From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
Good evening. You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio. I'm John Gallagher. Tonight, we're celebrating the launch of HerbMentor.com, and we are live with herbalist and author, Rosemary Gladstar.
Since nineteen seventy two, Rosemary has been sharing her knowledge of herbs as an educator, activist, and entrepreneur. She is founder of United Plant Savers, cofounder of Sage Mountain, Retreat Center and Native Plant Preserve, Director of the International Herb Symposium, Co director of the New England Women's Herbal Conference, founder and former director of the California School of Herbal Studies, author of many herbal books, including Herbal Healing for Women and Rosemary Glassdoor's Family Herbal. Rosemary is on the web at sagemountain.com. So wow, that was a lot. And so now you can see why it's an honor to have Rosemary with us tonight. So, hi, Rosemary.
Hi, John.
So, you know, aren't the roots of Mountain Rose Herbs in U2?
Well, it was Mountain Rose was a mail order part of my little store in Sonoma County. And when I left California, I was born and raised in Northern California. When I left California and moved to Vermont, which was in nineteen eighty seven, I sold the store to a friend and then two of my students actually bought the mail order part and they ran it as the mail rosemary Cloudstar mail or Rosemary's Garden mail catalog and then after a few years they separated and one branch became Mountain Rose and the other branch became another small mail order catalog called Wild Weeds.
And that's quite it's quite a little history there actually.
Yes. And I visited Mountain Rose Herbs when I was down at the North Ozark Conference last year and I was just blown away by that place.
Of course, what you're seeing there is all the creation of Julie and Sean. When I had it was very small, kind of operated out of my the back storage room of the store.
So that incredible growth was really the stimulus of Julie and Sean, the people who own and steward it now.
Yes. They're really, really nice folks there. So, you know what, my little I can't even tell how many people are listening tonight because I have this little button here where I have where I could update it. It suddenly disappeared from my screen.
But I know we've got hundreds of people on the line tonight. It was up to a few hundred at least when right at the point of five thirty. So I'm sure there's a few folks still filtering in. So I'm going to start asking you some questions here and I have a little discussion.
So, Rosemary, one of the main purposes of, our Herb Mentor site that we're doing is to create a sense of community around people on this path of learning about herbs. And, something I noticed that people get really excited and they have dreams, our members is to, you know, they want to learn and not only learn, they see themselves and they get excited when they have the thought of being able to share their knowledge and passions and experiences with other people in their community. Like, some people are, I wanna sell my salves. Other people wanna be a consultant or maybe they want to be educators.
And so what I was wondering is, you know, what's the what can people do to keep in mind when they're on this path in wanting to bring their gifts and learning this out to the world. And I know we're tying that in with the importance of what I've heard you call community herbalism.
Yes. It's always been the model that I've advocated since the very beginning is the idea of village herbalism or community herbalism where you have like the old model where you had an herbalist in every village and that herbalist was available as a teacher and they made products and they inspired other people and they were there to help in whatever ways they could. And I think that model has been actually successful in this country. We have many models of herbalism.
We have the clinical model which is also very useful and we have the professional model which I think village herbalism is a professional model, but we have that model where people want to take it into the hospital. So there's very many levels, but I think the place that I've really focused my teachings and my vision on is that idea of the village herbalist. And so back to your question is, I mean, I always say the primary thing is first and foremost to follow your heart because I always feel the plants themselves are inspiring and directing us.
Sometimes we think that we discover the plants, but I always feel the plants are who call us home. They kind of discover us and bring us to the work. So that's the first thing is to listen to your passion. I mean that's how it sounds like I've done so much, but basically all I did was listen to the calling and at each step my part and it was to be responsible.
So that's the second thing, if you're thinking about creating a small business and you feel that passion to share the things that you make because they're beautiful and they work well and you want to share them with your community. So the first step is you're listening to that. And then the second thing is you want to be responsible to the dream. And so then you have to be knowledgeable about okay, so what does it take to to make a business and so those steps are necessary as well.
And it's the same thing with teaching, so many people are inspired by what they learn and they want to share it and oftentimes they're intimidated to begin, but I would say, you know, sharing teaching is just sharing. It's sharing the little that you know with people that know a little less.
It's not ever knowing everything. You never know enough. I mean, I think about my God when I was twenty two years old when I offered my first class and I always look around when I'm teaching people and I think I truthfully knew less than anybody in the room because there was much less to know. But at that time it was more than anybody else knew. And so I was humble about it. I went out to just share the things that I was learning.
And your community also tells you when you're ready, like when you put your heart out and you put what you what the gifts that have been given you out to others to share, your community generally will applaud and they step forth and help you become better at what you do.
