Latest / Homestead And Heal Podcast / Ep 21: What Seeds Can Teach Us About Our Bodies & the Earth with Kay'aleya Hunnybee

Transcript

Ep 21: What Seeds Can Teach Us About Our Bodies & the Earth with Kay'aleya Hunnybee · Homestead And Heal Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Homestead and Heal.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Scott.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Lindsay, and we live with our three children on a farm in Vermont.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: 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_01: 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_02: This podcast is about remembering something many of us have forgotten: that we're not separate from the natural world.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Our bodies are part of it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Our healing comes through it.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: And when we reconnect to both, our purpose often begins to reveal itself.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: 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: Okay, welcome back to Homestead and Heal.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Today we are here with a woman who is dear to me, Kaya Lea.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I know Kaya from years ago now, when I was first starting my online business, she invited me onto her podcast, the Herbal Womb Wisdom Podcast.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we talked about breast care and just all sorts of things.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: That was right when I remember that was when I'd had that sort of epiphany moment in my greenhouse where the words came in, when you touch your body, you touch the earth.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like this felt like a lightning bolt.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that was right before I talked with you.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, we've stayed in touch.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then you came for my fascia alchemy professional bodywork training, which was so wonderful to be with you in the flesh and work with you.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just been amazing to witness you on your journey through life.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to introduce you to Scott, another herbal herbalist, herbal lover, and have this conversation with you.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we would love if you could just start by introducing yourself to our audience.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, beautiful.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: That was a lovely introduction to me.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And just yeah, I feel like the path to us connecting has been really organic.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like there's been any directing.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I just love those kinds of relationships.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Scott, I'm so happy to meet you.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, likewise.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And just feel like we're woven into each other's worlds already.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Gosh, how can I introduce myself?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting question.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't actually do it very often because I don't do a lot of interviews where I'm being interviewed.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I certainly am interviewing people.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But what I will say, yeah, what I will say is that my name is Kaya Honeybee.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And most people call me Kaya.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's just an easy way to speak my name.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I am a woman of the earth.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am a woman of the womb.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am a person who feels so deeply interrelated to the seasons inside and out of me.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really what I'm here, I feel like, to offer to people is just more connection to all of those things.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, in whatever ways that comes through, to be honest, it's yes, I'm an herbalist and I am a highly trained clinician and I work with people herbally and I love working with people in perimenopause and especially with irregular cycles.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's my favorite things right now, or like perimenopausal, like that transition, that threshold time where we're shifting.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that's one of those times, yes, it's having its trending moment in the world, but it's also one of those times that's not tended.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times we are tending the postpartum, we're tending perinatally.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people think about womb care.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have my herbal womb wisdom podcast.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So many people immediately think, oh, you're a birth worker.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I was a birth worker for years.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was orienting to birth work for five years.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I got into connecting with my womb space more fully.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized, I guess that was my late 20s and early 30s, because I was a student midwife for years.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that being a midwife was really about being with women.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't necessarily about being with the perinatal time.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that really gave me this spark of what else could be possible around being with womb and being with women.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I studied with Aviva Rahm, who really orients to the many phases, the seasons of our life, and studied her entire herbal or herbal medicine for women program, which, to be honest, it's an interesting thing to mention because there are so many people that I've known who've been in that program who have not completed it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is a very thorough, very comprehensive, very self-led program.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a lot of direction around getting through it, and it's super full on.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it took me 11 years.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna say that out loud.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It took me 11 years to get through that program, and I finally did.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, yes, this is I now have those deep foundations in being with women through with herbs throughout the life cycle.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that was like probably right before I started my podcast.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: That I maybe a year or two before I started my podcast, that I was like, did that?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I'm gonna bring this.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:14
  unknown: Yeah.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So Vivaram actually is somebody that I want to name as one of a primary teacher for me that I still go back to and I'm actually about to tonight.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have our welcome call for her functional medicine program that I'm stepping into this year that is even more deeply around integrative and functional health.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And specifically, I'm really wanting to orient more, like I said, to perimenopause and really bringing it from that lens because so many people are thinking about hormone replacement therapy or is this perimenopause?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm having sleep issue, all these things.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, I want to be able to really understand this landscape more.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'm in this kind of growth process in myself too right now of stepping in that way.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is super exciting.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is exciting.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm amazed by all the things that you do and have done.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I'm just honored to know you.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And what one thing that we like to ask, now that you've introduced yourself, is can you introduce the place where you are right now?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on in nature where you are, or just the landscape that you're maybe looking out on or that you see on a daily basis?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I love that question.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for asking that.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So right now I'm looking out, I guess it's north.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking north, and there's a hemlock, a very tall hemlock tree right out my window.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I love looking out at that tree.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just I it's interesting when I was gosh, I think it was when I was in high school or something.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had this vision of myself living in New England.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a really weird thing, actually, to think about this.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I had this vision of myself living in New England and having a window where I looked out at a tree and it was snowing earlier.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: There was snow, a snowpack on the ground.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I swear it's like this window.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fascinating thing.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's something that this is my office space, which is also my library, as you can see, and it's just such a special thing.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so there's the hemlock, and then so I'm in the Wabanaki lands of Maine.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I like to describe them.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I live about 20 minutes from Belfast, which is on the Bay.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I have access to the ocean, and Belfast is where I orient, and I have an office I work out of there, but I also am inland.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a little bit different.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting in the coast, and you know this because actually the two of you I know met in Maine.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's I love that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: But as you go inland, it's like a different ecology and it's a different zone.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's a different gardening zone where I am as compared to 20 minutes from me on the coast.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's wild how quickly that shifts.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I live inland and in the forest, essentially.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what I also want to name is that last night I went for the first time to this place called Nibizoon, Nibizoon, and that is actually this center for Wabanaki culture, which is Wabanaki.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: The Wabanaki are the peoples of the Dawn, so the people of this land, and the people of the Dawn are called that because this is the easternmost part of the entire North American continent.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of the tribes that are here are combined into the Wabanaki people.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were on Penobscot land last night, but there were different tribes that were represented and who were there.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just honestly, there was this part of me that was like, oh, somehow I'm like just arriving onto this land.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've been here for five years, and being with them in this space where we're honoring the equinox, they told a story of the stars in the sky and the way that they tell the seasons through how the stars are shifting.