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Ancient wisdom for modern times: Using herbs for healing and medicine wiht Nancy Phillips, owner of Heartsong Farm and Lost Nation Orchard
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Ancient wisdom for modern times: Using herbs for healing and medicine wiht Nancy Phillips, owner of Heartsong Farm and Lost Nation Orchard
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The MindBodySoulShow is hosted by Megan Wright, owner of Restorative Health Therapies, delivering well-being inspiration. Guest Nancy Phillips from Heartsong Farm shares ancient wisdom on healing herbs. They discuss incorporating herbs for health, sharing local plant knowledge, and Nancy's work at the farm. Nancy, a community herbalist, co-authored a book with her late husband, runs workshops, and sells organic products. They emphasize learning traditional practices for modern health challenges. Welcome and thanks for tuning in to the new MindBodySoulShow. We have been on air, this is our fifth episode. We launched this program at the end of July and we've been having a complete blast. I hope those of you who have heard the show before are enjoying it. So what is the MindBodySoulShow? Well it delivers your weekly boost of inspired well-being. Why? Because we know that kale push-ups and blowing dandelion wishes aren't always enough to live a healthy life. My name is Megan Wright and I am the owner and founder of Restorative Health Therapies here in Littleton, New Hampshire. I am a certified yoga therapist and I am your host for this weekly show from 1 until about 3 o'clock. Sometimes we end earlier. It really just depends upon our guest and the topic and all that stuff. So today, let's warmly welcome and learn from Nancy Phillips. She is from Heartsong Farm and Lost Nation Orchard in Northumberland, which is north of Lancaster here in New Hampshire. Nancy will be inspiring and informing us about ancient wisdom from modern times with healing herbs. And this is really helpful for our overall well-being. Disclaimer, everything we share on the MindBodySoulShow is meant to inform and to inspire. Not to diagnose, treat or cure anything. If you have health concerns, it's always best to check in with your doctor or your health care provider. Nancy, I like to kick off the show with a corny joke. What do you think? Should I? Oh yeah. Should I dive in? You like it? Okay. And then we do a stretch. And I know I'll be introducing you in just a moment after we do my really corny joke. And you're a yoga teacher also, so maybe together we can come up with a stretch for folks. But let's do the corny joke first. Okay. Since I knew you were coming and your orchard is all about apples, this one I thought would be pertinent to the topic at hand. This one is about an old farmer and a pond. One evening, an old Louisiana farmer decided to head down to his pond at the far end of his apple orchard. It had been a while since he'd been down there, so he figured he'd bring a galvanized bucket to toss a few apples into on the way down to the pond. And then he figured he'd use the bucket upside down as a seat by the edge of the water. As he stopped among the thick trees to pick a few ripe apples, he noticed laughter and splashing out in the distance. Curious, he crept up to the edge of the apple grove, and guess what he discovered? A group of young women skinny dipping in his pond, of all things. When he saw them, the ladies shrieked and scrambled to the deep end, water up to their necks, arms crossed tightly around themselves for modesty, and one of them shouted, hey, leave us alone. We are not coming out of here. You get out of here. Leave us. The man blinked, and he frowned, and he took a long pause in the sky. He held up his galvanized bucket over his head, tapping it loudly with two crooked fingers of his other hand, and he shouted to the girls very matter-of-factly, I didn't come down here to watch you gals swim naked. I just came down to feed the alligator. That's a good one. Oh my gosh. Fitting for an apple orchard. Yeah, I love it. That's great. I'm going to have fond memories. Skinny dipping in a pond. I was always worried about leeches. I spent a lot of time in North Carolina. I'm like, oh, leeches. I don't know. We are speaking with Nancy Phillips. I'd love to introduce her to you. She is a community herbalist, a holistic farmer, yoga instructor, and Ayurveda instructor. Ayurveda is an ancient Indian holistic health system. She loves supporting people on their path to finding more peace, joy, and vitality. Nancy's personal mission and passion are connecting people more deeply to the earth and to spirit. She teaches important life skills, such as working with local plants, making herbal remedies, and growing and preparing healthy food. With her late husband, Michael Phillips, Nancy co-authored the book, The Herbalist Way, The Art and Practice of Healing with Plant Medicines. For over 35 years, she and Michael have cherished and tended Heartsong Farm and Lost Nation Orchard, which is an herb farm, an organic apple orchard, and holistic educational center in Northumberland. Currently, their daughter, Gracie, helps manage the farm. Together, they offer herb and orchard apprenticeships, farm internships, workshops, growers' intensives, and healing retreats. They also sell their organic apples, apple products, herbs, and herbal products in their cider barn on fall weekends. I cannot wait for fall. What was your favorite season, Nancy? Summer, because everything's growing. No, I like them all. You do? I like all the extreme weathers, and I like all the seasons. Yeah, I like to be really hot sometimes and really cold, and I love the beauty of each season. They each have their own flavors. Yeah, that's great. I love fall. I used to say that fall... I'm with you, too. I like all of the seasons for their own unique attributes. I used to love the fall the best. Now, I love winter the best. I find that as I get older, I like to hibernate more. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, the rhythm of the seasons, it's important to have them really out there going and doing times, and then having that time to just pull more inward, more contemplative, more, like you said, hibernating time. It's really important. I agree. Yeah, yeah. I'm not a skier. In my mind, I'm an outdoor enthusiast, but in reality, I don't downhill ski. I don't generally get out and do winter sports, but I love that there's so much vibrancy around winter sports up here, and it's fun to live vicariously through other people who really get into it. I would say cross-country skiing and snowshoeing would be maybe more my speed. Yeah, that's what I love. Yeah. All right, folks, so our topic for today, ancient wisdom for modern times. Our current times are fraught with people suffering from anxiety, stress, depression, degenerative diseases, a lot of degenerative disease going on. It's eye-opening, really. Although science continues to learn more about how the body and mind work, ancient people knew and had many time-tested practices that can benefit us today. We can learn from science as well as the ancient teachers. Nancy is here today to pass on the teachings that have been shared with her. Today, let's start with learning how to incorporate healing herbs into our lives, and let's know that herbal knowledge has been passed down through the ages in every culture around the planet. Knowing our local plants and how to use them for food and medicine is a basic life skill that we can all learn to enhance our health and the health of our families. Now, Nancy, I have a quick question for you. Herb or herb? Well, most of us Americans say herb. Herb. But my English colleagues say herbal. Herbal. Tomato, tomato? I'm used to saying herb. Okay, me too, herb. Let's dive into this vast topic. There's so much that Nancy and I were talking together before the show, maybe a week or so ago, saying, what should we talk about? You have such a wealth of information, Nancy. You provided a list, and I thought, boy, oh, boy. I might as well just close my eyes, take my finger, and point to the list and see what comes up. But really what came out to me the most was the ancient wisdom for healing herbs. I'd like to first start with asking you about your work and your business at Heart Song Farms and Lost Nation Orchard. So let's just give the audience a chance to learn about the basics. Okay. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure, and I'm so happy to have this cool program here in the North Country, and the topic is certainly near and dear to my heart, and I really appreciate being invited to come. You're welcome. Well, Michael and I moved to our farm, bought our farm about 40 years, not quite 40 years ago, and we came because we really loved gardening and farming and wanted a homestead and had the goal of really growing all our own food and putting it up and soon figured out that that was harder than we knew. We have learned a lot of skills over the years, and our goal early on was just to be more independent and self-sufficient, and I just believe that's a healthy way to go about life in general. So we always have been excited about learning new things, and since the beginning days when we first went and walked down our driveway, we felt our land was really a special place on the planet and really wanted to show and share it with others, and it's been really a beautiful life overall, just a lot of hard work, but it's a pleasure, especially one of the things we love is bringing people to the farm and sharing things, and sometimes when we walk around and share things, it's things like, yep, see that? That's not working. That's not working. This is one way of not to do something, but over the years we have picked up some skills that are worth passing on, but yeah, so we bring people to the farm to teach them. Usually it's what I think of as not necessarily just homesteading skills, but life skills that are good for anyone, and in the area of herbalism, it teaches more like people that often want to incorporate more herbs into their daily life as a home herbalist for their friends and family, for themselves, and also for some people that come for classes also have other healing modalities, and then they just weave in the herbal teachings with those healing practices that they already have, so yeah, we live in an old farmhouse. It's like 1860s, but since then we've built a barn, had a barn raising, and put in the orchard. What did the land look like when you first bought it? It was pretty rugged. The house needed so much work. It was pretty run down, and there were really not really any vegetable gardens that were in any kind of shape, but there were some old flower beds and things that some things that are hardy were still coming up. Just a few apple trees. Now we have like 350 trees and over 100 varieties, so I always say we planted them, but really Michael gets the credit for doing most all of the orchard work, and