From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
Okay, everyone. Happy day after Valentine's Day.
And and, the last time we did one of these calls was leading up to the release of WildCraft, which was our board game, that we released back in December. And, I was packaging up the the games and, putting a deck of wild cards, in there in the Big Learning Herbs distribution center, which is also known as my garage. And then I thought, duh. I should have interviewed Linda Runyon. I should have not done that. And it took me about five seconds to think of the idea of just adding this on later as a bonus for you who purchased Wildcrest. So thanks everyone for doing that and purchasing that and supporting us.
So, just like we, did back in November, I'm gonna give away, cool prize at the end. But actually, there's three people tonight, not just one, so we're just gonna go, why not? We're gonna do that. So, hang on to the end of the call, and I also have some other really cool exciting announcements. So Linda Runyon, was a homesteader. And, for thirteen years, her family lived without indoor plumbing, electricity, running water, way out in the wilderness.
And, it was a it was in, it was this way of life that Linda learned about using wild plants.
And, in her day to day, for diet and her medicine. And for years, she taught and designed several very creative learning tools, including wild cards, the deck of cards with the wild plants and their playing cards, and the book from Crag Rass Muffins to Pine Needle Tea, both of which we carry here on Learning Herbs because, they're just so cool. And and, one of her books called A Survival Acre, fifty Worldwide Wild Foods and Medicines is now back in print at lulu dot com, and I will go over all that later to tell you how you can get a copy of that, towards the end of the call, some of the details of that. And, we'll get to all that later.
But for now, let's welcome Linda. Hey, Linda.
Thank you, John.
And you hear all the claps, and they're all clapping at home. But they don't have to but they they don't have to worry about, you know, doing the, you know, doing the dishes or having the kids screaming in the background while they're listening because we can't Yeah.
It's wonderful. Gee whiz. I don't tell you. When I came out of the woods, it was like it was like, you know, coming out of a cave to for the technology.
And now living on the farm, it's similar.
I mean, I'm seeing this tonight.
And it's five degrees and two inches above.
Five below. Yep.
Five below. Wow. And you have six courses. You're boarding at your place now.
Mhmm. South in South Jersey.
And, and Jersey can be a cool place because I grew up there.
Well, my daughter's here, and she's a vet tech. She's just incredible gal that get get gives to our community, a couple of hundred pets a a day, I would say. Easy. Mhmm. And, I just felt that I really wanted to when my parents here in Arizona passed on, I was on the desert about thirteen years out there. And I learned an awful lot about surviving on the desert and have a great respect for the Hohokam and the Navajo and all the tribes I've worked with out there.
When I moved back here, yeah, I just thought farm sounded like a good idea.
Yeah. Well, when I when I, when I, found your book on the Internet, the crabgrass muffins book, and I bought it, like, right away, I was excited. It's not only a recipe book, which is I've been researching books like this, but it's also a field guide. I love the nutritional information.
Thank you. Lookalikes information, gardening ideas with wild plants, and some basic homesteading stuff. I mean, it was just it was just a very fresh approach and very different. You're just kinda putting your all your experiences in there.
And, I think it's probably the nurse in me that got that all together, John.
Yeah. They're taking care of you. And so, so if you well, if one has such a resource, you know, how how can people wanting to get out there for the first time and make a dish with wild foods get started?
Well, you really should start with something that's already familiar. Most of us know the dandelion.
But did you know that about ten of those leaves equal over a glass of milk and calcium?
Wow. So you figure you know, you can look at all these different things up in the book. It's it's all in print. You can figure if ten of those leaves equal a glass of milk and calcium, and we need our calcium, then, just incorporate it any way you want from stir fried to chop to chopped up to walked up to, you know, steam to, just about anyway. We make flour out of everything, John. We make f l o u r. Wow.
So that you take the dandelion and if you dry it or you dry the violet leaves or you dry the malvelies or you dry, you know, maybe twenty of those plants on your deck of cards or in the book. What you have is flour that's so high potent that you can take three or four tablespoons of that flour and add it to your Duncan Hines or whatever you have, you know, and you just boosted your nutrition double.
Now you're saying flour actually made from what what what's some of your favorite plants to make flour with, and how do you do that?
Probably lamb's quarters because it's a full meal. It's a it's a, sort of a herby tasting, almost spinach tasting flower that's not it's not like the grass flowers, you know, like like, they're light, like our regular flour, you know. Mhmm. But whole wheat flour.
You can make any grass into a flour, f l o u r. But, the the leaves are herby tasting, and they're very high potent in vitamins. So we have, like, years supply of food down cellar of our in our classes. We taste test and stir fry and make little pita cakes, silver dollar cakes.
And Right.
We add we add we add onions and raisins and whatever to it and make a different, nationality.
Yeah. We do we do all that in our classes.
So you're, so when you're making the lamb's quarter flower, are you doing that from the seeds?
The whole plant.
I see everything as the whole plant. When you take an herb book, it'll say a petal or a leaf or a seed or whatever. No way, Jose, in the woods when you're out there gathering. And the way the way we did, you know, where where we were very tired most of the time, and I had to gather three meals a day and put them on, you know, in all kinds of weather.
Right. And right. So you didn't, like, take the, the old let's see. You pick this in the fall or you take the seeds off of this.
No. I see the whole plant.
So if you were looking at lamb's quarter seeds, for instance, you you would have, here I'm reading out of the book. You'd have three hundred fifty calories in the seeds, and this is a half a cup.
And and you would have, nineteen point six grams of protein in the seeds, which is more than a steak. A steak is about nine or ten.
Really?
Yeah. And so no. No. This is this this can blow your mind real fast. That's why I love to teach the military survival in a different way.
You know? Right. Yeah. Calcium, one thousand thirty six milligrams.
Now now you're looking at about oh, gosh.
Eight glasses of milk? Eight glasses of milk? In helmet and Three hun a half a cup. So you don't want a half a cup of seeds. Do you see where I'm going with this? You don't you don't want a half a cup. You want what what you want is the whole plan.
So that when when in our book here, we have the seeds and the shoots broken down, the leaves and the shoots broken down. So there's your seeds way too high to be eating a half a cup. So I would eat the whole plant, say. And and the shoots go down a ways so that you have three hundred and twenty four milligrams of calcium. That's eight ounce. That's nine.