So I think the thing I always say is first and foremost follow your heart and then be responsible for that. You like, am I making sense about that?
Oh, totally.
Like, you have to you want to jump, but you want to jump with both feet and you want to land. So you want to if you're going to do a business, you want to have a little bit of business knowledge or you work with people who have good business. If you're going to teach, you obviously have to do a lot of preparation work.
And as far as what you can do, my God, the scenario is very large these days, the opportunities because there's been a lot of work done already. So when I think about all going into the beauty parlors and bringing natural cosmetics in, powerful healing work in the beauty parlors and it can be making home medicines, it can be teaching, it can be farming, it can be gardening, it can be working as a teacher at a public school and just introducing children to a way of recognizing plants and the history of plants. So there's so many ways today that we can impact the culture we live in, in the green path.
And even the caller you were talking with earlier from Georgia, she's wanting to know about wildcraft and now she goes out and the field guide or goes on a walk and learns some herbs.
You know, it can be as simple as helping her remember it better by taking out a friend or children or parents or brother, you know, out into a local park and just start teaching or just sharing what she's learning. Yeah.
So that's great. So, you know, because something that kind of confuses people in beginning is that they it seems so overwhelming and they hear or get a book or they read something and they go, wow, this this this is this is so much.
And and then they wonder if, gosh, if I want to get into this, do I need to get a certificate? Do I cook for a certification program? Do I need a license to practice and all this kind of thing? And, I guess I'm wondering your thoughts on that kind of duality between learning these helpful plants that grow in our backyard that we can put in our meals, to that folks who want to take it to a level of, no, this is a professional thing, we need a license.
And then that barrier that some people feel when they're starting to learn and that confusion between the two because I hear some people going, yeah, just go out and pick the dandelions, some other people are like, no, that's going to hurt you.
Yeah. Well, it's all that when you really you're talking all the way from preschool, kindergarten to postgraduate work. There's this huge long path and every herbalist that I know always starts in preschool, you know, Every really excellent herbalist like you look at people like Tierney or Amanda McQuade or David Hoffman like these fabulous herbalists that are here today. I mean, they all started in preschool.
And it doesn't matter your age. I mean, you could start at preschool when you're fifty, but you start learning the basics. You know, you want to you always want to start with this building a strong foundation.
And so the foundation of herbalism is you learn a few plants. It's very and it's usually very joyful. You learn the basic plants that are safe and the plants actually that are still considered to be superior, really excellent medicine and food.
And, you know, I would say to my beginner students, you start with ten plants, that's all, ten plants and they need to be plants that grow around you. And then you just you slowly start to use those as food and then for simple home health things.
And so and in truth, the thing that is so marvelous about herbalism is it's actually incredibly easy to learn if you start in the basic way because it's ancient knowledge that's encoded in us. It's not like you're learning something that's really new to the human race. So it's kind of outside the realm of our genetic inheritance. This is stuff that has been passed down for literally sixty thousand maybe a million years. We don't really know. And it's just been passed down in every culture, generally through grandparent, to grandchild and on and on and on. So once you get people just starting to kind of play with the herbs, it can be in the kitchen, it could be in a little apothecary making salves and lip balms.
It's like you just watch these light bulbs start to go off and that's one of the things why I've loved teaching herbalism for this many years is because it's this magical process and it happens, I'd say ninety nine point nine nine percent of the time with people only occasionally do you meet somebody that it doesn't flash, you know, it's like And you think that's really I mean, I just want your thoughts on, you know, on that connection between something that's within us that's not awoken, you know, like it's there, it's within us.
But when you teach people and you see those light bulbs go off, is there something deeper, like something like ancient in our DNA that's like going, oh, yeah, that's right?
It is ancient. You have to remember that we've evolved in relationship to plants. In fact, humans could not be alive if it wasn't for the plants. They're in the bottom of our food chain, whether you're a strict carnivore or strict vegetarian, everything, the very basis is plants all the way from the plaque and up.
And then the air you breathe is plants and the clothes you wear is plants and the skin of the earth mother is covered with plants on every single level, you know, down into the biochemistry of us. We are comprised of plants and our relationship to them. So they and on top of that, they've been part of our tradition. You know, people use them in ceremony, they use them in food, they use them in the apothecaries, they use them in every kind of celebration.
I mean, I can't think of one celebration, whether it's Catholic or pagan or whatever that isn't enriched by a variety of plants.
So and on top of that is over the last thirty five years, I've heard the same story so many times, little tiny variations about people, it doesn't matter if they're older or younger, when they start, you know, they start working with the plants and all of a sudden it's like they're it's like falling down the magic rabbit hole, you know, you all of a sudden they're just completely engrossed in them and you know, they're hit with these amazing memories or feelings or knowledge that, you know, isn't really book learned. And, you know, I as a teacher, I feel one of the most important things is that you feed people information, but the whole point of what you feed them is so it unlocks the key so that their own memories are accessed for them.