we're grateful he did. Did you say over 100 varieties? Yeah, over 100 varieties, and a lot of them are old heirloom varieties, so that's really nice because I know I was just talking to my sister the other day, and she was saying she just bought, so she wishes she could have some of our apples because they're so good. She said, I go to the store, and they don't even have that much flavor, but I think over the years people have bred apples that are very hard and ship well, and they don't have as much flavor as some of the old varieties. Anyway, yeah, so that's fun, so a lot of different varieties. I didn't realize you had that many. Yeah, and wow, that's fun. Now before moving to Northumberland, were you both, had you owned a farm elsewhere that was smaller? We actually lived in a community before where we, all the people that worked there lived there. It was a children's home, and Michael was a property manager at that time, and I was working with the children as a social worker, behavioral specialist, sometimes fill in for the house parent's person. Oh, I didn't realize that was your background. Yeah, first degree is in social work, and I got an education degree later, but anyway, yeah, so we loved that work, and it was a beautiful place to live, but because it was a communal setting, which we enjoyed, we didn't, we just got to the place where we wanted our own nest. We actually got married there, and then soon after moved up to kind of north of like McDonald's and all the strip malls and things. Yeah. They followed us up. I can understand that, Nancy. But that's okay, they're good for something. Anyway, yeah, so we loved the open farmland and the mountains and fell in love with our farm location. Yeah. It's a special spot. I've only been there once. That was many years ago when you had a weekend retreat. Boy, I'm trying to think of how long ago that was now. Maybe five, six years ago, I think, and you have a very, very special property. It has magical energy there, especially with the river flowing through it. Yes. Or the brook. Yeah, the brook runs through the property, which is really nice, and then it sets off over the road, so it's pretty quiet and peaceful, even though it's not that far from town. No, it's not. It's a great location, and then you have all the rural aspects that you want. Yeah. And then you have these beautiful trails that wander through the property, very, very serene, very contemplative. The yurt is beautiful. We'll get into that as we go along. I think when we first walked down the driveway, we just kind of our hearts were singing and thinking, This is where we want to nest. But I also hear that from other people that have come before, or the first time they've come, that they just drive down the driveway and then kind of give a little sigh. It's just a peaceful, rejuvenative place. I feel blessed to be there. Oh, that's lovely. You know what? I realized that we didn't do the stretch part of our introduction, and this seems like a really nice time to take a quick break from our conversation and do a stretch. What do you think? Sure. All right. Normally we keep in mind people who are listening might be driving a car, might be at work, might be at home or outside. This time I'm going to, sorry folks who are driving, I don't mean to exclude you, but I really feel like standing up and doing a stretch. So for those of you who are able to stand up and join us, Nancy, you and I are going to rattle our mics here for just a second as we come up to standing and we'll just take your mic with you. Okay. You good? All right. We are both yoga teachers. I absolutely love the standing figure four. For those of you joining us, you may want to have your hands near a wall, a desk, a chair, something to support you because we'll be coming on to one leg here. Let's go ahead and stand nice and tall. Feel your spine elongate. Take a nice breath. Try not to exhale into the mic, which I like to do. Roll your shoulders open. Allow your hands to hang heavy off your shoulders and just notice how you feel. Notice how you feel in this moment, in this breath, reaching the crown of your head towards the sun and feeling the feet reaching down like roots into the earth. We'll be shifting our weight over onto our left foot for balance. Again, if you need a surface to hang onto, please do that. Shifting your weight to the left foot, lift your right foot like a feather off the earth, keeping a toe near the ground if you need it, settling into this balancing pose on your left leg. Also noticing if you want to drop your weight into one hip and see if you can't correct that so that your hips are staying stable. Slowly now bring your right ankle to your left shin. Notice how that feels. Take another breath. Continue to reach the crown of your head towards the sun. Relax your shoulders, your neck, and your jaw. Then we'll incrementally bring your right ankle up the leg one inch at a time. Notice how that feels in the hip, in the back, anywhere else. Slowly bring that ankle up over your kneecap if you're able to. And as we exhale, we'll be bending very subtly into the left knee like you're coming down towards the chair. This is figure four. You decide how much of a bend in that left knee you want. I am extraordinarily stiff, so I like to go slow, very mindfully. Nancy is just about on the ground. I'm very impressed. And when your body says, okay, that's good, then we'll ease ourselves out of that bent knee into a straight leg. Uncross your ankle off the opposite leg. Bring that right foot to the earth. Shift your weight left, right, left, right. Wiggle around. Roll through your shoulders. All right. Then we'll settle into the right leg. Feel your foot grounding into the earth like roots. The crown of the head rises towards the sun, lengthening the spine. Relax your shoulders. Relax your jaw. Let's slide that left ankle over the right shin. Check in with those hips. See if you can leave them square to the floor. Feel some support through your deep abdominals, through your waist, through all those muscles close to your spine. Begin to increment your left ankle up the shin. Breath. Up and over the knee onto the thigh. Exhale, bending the right knee, lowering yourself down towards your chair. This is figure four on the right. Do you like this one, Nancy? Yes. Yeah? I do. It looks like you probably do it often. I don't know if often, but I do it. Well, this is sort of a tree pose in a way. Listen to your body. Straighten that knee when you need to. Very mindfully take that leg off the other leg, both feet planted on the earth. Shake it out. All right. That's my exercise for the day. Nancy, do you have one that you love? Let's see. I guess we could just do a half salutation. Just, again, start. I love how you did the yoga, Megan. That was nice. I enjoyed it. So let's just do the same thing. Take our feet and feel them rooted to the earth. I'm going to take my shoes off actually, Nancy. Maybe a little too. Oh, that's much better. Sometimes it's nice to just lift and spread your toes, putting your pinky toe down and your fourth toe, third toe, second toe, first toe. And then feel as if you're lifting up from your arches and lifting up gently through the ribs, rolling the shoulders down the back, lifting the crown of the head to the heavens. And just take a moment of breath, opening to grace and breathing. And we'll bend our knees slightly and inhale our arms up over our head, reaching up long towards the sky, and exhale, flow all the way to the ground, letting your fingers slide up your shins, a long, flat back. Reach out long through your neck and through the top of your head, and then exhale, fold down, touch the earth. Push down through your feet. Push down through your feet. Bend your knees a little bit. Come all the way back up. And exhale, hands back to the heart. I love this one. Let's do one more. Okay. I love the number three. Same thing? Okay. Yeah. Pushing down through the feet, inhale the arms up overhead. Reach up long. Exhale, flow all the way down, hinging at the hips. Inhaling up halfway. Exhale, long back, and then stretch down towards the earth. Push down through your feet. Inhale all the way back up. And exhale, hands back to your heart. Namaste. Thank you. All right. We'll adjust our mics and come back to our chairs. That was a half sun salutation. I love having my shoes off. I think I'm going to leave them off. There is a lot going on at Heart Song Farm. You mentioned you've been doing this now for close to 40 years. I am really impressed, Nancy, with how many offerings you have. Mostly attracted to me personally, the ancient wisdom herbal classes. I'd love to hear more, and I'm sure our listeners would too, about the herbal classes that are based in ancient wisdom. So tell us. Do tell. Okay. Well, yes, I'd just say that I do believe a lot of it is ancient wisdom that's been passed down through many years, but we do weave a little modern science in as well. Like I said, my favorite thing is just to be a teacher and share what I've learned and what I know and working with people that want to weave the teachings of the plants into their daily lives. We find that sometimes some of the things we already know, you know, they just make common sense or we can feel like an ancient, get that connection to like the ancient teachings that have been passed down. And a lot of people believe that the plant wisdom hasn't always just been tried and learned from trial and error and that we actually have an intuitive sense of understanding and knowledge and that people can get in touch with that. I think, to be honest, probably in the past, ancient people had a little stronger intuition because they had to live and survive in that way, just as animals have a little bit maybe more instinctual drawing. So we believe that the plants gave the teachings to us over the years, really, and sometimes we can still get in touch with them and learn directly from the plants as well. But luckily, most of us today have a lot of great resources, books and teachers that we can learn from. I've certainly been blessed with a lot of great teachers. I love to share some of those teachings with others. In fact, one of my teachers says it's not really optional that once you're given the gifts and the teachings, then it's part of our responsibility to share it with others, which is a pleasure, actually. Yes, and it should be that way. Don't hold it in. Share it with your community. So maybe one of the first things I would just say is that it just was so typical in the past for people just to be able to go out and they would recognize the herbs and plants growing around them. So to me, that's why I call it sometimes like a basic life skill. I think that we should all be able to go out and recognize maybe you don't know 400 herbs. Maybe you just know five you start with, or maybe you know ten, and you get to know those and use them for a lot of different reasons and ways, and then you become like, have a relationship with