From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is Michael Pilarski. Michael is a farmer, educator, and author who has devoted his life studying and teaching how people can live sustainably on this earth. He has extensive experience in organic farming, seed collecting, wild crafting, medicinal plants, plant propagation, horticulture, teaching, and international networking. Michael has personally worked with over a thousand species of plants. He founded Friends of the Tree Society in nineteen seventy eight and has authored many books on forestry, agriculture, agroforestry, and ethnobotany.
And Michael has been involved in the permaculture movement since nineteen eighty one as a writer, teacher, and networker. He has taught dozens of full permaculture design courses in the U. S. And abroad.
Michael Pilarski has also founded the Northwest Herbal Fair which is back after a six year hiatus.
It is August nineteenth to the twenty first two thousand eleven in Mount Vernon, Washington. You can check that out at n w herbal fair dot com. And you can also visit Michael at friendsofthetrees, all one word, friendsofthetrees.net. Welcome, Skeeter.
Hey. Nice to see you again or hear from you again, John.
Yes. You know, it is awesome to have you here, and I'm gonna tell you why.
I just want to mention to folks listening that it was at the Northwest Herbal Fair in nineteen ninety eight that I met my first herbal mentor, Aaron Grow. And it was the place where I had the idea for an herbal kit. That's why I was looking around looking for one when I was, you know, first learning. So I owe it all to the Northwest Herbal Fair, and that is why of learning herbs dot com's existence really and that is why we're a proud sponsor of the event. And we'll talk about the fair a little later on because it's really cool. And, and, yeah, you you would all like I said, you would not be listening to this now had it not been for Skeeter's tireless efforts to connect people with nature.
We were even vendors there in two thousand five where we actually sold that kit for the first time. And it's actually the year and place where we met Rosalie for the first time through an instructor on Herb Mentor. So it's been a pretty pivotal spot and we're excited to get back up there this year.
So, Skeeter, thanks for that. I mean, you've it's, you made it all happen. So it all it it all had its origins there.
So we love getting, people's stories about how they first got connected and learning about plants because we're Herb Mentor and that's what it's all about. People are really inspired by people's stories. So, how did you first get into learning about plants?
Well, it started way back when I was a little tiny child, I'm sure, because my parents took me to the woods and to the the lakeshore in Lake Michigan in Lake Huron, like, grew up in Michigan.
And so I grew up playing in the woods and just, you know, made building tree tree houses and running amok, sort of my parents gave us freedom to just be in the neighborhood, and life was very safe feeling in those days. So, anyway, I I bonded with plants in the early age and decided actually, this goes way back to fourth grade. In fourth grade, I decided to be a naturalist and spend my life studying and teaching about plants and animals, etcetera. So and that was stimulated by a man named Roy Chapman Andrews who wrote a lot of, natural history books, adventure books. So you could say I was inspired by a predecessor.
And then, I I went away from that. I went to college and college did not satisfy me. So I quit college, in protest of the Vietnam War, I might add, at that time. Mhmm. And and and took a path away from regular society and ended up becoming a farmer in nineteen seventy two, getting, way into herbs in nineteen seventy three, and I've been, just there ever since.
But I'd one more story.
When I was, about fifteen years ago, I had reached a point in my life where I was teaching and writing a lot and sitting on my butt a lot. And so I decided I wanted to do something that was really hands on. I could, it needed more research about the sustainability and how to do it right ecologically and it needed to make some money and it had to be outside.
And a key factor would had to be something I could do with my nine year old son.
And so I picked wild crafting consciously because it met all those goals. And so since then, I've become an, I guess, I would be one of the experts on sustainable wildcrafting these days. And my son has been wildcrafting with me ever since. So he's twenty five now, and he's actually starting to fill he's filling orders for me. So I feel so great that wildcrafting is something I could do with my son. So I encourage all those parents out there to go out with their kids and collect plants and roots and berries and seeds, and your kids will never forget it.
You know, that's interesting you say that, Skeeter, because, I have a lot of friends who always say like, Oh, we can't have kids yet because we're waiting for something to be set up a certain way in their life, And, it sounds like you have a similar story. Like, my kids, formed my life, like, you know, like, so they almost dictated the work we would do as, herbalists because, you know, if you probably recall him when he came out of the, womb, right? And he came when he was born, you were like, Hey, where's the care manual?
Mhmm. Well, I thank goodness. Thank goodness for mothers.
Yeah, exactly. So did you, when you were learning, I know you were interested as a kid and all, but when the when when when the when the, you know, in the seventies, early seventies, say, when you started, you know, kind of getting into it a little more, did you, have, like, a specific, mentor or person that you may have learned medicine making or wildcrafting from? I mean, how did you figure that all out? Because there weren't as many books in then or hardly any. Right?
And there also There were hardly any.
And no way of that.
Yeah. Jethro Kloss Back to Eden was the bible, and that's what I started my herbal career with. And there were very very few mentors around at the time. In fact, for me, there there were no mentors.
I had no herbalist, elder or, anybody that that really taught me much. I had to read books and then go out and experiment on my own. So my my sustainable wildcrafting and how to actually do it wasn't learned, from anyone else. I had to invent it myself.
And so I'm, I'm widely I believe widely regarded as one of the, top wildcrafters in the country. And I didn't get there by studying with anybody. I got there by experience. So people shouldn't let themselves be held back from starting on a a herbal pathway because they don't have somebody there to teach them.
It's really great. And in fact, today we do have those herb mentors and that's why we put on these herb gatherings so that the herb mentor, you know, the students that want to learn it can meet the people that actually know it because now we have forty year old herbalists have been practicing for forty years and that was they weren't around when we started.
One more comment that my friend, Morgan Brent, who studied the herbal movement extensively and wrote his PhD on it, he calls the early herbalists like Rosemary Gladstar and David Winston and Michael Moore and Christopher Hobbs and once it really started the whole thing around forty years ago, the we might call it the modern herb movement or return to the older herb movement. Those he called those the spring herbalists. Mhmm. And now we have a lot of the summer herbalists.
We have a whole new coterie in the last, ten, twenty years. There's been a whole new wave. And they can they can call on the spring herbalists, for direction and training and books, etcetera. So we bring those people together at our herb gatherings.
Because you all might just be tired of teaching by now, so you just kinda be like, alright. Right.
You're gonna be the fall we'll be the fall herbalist eventually.
Just go see the summer herbalist because then they'll talk to us because we're we've been doing this too long now. Yeah.
Okay. So it was kind of a lot of experimenting and learning by, you know, just by, doing it and just figuring it out as you went along and, you know, something that, struck me when I because because the thing is, like, I I was spoiled like because I you know you know when you learn something and you know when you're in a good situation but you don't know it at the same time. So here I am first learning about herbs and I'm at the Northwest Herbal Fair. I'm meeting you, taking my first workshops from you, and, you know, all the great Northwest Herbalists that we have, Karen Sherwood, Eaglesong, Sally King, you know, Erin Grow. And, I got a little spoiled there because I had such great mentors. I didn't even realize how, you know, kinda, good I had it.