It's not so much about teaching people to memorize plans or you run through all the materia medica and the body systems and all the safety things. That's all important information. But the whole point of it is, is that if you do it right, you watch this key get turned. And when that key turns, it opens up these infinite memories. And how do I know that's really real because I see it over and over and over and over and over again.
Do you have a story for us, the student or someone who you've entered that just stands out like some great story?
Okay. So one just popped into my mind is, I have this a very good friend, Amy Goodman, who has worked with me for about fifteen years or maybe thirteen years, but quite a long time.
And she was she owned a beautiful like clothing store. She's a craftswoman and so she works mostly with clothing and she really didn't know that she had this latent relationship with plants and until she started working with them. And so she signed up for one of my programs years ago like maybe an eight month apprentice program.
And she said like after the first weekend, it was like we I send people out to do this like little we do all kinds of things, make products and go over books and all that. But one of the things that I introduce people is to go out and just meditate with the plants and be with the plants, you know, and just see if the plant if you can entice the plants to begin to reveal themselves to you, because we're spending the whole weekend studying about the plants. So will the plants then step forth and do that. So it's a little exercise.
It's not profound or anything. She came back from that with her mouth hanging open and I didn't really know what had happened for a while for her, but then later she told me that she just kind of fell down into that in that rabbit hole where you're going you're accessing time and she had this recall of actually being part of the burning times like being a wise woman in the Middle Ages and one of the village herbalists and being burnt and all those memories just came tumbling out for her. And so she's been studying the herbs like just prolifically now for the last thirteen years and in fact has gone on to start Vermont Herb Camp for Kids and she now teaches children.
She has this very successful Herb Camp that teaches kids all the way from two to the teenage years.
So that's just a little quick story that jumped into my head.
So things have really changed since nineteen seventy two when you started and doing now and how society is I mean just it must be amazing for you the acceptance.
Oh, it's so amazing. Like just the other night, I was invited to this little library that's I mean sort of out in the middle of nowhere. It's one of the little Vermont communities and you drive thirty miles down a dark dirt road and you wonder where the heck you're going and then you end up in this sweet little village and I just thought, you know, I'm going to go do a little free talk at the library and there'll be like ten people and I go in and the library's got like, you know, sixty people all crowded into this little community library. And I laughed just the very same thing, John.
I chuckled and I said, you know, thirty five years ago, you know, if two people showed up for an eight week class, I would be thrilled and I would go down to my little schoolhouse and I would teach eight weeks those two students because you were just happy to share with no matter who showed up, you know, and I always remind people of that today, you know, when they say, oh, my class is really small and I would say, well, you know, first of all, it's really great for the students and second of all, this is how you learn, you know, it's like a gift to you if two people show up and you need to be thankful and those two people will multiply and quadruple.
So, yes, it's changing. It's not just in education, it's with when we first when I first opened my Herb Store, I think the only tinctures that were available were Herb Farm. There wasn't anything else, not none of the products. It was just Herb Farm. Thankfully, they're still there and so are lots of other good products. But there weren't the industry as it's known today was almost non existent.
And I think one of the things I always laugh about, I helped co found traditional medicinal teas and you know it was just That too.
Yes, that too.
It started in my little store Rosemarie Garden.
That's the list.
Sorry, we'll add that to your list of But you know, I was just making teas for my community.
And you know, today, if I decided to start a tea company like that it wouldn't work and this is one thing I felt like when we were talking about going out in the world and doing all that, that first question you asked, One of the things that I always say to my students is, you want to think local these days. It's not like we need more huge companies competing with more huge companies. It's not really a good way to support the herbal community. The better thing to do is to look at doing things locally, doing things within the community, really strengthening the local networks in the same way that the food movement is becoming local issues. We need to do that with herbalism.
So anyway, yes, so even the industry, every aspect of herbalism, it used to be when we would study, it was very easy because there'd be like four herb books and thankfully they were really good herb books. But today, I mean, my library, I think I have four rooms of library of herb books, you know.
It's amazing actually. I'm it's like it's a success story. It's awesome.
That that's, you know, that's my vision too when I'm working between learning herbs and HerbMentor. What I see, like, every time I see a member, like, every time I send out a kit or a game or have a new member sign up, what I see is this like seed in a town somewhere, a community.
Yeah.
It's gonna be out there teaching kids, it's gonna be out, you know, connecting with their local farmers and telling them about things and sharing their gifts. That's exactly it, just trying to help people see that on that local level.