Let's see. That's about two glasses of milk, eight ounce. And, it's it's it's wonderful because you you don't think technically, John. What you think is this is the highest in nutrition in the world next to amaranth.
Amaranth is the highest.
Now I'm taking this lamb's quarter.
Right? Now just so everyone knows, I mean, lamb's quarter, it's a the genus name is Chinopodium.
You can you can find in Linda's book. You can find it in other books.
It's it's, some some And you should always cross reference.
Pigweed, goosefoot. There's there's other names other things called Pigweed too. That's why you wanna go by the Latin name.
Yeah. Don't just take my book. Always cross record.
So then, you find this, you know, any garden farm. So I I have this lambsquarter. I picked it. I've gone down a little. I picked, you know, even some the root maybe even, and I and I have this lot of it. What am I gonna do?
Like, how am I gonna be Well, I look at the seeds flower.
Now, John, you're a wilderness school, but in Rivas Mountain survival school out on the desert, we'd start our day in Rebus Mountain with a quarter cup of lamb's quarter seeds.
Okay? We would add hot boiling water to the thermos bottle that night before and a little bit of molasses and let it sit overnight.
It's a gruel, and that gruel would take us three to four hours hiking.
Wow. Okay?
So I've never heard that before.
When I when I save lamb's quarters, I have two buckets full of it down cellar. I would feed, like, three hundred people.
Wow.
So you I mean, I'm not kidding.
What?
Just putting just putting fresh seeds in a thermos, putting hot water in it, letting it sit overnight.
Yeah. That's what we do. That's how we start our day.
Great camping food even.
Sure. Because the energy is double and triple normal food. This is something people don't realize With wild food, on my windowsill, for instance, it's dead of winter, but I only have curly dock, dandelion, and some mints. It's all I need because I have I mean, that's not all I'm eating. Okay? But in in vitamins and minerals and stuff, those leaves are so high and so potent that I like to hydroponic them all winter. That it tells you how to do that in the book too.
Woah.
I I'm sorry.
I'm just really late. I told them I didn't know this.
But I tried to get it out because it's going.
We're gonna sell lamb sort of simple.
No. It it's so simple. When you see it as the whole plant, you you don't start picking and, you know, I mean, start thinking, oh, I when do I pick this one?
Do I the chickweed right now is all frozen.
Right? It's underneath all the ice up there. That chickweed is frozen just like you took, like, heads of lettuce and froze them. They are still one hundred percent edible.
Right.
So we ate all went along, greens. We would dig down next to trees.
Okay? We did this take the chickweed. Possibly. And ate chickweed, cloverheads, dandelion, whatever was growing there that we could tell immediately was edible.
We would take it we didn't eat anything that looked rotten or looked lousy. You know? We would eat the nice fresh froze I call them fresh frozen leaves. And they're all right there. Now this whole world here is like frozen from my feet.
And this is when you're living out in You could live.
Spending.
You could live in Alaska like this.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You could.
Wow.
And so I just wanted just for practical, I just wanted to finish that thought on the lamb's quarter because if you're making the I mean, like, if when you're saying what's this flower look like then if you're taking this It's very green.
And I'll tell you I'll tell you a funny story.
I I called Henry Uris one time who does the Amerenced products you have on them in your oil healthful shops. And and he and I laughed about what I was doing. I called from Phoenix one time.
Right.
And he said nobody was gonna listen to me because it was green. His air meant flower was white. It was bleached white.
Right.
That's all I'm saying. I like Amaranth, you know.
So so it's just people don't need the fact that their flower is gonna look like something differently than what they're buying in the house.
And they can cut that with some other things.
Exactly. And and what's funny is nineteen forty seven, during the war, I have proof of all this of writing. I've lost track of half of the files, but, they literally made clover cookies for the soldiers.
I understand that they had them on railroad trains. They had, green flower, which was made into cookies and given to the soldiers.
Wow. And you can take it back to George Washington.
Also heard, like, in World War two and fifty thousand alive.
Right.
And World War two in Italy when, he would leave pots of dandelion soup out on the in the in the And we all have grandparents that do that.
You know? We'll stop, stop, eat, just eat that. What what happened to us? Why you know, we sort of, like, floated off from our feet.
My great grandfather, if you, would take, in Philadelphia, would take dandelion greens in the park, and he'd take them and pick them up.
Yep.
You know?
And that was and that was a while ago, but he Well, he was drinking he was literally drinking milk without all the curd that bothers you.
Mhmm.
You know, he the goodness he was getting.
So so you talked about lamb's quarter. We talked about chickweed and and and some folks here know that if they've done like an herbal medicine, they could get on the roots and branches.
Of course, I have people just make a simple stir fry with dandelion root, or they can choose to make a little chickweed, you know, salad up or even have a chickweed pesto recipe on the website you can go and Oh, yeah.
Chickweed is wonderful and pita cakes and stuff too.
What and what what other, what what are a couple other of the most nutritious wild foods?
Well, out out west Arizona, for instance, we had a certain times of the year, we we were waiting in our Malva.
It's called Malva neglecta.
And here in our lawns in New Jersey, we try and get rid of it, actually try and get rid of stanolin.
Out west, it was the largest green that grew in in great abundance.
And I just I was hysterical laughing because there was enough there for the world. And then I saw it in Kuwait around all the swimming pools when they were eating their dogs.
Okay? And it was, like, four feet high, six feet high.
What? Well, I take them I put them in, ice cube containers. First, I put a little salsa.
Mhmm. And then I put the Malva leaf.
Mhmm.
And then I'll put a little bit of a teaspoon of refried beans, vegetarian without the lard. And then I freeze them, And I pop them out. When somebody comes for lunch, I just put them in a little container.
Oh, well, I'm good. Well, you do this with violet leaves. You do them with amaranth leaves. You do them with with plantain. You you take your deck of cards and anything that's large, you can do the same thing.
And you could fill it with whatever you'd like. Some people do, yeah, potatoes and stuff and whatever.
But, it's a fun quick way to eat wild food.
Highly nutritious, full of iron, malva.
Right. Right. And that's, is that the one people call a cheese weed or sometime?