So that was really, really cool.
But but something that struck me then taking classes with you is I learned right away. I mean, like, I I never didn't have it in my mind about wildcrafting sustainably and all. And so what was the transition, I mean, like, from early on when you just started going out and harvesting plant material to sell to folks who needed it, I imagine, to herb companies and whatnot. And then also just kinda starting to tie in and realize the whole sustainable aspect. So I'd like to hear your your journey on it because you've been really, you know, a big part of that, you know, kind of sustainable United Plant Saver type of movement out there.
Mhmm.
Well, I actually I started with sustainability, right in the very front of my mind from the very beginnings of my wild crafting career because I'd already been a leader in the sustainable agriculture movement.
And, at the time I started, I actually also been teaching a lot in the permaculture movement. So I'd studied sustainable sustainability agriculture, sustainability related to forestry, and through permaculture sustainability of society in general. So sustainability of wildcrafting was just came, real natural. And plus I have this deep empathy with nature.
I actually love plants and they, you know, I sing to them. I make offerings to them when I collect them. To me they're not just a natural resource sitting out there waiting, but they're a fellow being. And so there's a great deal of respect and love.
And so you it's hard to, you know, sort of go out and pillage a resource when you when it's actually sort of like a family member.
So, so I really took a lot of pains to to do as good a job as I can and at the same time I actually have to make a living too.
And I must say that wildcrafting has paid relatively well for for, someone like myself.
Now, I know it's possible. It would be possible to make even more money if I was careless, and didn't think of the quality as much as I do. I think of quality and sustainability, and that really helps kinda, I think, slow me down to some extent. But on the other hand, I also need to gather a lot.
Now, I think a lot about Native Americans when I'm out there wildcrafting. I talk to the plants It was life and death for them. And so when they were gathering food particularly, they had to have a lot to feed the family for the whole year. There was no backup, no welfare checks, no grocery stores, so they had to be really efficient with how fast they moved, the moves they made, the ergonomics, the right kind of tools.
So they they were experts at harvesting in a in a way you might say a quick manner.
And so I try to do that too. How can I be sustainable, but at the same time, how can I really be efficient?
So they're both, I guess there's both, all those things are weighing in there when you're actually out there in the woods or in the fields.
Have you seen many people that have mentored with you or go into this professionally? I mean, it just seems like it's a real lifestyle thing in a certain, you know, I mean, you you know, you're you're you're not you're you're doing a lot of driving around. You need a lot of hiking, hunting, and finding spots. It seems like it's pretty darn involved, and it's just a real you know, it's it's not for the meek for sure. Right?
No. No. There's not that many of us that actually do it professionally. I would recommend that everybody in the general public do some, you know, on the personal family, what they used to call subsistence level, you know, just family use etcetera. Everybody, I think, would benefit from that. Almost everybody. Of course, you know, only a small percentage of people would at this point in time.
But, actually, it makes me think of Russia right now. And in Russia, a huge a large percentage of the populace go out goes out, collects mushrooms, herbs, berries, and wild foods. And it's a very it's a very strong part of the tradition there, and it used to be in the US, but that's been largely lost in the US. So I've had quite a few students over the years and interns who have now gone into the herbal profession and some of them have started their own herbal enterprises.
So, I would I'm pretty happy that some maybe somewhere a dozen or more of my students are actually really into the herbal trade now. On the other hand, there's also my permaculture teaching. I've taught quite a few hundreds of permaculture students now within my design courses, thousands of people in regular workshops, etcetera, and I have some really good teachers now that took courses from me and now are teaching courses themselves and have built up a name. So I'm part of a lineage, and this is interesting to juxtapose.
In the lineage of permaculture having been started in Australia in the mid '70s, the first wave of teachers was called the first you know, Bill Mollison was the first teacher. And then the second generation, he taught, you know, maybe a couple of hundreds of people who are now teaching, and then they taught another thousands of people, and now we're into the next level. We're in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of teachers, but that lineage has all happened in, you know, in thirty five years, as we have all these generations of of permaculture teachers teaching the next generation, the next generation down.
So I'm in the second generation down. I learned from Bill Mollison.
In Herbalism, we have a tradition that stretches back into antiquity and pre language and pre you know, hieroglyphics or whatever, it goes back to the, you know, to humanity, before ancient ancient times. So the lineage of training could go back a long ways, and there are still people alive today who learned from their parents and grandparents, who learned from their parents and grandparents, mainly indigenous peoples and maybe some people in Europe where there is an actual, you might say, unbroken lineage that stretches back perhaps thousands of years of herbal information. The traditional Chinese herbalists spring to mind too. That there's this long, long lineage and you are just, you know, number eighty three or something and so I'm number two in my in primoculture because it's so new in a way.
But again, going back to our modern urban herbal movement, those spring herbalists of forty years ago like Rosemary Gladstar, most of them had to learn it not at the feet of mentors, but they had like me had to sort of create it and learn it and build it and now they're passing it on. So now we're getting second, third, fourth generation herbalists maybe within the third possibly. It takes a while to learn herbalism. It takes a while to learn permaculture too, but herbalism at its best, at its quintessential best is something that's a lifelong learning and a person, it becomes a real master, at diagnosing and treating people. You know, dealing with real live human beings. It isn't a scientist petri dish or anything.
You know you're dealing with people's lies and the quality of their lives and so Herbalism's a noble calling and, so I'm sure a lot of your listeners are firmly on board and part of that waves are coming.
Yeah. Yeah. And they and they are. And, you know, and it's and it's all different.
And probably you probably see the same thing in permaculture where there's all different levels of involvement, you know, from, say permaculture could be someone who just wants to do something in their city balcony all the way to a person who has a farm and has a vision to teach people and make a center to teach. Same with herbalism. You know, you've got your family home herbalist who wants to learn about chamomile and how to use arnica all the way to a person who may wanna someday, you know, start a school or speak at conferences. So there's there's there's all these different levels.
But what's really, by by now, what were these classes I heard with you is that though you may have trained some people who have gone on and and and and been professional wildcrafters, for most of us, it's it's the really cool thing. If we can just go out and learn to do some, basic wildcrafting and take some of that because because there's that there's that barrier. So I like to start with is is, you know, how do you help people break through that barrier of, like, oh my god. This is scary, all the way to, you know, how to go about, harvesting some plant material in a respectful and sustainable matter.
Because, like, well, again, there's, you know, one thing, there's there's dandelions, and then there's the other hand, there's goldenseal, you know. So what do you what do you what do you do? What do you how do you teach people about that?
Well, it's, start small and slow and, patiently like anything else and, and build up and start with the easy things. And dandelion's a wonderful herb to start with. I harvested three three hundred ninety dollars for the dandelion from my, you know, from my the weedy parts of my farm the other day. I deliberately, let parts of my patch be on the weedy side and encourage dandelions deliberately.