them. So that's one thing I like to encourage people to do because a lot of the plants that just grow right outside our doors are very medicinal and can be used for common ailments, and it's a great pleasure once you get to know them and you start to go for a walk and it doesn't just look like a wall of green somewhere. You say, oh, there's my friend dandelion or mugwort or yellow duck or nettles or whatever. You start to recognize them as friends and allies. One thing I do when I start an herb walk or a class and say to people, I invite them to just go around the circle and share something that people say they're good at. So I give people a little time to think and then just say, people usually get a little frustrated because they don't like to say what they're good at. I say, what do other people say that you're good at? And people will say, well, maybe they play the violin or they're a good cook or they're a good mom or they're really super at computers or running a radio show. Everyone has something. Then I just tell them to hold on to that and prerequisite for giving my herb walk or teaching them about herbs is we're going to just share things. Dandelion's good for the liver or it's a diuretic or something. But we don't know all the different aspects about dandelion. These are just some things. So just the idea that herbs are multifaceted, just as people are. So we know Megan runs her radio show, but we don't know. Does she play an instrument? I don't know. We found out she doesn't really like to downhill ski. We learned that. But we don't know all the other things. Does she love to cook? So that's the thing. I just like to phrase that because it can be easy to pigeonhole a plant to one thing. Oh, that's how you use it. Herbal medicine, we look at different facets of the plant energetically as well as the physical attributes and the spiritual components as well in the plant. It never occurred to me to look at them as multifaceted like human beings are. I really appreciate what you just said. It never, ever occurred to me. And also to build a relationship with them. I like that a lot. There is a movement. I wasn't introduced to it when I was learning like 30, 35 years ago or whatever about herbs. But a lot of people are trying to work with well, pronouns are a big thing these days in the world, right? Knowing that the language that we use also is an indicator of how we look at things. And so the idea of using, not calling a plant an it and they really aren't she's or he's as we might like to call them. But some people want to call them she's which is giving it more of a personage or respect. I know that maybe a lot of your listeners have read the book Raven's Sweetgrass. Robin Hall Kluwer. And she talks a lot about that. I think maybe that might be one of the places that idea originated. And I have to admit to myself I'm not always good at it. You know, I sometimes do she, he, or it. But anyway, the idea is like in her native language Potawatomi, like a table would be called it. A chair is an it. A poster is an it. An inanimate object. Yes, any living being is not an it. And she said that changes the way we look at the rivers or the oceans or the plants or the animals by not calling them an it. It kind of elevates their status and makes us more part of creation. You know, we're just a part of nature and a part of creation as all these other beings are. So anyway, it's good to contemplate. Like I said, I don't always get my pronouns right with humans or animals. Well, it's all about being mindful about it. It is about being mindful. And having it in your thought process. Yeah, and just kind of checking our paradigm and just thinking about, oh, that's right. When we call an animal or a plant an it, it's, you know, kind of lower. It takes the life force out of it. Yeah, exactly. So that's a beautiful thing. So to summarize, building a relationship, thinking of plants as multifaceted, and to refer to them as key versus it, inanimate, unuseful in a way, or secondary, below, beneath, lower than. Thank you so much for this. Now, you had mentioned learning the plants that are around us. We all have very different environments that we live in. Some are in downtown environments. Some are out in rural and have huge farms, or half an acre and it's all grass for the most part. Do you have in your plants for later to tell us about some of the most common plants to look for, or do you want to dive into that now? Oh, well, we could talk about some of the favorite plants, but many of them are either easy to grow or get just find out just walking some of them in the middle of a sidewalk crack. We know the dandelion likes to grow anywhere. We can start with dandelion. Sometimes people like to just ignore that because there's often even a war against them from gardeners or other places or golf courses. They'll pour poisons out and try to get rid of them. Really, I think the dandelions are winning. Yes, they are. Well, they have a beautiful ability to procreate. That's right, and they're very tenacious, which is part of their medicine, and it was really kind of revealing to me when I thought about that they're not native. They're not native at all to this area. They were brought by the colonists for food and medicine, and look how well they've done. Yes, so I think if we made a list of all of dandelions' qualities and their actions and things that they could do medicinally, and we said, oh, you can get this plant or this herb from abroad and pay, you know, it's very expensive, though. People would be lining up and paying for it. Meanwhile, we don't realize that just because it's common, and that's the way with a lot of our plants. Just because they're common, we're used to them. We think they're not important or valuable, but they are. And dandelions are a great example of food and medicine. And early on in the spring, you can use the fresh greens for steaming and eating, and they're still going to be a little bitter, but bitter is good for us. Bitter helps stimulate the liver and the digestive system. So these would be the early greens? Well, you can eat them any time of year, but they're going to be a little less bitter when they're fresh. I see. I mean, when they're young and tender. Okay. Yes, but if they've been mowed and then, you know, they're coming up again, you just want to make sure they are in a clean area. Right. Yeah. But, and actually, the way I usually like to use them is to go ahead and steam or saute them and then put a little, like, balsamic vinegar or something on. That takes the, with a little sweet, a little tart, and a little bitter. Sweet with savory? Yeah, yeah. So that's just one way to use them. The leaves can be used as a tea any time. They're a great diuretic and help us water to move out of the body. That's what a diuretic is. Increases urine flow, specifically what it means. And it also is full of minerals and vitamins, which we get when we use it as a tea. So would you take the greens and put them in water and just let it, yes, not boil and boil? Yeah. Well, maybe we'll take a little diversion, a sidebar, and talk about how to make tea. Well, let's go through a few more herbs and then we'll jump back to that. Okay. I'm going to write a note, tea. Okay, tea talk. We'll talk about the difference between a beverage tea and a medicinal tea. Okay. We'll come back to that. You could just, yeah, make a tea with the leaves and drink that, and that's a, you're going to get the minerals and the vitamins and the diuretic effect. And then also the roots can be used for, you could saute them and use them, but I usually tincture the roots and use them that way. But they could be used also for tea. For those listeners not understanding tincture, could you describe that briefly? Yeah. Do you want me to? Okay, so tea is water-based medicine and a tincture is alcohol-based. And there's also other menstruums that you can use besides alcohol, which is like apple cider vinegar or glycerin. Those three are probably the most common. So it's thicker? It's more potent. More potent, okay. And the tincture is more potent. Okay. And you can use a smaller amount. Yeah, you would just, whereas with the tea you might, if you were using it for medicine, you would want to drink like three cups a day. If you were using that tincture as medicine, you'd just maybe use a half teaspoon three times a day. Huge difference. Okay. But you could just use them both. There's really a continuum of herbs. I like to teach that there's herbs that are like food or tonics, and then there's herbs that are more like a specific medicinal, and then there's low-dose herbs. And it's not good to like lump them all together because what we say about one is not always true about another. So the low-dose herbs could even possibly be poisonous. So you said food, medicinal, or low-dose? Mm-hmm. Okay. Let's say specific medicinal in the middle. Specific medicinal. Yeah. Okay. Actually, in my classes, I have a clothesline that I have two people hold up. I learned this idea from my teacher, Rosemary. And we have the signs, and then I have a little basket of all the herbs. Oh, that go under each category? I have somebody hang up where they think one would go and the other. Oh, that's an interesting way to help memorize and identify. Yeah, just because what we'll see is the herbs that a community herbalist or a home herbalist use, most of them are going to be down in the food and specific medicinal range. There are clinical and other herbalists that might use something like digitalis or lily of the valley, which are potentially poisonous. Those are definitely down at the end, the low-dose. And you see that the common ones, we don't have to get so worried about how much dandelion or how much anything, orange juice, milk, you drink too much or something that can cause a problem. The body can't handle it. Like the food, you know. You could overdo one cornbread, I suppose. And I have. Especially if it's cooked in a cast-iron pan. That's right. I ate a whole one one time. That's right. So, I mean, anything can be overdone. But in general, the food tonic-type herbs, we don't have to worry quite as much about dosage. It helps people usually relax a little and realize that safety issues really depend on the type of herbs. Some herbs definitely could save somebody's lives, but they could be poisonous in the wrong dosage for the wrong person. I see. There's also herbs at that low-dose level that are, like, say, cayenne. It's not necessarily a poison herb, but we just use a little. Because it's kind of a heat. Yeah, it's a little bit. Disruptive. Because you can still eat it. It's still a food, but you just use a little. There's a couple of, you know, some other herbs like that. Lobelia and a few others that are not necessarily poisonous, but you just use a little bit. Because you're really conscientious about it. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. All right, so we talked about dandelion, which we all can get our hands on very readily. And then you have a few more in mind for the general person around this area. Nettles. Oh, like nettles. Nettles. Okay. Yes, cayenne nettles. And we didn't have any in our land in the beginning. In fact, I used to go backpacking with the – I mean, I would go out with my backpack and harvest them out in the wild and bring them home for food and medicine. They're prickly, right? Yeah, and they have little hairs on the stem and on the leaves, and each of the little hairs has formic acid. So that can sting you, and formic acid is the same thing that bee sting has. So it can cause a little sting. I find if you're prepared and you know it, it's not so insulting. But if you don't know it's there and you get stung, it's kind of annoying. And it depends. Some people are a little more sensitive to it than others. So you want to wear gloves when you harvest. You can wear gloves when you harvest a lot. That's a good idea. And some people use that stinging actually for medicinal reasons, like to draw circulation to the joints. You might have even heard of people use bee venom therapy. So sometimes it's used that way. But in general, most of us don't want to get stung. So if you dry them or cook them, the sting goes away. And usually I've heard people tell if you just speak to them and handle them gently, you won't get stung. I found really just the opposite. If you kind of grab firmly, the hairs go down. You need to show who's boss. Yeah, I don't always wear gloves if I'm just harvesting a few for just a morning tea or something. But certainly if I'm harvesting a big amount. Plus you've built up probably some calluses on your hands from being outside all the time. Well, that could be. I don't know. That's true. That's good. Lettles sometimes have the reputation for an herbalist might say, maybe they're talking to a colleague and saying they're telling them about a person they're working with. And they say, well, I really don't know what to do. They have so many issues. And other herbalists might say, well, you can always give them lettles. The go-to plant. Lettles are good for the liver. They're good for respiratory system. The main thing that lettles are good for, for so many reasons, because it is full, again, of minerals and vitamins. And you can use nettles for food. So they're down there on the food herb, food range, tonic. And a lot of people have that tradition even from little. Maybe listeners may or may not have done that when they were younger. But a lot of people are used to eating nettles, maybe especially Europeans, that when they come up in the spring and they're tender, you can use them any way you use spinach. So I put them in egg dish and omelet. I put them in spinach copra. I put them in lasagna. Really any way that you use spinach, you can use the nettles. And the same with dandelion. Well, the dandelion is going to be much more bitter. So if you use it, you would probably want to blend it with something else. Whereas the nettles are not so bitter. They're more earthy flavored. But you still might want to blend it with something else, some other herbs. So that's when they're tiny. And that's the most common time to eat them. You can steam or saute, whatever. You can blend them into a pesto. Oh, interesting. I actually usually do blanch them first and then put them into the pesto. And that's a good way to, if you're cooking a lot of them, I sometimes do just pick the stems and then toss them in the hot water for a quick blanch and then take them out and let them drain and then chop them up for the food dish. I love the pesto idea. Yeah. Do you add all the other ingredients that are typical to a pesto? Yeah. I love. Then you're adding lots of, well, nettles are pretty high in iron and they're really high in calcium. So that's a good thing to add to your food just to add a lot of nutrition. And they're very prolific. The thing with nettles is that they spread by seed and they spread by runners like mint. So those are the things that I find the most invasive. And I brought quite a few things onto my farm that do that, and they're trouble. Okay. So you just want to put them somewhere where you can keep an eye on them. And if you cut the seed tops before they go to seed, then they're not going to keep spreading and spreading. And then you have to be aggressive, just like a mint patch around the edges so that they don't keep creeping off more than you want. But they're like a gold mine. Do they transplant well? They're very hardy and very vigorous. Okay. And they will grow both in the sun and the shade. Great. They do like it moist and rich is the favorite. Okay. So dandelion, nettles, and what's your next one? Maybe I just want to say like a medicinal thing with nettles besides eating. Nettles are a specific medicinal as well as a food that people like to use, especially for hay fever and for allergies. And they're not so much for the symptoms, though they might help a little, like say you're all congested or your eyes are itchy and your nose is running. They're more like for the root of the problem, that you start taking before the hay fever season and they're helping to cleanse and detoxify early on. Take before the season. Yes. You take them beforehand regularly and that helps the season. Say a month before? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. All right. So that's just one other way to use them. Now, as far as the nettles coming dried, if you were to go to your place and get them or somewhere that might be more convenient for somebody, say right here in town, when you get them dried, how do you suggest using it that way? You could make a tea. Right. Just make a tea? Yeah. Okay. That's it. All right. Oh, another plant. Maybe we'll just talk about, oh, I was going to do chamomile because people are very used to it, but that's not a wild plant. Maybe we'll do yarrow because it's another wild one that's easy to find and hardy and resilient. And yarrow has a long folk history of being a healing herb. Achillea milfolia is the Latin name for it. So there's a folkloric story about what Achilles was. His mother dipped him in the yarrow tea to help for the protection, except for, you know, she was hanging on to his heel, so he didn't get that spot. Yarrow is known for protection and for healing that way. But whereas the dandelion was diuretic, which increases urine flow, yarrow is known as a diphoretic, which encourages us to sweat. So it can be used to help lower a fever. If you do saunas or sweat lodge or something like that, it's nice to do yarrow because it encourages and opens up the pores for sweating. One of the things that it's used a lot for is, well, I don't know if a lot, maybe a lot of people don't know, but they should know because I think it's so exciting. Yarrow can clot blood and it's aseptic. So if you have a little powdered yarrow and you keep it in a little tin or something like that, I know some elderly folks, occasionally they have even been put on blood thinners or maybe their skin is very thin because they're just getting a little older. So keeping a little tin of that is really handy because just like people who have kidney problems or something like that, they can just really bleed quickly. So it's good to just put a little powdered yarrow in there. It will clot the blood very quickly. It can be used for nose bleeding that way too. So if you keep a tin of it in your kitchen or wherever, and say I knit myself with a knife, you just take the powder right on it and then put it right on and rub it in? Or if I was outside and I was hiking and somebody had a... you could also have that person probably, or if it was for your own self, you could chew up some for a little quick pulses. If it's a very bad wound, obviously you're going to need to get some stitches or something that can help. Interesting. Okay. Neat. I'm going to definitely keep that on me. All right. Diphoretic. Yes. There's all the ways to use it. Again, it's kind of energetically known as a protective herb. I know some people like to put a little in their pocket or on them when they travel just because of that protective energy and just another way to work with the plants. Protective energy. I love that too. Okay. Next one, do you have one? It might be chamomile because even if people don't find that growing wild, you can almost go to any restaurant and get some chamomile tea or something like that. Chamomile is a great example of a herb that's common and it's gentle, but it also can be very powerful in a sense. You could give it to a baby or, again, it can be very gentle, but it can be really effective. The thing with chamomile, just like a lot of foods, there might be an allergy that's specific to a family, so somebody might have an idiosyncratic reaction and they're allergic to chamomile. But in general, most people can use it. And it's calming and soothing to the nervous system. It's also a great herb to use if somebody has digestive problems because a lot of times digestion is affected by the nervous system, or tension or something like that. It's all connected. Like chamomile can relax and soothe the nervous system and calm anxiety, but then also if it's made strong, like a medicinal tea, it's quite bitter. So the bitter is often good for stomach aches or stomach problems, and it has some antispasmodic properties as well. So if somebody has cramping, so it's just, again, a solid multi-faceted property. Again, it could be used for headache because it calms the nervous system. But headaches are different in different circumstances and with different people. So we won't say chamomile is the herb for every headache in the world. All headaches are unique. They have a lot of different roots to them, why they happen. So it could be something that's a very good one to try. It might just be, yes, somebody told me the other day that one of the things they're doing for their well-being is just starting their day, going out and picking a few. You use the little flower tops of the chamomile, just picking those and bringing them in and making one cup of tea in the morning with the chamomile. It's just a flower head. That's what we use. And she said that alone has been such a great practice this summer because she just starts her morning walking out on the earth, picking a few flowers, giving a little offering of gratitude, and then just coming in and enjoying that tea. Then a few fresh, maybe more than a few, but it doesn't take a lot of fresh flowers to make a lovely tea, and the flavor is going to be really terrific compared to an old chamomile tea bag that's been sitting around in your cabinet for five years. Part of that medicine is just taking the time to pause and slow down. And be appreciative. Yeah, and be appreciative of life. Does it create a beautiful color when it steeps? A pretty nice yellow. Nice yellow, yeah. All right, I'm going to add this to my plant list for my own garden. I don't have any chamomile. Yeah, so chamomile can get the seeds grow easy from the annuals. As an annual, so you can get seeds just to plant every year. Usually once you plant them, you won't pick every single one, and so they'll reseed for the following year. I don't think I reseeded for 10 years at one point because the chamomile just would always reseed in that area or they might blow over somewhere else. But there's also a perennial chamomile. I don't find it as prolific here in the Northeast, but it will winter over and be used interchangeably. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. All right, so we have dandelion, nettle, yarrow, chamomile. I say chamomile. Is that tomato-tomato, or am I saying it wrong? Tomato-tomato. Okay. Chamomile. Do you have another? Well, I'm trying to think of things that are growing wild that people can use with a lot of different. I keep falling back to some of my old family favorites, and one of them is echinacea, and I think a lot of people are familiar with it. It also grows so easy here in the Northeast, and it's very beautiful even just to grow as a flower in your flower bed. And we see a lot of it just growing, you know, even commercial plantings different places. It wouldn't hurt just to talk a little bit about it, although it's not going to grow completely just out in the wild here unless it got away from somebody's garden, but it does out in the Midwest where I grew up in Kansas. You would see some in some areas. But what we grow here usually is the palida, echinacea palida. Perperia, excuse me. Palida grows okay, but perperia is the one that's the most prolific. How do you spell that? Perperia, P-U-R-P-E-R-E-A, I think. Okay. And, yeah, so echinacea is a gorgeous plant, and this time of year it's kind of in the top of its glory here, but it's right now. Right now? Yeah, except for we're having such a drought, so we're getting a little sad right now. But you can use the leaf and the flower for tea, and you can also use the root. All those three parts are very medicinal. Okay. I would say it's not, like, real aromatic, like peppermint or lemon balm or something like that, so it's okay-tasting tea, but you might want to blend, you know, something else more flavorful with it. Spread some honey in there. Yeah, but it makes a nice tea, the flowers and the leaves, and then, like I said, the root also. When I first started learning about herbs, I was always told the root was the most potent part, but since then science has shown that the seeds actually also are medicinal. The seeds, the flower, the leaves, and the root, and they all have some of the same constituents, but then they all have a little bit of different ones as well. I was thinking that maybe we thought in the beginning that it was just the root because we know of echinacea because of the Native Americans, and I was thinking, well, wouldn't the root be the thing that would hold its potency and travel easier, and maybe that was because it was- Hardier. Yeah, that way. Anyway, so I like to make a tincture with all those parts and harvest them at different times of the year, and then blend them, and then you get a whole plant remedy, which is great for colds or flu. It's known especially also for snakebite, so if you think of that, it's like a blood cleanser or detoxifier. Even if somebody's had a bout with bees or bug bites and they're really kind of suffering because they're swollen up or inflamed a little bit, I often think of echinacea as a good thing for that just to help clean out and clear. So this would be a poultice again? No. Well, I'm just thinking, no, I would use it internally. Okay. Drink the tea. Yeah. Okay. All right. Now, can any of these, the dandelion, nettle, yarrow, chamomile, echinacea, can they be harvested and frozen to use in the dead of winter somehow? Well, most herbalists dry or puncture things, but I do have a dear teacher who's passed on now, and she grew up in Appalachia, and she said, Honey, if our elders would have had a freezer, they would have put it in it. So we have these traditions that have been passed on, but then we just have to use our best judgment. You know, some people, there are certain herbs that don't dry well, like chives I don't think dry that well, or jewelweed, which is great for poison ivy remedy. It doesn't dry that well. So sometimes I'll make a strong tea with the jewelweed and then put it in ice cube trays and then just take the ice cubes out and have a bag of them. Yeah. Okay. Jewelweed for, it's an antidote for poison ivy. Poison ivy, oh, my gosh. Or other types of rashes like that. I am so allergic to poison ivy. So it's good to have that on hand because you might not have the jewelweed right there handy. And that would be a topical. Okay. So you'd have the ice cube strong tea. If you have it, you just make it right then and there, the tea, but you could also freeze it into ice cube trays and then keep it in bags labeled, and then you have it. That's great. Also, there's other things that are, well, plantain we haven't talked about, but that's one of the most common herbs you'll see when you go for a walk. There's a couple of plantains. Okay. Plantain major and plantain lancelota. Those, that's an herb that's really good for poultices, and you can use it fresh. That would be one that you'd put right on for a bug bite or a bee sting. But I do sometimes like to make poultices with that and then freeze them. Okay. You can just blend it up in the blender and then put them in the material, like lay it flat, and then freeze it, and then put wax paper between. And then you just peel it off and apply it on. Yeah. Okay. In the winter or sometime when you don't have access to a plantain. Also, I do that with comfrey, which is a great herb, especially for tropical use because it's tropical. It encourages cell growth, so it's great for any kind of ligament, torn ligament or broken bones or sore muscles, too. It helps increase the cell growth of healing. I have some of that in my yard, but I know for sure it's in the wrong location because it likes more damp. Well, it gets going usually. It'll grow it either. It's not growing happily. I took it out of a friend's yard where it was growing on the side of a bank of a river, and it was doing well. And then I put it up on the top of a small hill where it's been in my yard now for probably five years, and it might be eight inches tall. You're sure it's comfrey. Positive. It's really big. Yeah. When it was in her yard, it was gigantic. And then I took some smaller, but, yeah, it's never really gone anywhere. So I'm thinking the location is not right. Yeah, I guess so. Usually it's very, very hardy and very resilient. And it does get a lot of growth, and that's one thing that's nice about it. We often use it, besides it on medicinal herb gardens, we use it in the orchard because the roots go way deep, like maybe six feet long, possibly. And then it usually can grow from just a small piece, a taproot, for them to get going. And then the growth will get quite big, like three feet or something. Then it will just flop over and make a natural bulge underneath the trees. So it's feeding the soil, bringing up nutrients deep from the soil and feeding the soil. And if it's in your garden, usually it does grow quite prolifically. You can cut it and then just put the tops in the compost, and then it feeds, you know, bringing your nutrients up. Oh, I love that. There are two kinds of, not just two kinds, but there's more than one kind of comfrey, and some of them do reseed, those you want to stay away from because usually they are quite prolific and they will spread, and that can be really trouble. Okay. But then I don't know right off the top of my head what the Latin is or what the species is, but that does not grow by seed, but that's what I have. And if I keep digging it, it will get broader and broader, but if I'm not digging in that area and I just cut the tops, it gets big, but it doesn't really take over. Does it spread wide? Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't know, Megan. I think that it must not like that spot. It usually is. It's very hardy and prolific. All right. It's on my, well, it's been on my list to relocate for a couple of years now. I'm sorry, comfrey. I'll take care of you this time. I think we're going to take a quick music break. Sure. Yeah? Sounds good. Okay. We have, oh, my gosh, Nancy, when I asked for your song list, you picked one of my favorites, this band, Rising Appalachia. I love this band so much. They are an internationally touring Americana and world folk ensemble steeped in the soul of the South. It's the brainchild of Atlanta-raised sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, and it's rooted in the traditional folk music of their family, storytelling, grassroots activism, lyrical prowess, and a multi-instrumental tapestry of their melodic ensemble. Their music is a reflection of the times, blending folk traditions with contemporary themes, lyrics, and poetry. The band's unique sound is shaped by the sisters' soulful vocals, very simple instrumentation, and their seamless harmonies. They're joined by a host of talented musicians who bring their own cultural influences, enriching the blend of folk, world, and urban music that defines their smooth sound. You can learn more about this band, risingappalachia.com. Nancy, you chose this song called Medicine. I think that's absolutely fitting. So, Nancy, before the music break, we were talking about some common plants in our yards that we generally can see, dandelion, nettles, yarrow, chamomile, echinacea, and then we also touched briefly on jewelweed, plantain, and comfrey. And I know herbs, we could be talking for 15 hours. Individual herbs, there's so much to learn, wealth of information. We touched a little bit about each herb, the benefits of them, and looking at our plants in our yard as individuals, referring to them as key, which elevates them to a living being, not referring to them as it or inanimate objects, building relationships with our plants, and looking at them as multifaceted. They have a lot of different gifts to provide, just like people do. And we were talking about tea, and you had mentioned sharing a tea recipe with us, so let's go there. Okay. Now, I am going to do the tea, but I couldn't resist because that last one was called Medicine. Just maybe talking about, just take a little bit of a sidebar before we go into making tea. Just the idea that when we do work with herbs, that the medicine is not just like the physical components, like we went to the drugstore or Walmart and got a container full of tablets, the pills, or whatever you take. Those can be helpful, and I certainly use sometimes tablets from some companies as well. The idea of kind of taking it back to the woman that was a friend who said part of her best medicine this summer was just taking time to go pick the herbs and making her medicine. I just wanted to touch a little bit on that, that the idea of when you start working with the herbs, it ties us into the seasons, and it ties us into