Yes. They do. And those little cheese weeds, oh, boy. Are they good? We put them in in, eggs.
Those of us that aren't vegan, we we we, stir fry them.
Oh, I see. Wow.
Mhmm. And they're fun to get children interested because they wanna get they wanna they want to focus on something very tiny like that. It's really fun. The kids will love to pick those little seeds.
Well, coming up here, I I just saw the other day poking their heads up right here where where I live in the Pacific Northwest is, the stinging nettles.
Oh my gosh. You got the source of protein.
I know. So Oh, wow. Tell me your tell me what you have to tell us about nettle and nutrition. Also, a couple of ways you like to prepare it.
Well, first of all, I never, I call it attack a nettle without, tongs. Always use tongs. And I used to I used to cut down if it was a whole stand of nettles. I would cut down.
Of course, I'm in the woods type thing, back there, and I'd have to bring it home and prepare it, not just sit there with the bears and try to prepare it and pull things off. I I literally because I had a lot of bear around me. I I would take two large nettle plants, lay them down like a railroad track. Mhmm.
And then I take the other nettles from the base, and this all you need is a pair of gloves and and a knife to do this. Put them across the railroad track. Mhmm. Then you pick up those two with your gloves and you walk off.
You have, like, several, you know, weeks of meals right there.
Mhmm.
And, I bring it home and I pull off all the nice young leaves, and I would wash them real well. And then I would chop them up fine, and I would add a little bit of onion.
And, if I had olive oil, I would add a little bit of that. And what I would do is make a cake. I would press it together and make a hamburger. They were called metal hamburgers. They're in my book.
And, you can do this with any of the lettuces or the wild lettuce or you can or even dandelion. You can make and you fry them on either side. And they're delicious. The amount of energy in that is amazing.
And that being protein, it's very amazing.
And it's very high in protein. Exactly. Exactly. But you know, they say, I've heard that around where I live, the native people didn't even really eat the nettles because they were they had so much protein from the salmon and fish that the other fish that they were eating.
Right. Right.
It's really interesting considering there is a native nettle here, you know.
Wow. You're lucky to have it. You should harvest you should harvest it and either freeze it just in little ziplocks, you know.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Or just steam it very briefly, even twenty seconds.
Mhmm.
And, impress it into into flat ziplocks. That's the way I harvest so I can have, like, a thousand meals in that tiny little freezer.
And that's a wow. That that's a great way to say it's blanching in other words.
Yeah. It's in it it's in the book how to make the most out of your tiny little freezer.
That is that is see, great.
What we do is we, will just say, okay. Nettle time, we got late February to, you late May, it'll start flowering.
And then, when you can kind of Then you can then you John, then you can harvest it by just opening up your, your your paper bag and taking a pair of scissors and clip off the, the new young parts, You know? We we keep harvesting and every time we come back with a huge garbage bag full Oh, you're great. You wanna see people We'll dry half, and the other half, we'll make something with, like, little Oh, you guys are great.
Or or stuff like that. Mhmm. But, yeah, that's usually what we'll what we'll do with the with the nettles.
And we'll just keep eating it and eating it and eating it and just about, like, everything until they A family can stay absolutely alive with about six different plants, honestly, harvesting.
And we figured all that out. What about I could write yeah.
I could write that as a book, but I I think that's really Well, tell us what those six plants are since we're too t Oh oh, I need it.
I need it. Now I gotta think. I know amaranth is is one. Okay. So you got two amaranth plants. We did this on the desert, which was really hard to do.
We we we found two amaranth plants and harvested them constantly.
And then two lamb's quarters. So now you have your highest in nutrition.
Mhmm. Then Malibu, which was the highest in iron.
Mhmm. And, let me finish on the desert here, and that that way we'll get, a sort of a comparison to the east. Okay. So you have Amerenst. You have the Lamb's quarter.
I I am thinking it's quickly.
I can't I'm getting old.
You have, let's see.
It's oh, Purslane. Minerals.
Minerals. Now out east here, it's chickweed.
You you can find purslane, but, out west, you have mats of it. Yeah.
So, the in the Middle East, that a little well, I don't think you have that book, but it's it's a it's gone now. It's out of print, but it's, a Middle Eastern book I wrote for the courage When they ripen down, purslane is, like, the highest in minerals in a small amount.
Okay. I'll show you. So so minerals and nettles?
Yeah.
Yeah. Wow.
Yep. It was you you can find all this in the nutrition area.
Uh-huh.
Thistle's very high in minerals. Right.
Just about, like, Canada thistle?
All your thistles. All edible. Every single thistle. You name it, it's edible.
Wow.
In Norway and Denmark, they take the little little buds and they literally freeze them like peas. You can buy them in the store.
Wow. See all these wild foods in different parts of the world. Peas were people part of people's regular diet.
That's what makes me so upset because we here in this country. We're having we're the ones that are having food possible terrorism.
Right?
Right. Right.
We're the least knowledgeable in what's free under our feet.
Right.
That's very upsetting. The bed Bedouins get down off a camel That's just and they will farm, you know.
It's just a matter of free.
It's also a matter of nutrition. I mean, there the this even a lot of the store bought organic vegetables these days, they're not grown on really good soil. You know, where it's going to be? It's because the time it takes I know.
Well, the time it takes us to go shopping, John, is the same amount of time that it would take me to gather six weeks supply of food.
Right.
So while I get my car and drive off, oh, don't get me going.
Yeah.
Get her get her gone.
Get her No. Don't get me going. You don't wanna get me going. You're asking where I go.
No way. Uh-uh.
Uh-uh. Comfort class one day.
I had two navy seals live with me for ten days once. I came for two. They ended up ten days. That was a lot of fun, and I won't go into that. But it was really, really wonderful.
That was a lot of fun.
I won't go into that.
I think no. No. I didn't mean it that way. I think no. They're they called me. We we're old friends now. It's been twelve years, I guess.
But that's how my cards finally got to Brigade Quartermasters.
But The wild card, so everybody knows, gets distributed, to a lot to a lot of military.
She sells a lot to the military.
Yes. And they're the same price as what John's doing.
So don't think about it. I'm sure they won't mind.
But my my premise is that if you give the Iraqi family a deck of free food of what they're walking on, you've given them something.