Well, and it's so often today there's this haplessness and hopelessness in people and it's because they're not feeling effective and I have to struggle with that also, but I always come back and it's like a very strong message that comes within me is, You know, you always look in your backyard and if you don't feel you can do something over in Iraq, you can do something that's powerful in your backyard. It might be to plant a garden and feed your community. It might be to join the soup kitchen and put some very good healing herbs and with herbalism, I feel that more than anything. I think that's why the herbal community is so positive.
And generally I would say that most herbalists I meet have this sense of empowerment and it's because we feel like we are changing the world.
It's maybe in a very simple way, but it's in a very profound way. And we've seen the results of that just with our simple small work that we've done here in this country. I mean we've revolutionized in a big sense healthcare and it's just beginning.
So I feel very positive actually.
And in that related to that, what's amazing that you were in touch with as well, as you're going along, you're seeing medicinal herbs get more and more popular, you saw that with all these people taking using these herbs when they're see when they're not your local person going and in touch with the local ecosystem and what's growing there and what's native and what's not and the growth cycle of the different plants. You saw that a lot of bigger companies and all, well, a lot of native plants starting to disappear.
And so when did you kind of start noticing that in relation to your vision to get United Plant Savers going?
Well, it was shortly after I moved out here. When I moved to Vermont, it was in nineteen eighty seven and I was extremely excited. It was in the northern range for a lot of the plants that I've been using in our Materia Medica that were native to the Northeast of the United States. So when I came out here, I had this childlike excitement to find Goldenseal and Ginseng and Black Cohosh and Blue Cohosh and Goldthread and all these plants that are very important in our modern herbal medicine, but don't grow on the West Coast.
And so I spent like my first couple of years with my plant ID books and out in the woods and forests and meadows and I was so disappointed and it didn't click. It just set a little alarm button, but not it wasn't going off strong enough that I noticed anything.
And I just started I talked to other herbalists around that time and just asked if they've noticed that some of their favorite hunting grounds were getting a little depleted or everybody was sort of noticing the same thing, but we weren't really alarmed. And then one time I was in traveling on one of my plant lovers journeys And I think on this particular trip I was in Europe where we always look to Europe and we say, oh, the herbal tradition is really alive and strong. And you can go into a pharmaceutical drugstore and there's all these herbal products and drug products and homeopathy and everything's altogether.
But I noticed when I'm traveling there and I've traveled extensively throughout Western Europe anyway, is there is very, you know, the herbal tradition may be very strong, but the plants that the tradition are based on are in demise, you know, and the only place you really find very many of these plants is in protected areas like parks or high up in the Alps. So I had come home from one of those trips and I was just longing for the wild messiness of our big tracts of wild lands here and I was standing out looking out over the hundreds of acres of wilderness that surround me and it just hit me.
It just hit me like a force. It took me down to my knees and I thought this is why so many thousands of people have been called to herbalism right now. It's not so much about us and our health as it is about the gardens are in danger, you know. The plants themselves need help and, you know, herbalism and wildcrafting is the bottom reason why these plants are in demise.
I mean, we've made an impact, but it's hardly like urban sprawl or you know habitat destruction or poor logging practices. We're at the bottom of the line, but we can make a difference because we love these plants with all our heart and soul. And when you love something, you'll fight for it, you'll stand up for it, you know, you'll give your life for it. And so it sort of began as a really simple little project.
I thought, oh, well, I'll just plant some of these plants in my woodlands. I had no clue what I was doing. I just, you know, I was like Johnny Ginseng Seed or something, I'll go and plant these plants up there in the woodlands and see how they do and start to restore the native habitats.
And at this point, I wasn't aware of like the native geodes and specific specimens that have to be planted. I was very naive. I'm glad I didn't know any of that because it would have overwhelmed me. I'm glad I was like a child.
I ordered some ginseng and goldenseal and I went out and planted in my woods and started talking to people and really got serious about it. And then in nineteen ninety four at the fourth International Herb Symposium we had a big group of herbalists there. I called a little meeting and I just it was a question. I said, is there a problem?
And If there is a problem, what should we do about it? And of course, you know, everybody it wasn't like I started this movement. What I found out is that everybody was concerned.
Everybody was worried and we just needed to get together and we needed to bring our energies together. And so we formed United Plant Savers at that meeting.
And then the following season, I think a few months later in the fall that was in the spring, we met at another wonderful herb gathering called Green Nations that Pam Montgomery puts on and we got together there as well and we formed a non profit and we've been doing this work non stop and we've made a huge difference because at that point in nineteen ninety four, which was just a drop in the bucket of time ago, there was hardly anything about native medicinal plants in the herbal industry, in the education fields, in the books and in the government. And today, what, how many years ago, it's like fourteen years ago.