the earth and the rhythms, and that alone is healing. So you start to recognize when this herb comes up and what it looks like and where it grows. Plant identification isn't always just by what it looks like. You start to learn, oh, cleavers always grow in the wet places in one community and other plants, and yarrow is often out in the meadows where it's open wide in the sunshine. You start to pause and connect to the earth. At the beginning of the program, we were talking a little bit about current society. We tend to have a lot of anxiety and stress, and we shouldn't, should we? Because we have such a good, easy life compared to people back in the day when they didn't have running water or electricity or cell phones or anything. And their life expectancy was in their 30s. Yeah. They were lucky. We should be having so much more ease, but I think it's the thing that we do have more ease and we do have more abundance, but we have sometimes lost those natural rhythms that we do tend to be on our screens or inside, away from natural daylight and not connected to the earth and the surroundings. It would be uncommon for some people to go out and not know which way is north or south or what are some plants that grow in their yard or what are some of the paths of herbalism. To me, it's not just that idea of making medicine and using the plants for their physical attributes, but it's also the more you do it, you get into this rhythm and this connection to the earth. To me, that's a big cue and part of the medicine. Being one. Yeah. Reminding that we're all part of the cycles and the rhythm and the divine creation too, and so are the plants. So I just wanted to throw that out. I love that. I have a teacher, David Winston, who runs Herbalist and Alchemist and he has a school too. He tells a story from this Cherokee tradition and just the idea that we're resizing the idea that in his tradition, medicine isn't just a pill or a tea or a tincture. It's relationships. It's music. It's beauty. I think that made a big impact on me. It's well-rounded. Yeah. So when we're thinking about body, mind, and spirit, it's the smells of the plants and the colors. You asked me what color does chamomile tea make. That's great to think about. It's the colors, the taste, the sensual parts. All the senses. Yeah. And when we study aromatherapy, it's all about smell. So being with a real, live plant and touching and feeling is part of the medicine too. Texture, taste, visual, the energy, all of it. Yeah. And so limited to one, we're shortchanging ourselves and we're shortchanging the plants. That's right. Right. And so broadens our understanding. And then having a relationship with the plants. If you know, oh, there's your comfort. You said, oh, I'm going to be nice to that comfort. So you start to build a relationship. Maybe you move it somewhere and you see, oh, it's thriving now. You start to have a relationship with these plants. Or maybe I'm harvesting a lot of yarrow out in the meadow. And I think, but I don't want to harvest all of the flower tops because I want to come back next year. Or ginseng in the woods. You know, some people have made part of their livelihood over the years from harvesting ginseng. And certainly some people have over-harvested, which is not good. But many people know how to just take just the right amount so they don't keep proliferating. Take what you need and leave the rest. Yeah. So anyway, that's that reciprocity, that relationship between us helping the plants and also just using what we need and not taking all of anything. I do worry sometimes when I see in the stores just massive amounts of certain wild foods and hope that whoever harvested those were not just taking everything they saw in a certain area, you know, just a little bit here and there. But anyway, so we'll take, that's just a little diversion. Thank you for that. That's important. It's important you brought that up. So thank you. So one of the things that my daughter and I, co-teachers with me as a program called Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times, and we teach a class on each time once a month we have the students come. It's the same group, so it's kind of fun because the people really get to know each other and come throughout the season so they get to recognize the plants early on in the spring and throughout the season. Each time we come together we learn a certain type of medicine, and people might not always think of tea as a medicine, but it is really considered in some traditions the primo tea or the most effective tea because, for one thing, the water's pretty much benign and we mostly all need to be more hydrated and have water, and then there's not any like, well, you can't get too much water, but in general the water's good and it's easy. The only thing with tea is it doesn't have a long shelf life, so maybe three days at the most. What are you sipping on? Oh, this is a tea that I brought. Sometimes in the summer I just like to go out in the morning with a colander and the scissors and just snip, snip, snip some whatever's looking happy and healthy, and so I have a little lemon balm, some tulsi, some red clover, some nettles in there. The color is beautiful. It's a nice amber color. Yeah. When we make a beverage tea like you might do when you went out for, maybe you go to a restaurant and you just have a tea bag and you make a beverage tea, it's just steeping for a few minutes or whatever the tea bag. That's great and there's going to be some nutrition in it and some healing properties, but when we're using tea as a medicine we want to steep it much longer. The plants like chamomile and peppermint and lemon balm and tulsi, things that we use the leaves and the flowers for, we infuse, so that's called an infusion, which means you boil your product, water, then you pour it over your herbs and let it steep. Usually for a medicinal tea you want it to steep 20 minutes or even overnight. It would be kind of like a super infusion then. You're going to get more of the plant properties in the water then. So if somebody's suggesting you take a certain tea for an ailment or if you yourself had a headache or menstrual cramps or you wanted the dandelion for a diuretic, you'd want to steep it for at least 20 minutes to get the medicinal properties. And then squeeze out the other material? Yeah, just strain it out. You don't necessarily have to squeeze it, but pour it over, you could put it in a teapot. One of my favorite ways when I make medicinal tea is to put it into a quart mason jar and then you can cap it. So that's always good to have it tight because some of the medicine is in the aromatics. So don't use a cheesecloth, use a metal cap to keep it in. Yeah, just put on a regular metal cap and steep it and then just pour it through a strainer. I'm sure some of them are releasing the essential oils and all of that. Yeah, exactly. And it could just be in a nice teapot too, and another way to do it isn't a French press. Oh, I never thought of a French press. Yeah, so that's an infusion. One thing that if you're working with a certain chronic illness, as we mentioned earlier, that some people are experiencing more chronic illnesses in our time period, then you'd want to maybe mix up your tea blend in advance and have that in a jar, and then you just make some, maybe make it the night before, put it in the jars, pour the hot water on, steep it, and then you're going to drink that. And usually you want to drink, again, if you're trying to correct a chronic problem or then you'd want to drink three cups throughout the day. And then you can keep that in the fridge or make more. Usually it's nice to make it daily, but you can keep it for a couple of days or even three days. I've always been confused about the temperature of water. You buy bags of tea from tea companies. It should be this temperature. It should be that temperature. It shouldn't be boiling. It should be boiling. This is a little bit. It's kind of like being a wine connoisseur. Green teas at one temperature, black at another. If you know, you can get hot pots that tell you the temperature and different things, but I just do a boil, bring it to a boil, and then I pour it over. I like your simplistic style, Nancy. You can get a little more fussy and, like I said, be more of a connoisseur. It does matter how long you steep it if it has a lot of tannins, like green teas or black teas have a lot of tannins. So the longer they steep, that brings out that bitterness and the astringency and makes it more drying, which could be part of the medicine you want. Say you were traveling and you didn't have any of your herbs with you. You can usually always get black tea. You could make really strong black tea and steep it, and that would be good for, like, diarrhea or something like that. Oh, I see. You have too much water in your system. Too much astringency. Okay. So that does matter. But usually most of the tea blends you do could steep overnight. And if you have things that you're using that have, you're going to use the root or barks or seeds, hard seeds, those are not going to give themselves up to the water as easily, so you need to put the plant matter in the pot of water and then steep it on the stove with the heat for 20 minutes at least, and then you can do it for 20 minutes or more and then turn it off and let it steep more. Those are concoctions. Okay. Gotcha. Concoction. All right. A little mini lesson on, like I said, when I like to teach the class the water-based plant medicines, and I have a whole workshop sometimes I do on what a woman can do with a good cup of tea, but can be a man too. But once you know how to make a good medicinal cup of tea, then you can make a good compress or you can make a good cyst bath. You can make all different syrups are made from a good strong tea first, and so that's one form of medicine. And there's, you know, oil-based and alcohol-based medicines as well, and dry tea, dry powders. Anyway, that's going to get you started. I learned from you how to make pine needle tea. Oh, okay. That was really. It came to Into the Woods maybe when we did that one class, maybe called Into the Woods. I don't know. I don't know. No, I don't. Boy, it's been so long I can't remember which one. But, yeah, it was white pine. Yep. And, boy, that was really nice, and I have made it several times since then. Oh, good. And I really enjoy it. I would have never thought to use white pine needles. That's right. A lot of trees have a lot of good medicine, too, and can be used. And the white pine makes a nice tea, so that's something fun if you're camping, especially you don't have to go bringing your tea bags with you. But it can also just be a great winter tea or any time, really. It's high in vitamin C. I did find that the resin leaves your pot a little bit sticky. Yeah, they are. And, also, sometimes it's good to strain it through a little cheesecloth or something. Get the little bits out. The hairs, fiber from the needles can