From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You're listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is Linda Runyon. Linda is an expert in wild foods and has been teaching since the seventies.
Though she has a long, lifelong love of nature, she's really, really, really learned her stuff, and she spent thirteen years with her family internet connection.
She has she has turned her amazing life story into many publications namely her wild foods, field guide called the essential wild food survival guide and a brand new DVD called Linda Runyon's master class on wild food survival.
She is also the creative central wild food survival guide and a brand new DVD called Linda Runyon's master class on wild food survival.
She is also the creator of the wild cards, which is a deck of edible plant playing cards that many learning herbs dot com folks have come to love over the years, and but you can find all of Linda's wonderful, unique learning tools on at her website at of o f that's of the field dot com. O f t h e f I e l d of the field dot com. She also has an amazing free PDF newsletter that you can get in your inbox every month or so. It's just wonderful packed with recipes and and information and all kinds of great stuff. It's one of the best I've seen. So go to of the field dot com after we're done with this interview.
So, woah, Linda, that's a that's a lot there. But, welcome back to Mentor Radio.
Hi, John. Gee, it's so good to be doing this with you.
Yeah.
I haven't heard your voice in a long time.
No. It's great. It gets New Jersey people back to you now.
But we've been, you know, but you're actually the, first person I've had return here. It's not, you know, not because I'm inter not interested in the previous guest.
It's just that there's so many amazing people to talk to, but I Oh, I can imagine.
Well, yeah, I I got your DVD in the mail and I was I immediately called you to come back because I just want, you know, listeners to experience this. It's so awesome.
How do you how do you like it match the field guide? My son just does some out of work there.
Yeah. Eric, you know, he's he's just a, you know, what a wonderful son.
Oh, boy.
I couldn't have done any of this. I actually was gonna retire and, he yeah. He stepped in because I put a farm up for sale and, of course, it was up for sale for a year or more.
But he stepped in and, oh my gosh. I mean, he filled me at Christmas time last year.
Not this year.
This last year, but the year before.
And, actually, he's, an extra in movies, and he had just done, Dessel Washington's, movie at that time and asked me to come down and see him. Took me up there. So I'm ten times as an extra in it. It was thrilling.
And then decided to film mother on the spot. He has all equipment with him. Fifty two hours. And those fifty two hours, he edited completely himself.
Wow.
Yeah. I mean, after doing the great debate with him, I really thought that that was it for Eric, but no. He stepped in and just he's just amazing. He's doing all the all my work for me. So I couldn't do without it. I am just the down to earth picking and cheering and and sometimes getting a good idea person. And that's it.
Well, I'm just, delighted to have, you know, to have you, you know, various DVDs and books and have all your wisdom in there from your life. And so it's wonderful that this worked out, you know.
So as I was watching that, I love it because it's in this format of you sitting in the chair, like, well, it's like it's like we're in the living room with you. You know? And you're you're chatting with us.
It's like we're taking our class, you know.
Well, I'm getting elderly and this this I mean, seriously, you know, personal leg problems and stuff from running a farm. So it it was probably the smartest thing he could've done was to do that. Because that kind of information ad lib, as far as I'm concerned, John, that's why I'm so so happy you're doing this today. Mhmm. Because sometimes things come out that weren't out and are not in print. I saw it had everything in print till he did the DVD.
And you know what? He did a transcript and glossary book Mhmm. That's inside the DVD, and you could follow word for word and you know when I'm reading it, I'm thinking, oh my gosh. My English is bad. You know, I'm still in the woods in a lot of ways.
I know. No. I am.
It's great to refer back to this because I can watch the bit on, like, Lamb's quarter and then I can go back and read.
Oh, yeah.
You know? So it's it's really handy. So someone could just quickly go back and and, you know, and remember.
You can do, you could do a whole show or a whole DVD just on one planet. You know that. Yeah. Because you're the expert.
Yeah. And and and we all know that we can do that. But my thing really has been survival in all seriousness because, I mean, we live with not a dime. And in my mind, we're all struggling in this time and whatever.
So where you have four or five vegetables maybe a month, you have probably close to a hundred dollars worth of canned goods that you're using in your family. You could step out your door, you know, literally. I mean, this is how I present it. And and and really use those things to totally, you know, change your life.
I mean, not only nutritionally, but they're gonna change it, you know, in your pocketbook. And so I look at it as survival. Well, and and and it's Not just nutrition.
And I should mention too that, you know, though you have the DVD, it really is, most powerful book.
The book.
And then we redid you redid a new cover, new title.
Eric did a whole yeah. He re he he added over a hundred pages or more.
Oh, he did, and he added. Okay.
So Dug out the recipes out of my brain, and we got more recipes and everything in this one.
So there's more in there. And even if you're like, oh, I don't wanna get another I already own pine needle tea.
Those have both books. There's an e book down. There.
We're glad they Yeah.
There's an e book download too.
So, Linda, today, I wanted to do something a little different than other episodes of Herb Mentor Radio. And rather than sit here, you know, ask you a lot of questions about things because, you know, we did another wonderful interview that the listeners can go and and, over, in your mentor radio section on her mentor dot com, and they can get the another interview with you where we did a great introduction and heard your story and everything.
So please go they so I encourage folks to go listen to that. And on on the page where this is being hosted on Herb Mentor, I'm gonna link over to there. So look at the link below there, and you can go over there and listen to that too. Throw that on your iPod too on your way to work and listen to you.
So what I wanna do is actually take an herb walk with you.
Oh, good.
So, like, we're gonna go in your your virtual of the of the of the DVD as well so they can get an idea of of what it's about and so, sampling of the of the of the d v d as well so they can get an idea of of what it's about and so, so we're gonna, I figured what's what what what's great about this little weed walk that we're doing is we can actually We can go through We can we can learn other plants too. So we can we're gonna we're gonna go to some desert ecosystems as well. So, you know, the first plant, and we studied it last month on herbmentor dot com, is, lamb's quarter. So, what what about lamb's quarter?
Well, I'm in the in the northeast, of course.
Mhmm.
And I eat every square inch of that plant. And what I do is farm it like it was a acre of land.
One lamb's daughter plant, let it grow to fruition. And what I do is as it's growing, I pick the larger extensions, the larger half a cup of leaves, whatever, and eat it. But I let it go until it gets quite big and bushy. And when it starts throwing its seeds on the top, I clip it off with my fingernail and that pack of seeds, I add hot water to it, put it in a thermos bottle, and overnight it turns to a green mush.
And, that green mush will put you four or five hours without wanting any food. It's absolutely incredible the amount of energy that is in that. We use that both the east and the desert out in Phoenix where I lived for twelve years. So I mean, that plant is everything.
It's spinach. It's it's stir fry. It's salad. As you go along, form it and you see the leaves come in the in the crotch of the extension of the branches and you'll see like double and triple.
And as you form it, a family literally could live off of one good size, a nice fertile soil, near farms and things like that, they get six, sometimes seven feet tall down this way. Oh. But on the desert, yeah, on the desert, they'd be two to three. But you'd be able to farm it, and you'd be able to get, you know, we're thinking survival wise.
You'd be able to get a lot out of that one plant. So why not have a whole bunch of them around your back porch somewhere, put them on safe ground, and that's that's another book coming. Well, it's already in the book. So of how yeah.
How to transport it and put it around you.
Oh, right.
And it's really super high in calcium and Oh my gosh.
It's it's a whole entire meal, a half a cup. In the book, we have doctor Duke's nutritional information.
And, yeah. And we're linking to his green pharmacy because a lot of people wanna know technology connected with it. And if you don't have the book or whatever, you can link to him and get a complete chemical breakdown of all these plants. If you have three to four to five times what a bean plant would be, for instance. Or, you know, I mean, as you know, they're double and triple.
Right.