It's a huge thing. The government has a whole branch now called the working, the Medicinal Working Group.
We have United Plant Savers which has become a national organization.
We have the industry that's become very involved and we have a lot of marvelous companies that have transited from harvesting at risk native plants and transferred it over to growing organic plants. So it's quite exciting.
That's the whole we wouldn't have done never came out with WildCraft, the board game, if it wasn't for all of the Native United Plant Savers as well because it was a need out of that too. It's not just a game but seeing, you know, it's the whole let's start people out, thinking about, you know, as a goal in sustainable wildcrafting.
That's so wonderful. And you have been so supportive of United Plant Savers. I know that you contribute a substantial amount. I just really thank you for that. And it's a wonderful game. It's just such a great family game.
Thank you. And just so listeners know, on herbmentor dot com in the members area, in the Urban Mentor Radio area, there's a whole interview I do with Betsy Bancroft from United Plant Savers where she really gets into the meat of a lot of the workings of United Plant Savers as well as lots of great tips and things like that on wildcrafting and that's at United you can visit them at unitedplantsavers dot org and they're actually next door to you, aren't they?
Yes, they're right. Well, for about the first maybe nine or ten years, it was in my Sage Mountain office and then Betsy our marvelous office, well they call her the office manager, but she's really a community resource person. She's excellent herbalist and a great office manager, a rare combination. And so she lives right across the field from me and so she has the office in her house now, But it's like coloring distance.
That's great. So we're going to about start the second half here and I just want to remind folks anyone who's kind of listening, kind of started a little late, a couple of things is that, well, you know we're talking with Rosemarie Gladstar. And if you're having trouble with the webcasting, if it's skipping, you can try just calling the number there. We have plenty of lines open there.
And the other thing is hang on to the very, very, very end because we're going to give away a lot of stuff. All right. So, now Rosemarie, I'd like to kind of go towards some of the questions that were emailed into me. And there were a lot of them. So what I did, folks, as I went through and tried to find some themes and, ideas that and then package it together here to kind of maximize our time here since we don't have that much time tonight with you. So, you know, unless you wanna stay to midnight, you know.
That would be fun.
So there are a lot of different experience levels I noticed too that we're emailing in, which is great. And, something that I noticed about seven people actually, when seven people email in a question, I know that's one I should ask. So I'm gonna ask on a cut some different levels composite of the questions here, was a a common one was, there are a lot of people interesting in gardening and were new to herb gardening.
And, they and a lot of people said about five of those people said they had small patches to grow medicinal herbs in and wanted to know, let's say, a few or maybe five, let's say, of herbs that you feel that people should be that ones that maybe they should think about growing if they have a small plot?
Okay. That's great. First of all, I'd like to recommend my favorite gardening book is called Growing one hundred and one Medicinal Plants by Tammy Hartung.
And it's just a great book. It's good for any level. And then the other, it's actually a catalog, a seed catalog, it's Richo Chex from Horizon Herbs.
He has a fabulous seed catalog that we just order because it's like a book for a dollar.
Anyway, and it has tremendous amounts of instructions. And so both of those are really good for people who are either just starting or who are quite knowledgeable about gardening with herbs. So the top five that I would say now we're looking at a huge broad range of habitat right, aren't we in the United States. So like I grew up in a zone eight and here I'm living in a zone three.
So anyway, herbs that when what you plant, you want to be very versatile. You want them to be fragrant and beautiful and used for medicine and food. So I actually would probably concentrate on some of the culinary like thyme, which is a fabulous medicine. It's also an excellent growing herb and here we would just say the common garden thyme, your the vulgaris, just a common one. And it tastes delicious in tea. If you grow lemon thyme, it's one of my favorite teas, just a good beverage tea.
It's very beautiful and it's really hearty. It grows in a zone three and it certainly grows in a zone eight or nine.
So time is really beautiful.
We all need more of it. Tons more time and it also blooms about three fourths of the season and the blooms attract all kinds of native pollinators and honeybees and butterflies and stuff. So, you know, very versatile in the garden. And then echinacea of course, the great herbal diplomat plant, it's just stately and beautiful. I would generally suggest growing the purpurea unless you're already really skilled at growing purpurea and then you can grow the angustifolia, the other variety that's medicinal or one of common varieties are just more challenging to grow. So if you want big success and beautiful flowers, you would grow echinacea. You could just grow echinacea in your garden and you'd have a nice medicinal plant.
You have to wait about three years before you harvest the roots. So every couple of years or every year you plant a nice new crop of it. It's beautiful. The buds, the leaves, the seed pods are all very medicinal.