be a little harsh, but sometimes I don't bother and it seems fine. And that can be also used as a decongestant steam. Put the pine needles in and then put a towel over your head and a bowl of water and use for decongestants. I love that. I love a good face steam. Great. Herbal recipes. We touched on using some of the previous mentioned herbs in food, sautéing and whatnot. Do you have a few recipes that you'd like to share? We could just put some on your website or my website and have people connect with us. But, in general, we can do that through the show notes. Okay, show notes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and let me mention to our listeners, if you have questions for Nancy and you would like to send us a note, you can email me, info at noco, that's N-O-C-O, communityradio.org, and I'll make sure that your questions get sent over to Nancy. When you're making the beverage teas or the medicinal teas, it's always nice to try the teas singly first if you want to make a blend. Then you know what tastes good and there's just certain herbs that really put them with something else. Your tea's going to be pretty tasty. Lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon verbena, roses, those are all tasty and flavorful. All the mints. Blending a tea, just a good practice just to know what they taste like alone, and then it's kind of like cooking, you know, really just blending it together. And you know what your go-to flavors are. I could give you some examples of the way I blend teas, like a few recipes. Sure. We can put those on show notes. I love that. Holistic versus organic, do you want to jump there or do you have some other thoughts in mind? Oh, no, we can go there. So our orchard program that we teach is called the Holistic Orchard Apprenticeship Program. That's an eight-month program. And also my husband's book, there's his first book called The Apple Grower, and the second book is called The Holistic Orchard. And some people like to know, like, why is he calling it holistic? Are you not organic? And I thought maybe it was a good idea just to share a little bit of that because your whole program is about body, mind, and spirit. It's just holistic. That's basically the definition of holistic. And so when we're growing in our gardening and our orcharding, the way we teach and the way we bring in speakers that have the same philosophy is to grow from a holistic perspective. And the idea that we're helping promote the whole system, the ecosystem, not just like the plant. So we're not attacking insects or funguses or whatever. I mean, sometimes we do want to help keep those in balance. But in general, our main goal is to build systems health. And that's really the truth about the body as well. You know, if you're more healthy and vibrant, then we're more likely you may still get a cold or a flu or an illness. But if you're going to be a little more, maybe you'll have a shorter time span. Yeah, and just that idea. More ability to overcome. Yeah. So that's why when we orchard, we do a lot of nutritional things to help build the soil. Like I mentioned, we plant different plants underneath the trees because they help bring up nutrients and they help mulch and then feed the soil, compost. Companion planting. Yes. And also that helps with the biodiversity in the orchard. My husband used to have a term that he said one of the key tenets of holistic orcharding was outrageous diversity, biodiversity. And that's mostly also because it brings in a lot of the wild pollinators and they help feed and nurture the orchard. And if there's a variety, then that helps with the soil. Plants just seem to thrive. If you look at nature, they're always like in a diverse community, which I think is good teaching for all of us. I'm sure is. You know, communities, they each bring their own gifts and strengths. And so we like a lot of different, actually plant a lot of herbs in the orchard and that helps with the invaders. Yeah. We do some sprays. Like some people think, well, organic orcharding is just, or holistic orcharding is just not doing anything, but really we actually do spray our trees. But most of the things we spray are nutritional, feeding and nourishing the trees as well as. Help them build their own immune system. Yeah, that's right. And fend off naturally. That's right. I love this. Building an outrageous biodiverse ecosystem. Yes. Some people will be kind of surprised when they come to our orchard just to see that it's not, it looks a little bit wild. This time of year we are keeping it, because most of the plants have gone to flower and have gone to seed and we are scything them down and making it more so we can get in there and pick easier and there's more airflow for the apples. But we don't keep everything completely managed, manicured and mowed. We like to keep the wildness there, especially for the pollinators. Yeah. So that's when we teach that program. I love that eight-month program because we bring in a new teacher each month or it goes for eight months. You mean once a month for eight months? Once a month for eight months. And this is an herbalism program? This one is called a holistic orcharding. Oh, the orcharding one. Okay. So we weave herbs in there too. Yeah, sure. Herbs for plants. Yeah, it's really fun because we just go through the seasons and start at the beginning of the year with pruning because the plants are still dormant and learn how to do that. And we do some lecture and then the students always go out with the instructor and Gracie and I too and then do some hands-on work, which is great. Like we'll have a look at the tree and, oh, should we do this or that? And then people try it out. Do you teach some of that program? Yeah. We help with that. We also bring in really experienced orchardists who have been orchardists. Our last teacher was a biodynamic orcharding couple from New York, and they've been orcharding for almost over 40 years. That was great. They just taught a lot of the tenets of biodynamic teaching and got out there with the trees and did some things. We made some of the biodynamic preps, and that was fun. Some of the guest speakers, were they students of your husband's? Yes. Some of them were. Not so much Hugh. Hugh was our teacher last time, Hugh Williams, but he was a colleague of Michael's. And some of our other younger students have been, they were maybe first introduced to Michael's book, The Apple Grower, in the beginning, and that inspired them. And then Michael helped start an organization that got, it's like a round table program. It's called Stump Sprouts in Massachusetts, and they just get together yearly and share ideas. And so he helped with that and also started a holistic orcharding network, like a forum for questions and answers. So anyway, yeah, some of the teachers that come, I'll often say that Michael helped shape their philosophy, and maybe they were all organic growers, but kind of widened their perspective of what that can be. So it's a little more depth, and surprisingly a lot of the orchardists that come are very really, they're disturbalists too. Yeah. And they have a very deep respect for the trees themselves and the relationship and that give and take of working with the plants. Michael offered so much in that particular arena, and we all miss him. Yep. It's been three years now? Yep, three years since last February. So he shared a lot of teachings that are still trying to keep his legacy alive. Sure. And it will be for many, many, many, many generations to come through his books, and then also through the program that we teach at the farm. Yeah, it's nice to hear from him. And he's here with you. Yeah. He's still a part of it. That's right. He's very present. That's right. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So some of the teachers that come have a similar philosophy, but they do things very differently than we do. There's a couple that come who grow, they don't try to even sell their apples as like fancy fruit, you know, at the co-op or something, say like that, you know, we do. But they just grow them for cider. So they're, and then to run their animals through, like with the livestock, so they're managing that silviculture, it's called, with the animals. What culture? It's called silvaculture. Silvaculture. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the animals are grazed and moved daily, usually. And then so part of their livelihood is the animals, usually sheep or poultry. And then the apples and like that was just Matt Kaminsky just using the apples for cider and hard cider. So that's interesting. My mouth is watering. I can't wait. Hands on some really fresh pressed cider. Yeah. We're going to press this week. I think our first batch this week. Oh, my gosh. I love it. Do you boil it down to make a boiled cider? We do. Yep. We make fresh cider, and then we also boil it down for a cider syrup. Oh. And it's so yummy. It's tangy and sweet. Yeah. I love that on pork chops. Oh, yeah. Pork roast. Yes. I didn't know I could buy it from you. Yep. Okay. Look for it, folks. It is to die for. Yeah, it is really good, and it can be used like in a marinade, like you said, or something. It's really thick and very syrupy and delicious. It's tangy and sweet at the same time. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, we're open in the fall. People ask, can I just drive out and have it any time of year, but we don't have a retail shop like that. It's open all the time. But on the fall weekends, we're open. Our cider barn is open Saturday and Sunday. What time do you open on the weekends? Usually 10. Yeah. Until 4, 10 to 4. Okay. My daughter and I run into that too much. Sure. And if people are interested, it's good for them to get on our e-mail list just so that they know, and we'll send out like what varieties we're picking and what's occasionally, like I know we have a wedding coming up. There might be one day or something that we're not open. How do they sign up for your newsletter? So they can just go to our website, HeartSongFarmLostNationOrchard.com. Okay. All right. HeartSongFarmLostNationOrchard.com. Sign up for the e-newsletter. Stay in the loop with what's happening over there. Classes and courses, and the times when we're open for fall for apples, cider, cider jelly, cider. Do you have elderberry syrup? Elderberry? Yes. We're doing elderberry syrups now. We're picking elderberries right now as well. Yep. And making the syrup. So we're just selling that. That's one of our, that's a great orchard. Big seller. No, and yeah, because it's such a good thing for remedy for influenza. Do you start now taking it? I usually don't take it every day. Some people do, but I just usually take it if I know I've been exposed to something or start to feel like I'm coming down on something. So you wait until then and not as preventative. You could use it as preventative. I know some people that send, you know, have their child take it every day because they're at daycare. Yeah, right. So