And so I have a lot of dandelions, and it's good money and you know you can't hurt the resource when you're dealing with dandelion or with plantain or with generally with the what we call the weeds, the non native weeds, they're generally just doing fine. And so some other great ones would be that are so easily available are Chickweed, Burdock root, Yellowdock root, St. John's Wort flowers or the very upper parts of the plant. There's so starting with the weeds that are medicinals is a really great way to go and start with the common things and then work towards the uncommon things.
And my rule of thumb is never, never harvest somewhere unless there's a lot of something. You never take all of anything or even usually I'm taking anywhere from one percent to ten percent of material in a particular stand.
And ten percent is probably high. And it also depends on whether you're digging up the plant and it's going to die. When you dig up a dandelion, every root piece you leave in there is going to try to sprout and make a new dandelion.
Hard to hard to, as everybody knows, it's hard to conquer dandelion.
But lomatium dissectum, you dig that red and that's gone. So you have to really be much more sensitive for some things. If you're taking, let's say, hawthorn berries, the birds are going to eat them or other things anyway. So if you pick you can pick a lot of Hawthorne berries and really not hurt the resource.
You can pick arnica flowers and leave lots to go to seed and you won't hurt the resource. So are you picking leaves, roots, seeds? There's all these there's a lot of factors involved.
There's very few books on the topic yet, but I probably should mention a couple of them. Mhmm.
Gregory Tilford has written several books on sustainable wildcrafting.
And I had them right in front of me.
I just spout off the From Earth to Herbalist.
Title you might know. From Earth to Herbalist. Yep. That's his main one.
And I have a little publication now called, Sustainable Wildcrafting and Cultivation of Medicinal Herbs in the Pacific Northwest.
Very long title, but I touch on sustainability in there too.
But there's, yeah. Can you what other can you think of another book, John?
What's What's the name of the Wildcraft book? It's it's I I honestly, there's those two, the one yours that I I picked up at a at at the fair years ago as well as Tilford's has kinda been, my main, you know, ones for ideas.
Because, for example, you know, in in Gregory Topherd's book, he'll go and give you certain tips for things like that you would never think of before like, you know, like an arnica, like thinking, you know, how to gather it, so it doesn't go to seed or, you know, on you or or all these little tips and things.
And also has little symbols like United Plant Saver symbols.
You know if it's one that you should look out for or a little toxics toxin symbol if Mhmm. If it's maybe one a beginner may not know could be sprayed, you know, like, or stuff like that. So, but those are the ones, you know. Mhmm.
Oh, actually, I thought of several more. Michael Morris' series of books, medicinal plants of the Pacific West, medicinal plants of the intermountain west, and medicinal plants of the southwest, For each species he covers, he deliberately has a section on sustainable wild crafting and wild crafting tips and processing. Very, very, very handy.
In fact, those are some of the best information you can get. So anybody in the Pacific Northwest or the Southwest, those are, you know, so if you were going to get into wild wildcrafting, those are must haves, in the bookshelf.
And you know what I noticed a trend too, Skeeter, is that, it seemed like the books written at a certain time or something seem to be less written by herbalists and more written by, by by more scholars or people doing research. But, it seems like most of the books I've been seeing in more recent years, especially if they're herbalists that you trust or people that you, you know, you see through networks or people you learn about online, the peep sources you trust.
You know, if it if it's written by somebody who is an herbalist, they're always usually these days seem to be including a section about harvesting and you can usually trust. Like, for example, I interviewed Timothy Lee Scott who's gonna be at the Northwest Herbal Fair. He wrote a book called Invasive Plant Medicine. And, that's a great book. And and, for example, he has a little little section in each plant part that has, you know, harvesting, you know, for example. Right. So I see that more and more as a kind of part of the plant monographs and many books coming out.
Right. And the I have a my herb library has somewhere around probably three hundred books or so. I have a a very extensive herbal library I've been collecting for years. And so I've looked at a lot of herbal books, and I I make a practice of going to herbal stores and bookstores, going to the herb section, and just I go down and look at the title of every book that they carry and look for anything that's particularly hot that I want.
And so I'm I've learned to be pretty discriminating.
After a while, you you don't need any more. So there's a number of classes of books. And so some of the encyclopedias, for instance, are someone that's just taking information from a whole lot of sources and it's all secondhand. It's all I read this and I put it in my book. I read it. So it's sort of like regurgitation of information.
Whereas people like Michael Moore is writing from very, very deep practical hands on knowledge both of the wildcrafting and also of the administration clinical use of it. So there are some incredibly good books out these days. There were very few in the past.
Edible Edible Wild Plants by John Callas is a treasure too.
Yes. There's I have a big book bookshelf on wild edible plants. And if you're going to be if you're going to be either wildcrafter of edible plants or of herbs, one of the things you have to study is what are the poisonous plants in your neighborhood and learn them so that you are not fooled by any poisonous Looks like, you really are paying attention.
So I What are what are some of the top hand full of real I mean, you know, a lot of books is like, well, you know, it's listen. It's poisonous. But, boy, you know, it's it's like so what are the real, like, serious danger ones?
Well, here where I live in the northwest, we could probably just come up with, like, ten for instance.
And one is the the water hemlock, the native, cunatum, and then there's the conium, conium maculatum, the European hemlock of the Socrates one, that's Secuta douglas is the water hemlock to native. There's death camus, aptly named. There's large spurs, monks hood, and hellebore, what's called false hellebore or veratrum. There's a number of different veratrums around, up in the mountains. So those are right off the top of my head. Those are the ones I'm most aware of. Anything off the top of your head?
Well, you know, the thing is about those though, for most people harvesting, it's those definitely the hemlocks are like, you know, the ones because they may look like other. But not a whole lot of people are going out and harvesting camas where they might run across deaf camas or hellebore. It's like, why would you gather that?
You know, so it's like, you know, so so really it's it's a it doesn't what I'm trying to say is it doesn't take too long to learn what's around so you can just get going on.
It doesn't. You just have to go ahead and do it. I collect books on poisonous plants. So I have a bookshelf. I mean, a section just for for that.
Because it is interesting that there's a lot of the herbal medicines are, there's some of them let's say, are poisonous. And so I like to break herbs down into, I have my own in my book, I have a listing. I've categorized yours into four different categories. The ones that are poisonous, in other words they can kill you quick, but they have maybe there's specific uses in medicinal by those who are very careful and this is things like maybe perhaps Belladonna or Henbane which are incredible pain killer herbs for certain very certain things but they're not a recreational drug and they're not to be used by anybody but the experts.
Then there's a type, a class of herbs that I might call, I call toxic. That if you take them over a period of time, they can start doing some harm to your system. They won't hurt you quick, but a long long term use, is contraindicated. So usually just use at a specific time for specific need and then you're off of it.
And then there's nutritional herbs that you can take about as much as you want, as long as you want, and it won't do you any harm, it'll only do you good. And some of those herbs I put there are Burdock root and dandelion leaf, dandelion root, oat straw, nettles, we could say burdock as well. But there's some of these things. If you look at burdock and make a tea, you could take burdock till the cows come home and just be a great food for you and a great medicine.
Great for bacterial infections.
