to be like all of the best of what I can be for them.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, in addition to the herbalism, at a certain point, learning like how to be a really good teacher became also something that was incredibly important to me.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like the I feel like, and this is also true, is that the people who come and take classes with me are they're my students are my employers.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: If people didn't come to classes, I couldn't do this.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so it then becomes my responsibility and also passion to do a really good job doing what they're coming to see me do and helping them learn in all the different ways.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that totally makes sense.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_04: So we would love if you would just tell us a little bit about your childhood and what we're thinking about is your earliest connections to Earth that you remember, Earth or Body, and if you can see the makings of who you are today, the teaching, the herbalism, anything that that you feel drawn to tell us.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I grew up in the 80s.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was born in 73, but I grew up in the 80s, and what I'm gonna call a really like Ronald Reagan, like suburban subdivision.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't have a a small shop that we lived on, but it wasn't big.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: There was just houses and houses.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: But at the time, there was like a from like behind maybe two houses, there was like quote unquote the field, meaning it was like the field that was close to our house.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone just called it the field.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't all that big.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: There was for a long time there was an old barn there, and then they knocked that down and just the barn foundation.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so we would go and screw around in there and just play out in there, and mostly like we stuff and pretend to be shooting each other or something, or building fires that we weren't supposed to do as kids.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then behind every every sort of like maybe square mile subdivision had its own little elementary school, and behind the elementary school there was the woods, meaning it was like within 1980s walking distance, which I think might be longer than what people consider walking distance now.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: That was like the biggest patch of woods with a creek behind it and stick forts and screwing around in the woods.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I spent a lot of time outside in those places because in a lot of ways it was like those were the unsupervised places because everyone else, everywhere else, there were like houses and people and parents, and so I could screw around and get into trouble and not any kind of terrible way or very terrible way, but just be unsupervised and be in those places, and I really liked it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then a thing that I l love and also completely adore and am passionate about that I did for some reason, because my parents and my family were not outdoorsy at all, even remotely.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: But for some reason we got into the habit of taking this yearly canoe trip on the Huron River, and it was that was like our yearly outdoor thing that that we did as a family.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Other than that, it was just like screen around getting.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Into trouble.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think if like when I really became connected to nature more consciously, is I probably told this story somewhere else before, but I was bum bummed out about this girl that I was dating who decided that she didn't want to date me anymore.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I had gone to the local sort of a metro park that had a beach, and at the beach was pretty crowded, and everyone had their stereos.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: And some people were playing like White Snake or Rat really Loud to try to overpower the stereo next to them, which was playing like Michael Bolton to overpower the stereo next to them, which was maybe playing Prince to overpower the stereo next to them, which was playing like Richard Marks or Are You A Speed Wagon or something.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just really bummed out.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I like left my friends that I was with, and I kind of just wandered off into the woods.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I just found this really beautiful grove of spruce.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then there were some like old, like there, there used to be a homestead there that the house had burned down or something.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so there'd be like some cobblestone walls mixed in and little remnants of this or that.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I just walked into the woods and I took this deep breath and I was like, I'm gonna be okay.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it was from that moment on that I like prioritized going out and going hiking in the woods.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then the happy part of the story is I'm married to the woman now.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_04: So oh my god, wow.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Everything all worked out.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, you're married to the woman that decided to be.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_04: That's amazing.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that was a good story.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then we that's something that that we ended up sharing a lot together is like our early dating.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we just drove around looking for Pizza Huts to find and weird places to go and eat up.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know whether my taste has changed or Pizza Hut has gotten worse worse, but um, it's not a thing we do anymore.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it might be both.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: But aside from like driving around places, we would go on, we would just go to parks and look for new trails and go on hikes and not know the plants, but go on hikes and just talk.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, nature just became something that became really important.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: And we've gone backpacking, we've gone canoeing for a week at a time and camping along the side of the river, lots of hiking.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And now we don't live in we certainly don't live in wilderness, but we've got a couple, what, a couple and a half acres.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: And when I look out most of my windows, I see plants.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_04: I'm curious about your canoe trip with your family growing up because I feel like that's a pretty outdoorsy thing to do.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_04: And what I'm wondering about is just if you know any reason that your family started doing that, or if you had connection with grandparents, ancestors, and knew a little bit about the way they were with the land or the plants.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: So didn't really know any of my grandparents.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: My let's see, I'm 53, I think.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty sure.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I'm 53.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: My mom is 92, and my grandparents were a lot older.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: I only ever have any memory of my mom's mother, my grandmother, when I was growing up.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: And what I remember about her was like the very end of her life where she mostly stayed up in the spare room at her house because she had to move out of her house and live with us, and she wasn't very happy about it.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we didn't really have that connection.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: I have no, I can't even imagine which one of my family members said, How about we go on a canoe trip with the whole family?