Right. So yeah. So that's what I see is I even pulverize the leaves, John, and I make what I call lamb's quarter, survival food. I have, like, maybe two cups of lamb's quarters in a glass jar. And if and when I ever needed it, I would eat that by the tablespoon. That's how much nutrition is in that.
Amazing. Wow.
Yeah. Yeah. You could be indoors eating that and, you know, we we store a lot of the food in ways that, we know will be sensible. And mostly, I don't grind it simply I do for show's sake, but I don't grind it.
I keep it whole. I'll do, like, a half a gallon jug Uh-huh. Of packed leaves, just really dried and packed tight. And that can be ground to, like, you know, any number of meals.
Probably forty, fifty, sixty meals.
Wow.
And, that's how I see that plan. I see it in that amount of energy. And then It's all provable. It's all provable. I mean, I can give you all the statistics on what's in it from the book here. I'm looking it up here quick.
Yeah. I have it here too in front of me. I'm looking at it.
Yeah. I mean, you know, your major meal with, you know, as people say, with meat and potatoes and whatever. I mean, just one plant.
And you actually take these leaves that you collect and you grind them into a Oh, yeah.
Into flour.
Using what? Like a food processor or what?
Yeah. That's what I use. Of course, in the in the woods, we used a pillowcase. My boy was four or five years old.
His job at night was to take the pillowcase, the dried leaves, whatever it was, red clover, you name it, dandelion, whatever it was that I knew was bone dry. You know, I'd sit around the edges of the campfire. Well, we have all the technology in our apartments and houses. For goodness sakes, we can do it so easily.
So in a pillowcase, does he, like, just, like, mashing, mashing, mashing until he gets pulverizes the leaves?
Take his little hands and squeeze and squeeze that. And and he knew that that went into the pancakes around we called them green we called them green pancakes.
And we'd have them around the, fireplace all the time because that was his energy. He'd run by and grab a couple of those, and they'd have a little burnt not burnt, but, like, brownish, tinge to them from being fried on rocks, you know? And he'd eat them. And my gosh, I'll tell you what, that gave him all the energy he needed.
Still eat well, you know, he knows he's great. He's in movies now and video production for you, but is he still out there doing it?
Both of them. Oh, my my son, Todd, probably, he's a fashion designer at Syracuse U and, up in New York State. And he fixes the most beautiful wild salad, your eyes. They should be printed and put on the cover of herbal magazines. They're absolutely gorgeous. How he fixes them and everything, you know?
Wow.
Yep. They have wild salads just about every night of the week.
Oh, wow.
So you raise I can't wait to go visit because it's it's gourmet.
You know, my thing is just shear it off and eat it nicely. That's the oil in it and you know how I do.
You turn your your survival, perspective into the You go up to his place and it's like it's like well, we have some recipes like that in our in our material, but Todd did some in, for us, you know, like lamb's quarters, calzones, and things like that.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you you can grind any of these plants, these wild food plants that are ripe free under your feet. You can grind them to flower. Now remember that they are medicinal, a lot of them, so you don't wanna be eating tons of, like, plantain flour or whatever, even clover flour. You only want, like, a quarter cup to, like, three cups of regular, like, you're you know? And the recipe should tell you all that Because it's so pungent. It's so good for you that you don't, you know, you don't wanna overload your system.
Do you find that you eat less when you're eating the wild foods then? Like, you know Absolutely. Okay. Because you're getting food.
Never in a better shape. I mean, I oh, the shape I was in, John, was just I mean, I of course, I remember all those wonderful years as an older person that does like pasta once in a while. We did grind all this stuff and make pasta out of it. I mean, the book shows you how to do all that. You can do all you can take it right to the limit. You you could completely and absolutely you had to do them. How to do it.
That's right. I know. I tell people Yep.
Completely and absolutely eat totally free for the rest of your life.
That. So we were just talking about red clover, and so maybe that's the next plant on our on our wall.
Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Well, aside from shearing it out out there with a pair of scissors, not going to that later, but, I just every time I see a red clover patch, I see a lot of protein, and I see a lot of the various different nutrients that the bunnies love. So and, in my mind, fifteen, twenty leaves equal like a piece of Velveeta cheese. Now I I throw that out to the figure. In what way? It wasn't it was in one of the earlier. I mean, of course, I used all those books years ago, you know, back in the seventies.
Right.
But they proved all that stuff back then. They made clover cookies in the in the war. Did you know that? And they they up in Albany, New York, they would bring a hundred pounds of clover flour and bake. I don't know what facility they used, but I was told over and over, oh, we used to eat clover. That it was clover flour where they actually dried it, ground it, and gave it to the, troops.
Is this like in Europe and when they're in Europe?
Yeah. Well, look at George Washington back some awesome days, you know. Know. I mean, he's fifty thousand men grinding the pine and the balsam needles. And that that told me, go ahead and try it. Right?
Right.
Boy, are they strong and good.
Yeah. Really? That many people hanging out at Valley Forge.
Well, that was that was the wintertime too and how they Well, there to me to me, why in the world do we spend so much time convincing people?
Yeah.
I mean, I don't wanna get into that, but Yeah.
Yeah. You know, it's ridiculous.
I know because you're not having to convince I mean, if you're someone listening to this already.
You know? We are the missing link.
We're we're preaching to the choir.
We're missing. Yes. We're not so that's how I feel.
So red clover also really nutritious too?
Yes. Yes. It is. It is well, I'm looking it up while I'm talking. It is, now now you do have a slight amount of chromatin in the white clover. So I tell you this in all the stuff.
If you're gonna go excessive and make flour and things like this, you're better off with red clover. It's far more, good for you than the white clover. Although you can eat the white clover, there is a difference with the little white flowers.
Those little white flowers on white clover, John, will keep moths away. So that's why I stay away from them.
When you dry them, they have enough chromatin in in them to give them a smell to keep moths away.
Oh, because I always get a question when I'm doing plant wasp. What about the white clover right next to it? And I go, well, as far as I know, don't eat it, but I never Yeah. Lie.
Well, you can, but, you know, you gotta remember it. Send your blood if you need it in excess, like we do.
Oh, excellent point. And you're mostly going you're mostly picking and drying the the flower heads with a couple of leaves. Right? Yeah.
Well, we teach we teach children to take those and and treat them like candy. You've got they pick the little nectar scent sections out of them. Mhmm. The a child will really turn on to wild food by the red clover tops, and that is something that, two or three year old enjoys picking the little nectar sections out and eating it singly. That's why I put them in my coloring book because you could you could teach you could link the tar real quick with the clover heads and dandelion flowers because you can twist and pull the green away so they have no herbivization at all. What they have is yellow fluff that you could eat a quart of.
Well, I love that information.
Literally good for you.
So everybody remember that about, like, what you can share with kids because my intention here is to try to get people to learn this stuff and take other groups out, you know, to spread the word. I'm just a little dandelion seed here, you know.
Well, just just just sort of like it affords people that they can eat that fuck and not have a, you know, I mean, if they don't like herb herb taste, you know.
Right.
But, you know, we made everything from jello to to whatever out of these things. The dandelion So for kids.
So now we're on to dandelion.
So let's talk about it.
How do we get on there?
Oh, we're just moving along quickly because we just looked next to this wonderful red clothing.
This is how I get a walk too.
And we saw the dandelion. And so now we're talking about dandelion, you know.
I'm sorry.
That's great. So so the you said you just say you made dandelion.
You said you wanted to walk and I jumped right So now is it dandelion popsicles you were just saying or something?
Well, I'm gonna reverse back to the clover shoots because I did find it here just for fun.
All the plants that that that we do are all there's fifty two of them are all half cup new nutrition, charts attached to it. So so that you have, like, a hundred and forty two milligrams in, clover shoots, you know, in the in the young leaves, the young, you know, clipping it with scissors. You've got a glass of milk, eight ounce glass of milk, actually.