But if you once you make it into a tincture, then it's a stronger thing and then you have to regard it with a little bit more care in terms of like, I'm gonna take, dandelion tincture for the rest of my life. That's probably really not a good statement. I had a friend one time, or not a friend, a buyer, someone I did not really know, and she wanted she was prone to a lot of sicknesses. She had a lot of colds and flus, anything that came by, she got it and was miserable. And she heard about lomatium dissectum, and it worked really well for her. She would take it early onset and and get rid of most of her sicknesses before they really got set.
Now, so she told me that she wanted a big supply because she was going to take it every day for the rest of her life. And I said, no, that's not what you want to do with lamination dissectum. It's one of those really strong herbs that are good for when you need it to knock out that bug. But you don't wanna take it on and on and on because it's it's too strong an herb. And so you have to look at those different categories.
Complicated a bit, but people shouldn't let it scare them. But they Right. You know, they gotta do some research, obviously. Right.
Rather than Exactly.
Exactly. You know, and I forget that. Like, I because I was mentored right away early on and kinda having a foundation in herbalism and focus more on the nourishing and nutritious herbs, I remember. One of the first things I ever learned coming in.
I mean, talk about invisible teaching in school, pulling up to the Northwest Herbal Fair, not knowing really anything, And, and and and hoards of people out, you know, gathering in red clover in the field to make tea for everyone. And so I'm just one of the first what a great way to teach by just example. And I and so right away, I was being shown, hey, you know, like, nourishing, nutritious herbs. And I forget that sometimes people may learn about herbs by through some of those stronger ones that they may, you know, have heard about as, oh, this is very strong medicine because it can help this or it or or maybe through some psych otropic whatever and then they don't realize that those are dangerous plants that you just don't wanna and often wildcrafting wise, ones that are more sparser or hard to find.
So, so that's a that's a good point because I I forget some people listening maybe like, yeah, you know, it's great to start with those the weeds and the nourishing plants to learn especially if you're gonna be wild crafting and to take care of yourself and nourish yourself and not try to cure any strong diseases. Let that to the let that to the more experienced people.
Right.
Yeah.
So, let's see.
What I I think will be fun to do since we have you here is, you have some really unique insights about some, about a lot of the herbs that you gather because all the time you spent with them over the years. And, some of them may be a little more northwest, local and others might, well, definitely available in a lot of places.
So I just want to go over a few of those. So tell us about your experiences or what you know about well, you know, you could probably go on for hours, but, you know, just in a nutshell, I guess, about, about, let's say arnica.
Well, arnica is gonna be coming up for me really shortly. I've got, I arnica has been a big herb for me over the years, and I could talk probably for hours. But in a nutshell, there's many species, some are better than others. They're found in most forested habitats in the northwest.
The ones on the west and what you're looking for is a plant that has hairs, hairy species that has not some are more hairy than others, but it has glandular hairs, and there's oils in those glands.
And the oil is the is the efficacious agent. So, I pick arnica cordifolia a lot. That's the big thing. It's found throughout the intermountain northwest.
Very common. Huge stands of it. Especially comes in after fires. So I actually follow, in a sense, one or two years after fires, forest fires or controlled burns, and harvest in those areas. So they don't they move around the landscape, so to speak, with the flowering following the fires.
There's the there's a number of them on the west side. Now I'm sure a lot of your listeners are from the west side of the Cascades.
Listeners, really.
Oh, you really are. Okay. Well then, there's arnica's throughout the temperate zones of the world.
I don't know exactly how widespread, but they're European, I would be pretty positive there in the Eurasia across Russia I bet too. But there's some on the West side like arnica and plexicollis, maybe arnica latifolia that are relatively smooth, they don't have as much scent, they have much less oil and so they're not as good. They have medicine but they're much less so.
So species identification is one thing, but use what you have can find locally.
For arnica, it's an external agent only. In Europe, they actually do use it internally in small dosages, but in the U. S. It's widely regarded as just like you don't use it internally, it's just only an external.
It is the very best herb of choice for bruises, sprains, muscular soreness, your neck's out, your back is out, you hit your thumb with a hammer and you know that it's all gonna turn black and blue and it hurts really bad, you start rubbing arnica into it. I keep it in my car, in my house, at the farm. I always want it with me because if I do hit myself, bang my head against something or whatever, if you put it on within the sooner you put it on, the less the injury will be, the less the pain will subside, the swelling will be less that will reduce the amount of bruising if any so it's just like a totally it's relatively kind of a miracle herb.
So it's a first aid herb that probably could be on every herb, you know, everybody's shelf. And in Europe, it's highly regarded.
And in this country it's a big seller too, so arnica liniment. So I go out and pick just the flowers, I make a liniment rather than an oil. Actually, I do both, but my experience over all these years of using it on, maybe up to thousands of people now, I've actually administered it to hundreds I'm sure, that they that the liniment works faster and better than the oil. The oil slides better for doing massage, it's better.
But if you the liniment extracts more of this constituent, preserves it better, will last longer, and it sinks into the skin easier than oil does. And so it actually so anyway, I'm a big fan. So I just used hundred proof vodka, and I can pick it up anywhere in the store, no permits needed. So I take a jar and stuff it, you know, I cut them up usually.
Cut up the flowers a little bit, stuff them in the jar till it's relatively stuffed and then and then, fill it full of hundred proof vodka.
And let it sit for a cup two to weeks, two to eight weeks and then press it out and you're ready to go. That's good for you. It should be, you know, it's good for some years.
That's great. Yeah. Okay.
Well, there's there's arnica. I'll just on a snapshot.
Yeah. Well, yeah. But I mean, the thing is what I really like is that, you know, you could read top ten books by great herbalists and and, you know, listen to this and you're gonna find out different information from every person.
So it's always great to Yes.
Read and soak in what you can.
You know, being we we we're in the northwest here in Devil's Club is a northwest plant.
But why I want you to talk about it now is because, you know, there isn't a whole lot written as far as wildcrafting all the way to usage and everything and and I just really recall you being kinda one of the more knowledgeable or experts out there since you spent so much time with it. So I like your thoughts on Devil's Club and all that. Like, what do you usually teach people about it?
Well, for I first thing I teach people, people about Devil's Club is that it's a very powerful plant and and both in the sense of the medicine, but also in the sense that it's one of the most dangerous plants out there, because of the all the thorns, the spines, which have formic acid, kind of like nettles, and so, it's really, it's, you have to be really careful when you harvest it. Yeah. So I wear very thick gloves. Okay, now let's back up a little bit before I give you the details.
It was also the most important medicinal plant for the for the Northwest Coast Indians.
And so, and they so they reverted greatly and and, it was used more widely than any other medicine, herbal medicine from the northwest by the North Coast Indians.
And it was also one of the most strongest shamanistic herbs. The the shamans of the of the medicine people of the tribes, they would make little huts out of devil's club and that was their place of greatest power. If they were going to do battle with another shaman or were trying to do some particularly difficult, healing or or they needed to really be at their most powerful and most protected place. They went inside their little Devil's Club hut and that's constructed out of all the stems with all the stickers on it, and they would go in there.