So then does the deck of does the deck of cards cover pretty much worldwide?
Ninety per ninety percent is in every country of the world.
Wow. That they gave me two years to make that deck and gave me twenty two lines. Per cart, I researched that thing in the biosphere, which I was consultant for at West, that city under glass.
And Yeah.
It was really cool because I I got to meet a lot of people from Kuwait and places like that. You know, professors and learned a lot.
And Mhmm.
Mhmm.
And learned that they already knew all these things.
And that really irritated me further to get this book that you have done and out. You know? And doctor Duke, being the best herbalist in the world, he did the research for the nutrition part of it.
Oh, is that where you got that?
Yeah. Pizza best there is.
So they actually went and did, you know, chemo chemist Oh, yeah.
Half a cup and analyzed it. Wow.
That took almost two years blown away.
To produce that. Yeah.
That wheel was the first thing, and then now that went by, and I put it in the book.
Mhmm. Yeah. And then you put it in the book. Okay. Done. Yeah. That is incredible.
But it it you know, you talk to talk to him, and he it's the same It's the same when we go to that place you don't want us to go to.
It's unbelievable, you know.
It's just unbelievable to me.
Yes.
So for people now here's the thing. I I got, you know, some questions in from people. And just so you know, people a lot of folks who come to our website and, you know, get our kit and and subscribe to our newsletter Our, folks, just like we're talking about, they're they're they're they're just, you know, awakening, discovering, and as you know, in the very beginning of of learning about plants that it's very overwhelming. It's very convenient.
That's that's another reason why I What what I what I wanna ask you then is, and this comes from Claudia.
Claudia asks.
Okay.
Do you have for someone just beginning the journey in herbalism? Mhmm.
Keep it very simple and pick one plant and run it right through the food chain.
Either dandelion or clover or violet leaves, something that you know instantly, you've got good pictures of, and you know that that someone you know, several of us say you can eat.
Keep it very simple, but follow that one plant right through the food chain.
Dig it and put it in water on your windowsill, watch it grow, clip the little leaves off, put them in your eggs or your stir fry.
I do this all winter. Mhmm. Keep keep that nutrition in front of you and in your system, and go slow when summer comes and you can gather a lot of it, follow that one plant, make flower out of it. You know, in the book, it it tells you how you should do it, you know, do it easy for yourself.
Not make it complicated.
Store it, have it in front of you, take a teaspoon of it, put it in your other recipes.
In other words, you take that one plant and follow it through until you're sick of eating that one plant, then go on to another one. It nothing is more overwhelming than sitting in the woods the way we did. I was sent up by my husband then, who's still living up there in Indy Lake, ex husband. And every day, I was given an hour to sit there on a log and figure out what I could eat.
And my nurse's training helped me a great deal.
Mhmm.
It's a little bit more complicated than that, the way I I trust myself, you know, I, to to to pick a certain plan. I kept seeing it over and over and over again. It would jump right out and look at me and, oh my, eat me. Eat me. I know you can't.
Don't ever do it.
Mhmm.
Bring it down to the place. Look for two look in two or three pictures put picture things. But if you start with something simple like dandelion, you have several different types of dandelion. They look just like dandelion, but there are other dips types of wild lettuce. Chicory looks a lot like dandelion.
Or cassia or Yeah.
So you wanna just pick something like red clover that you can't miss. You got a red clover ball of flower. You've got the red clover and know that the Japanese children are sent down to the to the marketplaces to, get the best bunch of red clover for the stir fry for the day so that you really, really have run that plant into your mind and into your recipes and into your storage, then go on to another one.
You will never be complicated that way. You will always just like your that one plant is coming out and you're seeing it. And if you develop that skill, you're safe everywhere you stand.
And you just take it one at a time.
That's correct. And and Just don't do what I did in the Buddhist ashram in the Catskills. What was that?
I must tell you, I made the biggest faux pas in the world.
Anyone listening, I apologize a million times. I have been constant, and this will be good. This is good redeeming for me too to say this. But, I was sent to get the plants for a family.
I fed a family for a week. I had them feed themselves for a week. And, it was wonderful because we devised all sorts of new recipes and new ways to use things. Mhmm.
But I kept noticing where I was going to get these things that the plants seemed larger Mhmm.
Than any place else I'd ever seen. Well, I was gathering plants from sacred ground that the Brahma Maya from India had cordoned off and said don't anyone ever eat or not eat, don't ever pick from this area.
And I'm bringing down the biggest clover head you've ever seen, and we're frying them. And, oh my goodness, the things I did. And I didn't realize it. And when when I was finally asked, because it never dawned on the family, where I was getting things from? That's when I found out I made the worst faux pas you could make there.
So then besides not picking, you know, besides asking first when when you're in an audit ashram Yeah. Or please. Or what other what other things would be Yeah. When people are out and they're saying, okay. I wanna work on Clover. I wanna work with Dandelion.
What are a couple of different tips or things he was We we literally cordoned all my students when I started out in the early seventies.
What I did, we cordoned off a part of the lawn that we knew the dogs didn't go or the cats didn't go. Mhmm. We literally took string and stakes and staked two by two by two feet.
Now this sounds silly, but let me tell you, I can feed what did I feed two hundred people off of ten feet? Now, John, you know I could do this. I was given six weeks. Out of ten feet, picking every day, the clover, the dandelion, the plantain.
I froze everything. Okay? And then we devised all sorts of stir fries and everything. We fed two hundred people in Indian Lake.
This is well documented.
Wow.
The fact is it made Ripley's, believe believe it or not. Nineteen eighty seven. Yeah.
You keep coming out with these little bits of your history here that are pretty big.
Gosh. I'm living in the past.
Working on the biosphere to But what I'm trying to say is to with your with your harvesting skills.
I don't mean to be, like, going back.
But I mean, it's like two by two by two feet. You can simplify your life by picking out all the edibles out of there and just sticking with that.
Something that I tell people and, which you could, you know, maybe, you know, in in this day and age when people are looking out for, you know look at a lot of times I'm teaching people are in cities, stuff like that. Mhmm.
And, and, but in Seattle, in this area, even if you live in a city, you're you're within an hour from, plenty of organic Oh, Oh, Seattle.