Mhmm.
You only have four milligrams of sodium, but you have three hundred forty five milligrams of potassium. And this is the one that gets you one thousand one hundred and sixty six units of beta carotene.
Woah.
Okay? So you I mean, I'm not a nutritionist, mister Duke is, you know, but, you know, he gave me the USDA figures to each one of these plants, and you will be absolutely amazed.
So when you get to the dandelion, like, clover is is a eight ounce glass of milk. But a dandelion is like many glasses of milk. It's just extremely hot. Let me get that.
Is it sure that's what's one of the highest sources of, like, plant vitamin a, dandelion leaf?
Yeah. The highest source of vitamin a is curly dock. Oh.
Oh, yeah. And I always had not fights, but, you know, disagreements with, unfortunately, with it was hard to to do macrobiotic groups because they were eating curly dog as a fantastic herb, but they would take bring them out at the dinners I went to in big bowls, and people would eat a cup, two cups of it, you know, and whatever, like it was spinach.
Uh-huh.
No. No. No. No.
Because that stores in your liver Mhmm.
The vitamin a. And your liver can only take five thousand units a day. Well, if you're eating thirty thousand units a day, what are you doing to yourself? Right?
Yeah. That was a little too much eating that. Then the curly docks, the room mix crispest.
So Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. But you gotta go slow with that. I mean, by slow, you know, I I wouldn't eat the entire seeds on the top.
Well, you know, you know, when we're eating well, Fuzo, I mean, really, don't you just trust our senses as we're eating?
I mean, if we're feeling like, oh, I really don't feel like eating anymore, then it seems like you need to take too much.
Not always. It's for the same reason that you don't tell is tell somebody not to walk on the pass on a desert walk. I mean, to walk on the pass on a desert walk. Do not walk off the pass and and you explain why and you tell them a hundred times and they walk off the pass.
They're happy. Right. They're they're whatever off the path they go and they get stuck by one of those cactuses, you know. Then then the whole walk is pulling the little things out of the person, you know.
I mean, I could go on and on. No. You cannot just trust your senses.
I was a nurse, and thank God I was because I went over and over in the woods with the same plan. You have to read the chapter of how I did it. And now it's a foraging rule. It's pretty easy. You smell it, and then if you don't like it, don't even proceed.
Right. Right.
If you do like the smell, don't eat it now. Don't don't eat it. I always got upset with the Native American, telling me they always ate little pizzas and and we'd always laugh about this because and then spit it out. No. If you did that with something that you were miscalculating, you'd be really sorry because, like your hemlock, if you did that, you would wish that, you know, you were, because you would vomit. I'm sorry to say. But you would.
And we're talking about the rules of foraging and you have them nicely printed out.
You have them for a reason. You gotta follow them. Yeah. Like, you were cold to the whole subject.
So just to make this a little clear for people, when you're saying, like, in this rules of foraging, by the way, they're printed in the back of the transcript book.
You can't get on my DVD without reading them. It's locked. Eric put a lock on it. Yeah.
That's right. It's great. So you're saying that what if you're not this is if you're not sure about a certain plant we're saying than about eating a little bit. And is that what you're saying?
I'm I'm saying that you don't eat a little bit. You you crush it and roll it on your fingers until you get your fingers fingers juicy and then you put it rub that juice up above your gum, up above your teeth.
Mhmm.
Now if it doesn't burn, it swell or something, you can proceed to the next step and that's bring a part of that little plant, just a tiny piece, quarter inch piece down to the house and put it in a teacup, add boiling water over it, let it sit, let it cool down, and then sit that slow for twenty minutes. Now I literally did this with each and every one of these fifty two plants. Mhmm. And I did it on purpose because this way, I'm adamant that people do this when they're starting out, and they do not know what a dandelion is or a clover.
Mhmm. Because in the survival way, you honestly would survive e e easily and not not, you know, starve to death in four or five, six days by the time you learn three or four or five plants. Follow it through. Mhmm.
Follow it through because it's it's it's almost foolproof. We know even those people with some allergies, if they were to rub it over their gum and then they got burning, itching, swelling, something, then leave alone.
Right.
If they took it and rolled it and crushed it and put it on your arm, and a child's arm, for instance, a little one's arm overnight under a band aid and and it was, like, red in the morning, then leave it alone.
Mhmm.
You see what I'm saying? And and these these, rules are on everything we do. I'm I'm not alone. All of us that we teach the wild food, that's why survival when I do this. And, it it works.
I've so far not had Especially if you're going into an area.
Would.
Well, especially if you're going into an area, like, let's say you've learned everything where you live and then you go into a new area with all these new plants and then you have these rules and then you're you're safe.
Well, this is it. We got I mean, you don't stand in front of a train and wait for it to go by. I mean, you know, for for real, there's no fear connected with wild food if you follow this. And once you followed it, your instincts are even better, you know.
But follow it at least, crush it, roll it, put over your teeth or, you know, get get down to where you're sipping it in a tea. Right. Okay. And then then you know that new plant agrees with your system.
Okay. That's great. That's great. That's, excellent.
So, you know, speaking of dandelion, and we're talking about dandelion before, what what do you what do you like to tell people about dandelion?
Oh oh my gosh. Where do I begin? The stem is beans.
See, we miss certain foods when we're in there. So we looked at everything on that plant that we could figure out would would, take the place of. And all stems that were easy to cut and were succulent to fry and a little bit of garlic salt and whatever, a little bit of olive oil. This is all in the books and stuff, and it's on the DVD and everything.
These things are, replaced beans in my mind, totally, was was to use the stems for that. So remember that.
The stem The dandelion stems?
Uh-huh.
You mean that's the stems that the the the milky sap part?
Yep. Really? Absolutely. And same thing with wild lettuces too.
The young the young So how do you use these stems?
John, we gotta go on a walk.
I know. I don't I don't ever really I use the stems medicinally for some things, but I never really ate them.
Oh, no. They're they're gum.
I mean, this is all the uses that, the book the it'll tell you all those uses. And and and the the flower, of of course, fully edible for for kids and that breaks it down into popsicles and, jello and things like that in the coloring book.
And of course, your leaves are everything. I mean, there are tea, there are stir fry, there are vegetable with whatever you you wanna add to it. They are everything Europe's been using them for for years, but I took it a step further as flour, f l o u r.
And, knowing the calcium content was that high Mhmm.
We baked these little green cookies, we call them, out of clover, dandelion, lamb's quarters, and amaranth. Those are our those are our main flower. Mhmm. And, I knew the nutrition in just a quarter size little cookie.
Wow. That's great.
So breaking this is a whole new this is great for everyone here because we don't really It is a new world, but it's, you know, if you're an herbalist, it's kinda really fun to take a plant you already know are safe and and and work them through and get them and save yourself twenty five to a hundred dollars a month.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Not trying to put the food industry under John.
Exactly. Well, that's what we are.
I mean, I must say that some people think.
They're gonna put themselves under. What about the roots of the dandelion?
Well, you'd find me digging them out under the ice up in the snow belt where I live.
I mean, I I just couldn't stand it not having the French fries.
They make the best french fries.
The French fries? Tell us about how to eat French fries.
Well, the the roots themselves.
Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.
In my freezer, I've got I've got several different kinds of roots in a bag, and I take them out once in a while. And I put them in a, frying pan and a little bit of olive oil and, french fry them. I mean, I mean, I just keep going until they're really they break easy, you know, and everything. And you just sit there eating those roots. There's a whole one of my friends, Doug Elliott, he does a whole world under the soil.
It's called, you know, roots. He does all the roots, with all the same kind of info that I'm doing on the leaves and the tops and stuff.
Yeah. Rick's got that dog's name. That was crazy. He's a great guy. He he sees that world under the ground as I see the upside down on top of the ground.