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: And because it was like me and my mom and dad and my brother, and then my my dad had two brothers that we saw regularly and their families, and then it became a bunch of my and my brother's friends and a lot of my neighborhood going, and then it was pretty, pretty massive.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know how it happened.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still a little bit bewildered about whose idea that was.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm still paddling that stretch of river.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's so cool.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_04: And you don't really know about your ancestors and their connections to lands or plants or anything.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, my my mom's mother came directly from Poland when she was somewhere between 15 and 17, let's say, and not totally understood what that is.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's different stories about that.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then my dad's family grew up in West Virginia and moved here to be a part of the auto industry in the Detroit area.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the connection to the West Virginia family was just never there.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: I've never met any of them connection without.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_04: It was a Scottish ancestry.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it's like probably Scots-Irish.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was in Ireland teaching, uh, this is amazing.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: I sat in a sauna.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you're listening, sauna friends, there was a really vigorous debate between an Irish herbalist and a Scottish herbalist about whether I was an Irish or Scottish McDonald.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: My understanding is Scottish, just barely, but the Irish person is like, but you're a Mick, not a Mac.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's an Irish thing.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not really sure.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_04: So you did tell us a little bit about the herb book in college that grew you onto your path.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_04: Are there any other moments that really stand out as being really influential to specifically putting you on this path of teacher and devoted to plants?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like many people in terms of when I first started teaching.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that I learned, I just self-studied on my own because in Southeast Michigan at the time, there was not a lot happening.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: The internet was not a developed thing.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was around, but not super developed.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: And there was there were some herbalists working and teaching in the Ann Arbor area, which is not too far from me, but at the time it was out of my sphere of where I went to.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I didn't really know that crowd until later.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: And only two, two, two people actively doing that.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: The first actually structured herbal anything I went to was a weekend at the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it was with Matthew Wood and Rosemary Gladstar, were like the main teachers.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then Paul Strauss was like the guy who lived on the land there and had donated the property to build the sanctuary.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went there.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was like a big nobody.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was funny because I was using like email lists and writing stuff online.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: It was before any kind of groups.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: It was just like Yahoo group type things.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I heard it was a funny thing because I got there and someone was like, Oh, you must be Jim McDonald.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Oh, wow, how in the world would they know who I am?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then they started cracking up.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, You're the only dude.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because it was all women.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I got I got to go on long herb walks with Paul, who just really knew his land incredibly well.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: So that was cool.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I that's where I met in person, Rosemary and Matt Wood, for the first time.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I stayed in touch with both of them.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so after that, one of the things that Matt did for me was send me the draft version of his practice of traditional Western herbalism, which wasn't published for years later.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: And what was eventually published was like much smaller and more condensed than the draft that I have.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we didn't have like a, I'm reading this and getting back with him, and he's explaining it to me.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's just here, I I think that you'll I think that you'll benefit from this.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: And every once in a while if we call him up and ask him some questions.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: And probably it's more like writing letters.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: I used to write letters back and forth with Rosemary.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: And when people at a place that I was going and doing kind of nature ecology-related stuff with started noticing that I knew about herbs, they're like, you should teach a class.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I don't know anything about teaching, like, I don't know how to do that.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm just interested in this, and why would I teach a class?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: And they nagged me about it for such a long time.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: I remember writing a letter to Rosemary, and Rosemary responded, and this is a paraphrase.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: She said, If absolutely you can teach a class if more than the people that you're teaching, and you don't say that more, then that's how people learn.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I started doing.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so the very first class I did was like a seven-hour walk.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I only did seven-hour classes for probably at least 10 years before I started doing some shorter things.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: But those in those initial interactions with Rosemary and with Matt, and then with a lot of the other people as I started to meet some other people or communicate with some other people, were really just amazing for me because I lucked out and pretty much all the people that I was meeting were just incredibly kind and supportive to me.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they their way of like looking at me was like, oh, I this person seems really honestly and sincerely interested in herbalism.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if we can do anything that would help him out, we'll do that.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that was just so great.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: I know some people who didn't have those kind of teachers.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: They had teachers that were very hard on them or harsh with them, or had you won't be a good enough herbalist to be able to do things until I tell you that you are.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I just I didn't really have interactions with those people.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm rather grateful.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: I guess some people that's what they want in the world, but that wouldn't have worked for me.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, Rosemary was instrumental.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: And whenever I talk about Rosemary Gladstar, I feel like I'm exaggerating or like stereotyping her.