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then we honored the fire and we had spring water.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was just such a beautiful experience of feeling connected to this land.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I will say about where I am.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, we're in the turning of the seasons.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that leaves are just starting to turn.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you're feeling that, seeing that a little bit too where you are.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, where we are, it's like the the colors are on for sure.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's moving in that direction.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: You're mentioning being in a different zone and ecosystem just 20 minutes from the coast.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Reminded me of the place where Lindsay and I taught.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that they used to market the school, which was at the time it was called Ferry Beach Ecology School.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's just the ecology school.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: But one of their like main things was that from the campus, which was located on the beach, was that we could walk to, was it six or seven six distinct ecosystems.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: You're like 20 minutes from the coast, but even being like on the coast, you have the beach, primary dune, secondary dune, forest, rocky, intertidal zone, what else?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Saltmarsh.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Saltmarsh.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like all of these distinct, really distinct all within walking distance from the campus.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that about Maine, actually.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: I love being on the coast, it has its very specific feel.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: But then as soon as you get just a little bit away from the coast, you can still feel that influence.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: I still know I'm in Maine.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's sandier, it's more pine trees than we have here in Vermont.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: But but you're moving into this New England feeling more than what I associate with the coast a little bit.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: We also always told a story at that school.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: We taught a nature at night lesson, and there was a story about how the night sky came to be.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I was thinking of those things as you're Yeah, that gathering sounds amazing and magical, and it is yeah, just so interesting to think of this how we've arrived on a piece of land or how long we've been someplace.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that comes up a lot in Vermont because I'm a flatlander.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they would call me.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I can resonate with what you're saying, just this idea of both just arriving and also feeling like really at home somewhere.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, but thank you for sharing about that ceremony too.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I did want to just say, too, that vision you had in high school or whenever it was of looking out the window at the tree.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: I just think these things are so magical.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I've shared this before.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to get into it much, but as a child, I wrote stories about Maine.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd never been to the East Coast even until I was in my 20s.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: I lived in Kansas on the prairie.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I really have this wondering of I met Scott within an hour of setting foot in Maine, working together.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I just have this wondering of like, yeah, how our how time works and how we know things from a younger age that would there, there's no sense that we can make of it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: But was I being drawn to Maine?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then whatever.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's something.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have some knowing or what?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or did I have some knowing then of like what my life was going to look like?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the same with your window, the view out your window and that tree.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was there somehow.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Hemlock is very special to me always.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: I love like the little we have a few hemlock groves on our land, and they're just like so magical.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: I've always had that feeling.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: They are very magical.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: We are in like full-on harvest mode.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: So much to do.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was asking Scott, I'm like, can we do another interview today?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he's can we do that next week?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Just so much to do.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering for you, like in your gardens, and what are you, what's really alive for you with your plants and like what are you working with right now?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's an interesting thing for me this year.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna speak this openly.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: But this year, I have a lot of perennials going.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: So mostly my my gardens are medicinal right now.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I typically also grow annuals and I also grow food, but this year I chose not to because I'm in a huge transition in my life and I just couldn't put the time, energy, attention, presence into gardens.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been really interesting for me, actually.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I haven't shared this out loud because I'm a little, there's a little maybe shame or embarrassment around it, but it's like I didn't even weed the gardens this year.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, wow, they exist.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: These plants are still living.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tend them next year.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I will caretake them, I will weed them, I will like re-establish and connect with the gardens.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm in such a massive change time in my life that it just felt like a fallow year in this interesting way that I don't know how else to describe it.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: You were like weeding your own internal gardens.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's been here inside me.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So definitely feeling that.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what's been really fascinating has just been like going out to the garden and being like, plants are still there.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have tons of lemon balm that just did okay, and blue vervain that just did okay.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: My wormwood did okay.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Everything, almost everything did fine.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe my bee balm got a little bit overcrowded.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's stuff that's has needs some tending.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Mother Ward did super well, but what I will say is that what I have right now in the gardens is mostly seeds.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I did harvest a lot.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I certainly made lots of medicine this year as well, even just from what I had.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm pretty much at the tail end of any harvesting or medicine making.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it's like root time, but I don't think I'm gonna dig any roots this year.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really like allowing myself to be in fallow mode.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I did make a really beautiful salve.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I make things just because I have to, because that's my life, is I need to have my infused oils.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I need to have certain herbs.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I made the things I need this year, and then I'm just letting everything else be there.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I would say it's seed time, and I'm like seeing the seeds in the garden, and seeds have been an really important part of my path, actually.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if the two of you have done seed keeping or if that's a part of your world.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to speak any more on that?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's actually interesting because I first, gosh, I guess I'll just share that I had no relationship to plants or land or really earth in any way.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I did.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I live on the earth, but I was born in Manhattan.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in the upper west side of Manhattan.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: So this is not a place where you're like deeply connected to the landscape.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're deeply connected to the sirens and the people scape and the concrete.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that is interesting to think that was like where I was born into and what I had relationship with.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I do have very young memories of but I lived across the street from Central Park.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So like I was, I did have access.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: We couldn't see it from our window, but I did live across the street from it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when I walked out of the apartment or yeah, out of the building, I would see the park across the street.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was little, I was brought over there.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was only there until I was seven, but I was brought over there and there was this big boulder.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously there was also grass and there were plants and there were trees, but I didn't have much relationship to them.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I still remember that boulder.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't even know how big it was.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of want to go back and see how big it was because to me it was like this massive rock.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder how big it was.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: But that's interesting to think back to having zero relationship with plants.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But then I continued on, like living right outside of New York City, really started connecting.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had a tiny little yard, so I had some relationship to the earth around me, and we had like what I called a forest.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: There were like five trees.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I actually called it a forest in our backyard because nobody else I knew had that many trees in their backyard.