They're very anti viral, anti microbial. The root of course is medicinal. So that's a good one. And then I would definitely suggest growing yarrow, a very hardy plant. There are many, many different kinds of yarrow, but I would say to grow the white wild yarrow species because you have one of the best medicines for all kinds of things for stopping bleeding, for stomach, for cramps, for colds and flus. If you look in an herb book at the uses of yarrow and it's beautiful, it flowers three fourths of the season it will be in flower.
So, okay. And then if you have a big patch, I I would suggest nettle. You don't want to plant nettle in a small patch. Nettle is my favorite plant as a food, as a medicine.
It's beautiful, excellent for the garden the soil, but you don't plant nettle in a small patch, you have to plant it in a big patch.
Would you be jealous if I told you that we've been like gathering every other day?
I don't even want to hear about it.
We are truly about at least six weeks away from even seeing the dirt. We're having a really big winter. It's beautiful, but you know, I mean, I'm looking outside, you're talking about spring and it looks like December twenty fifth here.
But anyway, so there's yarrow and a lot of the plants that are jumping into my head are the weedy plants, you know, that people usually don't want to plant in their gardens. But what are some other really fabulous one plant that I love to plant in the garden is, plersey root because it's actually an endangered plant, not in the Midwest, but in the New England state. And it's a beautiful, beautiful garden flower, but then it's a very powerful root. So when you plant it, you're planning really good medicine, but you're also helping to reestablish a plant that's becoming very sensitive in some of its native environments.
So that's a really nice herb. And then rosemary, if you can grow rosemary and lavender, those are fabulous.
Yes.
So and on and on and on.
And on and on. So yeah, there's a lot that you can go into Mints, you can get into Comfrey, you can get into Calendula.
Yeah, Calendula is an absolute both of those are really good too. And that's why I would recommend that for those people who wrote those questions to really get Tammy Hartung's book because it's a basic beginner's primer on growing and with enough detail that it really is excellent.
That's a really good one. But yes, Calendula, the plants that jump into my mind are those they're beautiful in the garden, they're versatile, you can use them in food, you can use them as medicine, they're good for the soil and they're good for the native pollinators.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Thanks.
Next, there were several questions about people with different health advice. And so obviously with every individual kid they're very long and so I looked at these and said, well how am I going to present this?
And so what I was wondering and a lot of them were kind of a chronic type of things. You had, bronchitis or you had a chronic bronchitis, another person with an underactive thyroid.
So, you know, I guess I'm wondering more, you know, you can look up different herbs in books and things and all, but you know, what can be confusing to a person is I think or it's lacking, if you don't have if you don't have an herbalist down the street you could be mentored from, is just that underlying like what's that underlying philosophy or approach that you take when looking at or treating chronic issues? Now I'm sure that every person you talk to and give advice for chronic issues, there must be something that's similar in what you tell.
Yes. Well, the first so the first thing I would look at is with common household problems like the everyday run of the mill kind of things that people get like we would say just a minor headache or an upset stomach, a cold, even a flu, if it's not a deadly flu, cuts and scratches and wounds and minor infections and anything that I always use this as a kind of a guideline. Of course, it's not a standard but it gives a sense anything that your granny might have treated at home like a sprained ankle for instance you can generally treat yourself even if you don't know a lot about herbs, if you have good book, you've been researching and you have a good beginning understanding, then you learn the way we all learn, the way everybody learns as you learn by seeing what works and what you know, so that's one of the beginning places that I look at.
The second thing is with chronic imbalances, it's a little more involved because chronic means you've had it for a long time, it generally established in your body, it's also the place where the herbs are the best medicine like natural medicine is your best symptoms, but to resolve the symptoms. And so herbalism and natural therapies are very excellent for chronic problems. And in fact, you can use allopathic medicine, you know, and this is allergy season in a lot of areas, people may you know, and this is allergy season in a lot of areas, people may choose to use over the counter some medication for their itchy eyes and sort of the itchy throat and stuff and it will make those symptoms go away, but it doesn't cure or stabilize the problem.
So that's where natural medicine comes in.
But it's a little more challenging to self treat that unless you have knowledge. It's a little more challenging to look in a book and go, oh, this is how I treat it.
So what I would so I think if I understand what your question is, where I would start with is the foundation, is making differences with the food, like food is our best medicine. It's really the basic of medicine and you can make a huge difference with chronic problems by what you intake on a daily basis.
And so that's one of the simple places to start with and it's not suggesting to people to make radical changes, it's to make sensible changes that are doable.
For an example might be if you have chronic stress, the stress is causing you to lose energy, to get depleted, to not sleep at night, a common place that you could look at is cutting down on caffeine, possibly even eliminating it if you can do that without causing more stress.