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel actually like I'm not saying how cool I think Rosemary is.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: I remember one time I was at the International Herb Symposium, and I walked with her from one building to another building, and there was like a stream of like maybe four or five people in that short little distance who walked up to just say, Hey, you probably don't remember me or what, but I just want to say, like, you totally changed my life and you did this for me, and then this thing happened, and that thing happened.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Oh wow, that happened with me too.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, I'm really grateful about that.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that was definitely very helpful.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Rosemary also, I had her come out and teach in Michigan for a weekend.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: She's the first like visiting herbalist I hosted.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: And after that weekend, she was she told me something to the effect of, oh, I really like what you're doing here in the community that you're building here.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: You should teach at one of the herb conferences.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I don't have any idea how to get involved in an herb conference.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, I have an herb conference, and maybe you can teach at that one if you just ask me when the next one is happening.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the International Herb Symposium.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it was from like that opportunity that she gave me to be able to teach there that I met so many more people who also then were cool to me and helped me out.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: That would be like I could list so many people and I'm leaving people out, but we probably want to talk about other stuff.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And they were like the first people who helped me.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then maybe I also want to say there was a the first actual herbalist I met was a guy named Gary Wattaja, who has an herb shop in Detroit.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: And he is not someone who was like a specific teacher of mine.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: But when I would go into the herb shop, he would just give me like little pearls, like a question or like a teeny little piece of information for me to think about.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Again, in this like really super supportive way that was very helpful.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he is one of the sort of like unknown, unrecognized, brilliant people that I've met in my life and benefited from their kindness.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_04: Sounds like you've had amazing teachers.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, Rosemary is we don't know her, but she's just so lovely.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_04: You can just feel her spirit.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's yeah, she's really beautiful.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_04: And we're hoping we can ask her to join our podcast at some point.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_04: I just wanted to actually ask this, isn't it typically one of our questions, but we love to get into ancestors.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_04: But I'm actually thinking you mentioned you have three kids that are similarly spaced as our kids.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm wondering if how their relationship with herbs and you as a teacher for them has been for you.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm wondering if there's been any resistance or if they're on the plant path or anything like that.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe you can give us some wisdom that we can bring forward in our family.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting because it's not like it's kind of not a thing to them.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's so normalized.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: One of my favorite stories is that my oldest kid, Liam, when oh, I'm not sure how old, said to my mom, like, I'm not feeling good.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have any medicine?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: And my mom was like, Medicine?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what kind of medicine?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, E.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: And my mom told me the stories, could you believe he said that?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, actually, I can believe that he said that because that's what he understands.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: My my middle kid, Rowan, probably uses herbs more and will like self-serve.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: Liam will ask for something and take something if I if I make tea, but is less likely to go and make their own tea.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: Rowan has stuff that they'll do and stuff that they know to use for this and for that.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then Eloin, my youngest, will be like, I don't want or need anything.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's not and not in a way like, don't make me do this, because we don't make them do anything.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: And partially I'm like, oh, come on, come, I could make really good things.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: This sir, this syrup is really good.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: But also, Eloyn gets better, faster for sickness than anyone else in the family.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: And whatever.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's okay.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: I let them do it.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's mostly it's just a normal thing.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: And there's all the things they know not to taste any bottle that's lying around in the house because it could not be awesome.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: Either taste-wise, usually I don't have any red here.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you people can't see me anyway.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: For anything that's a low-dose botanical or oh, a child could be, should not take this.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: They're usually up in a way and in a box and inaccessible, but they'll often have red caps on them.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: The red caps is that.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: So they know I've unless they got to be like teenagers, I was like, don't let your friends randomly take anything.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm pretty good about not leaving dangerous stuff out, but I don't want to have any situations.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, but really, it's just that one of the things about growing up as an herbalist and having kids is when you meet other parents, what has happened to me sometimes, which is it's not bad, but it just always strikes me at a certain point later, is like, oh, wait a minute, I just met that person, but they already know who I am.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: I recognize that if I'm in an herb conference, I'm in a class, people are there because they know who I am.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: But when it is outside of that or seemingly outside of that, you know, meet someone's parents, and or I remember there was just these kids that I met, and we were always pretty tight with like all the kids in the families and everything in the groups that we were in.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: And there were some kids and they just seemed not super comfortable talking with me.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then their dad told me later on, they're like, they grew up watching you.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: We would make them, they wanted to watch cartoons, so we would make them watch your videos.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, oh no, they wanted to watch the quote unquote cartoons that they really wanted to see, and their parents wouldn't let them.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, no, you can't watch what you want, it really makes you watch this die.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that that was a kind of a funny thing that's happened.