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's fair.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's fair.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what's going out in the forest?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: The reality is I love those little pockets of anywhere because there is actually so much happening.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: Even with five trees, the amount of life and stuff that's going on is probably unfathomable almost.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I actually, yes.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's one of the it's almost like the edges like in permaculture.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you're learning about permaculture, and that's one of the concepts, is that the edges, there's actually more life in the edge than there is in any of the more distinct ecologies that exist.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it feels like an edge spot when you're in a place that's more urban but that has a little bit of life in it.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think that really wires a lot of that.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: And what there's a Steven Buner book.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to remember which one it is.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the plant intelligence one about covering titles.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: But secret intelligence of plants.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Secret Teachings of Earth.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: He has the whole the opening of that book.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's just so amazing.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's so inspiring to me.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that one.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Kaya just got it from her bookshelf.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: I love that book so much.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the first chapters, he talks about Edge, and he talks about how on a map or from an airplane, like a coastline, it's very straight.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: But if you are to walk on that same coastline, it starts to undulate more.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if you are an ant on that coastline, more and if you take it down to the microscopic level, eventually you get to this spot where that edge is infinitely nuanced.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, and just this idea of that being true and everything.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: I something I think about a lot.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Everything.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's every little rabbit hole, really, that we can go down, it just continues to have more depth and more to explore in it.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I feel that so much.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are all microcosms and macrocosms, and it's all it's such a cool thing.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so just getting back to the seeds.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be a minute till we get to the seeds.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I had zero, what I would call zero relationship with plants, or and I really actually had the perception that if I touched a plant, I would kill it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: That was what my self-talk was when I was growing up.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: My dad tended our indoor plants.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's actually a plant person, and so he would grow things, but I don't know why I had this sense that I had no ability to do that.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: My sister had more of an ease around the plants, but for some reason I felt that was not my thing.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I must have had an experience, an early experience that I'm blocking out that that came through for me.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like you touched one of your ad special plants, and he was like, oh, easy, or something like that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: There must have been something, like some response to me touching a plant.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I actually had that feeling.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so the I did connect with trees when I was in high school.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was trees are the big plants, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there's actually a book about trees being the big herbs.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I which is an interesting, it was something that I learned about when I was in southeastern Ohio.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent time almost everywhere in the country, honestly.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was there, I just remember Paul Strauss, I believe, wrote that book.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's called The Big Herbs, and it's all about the trees.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I never thought of them that way until then.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting to think that now herbs are such a deep part of my life, and trees were the first way that I connected really with the earth.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a tree outside of my house that I would go and I would hug it.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I would be with it.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was my entire relationship, to be honest, with seasons and cycles, and earth was this particular tree, but I loved it.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went to college and I went to college in Colorado largely because it was so different from where I was from, and people were smiling there, and that was nursing for me.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Very good.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was it sounds so silly, but like when I was looking at colleges, I actually just was feeling the energy of them.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the ones I almost entirely looked in the Northeast because I was from New York City and New York area, and everybody was all into all the good schools, and you should go to these schools.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I got into a bunch of good schools, but then it was like there was this one in Colorado that was actually my in quote safety school.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I went and I checked it out, and it was like everyone was they looked healthy, they looked fit, they were being out, spending time outside, and they were all smiling.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, that just seems like where I want to go.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a college counselor who told me that I shouldn't do that, that I was making the wrong decision.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: I had lots of people, even when I was like my teachers in high school, I had a teacher, it was like my AP government teacher or something, who I told I was going to college in Colorado.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And she actually reflected back to me.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: These are the words that she said.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you leave New York?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: New York is the center of the world, it has everything you need.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's such a New York attitude.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: And did you know not to know, yeah, but you're just not getting it?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was like, you must not have been anywhere else.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: I just I had that feeling, but I still I was indoctrinated.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was indoctrinated into that belief system.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: I felt that people in New York were better than everybody else.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's it's horrible to say this out loud.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it probably that makes sense.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's just yeah, I can see that being what you're indoctrinated into.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was yeah, there's certainly things.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you from?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up right here.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: You did?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Not at my office, but uh on your land, but a five minute walk from here where Linda.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: His offices.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: I brought them to your office.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I know the I walked those streets.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Scott's family had a flower greenhouse business here in Rutland for my dad's family for over a hundred years.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: French-Canadian folks that ended up here and actually landed around Quebec City.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: And every couple generations they would migrate a little bit further down the river, eventually to Montreal, and then upstate New York, and then here to Rutland.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then Scott's mom's side is from more where we live.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, his great-great-grandparents' homestead is just a few miles down the road.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we've collected the rhubarb from there and have that growing in our garden now and some other things.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, our kids are seventh generation, like on both sides, kind of right here.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: From Scott's line lines.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: That is deep roots.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Truly.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: For people who have come from Europe initially, that is deep roots.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really interesting for me to see it in our kids because I don't have those kind of deep roots.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we talked about that some more in our the first couple episodes, or maybe first episode, we kind of talk more about our roots.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, okay, wait.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're still not to the seeds, are we?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: I know we're getting to the seeds.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, podcasting is new to me, but when I said that's a New York sort of attitude, I don't want to throw people.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: New York is special, but that I'm just putting it out there.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not disparaging of people from New York.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's also bizarre for us because we are like four to five hours away from New York and it feels like such a different world.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: It is crazy to me that this city exists so close to where we live.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's wild.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it is its own, it is its own universe, essentially.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: It has its own universe.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I grew up in that universe and I was indoctrinated into the belief system of that universe.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I did not know a single person who didn't feel the way that I did that this was like the center of the world and that people were superior from this place.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's this, I it's such a wild thing.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I go to college in Colorado.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: My I should say, my mom is actually, she grew up in Colorado.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I have family in Colorado.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a relationship to Colorado.