Oh, wow. So okay. Yeah. Yeah. French fries. Gosh. You put any breading on that or anything?
Or you just You could.
You could. I mean, there's no reason why you couldn't take it.
You it they'd be hard to shave, but you could many times, we took a pair of scissors and would cut them all real small because in the young spring they'd be little and they would cut easy.
The Koreans by the way they use a lot of roots and cut up and, burdock root is in all your, oriental dishes.
Oh, right.
Chinese food and stuff. Well, why not dandelion?
Exactly.
I mean, we import, like, thirty thousand tons a year from Vineland just down the street from me. We we import dandelions from Vineland, New Jersey to all the food co ops and all the, you can buy dandelion in my shop. Right? In my aims you or aims. Acme, you can buy them.
You haven't got that.
I know you can buy them on the on the West Coast. Well, they're probably shipping them out there.
Just in the co ops, like in the food co ops, but not like in the, like, active tech.
Why not utilize? Well, of course, you use the root and the top is gone.
Right.
That's probably why. You know?
Right.
Right. I mean, I ask a lot of whys, but I know it would be that you'd be wiping your crop out.
You don't wanna do that.
But dead leather, no problem.
The ultimate survivalist.
I know.
So, so so, let's see here. We're we're, going along here and and we're coming across a swampy area and I'm noticing some cattail.
Oh, You have another two hours on your show.
No. You keep talking. I'm picking the big ones here. I want people to know.
Okay. Now what time of year is it? Because every time of the year, it changes your food pant.
Well, let's start in Spain.
I'll try and be brief.
By cutting the roots out of an area, you know, stream or whatever of of lake, we really gave up on that. It was too much of an effort. I mean, we're down there with hand saws trying to get and then pulping that root. I mean, if you're a big time, wilderness survival man, maybe you get enough flowered that way, but not me. That's too hard. I have to do it the easy way.
Okay.
Tell her about it.
And and so my are you still there?
Yeah. I'm here.
Okay. My my flower would be, from the top of the cattail at a certain stage. The first stage is the is the shoots coming out of the swamp. You eat those as salad, vegetables. Corn. Yeah.
And, or and they're absolutely delicious. They're corn. Yeah. And, or and they're absolutely delicious. They're you could eat and should not eat a couple dozen. It's too much nutrition.
Men love to eat, like, a couple dozen of those, you know. We limited them to six or seven Right. Because the amount of nutrition in that would make you feel like you had ten Thanksgiving dinners.
You know? So we had to stop.
And that's all provable. But it it's real, really good food. And then the next stage, it starts to turn brown. But if you wait for it to get real brown, like, late in season, late in August, the flies have gotten to it.
So forget it for flower then. You wanna get it between the green and the, tan brown starting to turn dark brown. So there's one or two weeks in there where I used to watch it, and I would go in and literally get enough of those tops. You bring them home, you pop them open, and they're quite really nice and meaty inside.
They're not fluffed yet.
Uh-huh.
It's in between. Yeah. You could you could almost eat them and continue to boil them. But for me, it was always the easy time. Now I have flour.
Okay.
And that that to me was flour and open up I used to open them up by the ton and then put them in, cardboard boxes that we would find. And and when we'd make our, we call them dump runs that that we would make and get everything we needed for the next season. And this is all in the books.
And, seriously, you could do it so easy from your apartment or house if you have a clean swamp to go Right.
Important thing.
Which is your first thing. You wanna you wanna test that water.
You want Some some something I'm always a little confused about is, like, the roots. So if I wanna make some people sometimes, like, they, like, they they talk about making a flower or something or, you know That's what I'm saying.
It's so hard, John.
It is hard.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Because that's all starchy and goopy.
Yeah. I mean, if you're doing it for fun, I guess it would be fun. There's several things like acorns, for instance, but you could put down your Korean market and buy five pans of black acorn flour that's out of sight. Right.
Okay? Right. So so I I try to document this kind of thing. So make it easier on you, of course, in a in you don't wanna give up on your quest for having enough for your family of four or six, you know.
So yeah.
Right. Okay. So that is just something that you might do in a survival situation.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of easy ways to get a lot of the flower.
Okay. And, and then the center piece of the cattail. Mhmm. Oh, my gosh. I mean, before that though, I'm sorry, I jumped to the piss.
Of the shoot?
I'll go back to it. Yeah. Uh-huh. Of the shoot? In the season, it's it's a cucumber. It's it's like a nine foot cucumber.
How not nine foot.
Heavy.
Six feet or whatever your swamp is. I've got them that that big, about six foot. But, the water level, what's underwater, I generally will discard that, but I peel it.
And it's wonderful. You peel it. It's just incredible. It's like peeling an artichoke or something.
The outside peels off and the inside is a white piss. And it's just as sweet and cute and not even as strong as a cucumber taste. It's very delicious, very sweet. And, the teenagers that go on walks and stuff, they love to get that and make a lot of food quick.
My son literally I pickled them. I I would cut them into six or eight foot sections, And my son would eat so many pickles. Good. Heavens the nutrition he was putting in.
You're you're pickling the pith of the The pith of the cat Wow. I didn't thought of that because I love that part.
That's awesome.
Inches is a pickle, you know, in your mind, you know, and ate just like it.
Oh, okay. Great. Alright. I don't know.
But the pollen on the top, this is why I shouldn't have jumped. That would be the last thing that you would do in the season. The pollen on the top, that golden pollen will come after that begins to turn brown. You will have this golden pollen on the top.
No. Oh my gosh. That that's gotta be the the the most nutritious flour in the entire world. You don't need very much to make a pancake.
Mhmm.
You should only add, like, to two cups of whole wheat flour, add a half a cup of pollen.
Alright.
But if you try to do it singly, just the pollen Mhmm. It puffs up. It'll puff up couple inches high. It's just voluminous. It's incredible.
It is.
It is.
Weed up on that. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's that's fun to gather too. Oh, delicious. Oh.
And then, of course, you got your kapok, you know.
But don't do what we did. We stuffed the couch one time and it got was in real bad shape. We picked up on the side of the road somewhere. I mean, you're talking real homesteaders, you know.
We were. Yeah. And, we brought it home and said all we gotta do is stuff it. Right?
So we waited till winter and we stuffed it. And, you know, I sewed it all shut and everything.
And it was in next to the wood stove, not too far, maybe five, six feet from the wood stove. In the morning every morning, I'd say to Ken, what is that?
What is that? And we get down and look. Our cabin was real dark, and there was little piles of, alive things.
And I I don't wanna say.
Your couch was alive.
Well, it came alive. It went right out the door in the snow too. I wrote about it. We winched that sucker right out.
Oh, good. Out front. Yeah. That stayed there all winter, man. Upside down.
Catch bugs.
Well, that's the way it is. We went back to stumps and planks to the couch part. Yep.
You know, I was go ahead.
No. That's alright. Go ahead.
You know, we're just walking along here near the swamp, and I noticed You can tell I'm having fun.
Oh, this is great.
Yeah. I love these stories. And we're going along, and I I know and I just saw where I live. You know, I mentioned this because where I live, they're out in full bloom now and and so we're coming across, rose petals.
Oh my. I eat them every day.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Just eating them?
Yeah.
You could just eat rose petals. You can eat a rose like an apple. Mhmm. You have to have a taste for a lot of herbal things to do that. What you wanna do normally is to bring home a couple of of peeking roses that are just about to go by and take the petals off and throw them in a salad because they're beautiful, they're colorful, and they're delicious. I mean, there's no there's hardly any taste to them.
Yeah.
And, that's what we do a lot of, or make popsicles or tea out of it.
When you make popsicles, you just make a tea and then freeze it or what? Mhmm. Yeah.
Mhmm. What whatever you would do see, you begin to look at all this free stuff Mhmm.