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe we'll maybe we'll try that for our kids.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for our kids.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_04: We wouldn't do that.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_04: Our kids can't.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'll make a video and it'll have like me, and in the corner, there'll be like an episode of something cool, like Bluey or Avatar or whatever.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: That'd be perfect.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: So we can just filter out what I'm saying and watch that.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or just start with the cool wizard's hat, or like as if they're about to see something that they're really interested in.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe that's the next realm for you is kids, purple.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: I have a cool wizard hat.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I've got two two pointy hats that I will just wear.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: One time I got invited by a library to teach, it was like Science of Harry Potter or something like that.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, Will you come and teach this class?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was like back when the series was like super popular and really still in the middle of the movies.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I got there and everyone looked at me and she's like, Oh, you dressed up.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I just dress like this.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, and I'm like, No, really, I just dress like this sometimes.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_04: I love that about your kids because I feel like it's pretty normalized for our kids too.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_04: Our two-year-old is always asking for tea and always asking for plantain.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever she has little boo-boos and bug bites, she's like, I need plantain.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's really sweet in her little two-year-old voice to have her asking for those sorts of things.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: But I feel like we had maybe some of the first resistance from our oldest, from our almost 11-year-old daughter recently when she had a really annoying cough at night, and we were encouraging her to do a steam.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_04: And then she, of course, slept so well.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_04: And she's great because she does this for me with bodywork too.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_04: She's really interesting because whenever her pelvis is out of alignment, it's so incredibly obvious.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_04: She gets really sensitive.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_04: There was this one grumpy.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_04: She gets really grumpy in a different way.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: And there was one dinner where she was crying over the fact that everyone in her class got to chew gum with aspartame, but we wouldn't let her.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_04: And it was just this ridiculous just, why don't you let me have the crappy toxic gum?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_04: It was comical.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_04: And then I worked on her and balanced her pelvis.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_04: Comical to us, but I worked on her and balanced her pelvis.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_04: And then afterwards she was like, Mommy, I feel so much better.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_04: I can't believe I was crying over gum.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_04: And same thing with the steam.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_04: She was like, I slept so much better.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_04: She just it's but it's that little bit of resistance where when she was little, I remember making her a little badge that said number one tincture taker or something because she was doing so great with that.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, the first night with the steam, she claimed that it it'll move something and it got caught in her voice.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so she was really angry about that.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, it was that stupid steam you guys made me take, loosened it up, and it ended up in my voice, and now I sound weird.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_04: But she still did sleep better.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_04: And then another night she was not as resistant, and then she was just entirely over it really quickly.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_04: So it's nice to just I didn't grow up with I grew up with sleepy time tea, but not with herbs as a regular medicine in my house.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_04: And so it's and same with you, Scott.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_04: So it's interesting for us to and it's interesting to hear about you and how it's like you're you will trickle down the knowledge to your kids, and they'll probably do the same if they have children.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_04: And it's great to just think about, yeah, keeping that connection to the plants.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think with kids, when my kids are a lot younger, I heard a lot more about all of the right parenting things you're supposed to do.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember someone saying something like, if your kids, if you don't teach them really good eating habits when they're young, the chances they'll develop them when they get older are like really slim.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, that is just so contrary to like most like my life and most people that I know.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: I did benefit, my mom was a good is a good cook, and we ate mostly fresh food and meals that were prepared at home, and she chopped up vegetables and everything.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: But we didn't, we were not a greens family, and now it's like dinner without greens is like, oh crap.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: To wait, are we out of are we out of green stuff?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: When I can go in the backyard and pick things, but sometimes it's just like the the day, the week has been crazy, and it's like oh we'll have to we'll have to survive.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: And but I picked that up later, I picked up like all of anything health related later in life, and so I viewed it more as like creating a foundation.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like when I was young, and it made sense for my parents to think that I should go into drafting and get a job at General Motors, and I was like, that is not what I want to do.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what I didn't really care for was like having that kind of pressed on me, yeah.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I don't want to be like, oh, hey, you need to do this thing, or you have to do this and have to do that.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Then it's not like them choosing or them discovering or them finding.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: And if it happens earlier, later, or doesn't happen, that's up to them and what they like.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe the same thing applies to like music.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: There's certainly music that I want them to make them.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: And probably music that you don't want them to play, perhaps, or that you don't want to listen to at least.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: We have really lucked out.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: No one listens to anything that makes Stephanie and I miserable.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's good.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_04: That's really good.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: That is good.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_04: Ella was on the drive to school this morning.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_04: We'd done Would You Rather in the car recently and Would You Rather see the Beatles in concert or Taylor Swift?