It might be eating foods that you know make you feel centered like maybe more protein, good quality protein foods. And then you can add to that by looking in Good Herb books and there's many Good Herb books and they may offer they often do offer a supportive tea, something that builds the overall system.
And so one of the places I mentioned this before that I like to start people with is having a materia medica or a group of herbs of about ten herbs that they work with that are used for all kinds of things. They may not be specific medicine, but they help to reestablish the body's equilibrium or harmony.
For instance, a group of adaptogenic herbs that might be a good place to start with, starting with those herbs that help the body adapt to modern stresses or to these chronic illnesses. Is that helpful at all?
That's very helpful because, I just wanted to relate that with the fact of what's so beautiful about your approach when I because your family herbal book, I mean, that's just like a it's the one that's always out on the kitchen table. Oh, happy to hear that.
And what I really love is, I love the, what do they call this secondary title? Byline? I don't know.
Under Family Irvin, it says, A Guide to Living Life with Energy, Health and Vitality.
And so you have it's a guide, to bring I think for folks with chronic situations to help to turn that around.
Yeah. Well, you know, I think that's one of the problems with our modern approach to health is we look at it through disease. You know, we're, We look at it through lack of health rather than being healthy is not just not being sick, it's something else entirely. And people have transferred that into herbalism and it makes me very nervous because herbalism is not just about taking plants when you're sick, it's a way of life, it's about maintaining a healthy way of living. And so I was trying to just turn that a little bit around so people would use herbs more of the way they were meant to be, you know, like as your teas, as your tonics.
And yes, they're absolutely and building balance, and enjoying life more.
So I did try and building balance and enjoying life more. So I did try to do that in that book and thank you for noticing that.
Yeah.
It's a it's a, you have to read through it to get that thread, you know, to really see that there's an overall, it's not just random recipes My figure is gonna be my last herb book, and I wanted to try to get as much into it as I could.
It's like every it's beautiful to look. I love the pictures, and oh, gosh. Fine.
Yeah. Because I'm also the I've been a graphic artist for a long time.
So I Oh, great. So I look at it and go, this is the best laid out urban book I've ever seen?
Yes.
They did such a nice job.
Yes. It's a wonderful small company actually that used to be in Vermont. They're right over the border now, but they were lovely people to work with.
Yes.
So, thank you for that answering that because I really wanted to get have folks hear that whole that transition from looking at herbs as drugs to looking at herbs as helpers, allies and plants that you have relationships with because it really is about the relationship.
So it's, Annette, thank you. And so, there was a person who had acute situation and my heart went out to her, Sarah, because she has I have two little ones.
And so she has one that's cutting his molars this week and really crabby.
And indeed you have so we're talking an acute REM, you know, some for the city for a child, to help him calm him down.
So anything that's Oh, yes.
Well, the very first thing I would do is I would take, spilanthes.
It's my favorite herb for pain in the mouth.
And I take spilanthes and you held a little probably two years old, this little baby is somewhere around that age. You need to dilute the spilanthes, it comes in a tincture. You want to dilute it so that when you rub it on your own gums, it's tingly but not painful, because your gums are going to be much tougher than a baby's gums. So I just rub it, I dilute it maybe a quarter teaspoon of the tincture to a teaspoon of water and then I rub it on my own gum to make sure that it tingles.
You don't want it not to tingle, but you don't want it to be painful. And then just rub it all over that baby's gum and you can also make a tea and put it in a refrigerator and take a cloth and soak that cloth in that Spilanthes and let the baby chew on that. That's another good way so that the baby is just gnawing on it. And then the other thing that I'd like to do is to give it's an old formula that came actually from back in the eclectic days and Doctor.
Kloss' book from Back to Eden, the Catnip Tea. I usually make a little catnip tea and give that to the child and if the baby is nursing, the momma drinks a lot of it and it will go right through her milk and the baby will get it. And if the baby is really fussy and cutting a fever and not sleeping well, you give it a nice warm catnip enema and it just works like a miracle. It will help that baby relax and takes the edge off of the pain.
Another old remedy is clove and of course you never put clove oil directly on the teeth because of the baby's teeth because it will just burn them. But you can do the same thing, you could take clove oil and you dilute it, you could put a little bit with the Spilanthes or you can dilute it in a little water and you rub it on your own gums to make sure that it tingles but doesn't burn and then it's an analgesic, both phyllantes and clove are analgesics, but I have to say once I discovered phyllantes for the teeth, it's like a miracle worker.
It's so good.
You know another amazing one I was, you might like this story.
A friend of mine, he's passed away a couple years ago, at an old age.