I just came back from there last year.
And and and these, and these organic farms that are out here Yep.
Just love when you come and Oh, sure.
Many times we've deweeded.
I I took a group of ten people once, and we deweeded so the farmer wouldn't use pesticides. He says if you can get all the stuff out, fine. I won't use it. And by gosh, we did it.
Wow.
My daughter's around my daughter's house.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah. Well, just have fun enough people like yourself.
I'm finding the crazy people who wanna eat the weeds. Whatever.
You know, Megan from Massachusetts asks, what does, what had.
Okay. So she, what does, wants to know how you feel the best way is to discover wild edible plants in an area that you're not familiar with other than using a field guide.
So if you're safe from New England and got lost in the no clouded plant that that plant deck of cards is you're perfectly safe with it.
Anywhere you are. Anywhere you are.
It's the quickest, easiest way to Yes.
They can even find things in the desert.
Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Half those pictures on the cards we took on the desert. I did it to prove it to the Middle East. I'm not fooling you because I work with the credit union in New York.
No. I'm not fooling you. They are they are just anywhere that there's any moisture.
Well, let's say she doesn't have the deck of cards on her. What which which does she look out for? Let's, you know, what what Okay.
Well, if you are out out without anything whatsoever, okay, you must at least memorize your foraging rules.
Now the foraging rules you have and everything I've ever written, I came up with them, in the woods in that hour.
And the first thing you do is to look at that plant.
Okay?
Break off a piece of it and smell it.
Mhmm.
Don't eat it, but smell it.
Mhmm.
Then the second thing you do, if it smells good, okay, continue. If it doesn't, forget it, walk away.
You have to learn to link yourself with that piece.
People are quite far out of it, you kind of thing. I noticed sometimes, especially if you smoke too much or whatever, and and you can't smell it. Well, you keep crushing that leaf till you can.
Mhmm. Okay? Until you say, yes, I like it. No, I don't.
I could eat that. Then start there. Yes. I could eat it. Then take it and do not put it in your mouth and eat it.
The Native Americans say take a little piece and chew it. I fight with them all the time. I've been many times. You take it and crush it up real good and rub it over your teeth on your gum.
If it doesn't burn, itch, swell, or something, and you wait twenty minutes. Mhmm. Okay? And link yourself with your own gum.
Does it itch? Does it burn? Mhmm. Does it anything?
And, if it doesn't do anything, then don't eat it yet. Put it in a little cup, add boiling water, and sip it real slow.
Mhmm.
Just a little piece of the leaf. Now that's pretty foolproof. If you have anything at all that is toxic to you Mhmm. Either either your gum line will show if it's if it's poison hemlock, let's face it, you you will wish you were not here because you you will be very nauseous, extremely nauseous.
How much does it take about to die?
I mean, you know, you Quarter inch.
Quarter inch of You got it. And you're and how how long how long does it take for you to go?
I pressed a thousand of them underneath plastic a thousand times and given them to school.
That's all.
Uh-huh. Wow.
Because it's that lethal.
People know that?
Have you have you or anyone actually witnessed anyone die from a quarter inch of foot on top of it?
I think I read every account, John, and I've had to.
And I'll tell you how else I know. Thank god it wasn't one of my students because I have a whole thing on it and slides and everything. In the book, there's a whole chapter there show showing you of how to know the difference. I just tell people stay away from white umbels, white white flowers.
Yeah. Just stay away from it to to your exactly your botanist. Yeah. Right. Then then you're not gonna make it.
Even wild carrot and Queen Anne's lace. Just unless you're totally sure, stay away.
John, wild carrot wild carrot is on my windowsill in water growing. It has a fuzzy stem. If you could remember that it has hair on the stem, the food has hair on the stem of the white humble white flower, then you're okay. Mhmm. The only exception that that I I talk about is yarrow.
Now I'm complicating things. So, you know, it's better that people just stay away from the white, plant, period.
There's Actually, and the line and clover in your nettles and your salvo.
Only what you know you not making a mistake.
And you have a good, wild food recipe book like Right.
Don't go any further with mustards or anything until you've become really good with those, say, three or four of familiar plants, then you'll never become then you'll never get whirled out about them.
So when you learned all this, Like Because I had to. When I started when I started learning, I did can't.
I had it to be I, you know, I I could sign up for workshops. That's the day that's the era that I went or that I started learning.
Now when you were learning all that I mean, when you started, like, what happened over there?
I now I back me up to a baby.
I was tethered to a tree in Indian light, New York. My mother waited tables. I wrote this. It introduces that book.
I I she waited tables for a hundred people, and, that these are the days, you know, seventy years ago where they had Sears of Robot padded harnesses. And I noticed people use them today once in a while. And, anyway, making a long story short, I was always told to take those weeds out of my sweater. I would stuff them up my wrist part.
And when I was hungry, I ate.
Mhmm.
And I'm telling you, John, I could remember the difference between red clover when I was two years old, and it's still tethered to the tree, on and off. I can remember the difference in the taste of that red clover Mhmm.
To the white clover. They're different, you know. They're they're both clover, white and red, but the flowers taste different.
Mhmm.
And I can remember yarrow having a very different stimulant thing to it, the little chipmunk's tail in the grass. And I can remember grass tasting different than any of them. It's quite amazing if you just take two feet and delve into it.
Just take delve into it.
Two feet that your garden and you delve into everything in there. What take out this poisons as you go along. What is this? Oh, it's spurge. Alright. Take it out.
You know what I'm saying? And your garden can be two feet, and you can't get complicated that way.
No. It is exactly. And you don't even really have to garden. It'll just kinda do it on its own.
And we have to make ourselves safe because that way we're safe.
You know, it's I get it's somehow to tie in this question is, Sunny, asks, out in, Minnesota, I think, and, works with, doing a lot of wild foods. That has a wild foods blog or website.
Oh.
And, there's plenty of time Yeah.
I don't I just I'm at some point on Canvas.
As wild food foraging becomes popularized, well, you know, I know how pie and I think it needs to be more pot probably.
So she wants, he wants so he wants to know, how to suggest we ensure that the resources are managed well, and also, do you have to keep some kind of wild food foraging certificate recognized by State Parks National Forest enabling qualified people to harvest on public I always got arrested in the park.