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_04: And everyone in our family said Beatles except Ella, and she said Taylor Swift.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_04: And this morning she was like, You really would choose the Beatles over Taylor Swift?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, Yeah, honey.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I would.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_04: I would.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, we can't choose what these children become.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_04: We just have to nurture them the same way we would some plants and see how they come along.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there was a a Taylor Swift era.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's kind of short, or my experience of it was kind of short, but I was able to be like, ooh, here's a song that Taylor Swift did with the Civil Wars.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, here is a song that Taylor Swift did with Def Leopard.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: So there was a few crossover things that I was able to make work.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's cool.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_04: You can take that role with it.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to actually add a quick question about something you said earlier on?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: When you were studying at school and you came across the herb book, you said that you were walking by the university gardens or botanical gardens and they had things labeled.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: That was how you is I hadn't caught that piece of the story before, but is that how?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: You started to recognize plants out in the world?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: That was initially how I would do it.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: Although something that I'll teach to people, they'll say, Oh my gosh, what is that plant?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: I see that plant everywhere.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what it is.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, actually, if you're saying that, you do know what it is, you just don't know what other people call it.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you didn't know what it is, you wouldn't recognize it between one place and another.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: So the first plants I learned were like really obvious, like burdock.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: That was also the first plant that I ever harvested with a very small little hand troll and a very long beep root.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so there was just I saw the, I was like, oh wait, that's the plant growing next to the barn.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a little sign that says burdock.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then I go and I look back at the barn later that day, and I was like, yeah, that's that is the same plant.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then there was nettles by the barn.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: Willow trees were easy.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it was just like starting with the easy stuff.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then I learned a lot through initially through picture books.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: There was a oh god, this.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: When I had it, it was an eyewitness handbook.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was like something you'd find on the bargain books thing, and a couple little pictures, but pretty good pictures about plants and then teeny little pieces of information about them.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I learned Solomon's Seal and Cleavers.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: I remember very specifically having that book.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: I was at my friend Steve's wedding, and after the ceremony, we're sitting in the woods doing something.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like the plant screening around as like flipping through the book.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I found the plant.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: I found the plant.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: I know now that that's not the greatest way to learn plants, and there's plants that look similar, but I was right about a lot of different things.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: But initially, a lot of what I did to learn plants or just to learn information, because I didn't have a lot of money, is I would go into the a library or a usually college library or a bookstore and just pull out all of the books I could find in a section and look up one plant and then go through all the books and take notes about them and then put them back on the shelves.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd be really upset like when someone would buy one of the books that it wasn't done with yet.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: But out of my budget in some cases.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I did easily the first three or four years.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of what I would do is I would go into places that just had more books than I had so that I could research in different books and see what was the same and what was different.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe that also led me to like when I look for a resource, whether it's a book or website or podcast or something, the thing that became really important to me that started back then is I realized that some people were clearly just writing stuff down that they had read in other places about an herb.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: And they were covering so many plants that I got, I came to an understanding.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like they don't know all these plants.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: They might know some of them, but they don't know all of them.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: They're just compiling information.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then there were people that you could tell from the way they wrote, they use these plants.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: They what they're writing is from their own personal experience.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: And nowadays, one of the big issues that people are worried about and rightly is like how much AI herbal books are being published or websites.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: I have a group called the Great Lakes Herbal Cooperative that's on Facebook.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: And literally in the last week, I'm just having to take down all of these AI posts.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, oh, this is so irritating.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I also think that there's information that's been compiled by humans that's just as bad because the humans are just compiling information that they don't have any experience with and don't understand.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of these books that are like more comprehensive, where people are just like quoting this and quoting this, it's like, that's not anything different than what AI is doing.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: And what we don't want to do is be like, oh, I want a book written by or a website or a podcast or whatever, you know, that's done by a human and not AI.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: We want it done by a human who is in relationship, who is teaching what they know.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: Because I could research a lot about being a mechanic, but if I haven't actually fixed anything in my car, like no matter how many citations I have, there's gonna be stuff that I miss and get wrong because I don't know that I'm getting it wrong because I don't have the experience to know that doesn't work.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that that's become pretty important.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, initially, like just lots of visual recognition of plants based on pictures.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then later on, I started to learn more and more botany.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I could I'm sure I could always still stand to learn more botany.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: The one of the reason I asked that question is because so we the farm that we live on that we own is 92 acres, and it's just there's about 12 acres of open land, and the rest of it is forested.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got a forest management plan that has, I think, close to 15 distinct pockets of distinct forest types.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really diverse.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: And a bunch of years ago, I had this is probably 10 years ago, I had come across this idea.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: There was a Bioneers of or no, I'm oh I'm saying the wrong thing.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: I went to a Bioneers event once in California, but this was oh, what are the I can't remember the term for it, but basically they called in naturalists and specialists to all of the fungus people and all of the plant people and uh insect people, and they did this thing.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: What was the name for it?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_04: I know what you're talking about, but I also don't know.