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: My mom was actually born in Oklahoma and she lived, she grew up in Denver and lived in Colorado and she was like until she was like 22.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's from Massachusetts.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not New Yorkers.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I they didn't have this belief system.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: They never said this to me.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was what I was socialized into.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I completely believed it.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't impart that into my space.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: So my mom always thought it was a good idea for me to go west.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was never a question in terms of my family.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was more just like the societal awareness around me and what people reflected back to me that that was a stupid thing to do.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I was like, I'm doing it anyway, because I've always been an independent human.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that the mountains of Colorado are some of the most beautiful places on the planet.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I went to Colorado.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: I went to college in Colorado, enjoyed my experience there overall.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to speak a lot to that.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: But what I realized, I think it was like three and a half years in, maybe four years in, because I stayed there for five years, and I went on a study abroad program to India, to southern India, and that changed my life.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it was interesting.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually a program that was like a deep ecology program.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: We talked a lot about ecology and then being in southern India, we also were very oriented to spiritual relationship to the earth.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't just earth and science at all.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was very much like eco-spiritual experience.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it was one of the things that we had to do there was volunteer.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we had to choose our volunteer location.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up choosing two farms.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I had never touched a plant.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is at the point where I still believe that if I touched a plant, I would kill it.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know why I chose that because I'm thinking back to that.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I could have worked with kids.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many things I could have done that would have been not touching plants.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: But for some reason I felt drawn to these places.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, I would like to work on these farms.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I worked on a biodynamic farm and a place called Solitude Farm, where he was more Fukuoka.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know about Fukuoka One Start Revolution.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Such a formative book for me back then.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it was, he was Fukuoka based.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was doing essentially no-till farming.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he also was extremely spiritually connected.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he required that we did not wear shoes while we were farming.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say this was in southern India, where some of the most poisonous snakes and some of the most interesting insects live.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: So and so to not wear shoes was like a thing.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: But his belief was that if we wore our shoes, which now I really feel that when we wear shoes, that rubber or our soul is disconnecting us from the energy, the the flow of energy between the earth and our bodies.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting to just speak that actually and realize how relevant that is for the podcast, because that was such a big part of how I connected to this, to who I am now, is like having that experience of I have to trust and I have to connect.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we are the whole purpose of us being here is not just yes, tending the plants and the animals and carrying urine and buckets on our heads to the trees and cool things that we did that are all memories that I could share, but I won't share a lot about.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it was all about staying in relationship.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like how special for me to have that as my initiation into any kind of agriculture or connection to plants.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it was there that we were like harvesting peanuts.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, it was one of those first things we ever did, harvesting the peanuts and harvested them, and then we're like separating them.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, we were harvesting them.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess in a way I was in quotes killing the plant.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it was like I was tending, I was in this process with the practice of tending plants and harvesting and being in relationship with.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then we planted things, planted rice.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: I remember planting rice, and then they filled it with water, and there was like water buffalo is just a very cool, very different, obviously, farming experience than most people in the United States ever get.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the rice grew.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like, I don't know how to describe how that blew my mind that I could touch plants and then they didn't die.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I don't know why tears are coming up for me, but that's that was real for me.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was a massive shift of my identity for me to feel like, wow.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: I love that story isn't true.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: That is amazing.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I love you mentioning your introduction into the agricultural world being about relationship with the earth.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: I I've done a bunch of work coaching people in their gardens and helping them meet their gardening goals and dreams and all that.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: And when I think about this, it really is about building that.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's all about building relationship.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: When you start to be in, like for me, from the time Lindsay and I had our first garden, it was just innate to me.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: I was so fascinated.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: I was so engaged.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't help it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: It was an obsession.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't help but want to be in the garden every day because I was just like, it's so magical.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: But can I just interrupt and say this was when we were 24, maybe, and Scott hadn't grown up.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: He has this family that had the greenhouse business, but like his parents didn't garden and he didn't have that experience growing up.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Both of my parents felt like non-gardeners.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: My mom maybe had some of that same.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: She feels like she's bad with plants.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: She still, I try to help her, but she still feels like she can't grow stuff well.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: And my dad just felt like it was so much toil.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: My grandfather was really avid gardener, and my dad's like a hunter fisherman, and so he just aligned more towards nature in that way.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: And the garden was just like didn't really fit his for whatever reason.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: But they always thought I was like, they said I was a green thumb from the time I was a little kid.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: But so just in our garden, yeah, you were just speaking to the magic, I think, just the magic of I didn't have that belief that I would kill plants if I touched them.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was just disconnected.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: But to put seeds in the ground and see them grow is just you come into such right relationship with the co-creative nature of life.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's fucking wild.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's also fucking wild to think that we ever are disconnected from that.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: When we were working on a logo for our business, the idea was like the like the spark of life in the the alchemy gardens being like like working with these simple elements, seeds and soil and water and sun to create something far better than gold, like nourishment and good medicine and good food.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: And we worked with a bunch of different people, but the idea was to try to capture the magic, like that spark of life inside of these, like because it is.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: I've got so many seeds, and I still have stuff from when I was farming commercially.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: I've got like boxes and boxes of seeds, and they're just many of them.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: I keep them in our walk-in cooler, and they could have sat for the last 10 years, and I just push them into the soil, and they have this whole expression.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's so wild and beautiful.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is so true.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'm so excited that we're talking about seeds because we will get to my seed story, but I just they are truly like in the end, to me, they are life, right?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: They are like the potential for life, they're holding that potential.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they can.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those seeds, you've probably heard stories, but there are some seeds that can last like hundreds, if not century, or if not thousands of years, actually.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Some seeds.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And most don't.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot that do have to be like germinated more regularly and kept over time.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: But that's they're like the human plant relationship, especially the one where we've bred plants that we like to eat over time, like they that has happened through seeds.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: That has happened through seed keeping.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, at the core of everything, I think is a seed.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I also relate to that to our womb space quite easily, actually.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that is all this is all part of the story that's getting to the seeds.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: But so I'm in India, having these experiences totally blows my mind.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: I come back from India.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more experiences there that I won't share.