As whatever you would do normally, you know, in your family to to make this or make that. So for for tea, instead of throwing the bags in, you just throw the whole mint plant in. I mean, you don't pick one little leaf at a time. You just go ahead and, oh, it's mint.
Take some and, you know, in five minutes you have a year's supply. I mean, we we made wreaths, r w r e a t h. Yes. There's a whole chapter on that. Out of all this food because you can hang it on your wall.
And then you could just get up and and pick what you wanted to year round off your wreath. And I would rinse it underneath the water and then throw it in to make some tape or yeah.
And it and then every year, you'd have fun doing that again.
Oh, we we actually, just tried sticking some rose petals in in, in the homemade ice cream maker.
Oh, that's fun. Oh, yeah. We made corvettes.
It's really nice. And and Yeah. Good. And we left the petals in, of course, and and we're eating the you know? And you know what it's like?
And and and I'm I'm eating the ice cream with the rose petals in it, and I'm getting market it.
I swear. Yeah.
I'm getting the sense texture wise like I'm eating cherry ice cream. Yeah. And then and then it then it dawns on me, like, oh, well, cherries are in the rose family. You know? It is a cherry in a way.
You know?
I mean, I am kinda like a sort of mushiness in the ice cream when you have it, like, cherry.
Yeah. And violet's the same thing. Oh, a chaga's nuts over over violet.
Those little little Johnny Jump Ups or pansies looking at you and and vanilla ice cream is is a wonderful way to to introduce a child to flowers.
And what you're eating is a natural sugar. I mean, it's not, you know, like eating cane sugar, but it it is a natural. It breaks down into, a natural and fiber.
Well, we usually just use, you know, maple syrup along with some fresh rub cream from the local dairy and then throw in whatever fruit or flowers we have in the season and make all kinds of interesting ice creams.
Oh, you just put me back to when I oh my gosh. I lived lived in Phoenix for thirteen years, you know, and that was my greatest time to learn about the desert. And and, there was a gang that used to come at night, John. They knock on the door at, like, eleven thirty at night, and I'd open the door. There'd be, like, a six foot guy standing there with a chain hanging from every part he can put it through. And he would say, ma'am, do you have one of those popsicle popsicles, those rose petal popsicles?
Oh, yes. I said, I'll give it to you if you promise me not to knock on my door after ten o'clock. And after a while they stopped, you know, but they'd come before them.
Yep.
So that's truth, honestly. I could write a book just about those years after.
Well, since you brought us to the desert, let's talk about prickly pear.
Okay. What would y'all hear about prickly pear? Let's see. Oh, gosh. I could go on an hour on it.
It's Go right ahead.
You've got time. Okay.
Nobody's telling us this. It saved my life when I had, sunburn on a desert walk because, you could you could, you know, cut it in half, lay it, like, you know, and then and and wipe your arms and face and and the side of your. Oh, boy. Did that feel like putting aloe on, you know?
You're taking that prickly pear, not the fruit, but the cactus.
Not the fruit, the pad itself.
And and and you're pulling gloves or something and cutting it in half? Or Yeah.
You just it's like you're it's prickly. Right? But I always carried tongs and a long knife in a sheath, you know, and it wasn't to be funny. It was really on my desert walk that was vital.
Mhmm.
And, so it was very, very simple to cut the edges off, to lay it down on a you didn't have a board, but you'd have a rock. Lay it down on a rock and and you'd, score the edges off and, you could fillet that in half.
Oh. You see what I'm saying? And yeah. And you you you could you could take enough needles off so that you could handle it with your knife and you could wrap it around your your arms and and actually oh, man. That really felt so good. I mean, it just because I was burn crisp out there.
And then and what about taking that same pad? Can you can you can you fry that up or something?
You you not only can, but there's rules.
With the prickly pear, now a wild prickly pear, it's a wild but there's rules.
With the prickly pear, now, a wild prickly pear growing on the desert, they pick up salt.
Mhmm. So you have to be really careful. We had a little, a rule there on our walks. You'd poke it with your knife and then you would taste it.
And if it was I'm I'm sorry. This call comes in. That's what that's basis. If it was really, salty, you could taste that immediately.
It was like putting your knife in salt shaker.
Mhmm.
You can taste how much salt's in there by having a little piece of it, just by poking your knife in. So we always did that and and always, always only took young ones, not older ones. Now if you have, broken your finger I know this sounds crazy. But if you have or anything like that on an appendage, you could literally make a cast really fast within ten or fifteen minutes at a hundred degrees. You can. Because that pad will meld to the shape that you wrap your finger in.
Really?
Oh, absolutely. We've done that. Yep.
And then you wrap it with something and hold it or or take it to the emergency room?
Any way you can do it, if you've got a bandana or something like that, in twenty minutes or so, that will be like cardboard on your finger. So, you know, the native natives used to well, they're very strict. They still do. On some of the reservations, use prickly pear on especially small appendages, Children and stuff like that because it'll make a, a cast real fast.
But and then if you and if you found that but going back to eating it, if you found the non salty ones, you could just saute that or something?
Oh. Oh, yes. Alright. You you you you would have to pretend like you have a fish there, as I say, and filet it on both sides.
Got it. Got it.
Wow. Yeah.
And then the fruit too.
I mean, when has this fruity Oh, that fruit hoo.
But, here again, people would drink so much of the sun tea. I just take the fruit and not bother to go through all the taking, you know, all the little horrible little cactus spurs off of it and stuff. I would literally, cut them in half two, three sections, and just throw them in. And then I would strain the sun tea very well. I'd put it through cheesecloth just so that little hairs or nothing would get to the people, you know.
Alright. Alright.
And, but they drink too much of it, and that will lower blood sugar. When you go to stand up. You're like, oh, oh. So you have to be, when you go to stand up.
You're like, oh, oh. So you have to be cautious with that. And I put the cautions in the book with the various different things. Don't go in excess with the, with the buzz.
But you can make some jelly with it. Yeah. And that won't hurt you.
Yeah. You could buy them in the airport.
I bought some Exactly.
I bought some in Arizona.
I bought some in Arizona at a farmers market when I was down there.
Yeah. That's the retail. And they sell them. They sell their buds.
Oh, you did buy the I bought the gel.
I bought the gel. It was actually it's like prickly pear cactus butter. You know, it's like a apple butter.
Oh, that so good.
I've got it in the fridge now. We've been eating it and eating it and so almost out of it.
Oh, that's so good.
Mother-in-law is down in Arizona.
So every once in a while, we get down there.
Well, go on our website. Well, I don't wanna, you know, won't be advertising or anything like that. But you go on because we will have. There's a whole newsletter on that. See, when you go on the and put your name. That's all you need, your first name and your email.
Yeah. Right.
That's all you need.
Right.
And we we're not interested in in anything but that. That will automatically come to you every month Mhmm. Through, one of those services, you know. I mean, we're not sitting there.
Did did didn't you just feature a cactus in there?
Or did I We just did.
Cholla.
Yeah. That's what I thought. That's what I thought.
And the reason why I did that was, oh my gosh. I did that because so many people fear the cactus and and, you know, John, there's enough cactus between California and Arizona, survival wise, for instance, for people to to live completely sorry. The dog's barking.
Yeah.
For people to live a hundred percent off those cactuses.
That's a wild statement to make, but the nutrition in them, the amount of, calcium Wow.
And the amount of liquid, that's what kept the Hohokam alive. Wow. The Hohokam were were your, you know, four hundred year old cave people out there. Mhmm. And they they made pits in the ground, and they would throw in the cholla.
That's a type of catfish.
Yeah. On the and it's it's the one that's the most of, and it's always on the West Coast, all the way over solid. If you take the hundred fifty mile run on that highway, all you see is Troy and Prickly Bear. And, but what you do see is food.
Right.