So, there's a lot of mystique about it. They used the charcoal of the Devil's Club to make face paints for for black face paints. It has a it's very interwoven in their in their spiritual life as well as the practical herbal use. So one must approach it from the standpoint of this is really a sacred plant and that Native Americans, we use a lot of their plants and we use a lot of their information about how they used it for begin our study of ethnobotany and and friendships with traditional people today.
But by and large, natives are really not thrilled about seeing some of their special, sacred medicinal plants being used in commerce by regular society. And so there's a sensitivity there that goes beyond sustainability and beyond ecological and also borders on cultural integrity and so how we use it I think we should use it and and it's a great herb but we should always really treasure that aspect of it and treat it with care you might say.
So that being said, it is they found in studies in British Columbia that it was one of the very best herbs that they, or you could say the best, but incredible good for tuberculosis, particularly the new drug resistant tuberculosis, which is a real big concern in the world today. There there are drug resistant tuberculosis is they thought they'd beat it for a while in the world more or less, but now it is making a drug resistant tuberculosis is making a big comeback and they've recently discovered that there's now a super duper bug resistant tuberculosis that's really really nasty and you don't want to get it and they're worried that that's gonna really start spreading around and so Devil's Club is a is a solution for this or is is one of our best things that we can use. So that's a big statement. It's also one of the best herbs for diabetes and for blood sugar regulation.
It's what's called an Adaptogen, and that it helps system return to normal. So if your blood sugar is high, it will lower it. If your blood sugar is low, it will raise it. It will bring it to a better level.
So great herb for diabetics and of course Indians are plagued by diabetes a lot of Indian tribes people because of their in in, they weren't adapted to the white man's diet.
So their traditional plant is really good for them today.
So any rate, I go out there with thick leather gloves and thick, you know, Levi coat and full boots and, you know, really tough pants, etcetera, and I go out there and I pray. I always make a prayer. If you're gonna respect the plan, make an offering. If there's even one you're gonna do it to, start with it.
Do it with the devil's club. You don't wanna be on the wrong side, and you have to be really careful in there that you don't get whacked alongside the head. And I just take a I just thin patches a little here and a little there. And if you look carefully, you can find places where it's rooted in the ground, the top's fallen over, it's rooted in the new ground, you can take out that horizontal piece in between and both the uprights are still there.
You've just taken a bit of horizontal.
So, and another thing I do for sustainability in the shady and it likes about half shade. It doesn't like full sun, but it also doesn't like full shade. So sometimes I find places in the forest where the conifer overstory is just getting so thick that the devil's club is dying out. It's naturally going out of succession. So if I harvest it there, I'm not reducing its abundance in the landscape because it's already on the way out. I'm looking for how do I fit into the ecosystem?
How do I fit into the natural curve of things so to speak so I'm not do the least damage? So there is I would say a thing about the Devil's Club is that United Plant Savers has it listed as sort of like a I don't know if it's on their at watch or to risk or at risk or to watch list right now, but they say it's we have to be careful how much to harvest, it could be over harvested.
You could over harvest a particular stand, but there are literally, I actually did a study one time, drawing on data from Alaska to show that there are, I can't I don't have the figures in front of me, millions of tons, hundreds of thousands of tons of biomass of Devil's Club right now in existence. It's a very it's found heavily in Alaska, one of the dominant shrubs in much of Alaska, throughout British Columbia.
Strong in the Cascades of Washington. By the time you get down to the Cascades of Oregon, it's getting pretty, it's getting pretty scarce and there's not that much of it. So in Oregon, you're getting towards the south end of its range. If you go over to Montana, you'll in the wet mountains of Montana and interior British Columbia, Devil's Club in the parts of its range where there's lots of it, but that the people down in areas where there's not much of it, they should leave it alone. Get it from up here.
Do do you notice that, being that it seems to be getting more notoriety out there in the urban world because of those uses you mentioned, Are have you seen areas, like, you know, decimated by by, Oh, heavens.
No. I don't think I've ever seen the Devil's Club stand that anybody else had harvested in ever.
Devil's Club is actually it's not a big, I don't see it as a big seller at this point. I mean, it has the potential to be a really important herb if it was discovered and popularized by somebody like the World Health Organization who ordered hundreds of millions of hits of it for tuberculosis across the third world. But at the moment, there's not that much pressure. There's very little I would say there's very basically very, very little pressure on the Devil's Club stands.
So it's to me it's sort of in a sense the sustainability is a sort of a non issue as long as you're in the range where it's, prolific.
Okay. Okay.
And when you're processing it and you have the, piece of the, you know, stem, do you, like, how how do you remove the outer the you know, get to get that inner bark from the separate it from the main pith stem?
Well, this is my secret my secret information. Alright. Are you okay? I mean, I'm sorry. I just love you so much, John. What are you doing?
Oh, thanks.
Okay. You get a butter knife. You get a butter knife without serrations, an old fashioned butter knife. They're usually wider, there's no little cut serrations.
It's not serrated, just plain butter knife and I use that, I have, let's say I have a stem. Now, it's always called Devil's Club Root Bark. That's what we always call it, but in that's but in practicality, it's actually the upper stem as well as the root bark. But Devil's Club has very little root.
If you work with it very long, you'll soon realize that the root biomass to the above ground biomass is really small compared to almost every other shrub I've worked with. They're just a very, they have relatively smaller, there's not that much wood. So most of the material is actually the upper stem or the horizontal stem bark. So if I have something that's got spines on it, I take that butter knife and just hold it vertically to it and just rub it back and forth fast and it flakes off just really lightly and it flakes off the outer bark with the spines and you're left with this beautiful green bark.
It's just emerald green. It's yellow where it's away from the sun, but it's actually a photo synthesizing bark. So that inner is very thick cambium layer. So you take that butter knife and now you hold it at a bit more of an angle and you and you just take long strips of that bark off.
I get up to three feet long strips at a time, one to three feet long strips generally. So I'm making these long strips down this, bark which has, by the way, it's been cleaned up. If you do that butter knife thing, you end up with this like perfect bark. There's no dirt, there's no moss, there's no spines, on it.
So it's really clean. And then you scrape it off. Now, a very interesting thing about Devil's Club, I've done this measurement a number of times. If I have four pounds of Devil's Club clean sticks in front of me and I peel the bark off, I have one pound of bark and three pounds of wood.
I don't know any other shrub that gives a higher bark to wood ratio of anything. So in other words, ten if I had forty pounds of of stems that were cleaned up, I would get ten pounds of root bark off it.
Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you for sharing that.
Now I you know, speaking of speaking of, plans we were talking about, watch and UPS list and and, you know, the plan saver list and watch list. You well, I don't know if you still feel this, but a while ago, I heard you say that Oregon grape, you felt should be on on a watch list.
Do you still feel that?
Or well, there's three categories for the United Plant Savers.
And, and let's just say like go ahead and then there's the two watts like we have to be we're really being one monitoring the situation and there's the at risk. They think they say that basically you should, herbalists shouldn't use it, you shouldn't wildcraft it. Now Oregon Grape, they used to have in that lowest category list and then they bumped it up to the two watch, so it's never been on the highest level of risk. United Plant Savers, anybody that doesn't know about them, it's a great organization. I'd like to give them a plug.