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I come back from India and I'm like, I don't know if I can go back to school.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was just like done with academia.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, all I want to do is learn practical skills and be with the earth and have more experiences where I'm like in relationship.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that was something that my mom had a hard time with and felt that like I only had one semester left.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: I should probably just finish.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I did take that next semester off because I was just like, there's no way I'm going back immediately.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that next semester, I was like, okay, I'm just going to be here, recover, integrate this experience from India.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I also learned about permaculture that that season.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started a I took a permaculture, my first ever like eight-week introduction to permaculture class, learned some of the basics on that.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, how do I learn more practical skills?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have no practical skills.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I just realized I know so much about art and culture and research, and I can write these great papers and all of this, but I have zero practical skills.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I need to learn.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I need to go find a farm or something to apprentice on.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually was like looked in the woof catalog that willing workers on organic farms, a volunteer organic farming kind of resource at the time that was on paper because this is back in those days.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I found this farm in Missouri actually, pretty close to where you're from, Lindsay.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhat.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was more northeastern Missouri, so a little further from Kansas.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: But Missouri is definitely a part of that Midwestern world.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I found a farm that was actually also a commune and had been around since the 70s.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And everything about them, they were a homesteading commune, essentially.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: There were like 12 main members, and then there were people who would come in as seasonal apprentices and to support.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt a yes in going to that place.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went for the whole season because I wasn't in school that at the end of the spring, I was able to go really early and went all through harvest.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just soaked in everything I could in that experience.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: They grew 90% of their food.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm including dry beans, quinoa, or did they grow quinoa amaranth, maybe they grew wheat.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: They grew two different kinds of wheat.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: They were like growing all kinds of grains and beans, dried beans, and they were also growing all their vegetables and medicine.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't, they had some chickens, they didn't have a ton of animals, but lots of things going on.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And coming in, I actually, it was just such an interesting experience for me to just jump into this after having been in India and just being so new to everything.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: But when I came in as this apprentice, I actually had to take one of the things they designed for me was to choose a plant that I was going to tend that season that was just going to be my responsibility.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for some for whatever reason, I chose okra.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love okra flowers.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're just so beautiful.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're so beautiful.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the flowers are so beautiful.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then the seed pods are the seed pods are what we eat.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: The seed pods are so cool.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and the interesting thing about the okra, it was, I can't remember how much, but it was like a plot of okra that I had to just tend myself.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing about it is that when you're harvesting it, or at least in my experience with the okra plants we were growing, I think there's a lot of different ones that are out there.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: But they were like tall enough that in order to harvest, I had to go underneath them and carry my basket with me, my harvesting basket with me, and just cut from underneath the okra.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then they would get so big so quickly.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to do it every day.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like this really deep process that I was in once the okra got to harvesting level.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, all to say I have a love of okra that probably most people don't.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I also had to figure out, okay, we have all this okra, what do we do with it?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're not just gonna cook with it.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: So then I did a lot of pickling, like pickling the okra and learning how to preserve things.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then I became actually one of the things I got really into food preservation there.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so I became one of the managers that season of food preservation, all things I had zero experience with beforehand, but I learned so much.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that was like my initiation.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: I actually went back the next season as well because it was such an important place for me.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't, I knew nothing.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden I came back, finished out college, and I had a lot more skills.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that was it was really cool.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was really cool.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, go ahead.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no, I was just saying that's great.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: I did have one question.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: Do you work with okra in your herbal practice at all?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because I never hear of people really, it's such a powerful demulcent.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: And because it's so slime forward, people get turned off, but or some people get turned off, but I think it could be like so well utilized.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I live in a place you live in a place too, but it I live in a place where it's not the easiest to grow okra here.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not growing it myself, but absolutely think of it as a mucilaginous or demulsant plant that we can work with, both for our gut health.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I'm just gonna say out loud, also our vaginal, our vaginal moisture.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: It actually is really supportive.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that has been traditionally worked with in that way.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's absolutely something I name with people, but it's not something that I'm typically working with in person with people.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I will just say we did grow okra when we were commercially farming, and but I don't remember having the experience of the plants getting so high that we would they would be they would get taller than us.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, in a good summer, in a in a yeah, sort of average summer, less abundant, maybe.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: But I did grow one actually.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: I grew a couple this year, but they got taken over by some summer squash, some zucchini plants that just got ahead of them and grew over them.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to just say that I'm really glad that you spoke about your woofing experience.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we do have one or two episodes where we sh two, where we share all of our woofing experiences.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it is just such an amazing way to have this entry point.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was for us too.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: This very we woofed on four, four different farms in the US right after we got together, like a few months after we knew each other.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: We did a cross-country trip and woofed on four farms, and it's such a big piece of the path for us.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad that you brought that up.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: But are there more bits of this seed story?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more bits of the seed story.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: So as we continue on, so I have these practical skills.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: I leave college, whatever, finished that up, left, found my way into an interesting reality where I was what I called myself as a pro practical nomad.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I called myself.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Practical nomad.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing a lot of volunteering different places and learning different things.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, I ended up, yeah, I won't even tell my medicinal herb story.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just orient to the seeds.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up in Oregon and I was connecting with some friends that I ended up living with.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I just had this natural, I just a natural draw to putting my hands on people's bodies, actually, like tending them when they weren't feeling well, especially if they had like a headache or just some kind of challenging experience in their body.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so a friend of mine was having a challenging day.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember why.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I just intuitively honestly did body work.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew nothing about body work at the time.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually didn't even know you could go to school for body work.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: I knew about massage, but I didn't know body work was even a thing.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is obviously I grew up in an entirely different reality than I live in now.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this was all blowing my mind in my early 20s.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like laying there and I worked on him, and he and his brother, who I ended up dating, they had gone to bodywork school.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: They had gone to school for polarity therapy in Arizona.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so they had the experience of for years touching bodies and having people touch their bodies.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I worked on him intuitively.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, he was like, Wow, you have such a healing touch.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about going to bodywork school?