And I I won't go into great detail, about it because we have a lot of material on it that you can in my my deck of cards, tell you what to do with it.
It's it's it's a survival deck that goes with the book and the Everybody's gonna be getting their wild cards out after listening to this.
I'm like, oh, yeah. There it is. What about tumbleweed if I'm in the desert?
Oh, tumbleweed. Oh, my my. And that's in the field guide because that's probably one of the best vegetables there is.
Really?
Oh, yeah. In fact, is I won't quote the ice cream company, but I actually had one at the door once that wanted me to make wanted me to work with them to make. And I said, what? You must be kidding. I mean, who is gonna eat tumbleweed ice cream?
But they were gonna do it as a gimmick.
Right? But you could do it.
Yeah.
It we made flour out of it, made tumbleweed muffins all the time.
Just the whole plant?
I mean We you have to be very careful because it is prickly, and you don't wanna be eating that off the bush.
Right.
You can choke and carry on and and and get a piece in your throat and be real sorry. So we teach people how to shear one a nice green luscious in the spring tumbleweed.
You can take those little extensions that come out at first there, and you can you can, make flour very easily by throwing it all in the box and then just grinding it. That's the easiest way. Seeds and all, there's little flowers on them. Flowers, seeds, and all will give you a tremendous amount of nutrition.
Let's see. Let me see what's in there, real quick because I've actually forgotten.
I know it was good enough that they wanted me to to do a oh, I ripped it out.
Always this is my sample book when people come. Somebody asked me that. Probably, I'm sorry. I ripped it right out, John. It's not in this.
It's ripped right out. We made bread out of it.
We made, vegetable I've got the pine needle tea.
I've got the pine needle tea version of the book here in the nutritional charts open.
And and tumbleweed, you have a tumbleweed seeds, tumbleweed shoots, and, Yeah.
That's what I ripped down.
Super high in calcium. Really high in calcium. Really high in potassium.
Yeah.
And, I mean, it would be a real survival The shoots are super high in beta carotene.
I mean, thirty five hundred units, per serving. I mean, gosh. This is off the charts.
Yeah.
And, oh, and the shoots are sixty sixty grams of water in there per cut.
So And and and not only that, but but one tumbleweed is your family vegetable there like, like one, lamb's quarters might be for a family back east here.
I mean, it's it's literally everywhere.
Right. And and that's before it goes in tumbles.
Because that time Because when it dries out, it dries out and it rips out of the ground and off the coast.
We're not talking about the western film picking up the the tumbling.
Oh, I was, oh, I was out getting them out from under my car one time.
I had a whole batch of them hit me in a storm one time when underneath the car. And it'll grind right to a halt. And you're always tumbleweed up there. Oh, dear.
And for our desert Anyway, I didn't like it then.
And for our desert listeners in the book, there's also info on saguaro for those who are in the Phoenix area.
But Yeah. That's more trouble than it's I mean, that's Yeah. Fun to do, but you're not gonna survive very long out there. Just whacking off a few of them. I mean, I think it's great that the that the, trucks still do that, and they do it as a sort of like we might go out and pick raspberries with our kids once or twice. You know?
My mother in law's got one right outside her, right outside her back fence or her backyard in her little alleyway is, so she's right behind her pool. She's got this big old hundred, you know, year old saguaro.
Oh, that's I know. They're they're like monuments. No. They're beautiful. They're monuments to the west.
That's the first time recently, my trip down there in Arizona. This is my first time down there this year.
And first time I ever saw one of those up close in real life, I was like, wow. This is Oh, you can use the needles to sew with.
Oh, there you go.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. We we actually did that.
There there there's, things that you can use the stays for, of course, you know, the the, what what would be left if it dried up. You have all these wood, real tall stays, we call them. And, they could they could be used for a thousand things. We would just find one that had already fallen over or dried up and we'd tie those, wood things together because you don't have wood out there like you do back east. Mhmm. So we tie them together with, bungee cords and stuff, and that's what we would use to whack the fruit off because it's like sometimes they're, like, thirty feet feet high.
Wow. Yeah. But you could use old stays to do that with. Mhmm. So if you Or for far one.
There's few more here, you know, since, we leave the desert or we're still in dry areas. You see milkweed. Right?
I mean don't.
Do not you can see it, but don't eat it.
Don't eat it.
It's too strong.
Too strong.
I really did the forging rule through it because I had a feeling that that milk in there might have too much, nitrates up out of that desert. And by gosh, it did. It was not only salty, but, it tastes don't do it.
Now this is really interesting. So here you are saying, okay. Here's the thing. Here's milkweed plant and desert.
I'm like, nope. This I did that. You did the rule. Didn't just take it for granted that you could just do it.
But then but if you're in New Jersey or New York, what about milkweed?
Well, I mean, anything past the desert when you get to where the soil is actually soil. If you're on sandy soil, sand, then you've got then you've got nitrates. You've got salt, like, unbelievable. And it pulls up into the grasses to the whatever. Right. And so you've got to be aware of that. And you you you find it out real quickly because you you realize, you know, what if you're testing the cactus, for instance, how really salty they can be.
Mhmm.
So, be careful. And, certain things like early spring, sow thistle, you can eat all you want. Quartz, quartz, and quartz. That that was my breakfast.
I go down a a certain field down there, and the dew would be on it. And, oh, it's beautiful. And now you can hardly find that a lot out here. I found one in the crack of, an agway the other day out in their nurse report and I flipped.
The guy thought it was nuts too. I said, oh, can I have this? I need to press this. So we take a good photograph of this for for my next book.
I'm gonna be doing another book. Mhmm.
And, sound fizzle is hard to find out here, and I wanted a close-up real careful to show you that sowsier coming off Right.
The sides. But out west, they're everywhere. They're just and they're crispy like lettuce. They're wonderful.
Oh, wow.
Oh, yeah. You could eat all you want of the thistles as they come up early.
But but I mean I mean, is there you always wonder about the thistles because they come up and they just the the prickliness, I mean, is it is it worth that what you peel back the Oh ho ho.
Listen. You know, milk sypho?
Oh, it's silly marin, and it's it's, mother's milk, they call it. Mhmm. And, it's the silly marin that you buy in your health food shop for your circulatory system.
Oh. And also it cleans your liver out.
Mhmm.
And, oh, we just had a blast with that. The leaves can get up two feet long, longer than that either. And, they are prickly. They are like you could knit with the, things coming off the ends. They're they're really tough. And, so we take a pair of scissors, and we would trim the leaf.
Mhmm.
It doesn't take very long. And you trim it and then you just eat the rest of it. We cut it up and stew it up.
Trim the the prickly edges off the leaf.
Sure. Just take a pair of scissors.
Right.
Makes it really easy.
So this is a new twist. Everyone says, oh, you know, milk thistle seeds and you do that.
But you Oh, no.
No.
You're here taking the One plant.
I'll do a whole family.
Is that any thistle or just milk thistle?
Any thistle is edible.
And you can you cut off the the Mhmm. The edges. And what about the prickly stalk? Do you just peel it back?
I just peel it back like celery.
Oh my goodness.
And, yeah. We use we use sour cream dip and everything with, thistle stems. They're wonderful.
Wow. Wow.
Yeah. They're sweeter than sour.
How you prepare the stems then?
Are you are you are you Prepare the thistle?
Yeah. Well, what after you after you get the the avenas yeah. Sorry. The the when when we get the celery part, when we take that stalk and we cut it back and we get that middle part, what are you just eating it raw?
Any any any way that you would, yeah, any way that you would a a a a celery stem. In other words, we we literally, you know, cut them into little little three inch things so that you can dip them and just chew them down But you would have celery. You can put them in soup.
You can do this as thistle root in soup. You can also French fry the thistle root.