Oh, please.
They are a group of herbalists dedicated to conserving the conservation of of medicinal plants. They they love the herbs and they don't wanna see them, wild crafted or used out of existence, made extinct by use, which American Ginseng and American Goldenseal are two herbs that have, and there's other plants in other parts of the world that have suffered this fate. So they're really watching the situation. So they, goldenseal is their flagship species.
And so they're trying to get people to adopt an analog or an herb or herbs that would do the similar effects but wouldn't be Goldenseal. So they early picked Oregon Grape as an herb that does has a lot of the constituents and same actions as Goldenseal and there's a lot more of it. And so they were promoting that for years and then after a while they started saying, well my gosh, there's a lot more use of Oregon Grape now. Are we now going to be damaging the Oregon Grape resource to try to save the Golden Seal? And so they've raised the level of concern on it, But practically speaking, as a it's one of my bigger herbs. I watch it.
It's found throughout the northwest all the way from the from the Rocky Mountains all the way to the coasts, the Pacific Ocean, and not in not in the dry land shrub habitats, though you'll find it there too. But, it's super common, it's and it's hard to hurt a stand really. I mean, you can go there and cut off every upper part of the you know, everything you can see above ground and it will come back gangbusters.
You could try to dig it out of the ground, using tool hand tools, and you'll always leave quite a bit because it's just so you know, you'd be hard put to dig it all up, and some of it's so big that you need backhoes. And so no. Not many nobody's using backhoes that I know of for Oregon great. But we cannot really hurt the we could hurt certain stands if we tried hard. But basically, it's almost, you might say, it's not limitless, but in terms of what humans need for medicine, it's pretty much a real sustainable resource. And by the way, there's over a hundred species and they're found all the way, not only all the way up and down the Cascades and the Sierra Range, but they go all the way down the Andes, all the way to Chile. In other words, it's found the length of the South of North and South America various species of, of Mahonia.
I I taught a, medicine making class for about ten years in this one location.
And, and there were a little less, maybe eight years, in this one little location. And, there are two small stands of Oregon Grape that we always gathered from every medicine making class. And I sustainably gather there with that class year after year, and it's probably looks better now, more full than when I started. So Yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah. It's, it's one of the ones that everybody can, you know, everybody can go out and and get some Oregon grape. And by the way, Planet, it's also was in England after all the world exploration, botanical explorations and the plant explorers sent back samples of all these plants to England to be selected for the ornamental trade.
They, the Oregon grape from the northwest was rated as one of the best ornamentals to come out of the northwest into Europe. So it's highly regarded as an ornamental. You can grow it in your own yard and the berries are incredible good food. We could call it a medicinal fruit. It's probably right up there with goji berry and, elderberry and hawthorn berry and acai berry and all those fancy expensive berries you're importing from around the world. Well, people have Oregon grape right under their nose and it's probably as good or as any of those other, fantastic berries.
Makes good wine. Yeah. You know, it's it's funny because where I am in the in the west side of the Cascades, it's it's not, you know, natively growing around. But I mean, peep up where you find it as everyone's planted it like in park and rides and banks and and things like that. And it's it's kinda challenging to find a stand that's not covered probably with exhaust fumes where you could gather berries.
That's the that that's urban too much of an urban area there, John.
That's that that's talking about the aquifolia, the, the the taller variety or the nervosa.
The aquifolia.
The the nervosa is everywhere, but that's kind of the berries are too small to for me to gather enough to do anything.
Oh, it's hard to get much berry production on nervosa, aquifolium in full sun. That's where you get your berry production.
Yeah. Yeah. This is Yeah. This is a true sign that this is truly an herbal geek radio show when we start talking about it.
Right.
So, and, you know, last day, I was gonna say that someone because I just wanted to comment the other day. Someone was like, have you ever gathered lomatium? And I was like, no. You know, I never have because I never had to because I run into Skeeter every couple years and I buy a big piece of root from them. And it makes me enough tincture to last about three years.
Right. Yeah.
You don't need a lot of lomatium or even a lot of Oregon grape for that matter to make enough tincture for yourself to last you years.
So Alright.
Yeah. A pound of a pound of work will last you for years.
Exactly. You don't need a whole lot. Let's see where we're at. You know what?
Lomation, do you want me to talk at the Yeah. Please do.
I love Lomation. Yeah.
Because I as I mentioned that Devil's Club was the major plant medicine of the coastal Native Americans.
The Lomatium Dissectum, I would say there's, I might say, I could say that it is, it was the dominant useful native medicinal plant in the for the Great Basin and the inter mountain, the Columbia Basin and the Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Indians. Okay. So it's really big there. I would have to actually say though that OSHA or the OSHA relatives were probably just as important, but those were the two most important herbs. So Lomatium was incredibly used for huge amounts of uses by Native Americans, and they the clinical tests have showed that it's more efficacious or works better against more disease organisms or human disease organisms than anything else they found. So it's it's one of the top antivirals in the world. And with all this worry about, influenza, it's particularly great on influenza.
And they're and I say that not only is nature making more influenza strains out there, it appears that man is out there making more influenza strains too. So it is a concern, and so Lamatium is a really good backup to have on your shelves. It's also one of the very best things for the common cold.
It's also a very strong medicine, so I always have to caution people. There's the reason, probably the main reason, or there's two reasons it's not used more often today still. One of them is that a small percentage of people break out in a rash when they take it.
So people really should be careful taking it the first time or the first couple times. People that tend to have really allergic responses will be especially concerned about.
But it's a small percentage but since it does happen, you know, if you're a practitioner and you treat a hundred patients and one of them calls up and screams at you and says that you're, you know, that they're covered in red itchy blotches that they don't they don't, you know, it makes the practitioners really sort of back off using it. So that's it. I think people should test themselves with a small dosage to see, if they're one of those people.
Okay.
The tincture is less likely to do that than actually trying to eat the raw root or the dried root, which is pretty gnarly tasting, I must say. So the low the other reason that Lomatium is not used widely is because United Plant Savers has it on their At Risk group, which is the the their highest ranking of like you should be really concerned and shouldn't use it etcetera. And and I've I've gone to great lengths to talk to United Plan Savers about that and they agreed with me verbally and on the phone that yes it doesn't really deserve to be in that category and they should put it on the to watch list but they never have, they always kept it on their at risk group.
Now I wildcraft lomatium and one, my best stand where I do the most wildcrafting is on National Forest Land. I get a permit from the Forest Service and I reckon and there's the average the average hundred square foot has has three hundred pounds of lomatium in the stand. The stand goes on for square miles and there's literally thousands of tons in this one stand. And I know where there's many, many, many stands, it is a good stand, but I know where there's hundreds and I know that there's thousands and thousands of stands that stretch on throughout in the right habitat throughout Montana, it goes from Alberta, Montana, Idaho well into the Great Basin, and laps up against the East Cascades where I gather.