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: We were living in Montpelier, Vermont, and they had they were bringing people into the capital of Vermont to try to document as many species as possible in the town of Montpelier.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, that's such a cool idea, just the vast array of things that are out there that people are probably unaware of.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I should do that for our farm.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: I should just name everything I can.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: And just sitting, it was like the middle of the winter when I had this idea and just sitting in my living room, I came up with this was 10 years ago or so, I came up with 250 things really quickly.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now I know there's so many more plants and mosses and funguses and things like that.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: But we're having people come and stay for retreats and get connected to the land and learn stuff about homesteading and get body work from Lindsay.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it is just getting people to come here and feel what it feels like to not be in busy modern paradigm in the city and all of that.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: Just come and learn some stuff, but also have a lot of downtime to just hang out at our place, which is really quiet and out in the sticks.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been thinking it would be really cool to start putting labeling stuff, just like having labels that would hold up, I don't know, the metal ones or something that you're catch on to.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like for a lot of people that tend to take an interest in this stuff, they want the ability to discover it on their own or at their own pace, not to be like having it crammed down their throat if they're not looking for that.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think hearing that you were checking out the college garden to get introduced to herbs like re-inspires that idea that would be it'd be fun to just label trees, label plants so that people can wander through, sort of self-guided and start to get to know plants.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I the place I first started teaching was called Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's part of the reason my Lindera course is just called Lindera, because I was like, if I need to writing or typing something out, it's not going to be that long.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I had it in my head for a long time is no, maybe someday I'll make some little self-guided trail of and probably what I would do is rather than having like some of the old school nature trails, they have a plaque with a lot of words on it that says something like something, is we had been up in the upper peninsula along Lake Superior on this trail, and they just had a little post that said if you grab a pamphlet, and there was like the beginning of the trail, pick up your pamphlet and then a drop-off trail pamphlet.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, nowadays we'd use like QR codes or something.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: And just there would be like a little number.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: You'd read the thing on number one in your pamphlet, go to the next thing.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then over the years, I realized, oh, you'd really have to keep moving these things around because we think about plants as these stationary things.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: But once you are in a place for a long time and you get ton of your place, it is amazing how much things move around.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: And some things move more than others, but whether it's through like herbivory where the deer eat out your Solomon seal, which has happened a lot in my backyard.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_02: I like a lot of my things.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think they think like I have this fancy restaurant in town.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: So like there's stuff that grows there that doesn't grow anywhere else.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: But also just like plants go through their cycle and then a new thing moves moves on.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, having that ability to something with the you can just make sure you can move it, right?
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, not like a wooden post in the ground that's gonna be hard to dig back out.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, sure.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it would be, I'm not trying to put down this idea, but yeah, just thinking, I'm thinking too of just the seasonality and where the trilliums pop up and how brief these windows are sometimes for certain plants, but also, yeah, it's there are just so many amazing plants on our land and all the land, really.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_04: So I like this idea.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_04: And it has been interesting, I think, to have the guests that we have had come and just see the immense amount of plants that are just basically right in the yard.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: The dooryard.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all the stuff that's naturalized.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: That we, our sort of entry into medicinal herbs really was through we were selling a lot of plants at the farmer's market, and we were getting a bunch of stuff from strictly medicinals to just round out to have a bunch of interesting stuff.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really know them much at all.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Lindsay made these beautiful little cards that we would like labels, and we could fit 20 words on there.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we would have a very it was like this for that sort of herbalism sort of style.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: But so we were just getting introduced then.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, I was really getting to know the plants, even though I didn't have the lens of herbalism or western and the seeds, energetics or anything like that.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: But we were getting to know the plants really well.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then yeah, it's been interesting to see to develop that relationship to get to know them better, like how they interface with our bodies and how they can help other people and all that sort of thing.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: I keep losing my training.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel like you're probably I feel like that's probably a less common path for an herbalist to start by growing so many things and then beginning to use them as medicine, which is really what you're talking about.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_04: You were growing them from seed.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then planting them out and herbs.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_04: And then planting them out, and then it was for many things besides the real basics of peppermint tea or calendula or something like that.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_04: It it's taken a number of years to begin using so much of that medicine, which is a cool, unique path, I think.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: Plants take take over our lives in so many distinct ways.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_04: They really do.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: Wonderful ways.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_04: I'm wondering, Jim, if there's anything that you're really excited about in your work moving forward.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_04: I know you have your more soon-to-be-done task list of your your root harvest, but is there are there any plants or anything you're learning about or anything that you just feel really excited about?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: See, I just got I was in Florida teaching earlier this year, and I met a guy named Ralph Stephen down there.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: Stephen Stevens?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: One of those Ralph.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: I met Ralph down there.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: No, I maybe I shouldn't say this.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, Ralph, if you don't want to be this everyone, my new source for Cactus grandiforis or Selenoserius grandifloris, or maybe it's Peteranthus.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the two.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: They're fairly interchangeable, it seems.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I've been using that plant for a long time.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: And all of the old books, because this is a plant that kind of fell out of use for a very long time and is still not super easy to get a hold of.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great restorative cardiac herb and a really great like nerving trophy restorative.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I would read these old books from like the late 1800s, early 1900s, and they would say things like the the cactus grown in the greenhouse is inferior to that growing wild.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I've used stuff that was cultivated for such a long time.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so now I have this wild stuff, and I'm really been taking that and sitting with it and like feeling out like can I discern a difference?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: To which I right now I don't know.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: Can I discern a difference?