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I don't even know what that means.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he told me, obviously.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, huh.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that my actually my grandmother had passed at that time.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had this extra.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: She had, I think we all the grandchildren got a little bit of money from that.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, had this little bit that I could work with, and I didn't know what I was gonna do in my life, and it just felt like the right thing to do.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, I guess I need to look into that.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I just checked out schools that were all over the country because I had no rootedness in myself, and I was very much a nomad at the time.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the school that drew me the most was a school in New Mexico, the New Mexico School of Natural Therapeutics, because yes, they taught bot them, they taught massage, but they also taught natural therapeutics and really oriented to naturopathic philosophy.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: They taught herbal medicine, they taught just basics, but herbal medicine, flower essences, essential aromatherapy.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was a whole big kind of like foundations to natural therapeutics in the world.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it was amazing.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful, really cool introduction to body work.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved being in school.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when we were in school, one of the offerings that was there was something called core synchronism, which is really similar to craniosacral.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's developed by the teacher who was started that school.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when we were learning core, we also had a pregnancy core class.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is getting to the seeds, I promise.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: So in this pregnancy core class, I experienced I had already worked with, I don't know, in our herbal clinic, probably 150 clients, so many people who were not pregnant, just people who were just in their bodies.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when I worked with, we were practicing, and I when I worked with this pregnant woman who was probably in her third trimester, that was pretty far along in pregnancy, had a huge belly.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the experience that I had was like so different.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: I really felt this subtle, like, oh my gosh, just this flow of energy that was so sweet and so special.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like I could really feel the baby, the babe's energy and connect in that way almost through it was like it more of an energetic practice because craniosacral is very subtle.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it was more of a subtle practice, but it was so tangible for me.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was so potent for me that I was like, oh my gosh, I need to learn how to how can I work more with this population of people?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: I just felt, oh my gosh, I need to work with people who are pregnant in this time.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the woman who was teaching it, Rachel Rose, Rebecca Rose was her name, was a home birth midwife.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I, at that time, home birth midwifery was completely new to me.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: There was all these things that were just totally new to me.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, huh.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Asked her about it, started learning about home birth midwifery, and I was like, I think I need to go in that path.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was just in discovery mode 20s.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this was at the time that my ex at the time was like, if we're staying together, you need to move with me to Western Massachusetts.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I had no interest in moving to Western Massachusetts.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: And but I anyway, we ended up moving to Western Massachusetts, which ended up being a really beautiful experience for me, but I did not have any draw at all to New England at that time.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we ended In Western Mass, and I'm like immediately interested.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing body work and I also am immediately interested in like how can I learn birth work?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I become a birth doula and a postpartum duela.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: I started attending births as a birth duela almost immediately and was really interested in the birth process, then trained in pregnancy and perinatal massage and body work.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was doing that for a while.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I was working with that population in many ways.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Also, was my initiation time into herbal medicine, doing my first some of my first apprenticeships.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more in there.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I was just working with that midwifery spectrum, the time in between.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, also I'm living on a homestead community arts farm where we're growing food and it's all in relationship, right?
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is my world.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm working in birth, that was like totally my direction.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I was doing.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna become a home birth midwife.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: I did three different programs.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: They were all grassroots DIY programs, but I was fully identifying with that path.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: And a few years later, maybe four or five years later, into my path of that, which is a really long path if you're studying home birth midwifery.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody is ever studying that and you're not doing it just going to a school, it's really there's so much that you have to put together for it's a real interesting journey.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a long time.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: So as a few years in, we end up.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: I remember my ex was just like ready, we were ready to move.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: We were like, it was the right time to move.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, where would you go if you if we were not to be here?
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he mentioned Northern California.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, I guess maybe we're gonna move to Northern California.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: So then we moved to Northern California.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: That actually felt like pretty decent for me to move out west.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we end up in California, and California's midway free laws are really strict.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: Where did you land, just out of curiosity?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, do you know Northern California?
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: I went to Humboldt State for a little bit.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yay.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was in Nevada County.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the Sierra Foot um in basically equidistant between Sacramento and Tahoe area.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think you've had a guest, Amber Magnolia Hill, was on your podcast.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: So she was in like the community that I lived in.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I met Amber initially, like 15 years ago.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I remember bringing a meal to her postpartum for her youngest.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, just thinking of that, it's nice to weave her in.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: But so this is so interesting because it actually relates right back to the seeds.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: So here I am stepping into California, life in California.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: What am I doing here?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was really getting deeper with my herbal work too.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that was happening alongside.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: But because the laws were so different, I actually would have had to go to what was called a meek accredited school in order to become a midwife in California.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: The five years I had given to all these different programs, time, energy, all the births I had attended, nothing was gonna count towards Yeah, I was like, I sh my identity shattered.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: This was like another identity-shattering experience.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: I dissolved.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was so confusing for me because it felt right to be there, but it was also everything that I had been orienting to for five full years of my life was, and what I saw as my future was just dissolving in front of me.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, these schools were 20,000, 30,000.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: They were just expensive.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have the money to do that, or at least maybe that was a limiting belief for me.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: But at the time, that was like really true for me that like I had no clue how I would be able to afford going to one of those schools, and then also just losing everything that I had been working towards.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I really spaced it in myself.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what am I gonna do?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this is when I got into Aviva Rom work because I was like, oh, being a midwife is being with women, and okay, I can still be with women.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can still be with women and wombs through the seasons of their lives, and it does not have to be in this midwifery format.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is like really, so now that's probably 15 years now that I've been on that path of okay, what does this look like to do that?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: In that time, as I was stepping more into my herbal work and still working with women and wombs, but not in the midwifery path, I encountered Rowan White.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if the two of Rowan at all.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: Mim sounds familiar, but I can't.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: White, Rowan White, R-O-W-E-N White.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: I encountered Rowan because she is she was a seed keeper, uh bioregional, she had a bioregional seed company, farm-based seed company in that area.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: She's an indigenous woman, originally from a Mohawk woman from northern New York State, but lived in Northern California.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, she speaking of Western Massachusetts, which is a birthplace of many things for many people, she met her husband, Gordon, who's amazing, in Western Mass.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: She went to Hampshire.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's how they met, and then they ended up in Northern California.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's like all these interrelationships, right?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's where she actually started doing her seed work, but then moved to Northern California.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: And when I encountered her, she was offering, I think it was just uh, it must have been some kind of apprenticeship or internship or something.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like you go twice a week, and I was just like, cool, it's free.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: I need more relationship with the earth.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm new to this area.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: This was one of those things where you're like new to a place and I needed to get connected to the earth because this is so different.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Sierra Foothills is very different from the northeast landscapes that I was living in for the four years prior to that and that I had become accustomed to.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: So very different.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I needed to learn plants.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to learn how do you even garden here?