So it's a very widespread, very common plant in the right ecosystems. I mean in some ecosystems, fifty percent of the ground canopy coverage is Lomatia.
So, anyway, so there's no justification for saying it's being over wild crafted or over harvested or endangered in any way. There's again, what happened I think in the early days was that some people down in Oregon or the in an area where there wasn't that much of it harvested to access in some stands and that got word got out and so people said look they're over harvesting it and that And in a few specific locations and a few specific stands, that probably was the case. But by and large anyway there's a lot of it out there it's really useful but it's also has to be used with caution because of that rash thing.
So, anyway, there's just a few comments about Lomatium and most people will never encounter it because they don't go to the habitat. It grows out here in the dry. It doesn't, it grows sometimes with Sagebrush, but most likely it's found with a Bitterbrush or Persea tridentata, shrub steppe. You know, it's really dry, rocky hillsides and boulder fields. And people just don't go there. People go where it's easy to walk, where it's pleasant, and there's water and water fountains and convenience stores.
So, yeah, they're just you don't most people just don't aren't out here, and so they'll never see it. But, I'd love to take you out sometime, John. If you're over here during, come over here sometime on a vacation to Eastern Washington, and we'll go out and and meet some.
Oh, I'm gonna take you up on that offer. Speaking of out there in Eastern Washington, are you growing some of the herbs where you are for sale as well?
Because you did try Oh, yeah.
I think at the time when I last ran into you, at least teaching years ago, you were saying at that point that you were beginning to experiment on growing some herbs, you know, that you, like Devil's Club and others. I don't know how that went.
Oh, yeah. Well, I'm I'm growing I I'm a commercial herb farmer as well as a wildcrafter. So about half of my herbs that go out the door are are grown on my farm and half are wildcrafted.
So I grow and I'm growing I have experimented with growing some of these native, medicinals. I have experimented with growing arnica with Devil's Club, with Lomatium, and, and it it can be done. So I think that we could base in OSHA. OSHA has a reputation of being very difficult to grow. I'm growing it quite satisfactorily myself in my in my gardens.
Arnica cordifolia, I haven't had that much luck with it, but I have so much wild stuff I haven't tried very hard. I grow Arnica chamasonus and Arnica montana on my farm. One's native, one's from Europe. The Montana one's Europe. That's the famous original arnica.
Devil's Club, I've had a hard time growing because I live in eastern Washington in a semi desert, and it's really hot and dry, and, I didn't have enough shade, and I'm sure I could grow it in my gardens here, but so far I haven't had enough.
The few times I have tried over here, they failed because it's just been too hot and dry.
And even if I irrigate them, it's still just a tough go. So but on the east on the west side, there's certainly no reason, I'm waiting for someone to put in the world's first Devil's Club, plantation. An acre would all you'd only need maybe a half acre and you could be you could be the first, you know, could be the first sustainably grown, or I don't know what you'd call it, organically grown, devil's club. So I think that there is a place for growing medicinal plants.
I, however, there are some people who are so against wildcrafting or they're so they're so they love it's sort of like, look at it this way, this actually does so many different. There's some people who love deer so much and animals, they think that it's horrible that humans would ever hunt deer or hunt Bambi or but if if there's not enough predators in the landscape, deer become way overpopulated and really start hurting the ecosystem.
That's it. So, there's a place for humans in the hunting gathering role and plants, I don't think that plants, I would say, need us so much, though sometimes we can help them be more abundant in the landscape. But I think for humans to be, in a sense, fully human, to be, all that they can be, that wildcrafting and going out into into the wild and working with the plants there and and eating and gathering herbs is something that's a really basic, I might almost call it a basic right for humans, that that this opportunity is available for children and adults as well, that they people should be out in the wild and gathering things is something that's deep in our genetic heritage and I think that there's that it's a lack, that it's, it leads to a little bit of a hunger.
People that aren't, we talk talk about nature deficit disorder. People that don't spend enough time in nature get a little squirrelly. They can't really be as fully mentally healthy. I mean this is really being broad and there's always exceptions, but people need to be in nature and what a great way to do it.
So what we need as a permaculturist, I know that we can meet all human needs, even with today's population, not infinitely, but even with today's population, we could meet our food and our necessary natural resource needs on half of our land base we're currently using and we could let half of our farmlands and half of our forests and half of our prairies and grazing lands etcetera, go back to really being wild and we would work with it, co create with it, and there'll be a lot more stuff out there, Wildcraft, than there is today.
And if everybody did it sustainably, there would be enough for everybody to go out there and get something and and and share in that experience.
So that's my I guess that's part of my goal in life is to for humans to take up a lot less of the landscape so that we have landscape that to roam around in and wild craft and experience wild nature on its own.
That's awesome. I couldn't have said it better myself.
So, are you out in you're not at Twist Bend anymore. Right?
You're you're out there in eastern I'm in Kanaskit, Okanagan Valley now.
Okay. Ten inch rainfall zone. Okay. Okay. Sagebrush. But of course from here I can drive into the mountains.
But one more thing, I know we must be running low on time, but there is one thing I thought I'd like to talk a little bit more about and that is this the topic of gatherings, herbal gatherings.
And I know we wanted to talk about the Northwest Herbal Fair.
That was my next question, getting into the fair. So why don't you tie that in with telling us all about the Northwest Herbal Fair.
Okay. Well, I'll I'll think of some general statements first about I think that just as I say, I think it's a real important for a full human existence or to be that festivals and humans getting together in groups of like minded people for things like herbalists getting together for herbal fairs and permaculturists getting together at permaculture conferences and foresters getting together at forestry things and reggae people getting together. Whatever it is, that getting together with groups of people in a festive atmosphere, with larger groups of people is is just, I think, one of the best experiences of being human.
You know, that camaraderie, that feeling of, of the group, and the joy, and being around a lot of other people that are pretty similar to you and are passionate about the same things, that it really gives you a really good, I might say spiritual input. It really helps raise your spirits. It really is an incredible time together. And so, over the years I've helped put on a lot of different gatherings and I've helped start four different herbal gatherings over the years just to bring people together that are into herbs and beginners and experienced.
Now, so in the past I've annually published a list of all the herb gatherings in the Pacific Northwest that I knew about, which is probably most of them, and sort of compare them a bit like this one has this many people, this one charges this much, etcetera, and how often they happen and what kind of herbals they attract. So I really keep an eye on who's teaching, what are the herbal gatherings in the northwest. And I'd like to mention, just three maybe really right now that are particularly germane, and one is that the Bastyr University in Seattle is having their annual Herb and Food Fair Day, June fourth, a Saturday.
So, anybody that's in the Puget Sound area, that's a and it's free and there's teachings and lots of vendors. So it's it's just a one day thing. So but it's, you know, it's a great thing to go to.
And they do it every year.
So They do it every year. So you can always go Same with you.
Yeah. Changed a bit over the years, but now they may be stable.
Then there's the Brighton Bush Herbal Conference, which is the longest running and probably probably we might say the most famous herbal conference in the US and it attracts two hundred people or so, and it's at the Great Bright Bush Hot Springs in Oregon Cascades.