My friend Steven Bill Bill got arrested. Answers, honey.
No kidding. He he he oh my gosh. And then Mayor Koch, We we fed Mira Koc in New York and about four hundred other people. It took four days preparation. I've never scrubbed so many roots in my life over a bathtub.
And, we we we fed, like, oh my gosh. And Mayor Koch was one of them. And when Steven got arrested from, eating the damn vine, they slapped the handcuffs on him. Oh, yeah. Because he was eating the bark.
Yeah. Yep.
So Steve it's a wild man, Steven Brill, wrote a big book big thick, wild edible book and, so he Oh, he's go on his website for wild food information.
He's incredible.
You've got a great website and, and, and so you were with him when that happened?
No. I worked with him, on the dinner before he got arrested.
And then after he got arrested, he he called me. I was already a friend of his, and, I was running the Raining Institute. When I came out of the woods, they opened up the institute to make money on me Uh-huh. On whatever.
And it it it was quite an experience for me to come out of the woods and have a corporation. You know? And I I ended up it's a long story, and it's in the book. It's logged in the book.
And it was great because I was given rooms to fill and a root room and a tree room and a bush room, and you you could it was a museum to wild food is what it was, and I would like to see that in every town. I would like to see a wild food walk where everything is planted, and I've done several of those, ten or eleven of them. And, the one in Jersey here grew too fast for me to make noise. I needed a crew of about ten people to keep that thing right.
Wow. It's just amazing to think if if everyone could imagine what it would be like if every town had, you know Yeah.
In a point of local parks, wild food gardens Right. People could see. And maybe everyone listening here could get out and make that happen in their town.
Well, in my book, it'll tell you how to do it.
That's my next book.
And it does. And it does. And and, Waffle Walker.
The, airgrass muffins, you know, you have a a, you know, example garden structure.
Yep.
It's the same plants.
It's Dan you put in three DanLab plants, you'll have a hundred of them. In six weeks, you have you have a filled in two by two section of every single thing you put in there.
I gotta tell you a story. I I, there was a time when, when I was a teenager that I was hired and paid, in landscaping and where I was poisoning all the dandelions. Right?
Oh, yes.
And then things turned years later to and then I saw that one time when I was out there. And occasionally, you know, if I have some extra dandelion seeds, I call it a, you know, gorilla gorilla gardening.
Well, you I'm like, yeah. Lawns. You know?
People John, I have gotten a call.
Garvey's being arrested in Chicago for having, wild food, grow in his yard because he he was like yourself, and he let the wild lettuce grow, like, you know, six feet tall and harvested it. Right? Well, they were gonna arrest him. And and in Arizona too, it's a five hundred dollar fine if if it's over eighteen inches.
So Wow. Yeah. It it's in the book. I I stuck it in there just just hope hopefully, we'll we'll ward off this kind of thing.
As long as you put around what you're allowing to grow, something that shows that you're allowing to grow it, that it is a garden. You put rocks around it. You put boards around it.
You can call it a garden. Now the Department of Agriculture in Arizona gave me permission to do that on people's lawns where they were finding them for letting the lawn grow and eating the weeds.
Well, I would to get back to Sonny's question a little more too, which we're still kind of around on that subject. You know, I don't really see a need for well, you know, I think with wild food foraging, if there's some things that you're doing on public land, like, at least in Washington, they do you can go and get permission to do, like, safety issues.
But see see, there's problems with liability connected with that.
Yeah. Exactly.
Where everything's going everywhere I look. I I mean, it's I'm just appalled. Okay? But it's going there. Right? So you have to ward that off.
Yeah. It's better if you have both of them.
You don't want it, you know, somebody to sue whoever's field you're in, you know, if they got into something bad. They would turn around.
And let me say here that it's about relationships. So like, a lot of the plants we're talking about here are, you're growing local farmland, organic farmland, wherever.
And if you can you know, establish a relationship with that farmer and get to know them, it's a good thing to know the farmers and know the people, and then they and then nobody's gonna worry about any kind of liability issues and things like that.
I know. I know.
I know it's possible.
I know things like that do happen and it's an issue to think about, but it's, you know, we need to be only we need to be scared about it. I think it's just really it's just a matter of being smart, talking to people, whoever's land it is. And, The noise you might hear is me throwing wood in the heat later here. Oh, okay.
Hang on. I mean, if I don't because it is five below.
Okay. Okay.
So, you know, I I I just wanted to just talk a sec here about, I I I just picked up off of lulu dot com, a survival acre book. And it's, this forty about forty four pages here, and it's eight and a half by eleven.
And what's really interesting here is just how simple you keep it and and and you let it Otherwise, you don't do it.
You know? Right. And and to me, I would not I'd have been dead in the water.
I mean, I don't want anybody going through what we went through. It it What we went through is total total Yeah. We we went through until I simplified it with saying, okay. I'm gonna follow foraging rules on one plant every few days.
Right.
Well, I ended up with a deck of cards, and I ended up with survival acre.
Right. Exactly.
So you've got a simple these herbs are simply laid out, and it has a little layout map of the property, and it's repeated again and again just showing you what parts of the field or a garden or a swamp or in the woods That was my house.
My first house when I came out of the woods.
And then there's, you know, drying stuff. There's, there's, various all kinds of tips and things, you know, from pick pickling. I I'm looking forward to trying to pick I pickled bird eye plenty of times, but I haven't pickled cattail or fiddlehead.
Oh, my son used to eat that. Oh, my goodness.
He eats the whole jar of pickles.
Staple cheese. You have a Yeah. High nutrition list, which lands quarter thistle, pigweed, which is, yeah, plantain, blue, astrot, and wine. You have highest vitamin c source, rose hips, woodsorrel, bracken fern, thyme, yarrow.
But see see now already there are there are people that right away going, oh, I what's you talking about? It's too much. I can't I can't deal with it.
Say for instance that you had picked for your plant, cattail.
I mean, that's an odd one to pick. It's safer.
Good one to pick. You can yeah. So supermarket in a plant right there.
Right. So you go all the way down to the pickle to the piss in the middle, you know.
The other the other, summer this last summer, we fed a whole school of eighty kids. Just the piss.