it won't hurt you. It's on the food. You know, you can eat it in, you know, as long as, you know, it's cooked or dried. Elderberry syrup, fine food. I love elderberry syrup. I could just chug the whole bottle of it. Yeah. Low dose, Megan. Low dose. Don't chug the whole bottle. You're also on Facebook. Facebook.com slash HeartSongFarm.nh. Instagram, same deal. Instagram.com slash HeartSongFarm.nh. All right, it is 240. Let's do another song. Okay. Is that okay? Sure. All right. We have, let's see, Brooke Medicine Eagle. I didn't find the song that you wanted me to play. I looked and looked and looked. I saw it on YouTube, but I didn't find it where I put it on my playlist. So I chose a different song. This one is 5 minutes and 49 seconds. It's Brooke Medicine Eagle, also known as Brooke Edwards. She was born in 1943, and she's an American author, singer, songwriter, and teacher, specializing in her interpretations of Native American religions. She is an indigenous earthkeeper, wisdom teacher, shamanic practitioner, and sacred ecologist. That's quite the resume. You can learn more about her at MedicineEagle.com. The song is called Send Me Your Voice. We'll be right back. The song is 5 minutes and 49 seconds. Kick back, make a cup of tea, and enjoy. We're wrapping up our conversation today with Nancy Phillips, owner and founder of HeartSong Farm and Lost Nation Orchard. As we conclude our very, very interesting, very informative conversation, Nancy, I would love to ask you to recap some of the offerings that you have at your place. You have a variety of classes, workshops, lectures, all kinds of different things throughout the year. Would you like to talk a little bit about those and how far you are from Littleton if folks want to see you? Yeah, I'd love to do that. Thank you. We love our work, and we want to connect with more people that want to do what we need or are interested in what we're offering. One of the biggest pieces of our work is the Star Holistic Education Center, as well as it all happens on our working farm. We have two eight-month programs, which are a couple of our favorite programs to run. One of them is called the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times. In that program, we meet one Saturday a month, and then there's some readings and other things. Our book is part of the Herbalist Way. It's one of the vennies that goes with the program, and we often suggest reading in that or other things. And we read in herbal medicine and yoga and Ayurveda, the teachings of Ayurveda. A little introduction of each of those, and they all intertwine really well together because it just helps people to know how to identify the plants and make common herbal remedies. Through Ayurveda, they learn working with the rhythms and connecting with the seasons and weaving in some ancient practices that help with our health and well-being. In yoga, we usually do a little yoga each time, which can be for all different levels and just encourage people to weave in joyful movement into their life for health and well-being. It could be yoga. It could be something else. I love that. Weave in joyful movement. And you teach the yoga in a yurt. Yes. We have a beautiful yurt. You sure do. I was very grateful to be able to get that about, I don't know, about 10 years ago. It's 30 foot, so it's quite big. It has 24 people for yoga. That's not usual. That's usually for a retreat. And it's plenty. Even 24 people in there. Yes. A lovely yurt. A lovely yurt. So that's our classroom, mostly. And then we have that. So that's an eight-month program. The thing with that, like I mentioned earlier, is that people really get to know each other and build a sense of community through the seasons that way with the same group. They always take a little time to just check in with everybody at the beginning and how's it going. And so I love that program. We've been doing that for years. I imagine people build really nice friendships. Yes, they really do. They spend so much time together. Yes. Some people still keep in touch years later. They're still getting together for gatherings at each other's house. That's lovely. Yes. So that's really fun. Let's see. And my daughter coach teaches that with me, and we also usually bring in some guest speakers. We have a friend who has a part where she's Abenaki, so she always helps us just get a sense of place where we live here in the north country because our land is certainly part of the Abenaki tradition. The indigenous people that lived here were the first people here that lived on the land, and certainly a lot of our neighbors still have Abenaki background. Okay, so then let's see. So that's the eight-month program, and then we do the medicine-making and things like that, and then we have the eight-month program that's for holistic orcharding, and we bring in the guest teachers for that each month, which is really you can use a lot of the things that we use for the trees also in your gardening, just the philosophy and the teachings as well, and that has textbooks, which are Michael's books, and it goes with it, and also videos during the month. The other thing we do is just offer one-off classes, maybe one-day class or two-day retreat weekend, and we bring in guest speakers. Last past year we had Rosemary Gladstar came, and we did a foraging and feasting class, which was really fun. That was the one I took. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's so fun. Oh, we had amazing food. Yeah. Yeah, delicious wild foods, and everybody helped gather and cook, and that was just one example. This weekend is for about seven years. We've had our guest and friend Lucille Alacon, who is a really wonderful teacher from Ecuador. She's coming this coming weekend, and it's called Healing the Healers. So she and Gracie and I designed it early on just to be a time for people that are often giving and sharing and healing themselves to come and just be rejuvenated and refreshed, and we offer a lot of practices, some of them that can easily be just done by yourself home later and also just gained from that weekend. Everyone always feels like they just have their vessel filled back up again and rejuvenized. How does somebody become a part of this coming weekend's event? This one's full to the brim. Is it? Why am I not surprised? She comes every year, so it's just good to get on our mailing list so you can attend another time or any of our other guest teachers. In previous years when she was here, did you offer sessions to the public to come in on by appointment? Yes, we do. Sometimes if she has extra days when she's going to be here, and those are full also this year. But we have about three different days offering some healings. So that's even more reason to check out this newsletter. It's usually just a few people that are because she's very well-known. She's a wonderful teacher. She blends in the ancient teachings from her elders, her grannies. She often says this is one of her best teachers. But then she also has a Ph.D. and a doctorate in pharmacology, and she's well-versed in ethnobotany. So she brings a lot of things. She's a fascinating woman. I feel very grateful to have her. Yeah, so every year it's just a little different. We almost always have a Rocio. Rosemary's blessed us many times to teach. Sometimes we've had different classes on flower essence. So it's just good to check them out. We are signing people up now for our eight-month program, so that's good to get on the list. When does that start? The orchard one starts in March because we start with pruning, and that's when the trees are still dormant. And the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times starts in April. Okay. And you're taking enrollments now? Yes. Okay. Don't wait too long if you're interested in these programs. Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. So, yeah, go into our website, heartsongfarmlostnationorchard.com. Phone number? I can get you more information. Oh, yeah. You can call 802-473-6117. Okay. I'm happy to get you on our list and share any information you need. Wonderful. I am so delighted that you came to see me here, Nancy. You are a gift in my life. I love seeing you. You and I first met in a business class. That's right. Many moons ago. That's right. It was the BETA program, right, through REN? Right. Yeah. What was that business? I can't remember what the acronym stands for, but we met there. Through REN, yeah. That was a pleasure, and I'm so glad that you're doing the work you're doing, and with your yoga therapy, as well as just offering this show is really a great plus for our community. Thank you. It's important to share, and it's important for people to know what's out here. We can oftentimes live life in our own silos, even though we're in a small community, and most of us who have been here for a bit walk around seeing people that we know, but you don't necessarily know-know what's really happening. I love that there are so many practitioners in this area who have a wealth of knowledge, can support people in all kinds of different ways, and that's the whole point of this show, for listeners to understand what is in your neighborhood, what's around the corner, and if you're living on the outskirts, what might be worth a drive, and there's always ways to connect online too, so thank you so much again for being here. All right, we're going to wrap up the show. It's 2.57. Thank you very much for listening to Restorative Health Therapy's Mind, Body, Soul show. This is your weekly boost of inspired well-being. Well-being happens in the everyday moments, not just at the finish line. Take what works for you from today's show, leave the rest, and keep moving forward. Remember, having all of our life's ducks in a row is the least of our priorities. Our tips are for inspiration, not medical advice. If you have health concerns, it's always best to check in with your doctor or your health care provider. Until next time, stay curious, be compassionate, and keep learning. If you'd like to be considered as a guest on this show, please reach out to us here, info at nococommunityradio.org, and you can also send in any questions that you have on today's show. I'll make sure Nancy gets them. We are skipping next week. I am going on a retreat on a remote island off the coast of New Hampshire for a week, and I can't wait. It's a writing workshop, amongst other things. Sounds awesome. Yeah. So I'll be gone. We will be skipping September the 1st. Our next show will be September the 8th with our guest, Annika McCann. She's a registered nurse and founder of Primal Botanical. We'll be learning about CBD 101, the history of CBD, how it works, dosing, how to source quality CBD, and so much more. So put that on your calendar, September the 8th, CBD 101. Have a fantastic rest of your day, everybody. Remember to smile to a stranger, show compassion, show love, and be of service. Until next time, take care.
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