Wonderful thing. I've been numerous, you know, numbers of times that attracts some of the top herbalists in the country.
But it costs, if you wanted the best, you know, the good lodging in the cabins and eat all their meal tickets and go to their intensive, and you could spend five hundred dollars price tag on that. The third one I'll mention is my very own Northwest Herbal Fair, which, as you mentioned is August nineteenth to twenty first this year. Ours has the the, is large size. It's grassroots. We've been running around a thousand people.
Mhmm. It's very grassroots. It's, and it's very affordable. You know, our early bird price is sixty dollars.
So It's crazy, man. Sixty bucks.
And so and we have more we have more herbalists than any other I think we have a bigger herbal herbalist line of herbalists speaking than any other herb gathering in the country that I'm aware of.
I will. And I only mentioned there, Skeeter that, as far as teachers go, that there are folks listening to this would be familiar with, who who will be this year, Orion Drumm, Cascade Anderson Geller, Heidi Bohan, Timothy Scott, and, as well as Eaglesong and Vince Gardner, Julie Nunn from the forums, as well as from the kids and herbs course on learning herbs, Angie Goodlow.
So there's names, and and and Your very own Rosalie Bill four k.
That was my bill. That bill Rosalie will be there as well teaching as well. And, and, so lots of, familiar faces from Urban Venture will be at this, very inexpensive, awesome weekend gathering.
Yeah.
And I'd Me too.
One of the things I've really worked really hard at over the years is I really like to get the head teachers, the botanical medicine teachers from from the herbal colleges and schools, around the US. And so I've been really fortunate to get many of the top, herbal teachers in the US to come to our grassroots gathering. So we're real grassroots and, we we take a lot of you don't have to be a famous herbalist already to get here and as I say, you don't have to be famous to be good. So we're we take a wide range of herbalists from around the Northwest, but we really go for the top herbalists in the Northwest, which means they'd be some of the top in the U.
S. We fly people in from other parts of the U. S. Occasionally, but we can't fly too many people in long distance and keep our prices low.
So we rely mainly on regional people. But this year we have Roger Wick from the Rocky Mountain School of Herbal Medicine who's a top notch teacher of Chinese Medicine. We got Terry Willard from Alberta from the Wild Rose School of Herbal Medicine. We've got Erich O Schleicher from the Elderberry School of Botanical Medicine and Jenny Perez from Bastyr University and Amanda Howe from Pacific Rim University and Candace Canton from the School of Integrative Herbology in California.
So we have, you know, we really have some of the most advanced teachers you can find as well as just a lot of the grassroots local herbalists that aren't known outside the region. So it's a great place to rub elbows with a lot of herbal people, and, the other big thing about our gathering that is different than a lot of herb gatherings is that besides being a lot of serious education, we're into having a lot of fun too. So we have a lot of bands and and circles and entertainment and theater and there's music around. So there's the there's banners flying and and there's kids running around all over.
You really feel like you're in a festival rather than like some herb conferences are in stuffy motels with square rooms and padded seats. Our stuff is outdoors, and so I I think I'm really quite, jazzed that we provide a real rural herbal experience, rather than an institutional kind of setting.
And it's a new location this year. So don't go to the river farm. You're going to Mount Vernon. And, Right.
Yes. We've changed venues.
And it's a it's a great new venue. I we're we're we were looking for the perfect venue and we were like, wow. This is this is as close one of the closest to a perfect venues I've ever found. I mean, it's got a lake. It's got lots of buildings, a huge kitchen, dining hall, lots of cabins for people that stay in if they want. The only one of the things they don't have is a stage, so we have to create our stage.
But, they it's great facilities, and, so I'm looking forward to You ever hear that local that local Seattle band, Death Cab for Cutie?
Death Cab?
They're called Death Cab for Cutie. It's a Seattle band. Oh, I think they make it to the national level too. But I just thought if someone should have the band named Death Camas for Cutie, you know?
And I thought Oh, okay.
And they could perform live at the at the herbal fair.
So maybe Alright.
Well, we yes. We might come up with a little less macabre titles or whatever, but I get your meaning.
I just said that. I don't know. Sometimes I have those little tangents.
That's great. I know it's hard to find a band that's also herbalists. I don't think we've found any yet. The herbalists are too busy making herb medicine, so we had to bring in, other bands.
Awesome bands too. I saw some, learned a lot, a lot of great bands in the past fairs in back there. You know, also, Skeeter, Friends of the Trees dot net and when folks go there, they can find out about your permaculture classes?
Maybe can they get some of your books and papers that you Yeah.
There's a there's a place in there to, you know, you can buy books.
My website has nothing, to write home about as they say. It's pretty basic and plain and we don't spend a lot of I I wish I could say I spent a lot of time making it better and better and better. I know you put out a fantastic website, but we're we're a little bit further be behind that. But but I must say our Northwest Herbal Fair site looks pretty good.
It's nice.
And yeah. And the, and I'd love to have more people getting into permaculture, so we'll give permaculture a plus.
One of the, it's a discipline of design science in an art form, you might say, to live sustainably with the Earth. How do we design human systems that we can live sustainably with the Earth and the Earth will get better instead of worse. Right now, almost everybody in the world's living a lifestyle on the Earth that they're making the Earth get less good for the future. And so permaculture is about turning that around and all of a sudden creating lifestyles and systems in agriculture etcetera. So things are going to start getting better and better for future generations. So that's the paradigm shift. Instead of how much can we get, it's how much can we give, it isn't how much can we use up this generation, how much can we create for future generations.
So there's a new paradigm that's really starting to move around the world.
Peace instead of war, love instead of hate. There's you know, the world's full of disasters and bad things happening and the media tells us about all of them, but there's a lot of good things happening too and there's a the herbal movement has grown so much since I was a young lad and the organic agriculture and organic food movement has grown so much and natural healing has grown so much and there's there's a there's a lot of positive signs out there. So, I'm hoping that herbalism will become much more of the much bigger part of the healthcare in the U. S. And the future, the new healthcare paradigm taking a much bigger role. And that could be by choice in humans, you know, Americans, us just start saying using more and more herbs because it feels better, they're cheaper, they're more they have less side effects or no side effects. They actually work better than a lot of pharmaceuticals or surgeries etcetera.
But in the future, what if pharmaceutical and the military, I mean, excuse me, the health care industry, if we could call it that today, relies on huge factories that produce big machines, complex pharmaceutical medicines, in locations around the world, but they draw material from around the world and they ship it around the world and it's very high, it's very you might call it delicate infrastructure and that might not always the new paradigm might be that they're not shipping stuff all over the world from big factories that are very complex and in which case herbs will be rather a necessity rather than a choice. So, I think it's good to think ahead and really start learning our herbal medicine today.
I agree.
So again, folks, I encourage you to come on out. Meet Skeeter and myself and a host of other amazing folks, nwerbalfair.com.
Michael Pilarski, it's been an honor. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you, John. Thanks for the opportunity. Good work. You're doing great stuff. Congratulations.
Thank you.
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