Just the center part of cat tail. Mhmm. Sunflower has a pith to it too. And we grew all of us grow sunflowers, big sunflowers.
And so the kids came over and busted off all my sunflowers, and we took them back and we split them open. And we had all this white foam, like, in the middle, and it's extremely nutritious.
Really?
Yeah. Sunflower, oh my gosh. On Arizona desert, that was one of the foods that the Apaches love that that my friends yeah.
Either raw or Yeah. Uh-huh. Wow.
Yeah. That's that's a that's a, one that is wild, in desert areas.
Oh, another good desert.
That's another good one that's wild, and I should have thought of that. I just I've been out now for, what, nine years?
Nine years.
And so I'm back to the green era here. But it's been nine years I've been back.
But, Now here's the question, speaking of green that someone asked, which is, you know, probably every plant walk you've done and you've shown nettles, I'm guessing that every there's always one person in the group that has an opinion of a different plant that you didn't hear about before, about how to take care of the nettle stings.
Oh, I heard you could use this. I heard, but, this question here, is asking, how do nettles help the nettle sting? It's because you hear that too. You can use nettle. Oh, yeah.
There's whole books on it. Okay. There's whole books, and the my English friends, they use nettles for a million different things. And they even use nettles to, whack on a person.
Let's say for instance your arthritis is on your on your, knees. So they literally, hit the knees, stain them over and over and over again with a nettle plant. What they're doing is bringing a blood rush to the area. Unbelievable.
Well, then how does from the sting. Okay? If you have a sting, then how does, you know, rubbing the you know, say crushing up a nettle leaf and rubbing it on the sting, how does that help?
I I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't want to ever myself do that. That that wouldn't make sense to me.
Yeah. I I never really done that either, and I know people always say that. And see, for me, I've harvested so many nettles that, that the sensation doesn't bother me at all, so I don't mind it. Right.
And and and if you're approaching the plan respectfully and working with it and taking it and and being aware and attentive that you're different. You don't get caught off guard and get a sting where you're like, woah.
That got Yeah. You get you you pick it and you feel sensation, and when you're done, you're a little numb on the fingers. And that night, it's like you wash the dishes and you're like, oh, this isn't neat.
But other than that, I don't really it doesn't bother me, you know? So that's why I don't even wear gloves when I pick. I just pick them up.
Oh my gosh. You got it. Oh, not me.
I have to stay closer in contact. Oh, dear.
I like aloe. I think everyone should have aloe vera in their house. You can get it in the supermarket. You know?
You can buy yeah. Yeah. You can get it in the supermarket and always have some in your house growing. I have paint bowlers here, and, they wipe each other with paintballs all the time.
And they they know to come up to the house and get an aloe ice cube because all I do is scrape the gel out of it. This is in the book how to do that, Joe.
You scrape the, gel out and and you freeze it. So they plunk it on their well, and it reduces the well immediately. Both the aloe does and the ice. So the combination of the two will stop any burn whatsoever.
Yep. And that's a good way of doing doing that.
I Yeah.
Everybody should have some in their house. I remember It's not a mystery.
It's it's made fun of by my brothers by my by a roommate, my friend of my brothers, and I'm living in Maryland for making Jewelweed ice cubes and keeping them in the freezer.
Oh, I love Jewelweed. That was one of my favorites.
I did that for, obviously, for poison ivy. And they'll be like, oh, John's, what's the put this in the freezer. And then I don't know. It's making fun of me all the time.
But, hey, I didn't have poison ivy when I was out in the woods. So, we're getting near the end of the call. I'm going to have some announcements and things. Okay.
I guess I'd like to ask you one more question, one more big question here. So, you know, on staying healthy, what is your view on taking, on using herbs for health, learning about herbs, studying nature, connecting with nature, that kind of thing.
Just what's your what's your Well, you you might find me going around the Robin's Horn with something here, but I'm I'm talking I'm I'm tell I'm saying something that I said in many classes. You've got a lot of wisdom and a lot of Your primal roots are is the gut part that can keeps me going up to the barn and or keeps the bicyclist pushing, Lance Armstrong pushing, whatever.
It's the primal route that we are trying to reach through exercise and or many other ways. Okay?
This subject, to me, once a person has cracked the surface of it, Mhmm.
It can reach your primal roots faster.
Herbs are herbs. Wild food are herbs. Mhmm. Half of that deck of cards is herbs. They're not just the basil, the the the, you know, these things that we that we buy as an herb.
To look at it as a food, I eat the basil leaves because I know what's in them.
I I eat a strip of an oregano oregano piece off, you know, and just chew it down because I know what I just chew down. It's an antibiotic, really. It works really well.
And, we need we need to to to, as I say, start with one plan. And when you develop these skills that you're doing every day, make yourself go out now and and look at your clover again. What else can I do with it? How else can I fix it?
You're on your knees. You're picking. You're reaching your primal roots, and we watch it on television as entertainment, for goodness sakes, to me, that's how we stay healthy, is to to to do something out there. You know?
Whether it be bicycling now take take my son. He's a bicyclist. He he stops and eats lunch along the side of a field.
He knows what I mean, he's in the woods with me, of course. But, I mean, he knows what he can take and chew up. What if every athlete knew how they could get their energy without having it in a bag with cellophane around it? Yeah. Or out of a out of a can that they can only carry a couple of them on their bikes.
Right.
You just a handful of cloverleaf is gonna give you as much energy. You know? This is all provable.
Right.
And so so wherever you are in your lifeline and what you enjoy, this is reaching your primal roots in a very, very healthy way.
And herbs are number as far as I'm concerned, they should be part of everyone's life. Children, it's a natural thing.
Exactly. Exactly.
That's why my mother drove it home for me. She kept saying stop eating those things. And the more she said it, the more I ate them, more I hid them.
Top of me every part of my clothes. And then, yeah, she's flying clover and this and that, whatever.
And that was the beginning.
Right. Right.
And that was And and and, you know, she was eighty some years old, the woman and I, sitting on a couch one day, and she said, Linda, you really did benefit by me telling you not to do it, didn't you?
I said, yeah, mom. It's the truth. Thanks to you. I continued it.
Yep. Well, you know what?