If I'm on a hillside somewhere or there's a hill around, I will always take the thistles that are on the hill because they're easier to come out. They can have really big root long roots and they'll snap off and and regrow if you, snap it off in a in a regular, you know, dirt floor. But if you're on a hillside, that's the time to, pull plants actually up. They will come up a lot easier if they're growing at an angle like that.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
And that's kind of fun.
Okay.
And I always eat the fluff on the top.
The the the whatever the fluff is, whether it be yellow or purple, all thistle fluff is the same kind of thing as eating Dan Line fluff. It's I don't mean the the the old that blows away. I'm talking about the actual, you know, food part, I call it, where you pull it out of the center of that bulb.
They serve that in Denmark and Sweden. You can you can buy thistle bulbs over there like you buy Really? Llama beans here. Mhmm. And I've had people say to me, I bought thistle buds just because I had heard from you that you could eat and it and they were they were good. They just boil them up like you would brussels sprouts.
No way. Just the buds of the flowering thistles.
They grow. They take the young ends.
Right.
You know, not Right.
You know. Right.
Yeah. It's when they harvest them. And you know what? They continue their crop because they can probably get three cuttings in a season. Mhmm. It's because it keeps going to seed.
That is cool. You're now Yeah. Asking a lot of questions even when I'm doing, like, walks with people. Of things I've always wondered, like, you know, like, I see the thistle, like, I know you can eat it but I don't know how, you know. I always say that and I don't even know how. I gotta try it now.
I wish I was much younger like yourself, John, because really, we at one time, channel three in New York, after People magazine did an article on me back in what was it?
Eighty seven or something.
Uh-huh.
I remember eighty two. I don't even remember. And, but they wanted me to do a cook show in New York, and I had bad shoulders from chopping too much wood. And I knew I couldn't handle pots all day long, you know?
You know? You know? No way could I do that. So I I refused. I'm thinking somebody should be doing that.
Do you realize how quickly the television audience would generate to somebody doing that? Right. I pray that that my stuff someday, I really pray that somebody will take it and do that.
Right. Right.
Just a simple simple simple lawn plant.
Well, we're we're doing you know, we're we're getting there on HerbMentor. Like, my goal is, a series I wanna do next year is similar to that where I'll just go one plant at a time of little two minute videos that we can stick on YouTube or something.
Oh, there we go.
You know, that's the that's the modern generation. Forget about TV. Everyone's watching on YouTube.
So I mean Well, that's why I did that DVD and believe me, fifty two hours.
Oh, my God.
Yeah. I know. I know.
Because I just I had sworn I would never poor Eric. I swore I would never ever do one.
Well, he's got several other DVDs because this DVD is only three hours, so he's got another forty minutes.
Hours long, you'll never sit through the whole thing. But you can you can gear it when you go on the he he used a little dandelion as your pointer.
Yeah. It's awesome.
So that you can, yeah, you can point to drawing or this or that or whatever, you know, and and get there.
Can I see a question about, since we're talking about, like, you know, okay? You said, okay. You can use all the thistles this way and all. Now now, a question I get all the time when I'm teaching dandelion out in the field is and that because the main thing I'll always do when I'm showing dandelion is saying, okay.
This is a look alike called, you know, the cat's ear or the the the the one.
Right. And I always get the question too like, can we use that in the same way?
And and my answer Well, yeah.
But that's not in there.
I mean, you don't have the nutrients.
You don't have them. Yeah. It won't hurt you.
It don't hurt you. Exactly. It doesn't have quite the same nutrients. And also, why I mean, the the texture is all fuzzy.
I ate it for years and never knew the difference. You know, I was just so damn dirty when I hit the woods.
You're like, god, it's a little hammy about what I Yep.
Boy, we learn. Oh, John.
You didn't have the books that we have now. Now. I can go get a million I have your book now.
Why now? I listen. I couldn't find anything. I think I had one oh, gosh. I can't even remember. Back in seventy two. You'll give us.
That was that was Oh, right.
They they they wanted to take my field guide in New York and make that into the next You'll Give Us, but I I couldn't handle I still can't. Okay?
The the back and forthness going on for years to get one of those things done. Right.
I mean, I was just I pulled out finally after four and a half years, and I won't tell you who the publisher was.
Right. Right.
And no. I just can't handle it. So I work with Eric's girlfriend. She's a really good editor. Mhmm. And we'll be working on this next book.
And, as hard as it's gonna be, it'll be my next six months probably to to get it done and get it out there.
That next book?
Tell me about this next Well, because I I take this thing so seriously as a possibility for people to save so much money, I kept building these wild food identification walks.
Mhmm. And I I built some years ago all the way up to the the latest one was in New Jersey here, receiving busloads of people already, and I had to pull out because it's too much maintenance for one little lady in her seventies. I just couldn't do it. Yeah. And you can't find the dedication, you know, of people to take care of it. If I were an organization like Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, it could be done.
So I I did put a walk in for, just your common everyday weed plants on my deck of cards, except for the cactuses and the trees, for a a children's school.
And, those kids, boys, they dedicated themselves to watering anyway. They were wonderful. They watered the plants in pots and also ate them. Mhmm.
So that every time they go by, they eat the spearmint or the mint or the, you know, that type of plant. And the serious botanical kids would go for the yarrow as a stimulant or the plantain mowing your lawn. It just keeps growing. The more the kids would take it, the more it would grow.
Mhmm.
So I'm thinking to myself how easy it would be to show the world, quote, unquote, seriously, their free food.
Mhmm.
And, it it can be extremely simple or very, very complicated. Any way you wanna do it. Mhmm. I mean, you can you can put gravel on the sides and then not be able to push the wheelchair like I did once.
I mean, these are kinda hints that you'll get out of my book. I mean, you can't you know, there's some mistakes I made that were quite bad and, like, red ants. Okay? Red ants coming through the sidewalk, correct them, and the mothers put their children in strollers, and then they get all carried away talking about the plants.
And on the walk, and the child gets bit by the red ants. So you gotta know all this stuff. If you're gonna do it out west, you gotta know about the red ants and how much much water and all this kind of stuff. And if you're gonna do it back east here, you you better, read the chapters on, like, for instance, how fast Milkweed can take over the whole plot and pop up six feet away.
So you have to really make it easy on yourself. And you you cut your hole, your two by two section or whatever you're doing. And you sheet metal it or you black paper it real heavy. And then you put the dirt back in and then you just grab a couple milkweed things and stick them in.
They'll grow. They'll fill that whole they'll fill the whole thing up. Yeah.
So we're good.
But then they won't get out of there.
I I I think this is gonna be a really great book for a lot of our members because what happens with what what what what they find is that, sometimes they, you know, it's interesting. I take it for granted because I have a lawn full of, you know, wonderful dandelion.
It's all on your lawn. Yeah.
But, but a lot of people, they live in areas where that's all been, you know, depleted and it's not there anymore. And so they have to literally, like, you know, like, I can't find dandelions, you know, and I'm just like, oh, so so I think that there you'll be surprised that there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna be excited to see this book, to actually be able to bring these these wonderful plants, nutritious plants to their yards because, even if they have them growing in the wild around them, here's the thing.
There's often for a lot of people, especially when they're new at it, and you know this, I'm just presence on this because Yeah.
You know, you've got a lot of people listening here haven't heard you say it is that Well, it's agriculture all over again.
Well, it's also there's something, you know, the fear of wild plants when people are starting, out. And and that's one of the things that, you know, we do in herb medicine when we're taking one herb at a time.
But still, some people are like, I'm not too sure if I really wanna go out there and pick that, you know, dandelion or or pick that Well, why not throw up by a seat?
Exactly. Why not why not why not beep up Richter's, which I just found not too long ago? And now I have, window boxes just crammed full of fields.