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hot and it's like these seasons are so long, and what do you do?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I need to work on a farm to learn.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was an opportunity, and I really felt like, oh, seeds.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that I don't really know a ton about.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so I stepped into that internship and I was there twice a week for gosh, I feel like that was probably we probably started in March, ended in November or something.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like a really long season.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: The growing season there is quite a thing.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and I was with the seeds and with the community and with Rowan.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Rowan is an amazing human.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: So really, she is someone who I highly recommend if you don't know her, starting to follow her.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's such a wisdom keeper.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so much of the wisdom that she keeps is, in fact, she would be an I don't know if she would come on the podcast, but she would be an amazing guest for this podcast because she is so deeply in relationship with the earth and with her body, but also specifically there's just the wisdom of the earth and the wisdom of the seeds, how the what the seeds carry and the yeah, the wisdom of the of life generating and all the seasons.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: So she is such a potent, such a beautiful human.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she is a hundred percent indigenous, and she carries with her a lot of tradition in relation to the seeds.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: So started working there, started getting to know the seeds just very practically.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: She's also very trained from more of an academic world of reading, seed breeding, and she's worked with lots of people.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: She actually wrote a book called Breeding Organic Vegetables.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a good one if anybody's interested.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I think I think I might have that book.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's where I'm from from the name from.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I learned a lot about that.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: I learned how are we gonna decide which plants to save and like which ones are doing well, and how do we like diversify and all the things in relation to the seeds.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I was there for that season, and then she actually needed someone to work in the office and to just continue supporting her.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: She was she's an amazing human, so in relationship with the seeds.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she had a farm-based seed company.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the part of the admin and the part of running the office was not her biggest gift or what she really loved to do.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: And relate.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, huh, I think I could do that.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Really, I didn't have a lot of admin experience or office experience, but I just felt like I wanted to continue working with her and working with the seeds.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I put myself out there and she Yeah, she accepted me in.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually worked with her for another couple of years in the office.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like essentially really support, really a part of this seed company that was called Sierra Seeds for a few years.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so what part of my so much of my work was it was a farm-based seed company.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot of like being in the fields that we did in the internship.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that, because I was in the office, which was such a very fun, interesting office to be in, but because it was like in a yurt and it was we had we actually, oh my gosh, you'll appreciate this.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was there as an intern, we built something that she called the seed kiva.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was a cob, a beautiful cob structure with a living roof that we all built together.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: There was like certainly ceremony ritual that kind of we started with, and just songs were sung.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just such a beautiful life, actually, to be with folks who have that level of tradition and relationship with earth and ceremony and connection.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and we all kind of did it together.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: And there's like pictures of us all pan in the cob and making it happen.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then it became this beautiful, basically seed temple, I would say, a really beautiful earth and seed temple that then we stored the seeds, and I'm sure she still has them stored there in an earthquake.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was a dugout space in the earth.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: So the storage for the seeds was actually like in the earth in the middle of this in the seed kiva.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: So long like an alter space.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so special.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was such a special experience to be there.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of my work as a person from the office was like going into the seed kiva and getting the seeds and then fulfilling orders and weighing things out.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was also doing the germination, like the checking of the germination of the seeds.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I was doing all these things where I was with the seeds, right?
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was with the seeds in so many ways.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was with the with the seeds as plants, I was with the seeds in the harvest, in the drying, in the processing, and all of them are different in the ways that they're processed.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think, gosh, the amount of varieties that we had was probably two to three hundred.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember, but keeping that many varieties alive over time means that you have to, and she had a few acres.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like a huge farm or anything, but it was like a few acres in production and just consistently bringing back, okay, what are we like making sure that we still have that's viable and keeping them viable?
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a whole journey and process and world to be in the seed world, but I was like deep in the seed world.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that I wanted to say, and this brings it back to the birth stuff, is that when we were in the gardens that first year we're in the gardens, I remember talking to her and just saying, because she knew that I was like, I was a birth worker and midwifery was a big part for me.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, the seeds are like the wombs of the plants.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is really the birth process that we're tending.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this is essentially midwifery.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we, and the two of us together were like, yeah, this is it's seed midwifery.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you're seed keeping, this is seed midwifery.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was actually for me a way that I felt like I was continuing my relationship with that part of myself that I had that had been dissolving in me.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, but it can continue in this other way, and really felt that so much.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then I will also say that there's seed songs, and I can't share most of the seed songs, and I feel really honored that I was like given some seed songs to through Rowan and through her lineage.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: But there was one song that we learned that we sang a lot.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: We actually sang it a lot when we were packing seeds.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'd have these seed packing parties and people would be there and then we'd sing songs together.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: But the one song that almost everybody knew who would come and pack seeds was a Lakota song that was actually it was a midwifery song.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a song that was also used with seeds.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all about birthing when you're ready.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, what it translates to is birthing when you're ready and trusting the process and trusting the seeds and trusting the bodies.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: And essentially, that's yeah, that's May Seed's story.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's beautiful.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love this symbolism because it just reminds me of just conversations Scott and I have had and his kind of evolution as a grower over the years.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: Just these ideas of for a while, he was like strictly following the biodynamic calendar and just how limiting can be these guidelines, I guess, for certain things.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: And not to say there's not wisdom in the biodynamic calendar.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: I believe there is, but I'm thinking of times that on our farm I'd be like, but it's a whatever, it's this day.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: I need to plant all the peppers, and it was like 80 degrees.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he's, I don't think this is the right time for these.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: And just how there is that wisdom with birth and the system that many women are birthing in can be so constraining.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I love this idea of the seeds being a good thing.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what that reminds me of is just the whole piece of trusting, the knowing that you have.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the relationship.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: There can be things that can be nice to layer on top of that.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're finding yourself in a rigid system that doesn't allow for the nuance of the situation, then it's probably maybe not helpful in that moment.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for growing or for birth.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm gonna be thinking about this.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is really, I love that you brought this in and it's so beautiful.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, you really just you took us on a journey through many of the questions that we were going to be.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty much let us write through them.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna mention one thing.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think that you're talking about just that moment of I think it was rice you were saying, like planting that, like recognizing that magic in the seed.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: I would just invite anyone listening to to just grow some seeds, try growing something.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I got excited a couple years ago or a few years ago.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_02: I led I called it a seed walk this time of year.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I basically just invited people to our farm.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: And we wandered through the gardens and the fields, and we just collected seed because and people were like, What can we collect?