I think it's really rare to have someone with your knowledge and experience who has gone ahead and shared that information and and Oh, you got to.
Just like you are, John.
Well, I'm glad that, that you did, because, it's, you know, this information came with a lot of research. It's just not something you just threw together, and you can tell that when you're looking through it.
Thank you.
That's why I that's why I carry I I know when I I know when I got a good book. You know? You know? I I probably have a I have a lot of herb books, but I've got, like, a a a short list that I reference.
And they're all ones by people like yourself that have spent time with the herbs themselves, and they're their own stories. And then, you know, it's not just an encyclopedia of herbs and that kind of thing. That is and and those are the best books. You know?
Those ones are the most spirit, and and and I appreciate I really appreciate all that you've shared with the world in, in doing and I appreciate you asking me to do this.
This has made my day, week, and month, really.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Before we say goodbye here, I got a few things I wanna say.
View important very important announcements. Hang on because I'm giving away stuff. So don't hang up. Oh, I wanna hear this.
Alright.
So, so the good news is just this week, wild cards are back in print, and, I have got them. And I'm selling them for less this week for nine ninety nine right now.
And you can even get more off if you buy it with Linda's book From Crabgrass Muffins to Pine Needle Tea, and that is On Learning Earth. And, Linda's Survival Acre book, which I picked up on lulu dot com. That's l u l u dot com. It's a it's a wonderful site where it gives opportunity for for independent publishers to put their works on and they kind of print as they go along. You can even download an ebook version of it for ten bucks, less than ten bucks and have it instantly.
John, make sure they say a survival acre because most people are having trouble.
A survival acre. When you go to lulu dot com we'll just put Linda Runyon in the search engine. I tried it myself. Oh, does that work? Linda Runyon. Yeah. So I put Linda Runyon in and it came right up.
Oh.
And so and so, it's r u n y o n. And, and, yeah. So you can get right on that.
So the next announcement is that I am doing a free talk on March fifth in Seattle at the REI flagship store, and you it's all on plants, obviously.
And you can it's not on rock climbing. And you can link you can link to that from the right column of the Learning Herbs homepage, and this is being done through Wilderness Awareness School. They do talks there every Monday night. Sorry, every one Monday night every month that is. Next, Kimberly, my wonderful beautiful wife, and I are teaching a work shop called wild plants and, for food and medicine also through Wilderness Awareness School. It's a weekend event in early May. It's, includes camping, airport, shuttle food, really good food.
And, we'll do two days of hands on intensive instruction from ourselves.
And, you can check this out and register once again on our home page in the link's on the right column.
And you know, if you do sign up for this and it looks good for you, send me an email, and and I'll send you a copy, a free copy. I carry three herbal charts on my site. I'll send you one each. One each chart, no charge.
You don't have to mention that to the every Monday night. Sorry. Every one Monday night every month, that is. Next, Kimberly, my wonderful beautiful wife and I are teaching a workshop called Wild Plants and, for Food and Medicine also through Wilderness Awareness School.
It's a weekend event in early May. It's includes camping, airport, shuttle food, really good food. And Yeah. That's great.
Two days of hands on intensive instruction from ourselves. And, you can check this out and register once again on our homepage in the link's on the right column.
And, you know, if you do sign up for this and it looks good for you, send me an email, and and I'll send you a copy, a free copy. I carry three herbal charts on my site. I'll send you one of each. One of each chart, no charge.
You don't have to mention that to the school when you register. Something we can do on the side. They don't need to know about it. But I'm really excited about the class, and I want folks from the learning community to show up.
So, there's only, I think, twelve more spaces.
So if you're interested and you wanna hang out, Kimberly and I and have a good time one weekend and meet us and and I'd love to meet some of you. So I'll pass the word on. Next exciting announcement, Kimberly and I have entered the blogosphere here, meaning we got a blog on our site now because there's so many times when we wanna share something, and it doesn't fit into a newsletter. So we have this blank canvas on the website where we can post things that we wanna post.
And Kimberly just put the first post of a major project she's working on about nutrition and plants, and she put her first post on there. And you can see that. And and you just go to the website and hit blog on the left side on any page, it'll bring you there.
The next announcement so we just did a another batch of fifty kits, you know, and we only have three left from the batch. So if anyone wanted an herbal medicine making kit, now is the time. There's only a few left. If you see the order form up there still, you know we still got them.
And next to now Wow.
Are you busy?
I know. I I have so many. I know.
My horse is keeping me.
Oh.
That is so exciting.
The acupuncture clinic in Redmond is open for business. If you live in the east side of Seattle area, you can email me from the site if you wanna make an appointment.
And finally, the three decks of cards. We're giving away three decks of wild cards tonight.
Alright.
This is how we're gonna do it.
This is how we're gonna do it. I'm gonna read off the last four digits of three different phone numbers.
If that is your phone number, email me off the website and tell me the whole phone number.
So for example, if your number is, two zero six nine six three five five five five, you know, send and I say five five five five, just e email me the whole phone number with your address and everything so I can just verify all that. And, and then I will send you out. And or if you if your phone number ends with two five six eight, email me. If your numb if your phone number ends with two two one three, email me. And if your phone number ends with, one seven three four, you can email me, and then, we'll do that. And so what? I'm just, double checking that and writing this down before those phone numbers disappear from my screen.
And, so those are the, those are the three people. Once again, two five six eight, two two one three, and seventeen thirty four.
So Linda, once again, thanks so much, for listening to all that for us.
Thanks, John. That was wonderful.
Time and sharing your wisdom. We're we're all truly honored to as to have been in your presence tonight, and I hope we can do this again sometime.
Thank you very, very much.
To meet on your next trip to Seattle.
Oh, yes. No. My brother just moved from there over here to Illinois.
Oh, darn. I went to Sequium. I loved it there.
Oh, that's that's nice. That's a nice part. Well, if you ever make it or maybe when I you know what? More likely, I'm gonna be going to I'll more likely be in New Jersey because I have family on the east.
So when I go back east Well, I got a couple of rooms.
Let me tell you.
I'm gonna we're we're a whole family stopping by. Believe me. We're gonna be there. Wonderful.
So that's that's great. Alright. So good night, everybody, and thank you so much. Bye bye.
Bye.
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