These are window box this this will be the tail end of the book. This this I'm working on now with the research going. I've eaten twenty five meals or more just out of a couple window boxes so far in front of many people here in this, in this office place that I'm living in a in a, in New Jersey. And, it's for elderly, retired people.
And, believe it or not, now everybody's tried just about a little curly dock leaf, maybe an inch and a half, two inches. You just keep shearing it like you're mowing your lawn. Mhmm. And what you're getting is dandelions, curly dock, chicory, all these wonderful seeds that Richter's has.
Right.
It's amazing. And and and just start small. Start with four, five, or six wild plants. You could be handicapped Mhmm. And eat wild. You could be on the thirtieth or fiftieth floor in New York in a sky a skyscraper and eat wild. It could change your life.
Wow. So that's the that's the wrap up for me. I probably will do nothing after that Wow. Except, you know, whatever I have to do.
How old are you gonna be hanging out and eating more things from your window box? Forever.
As long as I'm alive.
But it also takes away the fear of people too have about spraying when they don't know their area. Exactly. They don't know their park. They don't know, you know, and I get that too.
And to those people I often say, oh, just go find like, I'm so lucky around here. I've got so many organic farms. I just go eat the weeds of the organic farms. You know, because because I know they're organic.
Well, you know, I did all that. That's where I get my point. It's really yeah. It's it's the answer for people that can get out and do that. But it's the answer for everything. But I'm talking to a lot of handicapped and a lot of, people that really do wanna find, more nutrition and and and feel like they can because years ago, we brought the stuff in tubs and stuck it down our cellar and ate from that cellar.
Mhmm.
We did. We ate dandelion, stuff like that years ago in the woods back in the early seventies.
And now it's as simple as throwing a bunch of seeds that grow prolifically Mhmm.
And just keep shearing it. And I wanna see how much, whether or not I have to do any fertilization type thing. I'm just using potting soil. Mhmm.
And, I'm already finding quite a few things. There'll be little hints that'll help somebody through it. And, I don't spray. And if I do have to for anything, any reason, maybe white flies out west if I were doing it in Phoenix, I would, just use garlic and let's see.
Garlic dish soap garlic dish soap and olive oil. Mhmm. And what you do is do a third, third, and a third, grind it all up in your food processor, and spray that on. And trust me, those white flies that can decimate young seedlings, they really did a job on my wild walks out there.
Oh my.
It will stop them. And the ones that do insist on staying on that leaf and eating, it will slide right off with the, dish soap and the, olive oil. And for you to eat that exhibit, it was as simple as rinsing it. That's all we did.
Wow.
We'd rinse it and hand it out on our walks, you know, but we have to rinse it after we had sprayed it with that, but it would stop the bugs.
Wow.
This is just So, you know, permaculture, whatever, John.
Mhmm.
They could really put in, well, food walks and and have, the public, you know, really learn fast.
It's it's it's an alternative food source.
It's been here longer than So as long as long as humans have been here.
I read I read I read that the missing link had one seed in in in her, that little female, you know. I just am giggling because, I mean, she had one seed and, of course, they're trying to figure out what it was. Well, it's forty two million years old. We don't know what was here then. But I'll bet you anything. It was a weed.
Right. Right. Right.
Bet you anything. It's just a feeling I have.
I And she was eating the weed.
Mhmm.
I just wanna tell folks that, you know, that, your your book in in in DVD, and your, you know, your book is, of course, are, you know, people listening probably figure that that I pretty much buy, you know, any any cool herbal book or wild food book that I see, you know, that I that I'm like, alright, add it to the library.
And, and yours is the one I refer to the most because, you know, when you have something written by someone who's done it a long time, who really knows all these different creative angles. I mean, you're out there learn, you know, how you you know, and in your in your years and your wisdom, you know, I I, you know, just can't say enough.
Yeah.
But just what you've offered.
I mean, just everybody doing it would have come to all, you know, all their own.
And they're all of us have our own chain of And that's a lesson there because that's exactly what I try to get across to folks is that, you know, you just go out there and you do it and you get that confidence level up and you start working with things.
And then it's endless.
Like you said before, you could do the whole two hours on that tile. You could do two hours on dandelion.
You could do a whole day workshop on dandelion.
I know. I say this to people that are so time.
It goes on and on and on. And so it really is infinite. And so it's not really about, you know, it's not really about going and saying, okay. I wanted to get this book and that book and take this workshop and that workshop and try to learn anything I can. No.
It's just like you do that introduction.
What were you saving ten bucks on, you know? This I mean, get it right down to the pocketbook here.
You just learn you just learn that, yes, you can do something with dandelion and then you can just learn a million things to do with that.
And it removes fear Right. When you see food source everywhere you look.
Right. Right.
It removes fear. I remember the fear ahead when I hit the desert. I thought, well, that's over. I can't be teaching this anymore. You you don't have to. How much you can do with all these I know people now from everywhere over there. And my book went in six languages.
One I did for the Kurdish studies in New York. And there was a little book that you can't get, unfortunately, but, I could tell you where you could get the manuscript, the original manuscript.
Answered, when that went out in Turkish and and all the different languages over there, that that, you know, they will get off a camel and take the time to get down and take crabgrass off a clump, leaving the roots carefully.
Putting that crabgrass in a side bag, take it home to their wife who would there and mash either mash it up or dry it the same way we did in the woods. It's just well, it's all the same.
It's all the same.
When when the necessity hits you, you will figure it all out. Mhmm. Right?
That's right.
But why why not know it like the veterans have been forty thousand years doing the same thing or however they've forty thousand years. That was a misquote there.
And But, you know, I don't know how old that civilization is, but I I was thrilled to hear that that that the crabgrass, that's why I named my that first book that, you know?
Alright. Because yeah. I mean, it's like it's it's back as long as, we know.
And, it doesn't have to be tried and proven anymore.
Mhmm.
Just make it easy and accessible to our very quick minds that have to have it quick.
You just gotta get out and do it.
Yeah. Bend down.
And if you can't, throw the seeds in it. It I'm so excited to put this thing out, this next one.
Oh, we'll make sure we, feature that on the site too when that book comes out.
Everyone's gonna know when it comes out because of course Oh, thank you.
Because we're always one of my favorite one of my favorite herbal people out there, Linda.
So Oh, you mine, John.
And I and, you know, and so, folks, once again, you know, you can visit Linda online at of the field dot com. That's like of o f the field dot com. Sign up for that amazing PDF free newsletter.
Check out her book, check out her DVDs and a lot of I mean, you can write me if you want.
I'll send you a catalog. There's an address and everything there.
And Linda's there checking her email so you can get to know her and and and, you know, and and so, please, you know, love folks supporting supporting the herbalists that are out there.
So go right to your site and check it out there and then and that's what's going on.
Thank you, John. Thank you so much.
Oh, it's an honor to have you on again, Linda, and I really appreciate it.
Can anybody get a copy somehow of of of your radio show? Yeah. I asked because I I mean, even truckers I know now that are you have no idea.
They're making their rest stops, and going and eating their lunch.
Right. Right.
I honestly. And they they really are.
There there are no Well, what I do is I eventually podcast it out on, of course, we we have it.
All what I do with these is they go first on her mentor dot com where we have the feature page and everything in people. And eventually, in time, it gets on a little feed where you can go on, iTunes.
If you if you so funny, I was struggling to probably have iPods, And they then they have to have a computer hooked up to iTunes.
If they type in Herb Mentor radio into their iTunes, service I don't have any these things.
They they can get access to these. Yeah. So so, and maybe I have her mentor radio dot com.
Yeah.
We'll we'll we'll I'll check with you when we get off the line.
Would you? Oh, I really appreciate it.
I will. But but, don't hang up there. So I'm gonna finish I'm just gonna finish up here to say, you know, one you know, once again, thanks a lot, Linda, for joining us today on Earth Manual.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
See you again, I hope. Done. Alright. Bye.
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