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably like like it's not something new that I'm doing, it's like I have there's plants that I work with for a long time, and I've come up with thoughts about them.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's growing those thoughts and deepening those thoughts and coming up with more like subtlety and complexity around them.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: So another thing is when I first learned about royal fern, another very obscure plant, I learned about it from Matthew Wood for back injuries.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I he had sent me some that his he made almost like a flower essence, but made with the leaves.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then I did research on it.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: I heard that it was primarily the root that was used, and so I harvested some root and made tincture with that and was using it.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, I like this stuff.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then it was like, these roots are kind of like they're beautiful and really amazing looking, but they're a lot of work to harvest.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's using the leaves, maybe I can just try using the leaves.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I started using the leaves, and it's like, oh, I like the leaves.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think the leaves work really good too.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I used the leaves for easily 12 or 15 years now.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: And last year I was like, Do I do I actually think that the leaves are the same or equivalent to the root?
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: Or I'm gonna go back now that I've used them for such a long time and kind of switch back to using the root and then compare contrast between the root and the leaves.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because one of the things that I think happens in all the different ways that people learn is what we learn reinforces what we know in ways that are sometimes like limiting to us.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: I learn, oh, this plant has these uses, and I start using it for those uses, and then there's things that I don't use it for.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then is it because it's not good for those other things, or because I'm just not thinking to use it for those other things?
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_02: Or I get excited, like, ooh, there's maybe a more sustainable way.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: And where I live, royal fern is really sustainable to harvest.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: I can more sustainably gather the leaves than the root, I'll just use the leaves, and then be like, oh, is it quite qualitatively the same, or is there differences?
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so sometimes what I'll do is I'll what I'll do is I'll look at something that I've been doing and being like, oh yeah, this is what I think, and just throwing a little bit of challenge into that so that if I've fallen into like a knowledge or an understanding that is unbenims to me actually self-limiting to coke at that and feel around that and see if it's actually true.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to say I try to do that with most things in my life.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure I'm a little bit resistant about some things, like as as we all are.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: But that's it's more like continuing to develop relationships with stuff that I already know or that I'm already doing, as opposed to ooh, there's some new thing that I'm super interested in right now.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like you're saying, appropriate to herbalism, which you can just study endlessly forever.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there's just like even the plants, like you're saying, like the plants you've known for such a long time, like continue digging into the nuance.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: One a couple quick questions.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: One is there a piece of advice that you wish you would have gotten earlier on your path.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's like what I touched on earlier, I think when we started, is like you don't have to know all of the things to be good at something, right?
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think that when we're learning and we put that kind of pressure on ourselves, and with herbalism, in addition to that, kind of like along with that, I think that people want to know all the things and they want to learn them really fast.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_02: So like they oh, I I've decided I I love herbalism, totally get that.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so now I want to know all of the things and get good at it like as soon as I can.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that was both a benefit and maybe a drawback of mostly teaching myself the stuff that I know, and not like I didn't learn from a lot of other people, but in terms of any kind of formal study, it took me a really long time to learn things.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then eventually, when I would learn them, sometimes I would think, wow, someone could have told me that in about 10 minutes and I would have gotten it.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it took me months or years to be able to wrap my head around it.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_02: But also like having this like slow process of growing my knowledge created a really good, solid foundation for that knowledge.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: A foundation that sometimes needs work.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I'm like, ooh, there's some weaknesses over there.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: But what I see now, and especially even the way that people are how they learn to learn, is it's like we're gonna present you with information and it's the especially in online material.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: In this course, in this module of this course, we're gonna present this information, and by the end of it, you will know these things.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_02: And what I think that's done with the way that people learn is they get information, and then if they don't understand every little bit of it, they'll be like, How come I don't know all these things?
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I think about learning as more like a path of wondering about things where you build up your knowledge and understanding rather than knowing being an endpoint that you get to.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, now I know this.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because if knowing something becomes an endpoint, that also becomes an endpoint, can be like a resistance point when you learn something that conflicts with what you know.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: You want to be like, that can't be true because I know this and that's not this, and that's different, and you can kind of fight against that rather than me like, ooh, that's interesting.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: I never thought of that before.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't mean like when you hear something and you're like, that can't be true, that it is, but you're open to thinking about it instead of feeling it about out.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: So just taking it easy if you're someone who's learning, or to me, what I tell myself still, is like I don't need to know all the things.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_02: I can just be like, what are the things that I'm good at and what are the things that I'm drawn to and interested in?
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_02: And how can I learn those really well and know where my edges are so that I don't overstep them?
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then not being in the rush to know all the things as fast as possible.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because sometimes when you do something really fast, it's not quite as strong or solid total understanding.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_04: I can feel into that even just with I'm just thinking of someone I know who is has been studying herbs, but it's like you described, she seems to know a lot of the analytical information, but it's like it almost hasn't taken root in her.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: And I think it's because she's trying to do it really quickly.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_04: Whereas I feel like the way Scott has been learning, although he has had formal teachers, is he doesn't feel any pressure to know everything.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_04: And and I feel like he's really embodied and learned on kind of a deeper level.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_04: So I feel like that is great advice, especially with herbs where it's endless.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_04: I feel that way with the body too.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm just I'm slow moving in my process and just the way I think.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: And but yeah, I talk about that on the farm all the time.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: It takes such a long time.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_02: Every once in a while, someone will ask about my course and they'll be like, Wait, there's no homework, there's no tests.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, No, there's not homework or tests.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: And they'll interpret that is I guess this is not uh what would be the right word?