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, just look around.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_02: Most of this stuff is ready.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: We can collect like you can any of these plants that call to you that you love, we can go and collect seed from most of this stuff right now.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_02: Or if it's not quite ready, just keep watching.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: These are the things to look for.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that was so eye-opening for some of the people that participated.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I haven't done that again, but I'd love to do that again.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: I should love, I would love to do that because I think it was eye-opening to people to just be like, wow, I don't have to just order seeds from the seed company.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_02: I can go out in the world and it just exists out there.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a powerful awakening, I think.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: Just a moment of empowerment that many people need all these as many moments of empowerment as they possibly can get.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, bringing it back to the seeds too.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, one of the things that I think is really potent is actually stories that are carried through lineages with seeds.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is like we all throughout our ancestral lineages, at some point, our families, our family lines have carried seeds.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: They have had to.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: That is part of who we are.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we were talking in the beginning, or maybe I said, that plant people relationship has only the way that we have bred the plants that we eat or that we eat, most of the medicinal plants are a little less bred, but whether it's food or medicine, it is through seed keeping.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we've done it.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely every single one of us has access to our relationship, growing a relationship with the seeds.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: And even if it's just one plant.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have too much longer.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like we really could talk for hours and hours.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just wondering what seeds you're planting metaphorically.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: I know you spoke about this program that you're just starting, but what are you really excited about in your life moving forward and in your work?
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, what's bringing you joy?
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: What are some little seeds you feel like planting on this episode?
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you for that.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting question because I've been in such a transitional time in my life.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say there's two pathways that I'm cultivating right now, and one of them is in-p and one of them is online.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the in-person part, so if anybody is in the Midcoast main region or in that general area, I also spend some time in Santa Fe and New Mexico.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'll probably be spending a little more time there occasionally.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: But either of those two places, I am offering body work these days, and I'm loving actually, I did.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about Lindsay, how I came to your fascia alchemy training, and I am loving offering the fascia alchemy.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Holy beauty.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have been a body worker for 20 years this year.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 20 years since I went to bodywork school.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so interesting.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, why did we not learn myofascial?
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just have no idea what why we didn't, we weren't oriented to myofascial work, but I guess it's just they weren't trained in it, right?
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just not a path that they were on.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it is such a beautiful work that both has really clear practical shifts in people's bodies.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's also this deeper layer that comes through with many clients where there's press just the presence that we have together that's so special.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really grateful for that training.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then I also bring in abdominal, pelvic, womb work.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: I do a combination of the two depending on what people are needing at any given time.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that is happening in person.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: I am also teaching classes in person if people are around.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: I do herbal classes, I teach natural contraception in person.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I am also going to be offering, I think I'm feeling a desire to offer perimenopause circles once a month in the community.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, just I've had more and more people being like, am I in perimenopause?
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or I've got these things going on and just kind of normalizing that and feeling like this is a time that we can actually come together.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever wants to can come together and actually we can be not on our own, not feeling isolated in this.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something in person.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm feeling really drawn to that.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm also 44 and about to be 45 soon.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like things are shifting in my own body.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: So feeling like I want the community too.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then online, I have, of course, my podcast, Herbal Womb Wisdom, which is a great resource.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: I just, I honestly, at this point, there's like, I don't know, 240-something episodes, and it's like such a treasure trove.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't Lindsay's on it from a few years ago.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to have you back on Lindsay.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just truly such a treasure trove of so many incredible practitioners, deep wisdom, embodied experience, people telling their stories, also sharing what they've discovered in their own practice, like what is really supportive for people.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so if people are interested in anything throughout the womb phases of our life, it is absolutely a great resource.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then online, I do offer my natural contraception program that happens once a year.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a really beautiful, very well-supported program where I teach fertility awareness method.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I also add in herbs as backups.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: And for the people who join it, it's just like a there's a community feeling in it, and that is something that I love offering and I'll be offering again next year.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm also interested in creating some kind of more.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't, this is I'm still in like vision mode around what it looks like, but I am interested in creating more of a community space for people.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know quite yet what that looks like, but people can stay stay tuned to me.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so exciting.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll have all of your contact information and everything in the show notes.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I our last question always is there any advice that you wish you would have gotten earlier on just thinking of the people that might be inspired and just starting their path to their body or the earth?
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: Is there anything you would say?
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: There is so much power in just observing and listening.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: So whether it's internally in our bodies, we have so much knowledge internally, and then just witnessing the seasons, witnessing the earth, watching plants, paying attention.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much that we can learn just through listening.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the word listen has been such a huge part of my path and journey and is especially when I really feel like I'm trying to teach in my practitioner training, is just how we can listen to the body.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's amazing advice.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, same yeah.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: I just feel like I find that just over and over again on the farm, just have ideas about things and then sit on them for another season and it shifts because of like having the time and space.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_02: And from some people's perspective, I'm probably like moving too slow for the times, but it's just a product of just like there's a lot of message out there to receive from the earth and from the plants, and it can take a long time to move forward.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, actually, that can I just speak one thing?
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just feel like that that has been coming through for me so much recently of like it's okay to be slow.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to take it slow.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a world that is constantly barraging us with this feeling of speed and exponential growth and all of this stuff.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, the way the earth moves is slow.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we actually let ourselves and like it's okay?
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have to tell myself that it's okay.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay for this to take time.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the snail, and it is a slot.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: The snail.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, these are symbols that I can get behind.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm right there with y'all.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's how we ended up together.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do love my snail husband.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's very grounding for me.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this has been so beautiful, and I wish we didn't have a time constraint on this end, but I'm so excited to see you, whatever that is.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I yeah, I just feel like this was such an amazing conversation, storytelling with so many beautiful threads, and it's exactly what we want to share more of on our podcast.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always fun for me because I can just see Scott like all lit up over here.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yeah, I've got really cool women in my life.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's just so fun.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can feel how much I would love to connect more with you, Scott, too.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, come visit sometime.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_02: Come to Vermont.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to come visit.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that'd be great.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you so much, Kaya.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're so welcome.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to this episode of Homestead and Heal.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: If you loved it, please help us spread the word by subscribing to this podcast and leaving us a review.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: For more information about our work, visit homesteadandheal.net.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're wishing you the life of your dreams, one that feels deeply rooted, fully alive, and connected to the earth beneath your feet.