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_02: Valid or structured, or like there'll be some sort of like dismissal that because I'm not giving people homework or tests, that the course is like less serious or that the information is less comprehensive or whatever.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the biggest reason, well, there's a couple of different reasons, is if I gave homework and tests, then I would have more work to do.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then every because if I have more work to do, it's also more work for me to do, but that have to charge more.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then that becomes a barrier for some people.
• 1:03:41
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then the other thing is how do I test people?
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: If someone's not, if writing is not their thing, do I have where like it's a writing and reading kind of testing?
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I know a lot of people who have those.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: If if someone's a slower processor and my course moves at a certain pace, does that reward the faster processors and make the slower processors feel like, oh, wait, maybe I'm not as good as these other people who were able to comprehend the information more quickly, which is how people are taught to learn in conventional schooling, right?
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_02: If you were a slower learner, even if you're learning just as well, but just at a slower pace, and by the time you're 12 or 15 or 20 or 30, you know just as much as the faster learners, a lot of those people can feel like, oh, I don't learn as well as other people.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like if I had homework, I'd have to off of the option where someone can write something or make a video or do a sculpture or do like creative interpretive dance.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then that seems overwhelming.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so what I'm hoping is that the people who take my course, they're taking because they're motivated to learn, right?
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like they want to learn because they really want to learn, and they're taking my course because the way that I teach fits good with the way that they learn, you know, and like those are the people I want to take my course.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_02: And if someone's like, oh no, I want a lot of tests, I want a lot of like academic ri rigor, I want to have to write monographs on things where I had to cite every single post that I make.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_02: I know other people who have those schools, and they would be happy to see your citations.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, perfect.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_04: Love that.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_02: That works great.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_04: It's been amazing chatting with you today.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_04: And Scott has spoken so highly of you, and I've seen a few of your videos watching along with Scott and really appreciated the way you teach too.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_04: And so as we finish up, is there anything you'd like to share about where people can find you either online or in person or or learn about your work?
• 1:05:47
  unknown: No.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_02: So online, my website is herbcraft.org.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_02: So herbcraft.org, not herbcraft.com.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that has a website there yet.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: I keep getting emails that I can buy it for lots and lots of money, and I'm not going to.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: But someone also sent a PayPal to Jim at herbcraft.com for something that they bought, and I never got the money.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_02: So whoever has that got$30 or something.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: So herbcraft.org is the website.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_02: On social media, I'm on Facebook, kind of on Instagram.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: I have an account on Threads and on Blue Sky, and then maybe some other placers, but I'm I'm much less active there because really I don't see any engagement there, but I do post classes and stuff there.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_02: And let's see, I teach a lot of classes in person, and most of them are here in Michigan.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: And really frequently on the southern part of the lower peninsula of Michigan, I'm driving back and forth across the state teaching classes all year long.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_02: I do stuff in other parts of Michigan and other parts of the country, and then sometimes in Canada and once in Ireland.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_02: And if anyone wants me to come and teach in Hawaii, just send me an email.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_02: What about gym earthcraft.com, Jim and Earthcraft.org.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_02: That'd be great.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_02: I have taught Vermont before.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that that's not undoable.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_04: Just maybe a little less of a fun winter trip than Hawaii.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_02: Hawaii might be a better Hawaii sounds like a great January trip.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, those are the online things.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_02: There's a bunch of there's a ton of free writing on my website, literally hundreds of pages.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's hours and hours of videos on YouTube that are totally free.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's lots of different podcasts.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of offerings.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that that I try to do is provide a lot of free stuff so that people who are interested in my teaching can check out what I do and see that it works for them before they commit to paying for a class or joining the course.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because although I certainly want people to join the course, that's how I make my living and feed my kids and sometimes buy just splurgy stuff for myself, which I really like doing.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want people to join my course who are like, this is not the way that I learned and this isn't working for me.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_02: That would make me sad.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: I would rather have those people go to someone that fits their learning needs better.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in order to manifest that, I just have lots of information and people can see whether they like the way that I teach in puns and prog rock references and all the other stuff that goes into it.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_02: Balloons, pool needles, donuts.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_04: Amazing.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: We really appreciate your coming on and talking with us today.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you for all the good work you're doing out there.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's awesome.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's been great.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_02: Meeting you and talking with you more back and forth is great.
• 1:08:35
  unknown: Awesome.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you for listening to this episode of Homestead and Heal.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_04: If you loved it, please help us spread the word by subscribing to this podcast and leaving us a review.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_04: For more information about our work, visit homesteadandheal.net.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: We're wishing you the life of your dreams, one that feels deeply rooted, fully alive, and connected to the earth beneath your feet.