He he grew up hidden from the, Indian schools on on Pine Ridge Reservation and his grandparents. So he knew the names of all the plants, right? But he just called them what his grandparents called them. So the echinacea to him was toothache medicine.
Yeah.
That's what it is. So he introduced that to my friend when their baby was teething and I was trying some root from his yard in South Dakota. Oh my goodness.
Yes. He probably had the angustifolia, it's much more tingly and it grows in that area.
He would have not the purpurea.
But yes, exactly, what's native to where he is?
Yes.
I mean, sit right out of the parched earth there.
Yes, that's it. And all of those have that tingly kind of analgesic properties, echinacea has it too.
So that's what I would recommend.
And then the parents take a lot of catnip and a little valerian, so they're relaxed because it's an edgy time. It's that symbolic, it's both literal, the baby is cutting teeth and then it's also that biting into the world. So it's painful.
Thanks, Eric.
She is like, I'm I'm suffering from a cold too and I'm exhausted. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry.
She needs to have a good friend come over and sit with her baby for the day so she can get a rest.
That's what I'm going to do on Saturday. I'm going to go up to my daughters and babysit my two year old granddaughter so my daughter can get a little rest.
What are you up to these days there? Are you doing a lot of teaching or?
Well, I have a really busy season coming up. Our season starts in May. I hope the snow will be melted and it goes through November and I've got a really super busy I run my apprentice programs and my advanced programs here and generally a bunch of other classes, but I am pretty much slowing down and this will probably be my last year of teaching classes actually. I still do my plant lovers journey as I like to go a couple of times a year.
I do take herbalists and we travel around the world and go to pretty remarkable places. We have a big trip coming up in November to Southeast Asia. We'll go to Cambodia and Malo and Thailand.
We meet with herbalists and we hike in beautiful areas and they're part holiday vacation, part spiritual journey, part herbal educational experience.
They are amazing. I have been doing them for since about nineteen eighty five and I've traveled, hoofed around a lot. I love doing those and I still sponsor the big international Herb Symposium and the Women's Herbal Conference. I just love the networking that goes on with that. But I think in what I look at is in my community now, we not only have an herbalist in every community, we have an herbalist here in Central Vermont on every corner. It's really exciting. We have a herb school here and a free herbal clinic and fabulous teachers and growers and we have a very abundant herbal community and it's a perfect time for me to sort of step out of the inner circle and into the outer circle.
So I can be a voice of support for all the people that are You must have another something up your sleeve then.
You've got an idea brewing there.
Well, you know, I have been wanting to write my herbal novel called Chili Verde and the Garlic Queen. But I'm more interested actually, you know, I've always been a person who's had dreams and visions and then worked hard to make those happen. And I'm in that place where I sort of want to I'm thinking of just like taking my overflowing cup and just sort of emptying it and then turning it upright without filling it and just see what spirit puts into it. So I'm more in this place, I'm almost sixty and I'm more in a place of just wanting to see without having a big agenda or a big plan. I want to create a little mystery.
And so I'm trying not to have a big thought about what I want to do next, like I could think of a zillion things, you're right. I have this sort of perpetual mind.
There's always more, right?
Yes. For a little while, I've been doing that I've been doing this a long time of not just the herbs, but this way of living and I'm thinking that it might be interesting to just kind of plant a garden for a while and see what comes up.
I don't know. It's like a mysterious time for me. I'm very excited about it actually.
Wow. Yet another Saturn return, right?
Yes, maybe that's it. Yes. It happens right now, doesn't it? I'm at fifty nine.
There you go.
I think I've finished. I'm in my second Saturn return.
Thank you for reminding me.
My first Saturn return was a little wow.
Did it involve your children or kids?
No. My first Saturn return, my Herb Store, which was doing fabulously, burnt to the ground. I was run over by a motorcycle doing an Herb Walk and ended up with compound fractures on both legs and in cast for two years. It was like a horrific experience.
I learned a lot though. I learned so much, but I'm really going to pray that doesn't happen this time. I think it's about staying humble. I was feeling like I was on the top of the world, everything was just lying high and I think a lot of it is about staying close to the earth, crawling, being close, being on your belly, close to the earth, smelling the flowers.
The best way to learn is to smell the flowers. I was going to ask you the last question before we wrap it up that now as folks who are listening are on varying degrees of their herbal journey here and in relation to what we've always been talking about, have any words of wisdom that you find yourself giving to many people that you talk to or classes that you give in relation into all of that?
Well, I don't know how wise the words are, but what comes to me when you said that is there, we're all being called to do something very different in this huge herbal community or what I really think our communities, they're intersecting circles and that the best thing that we all can do is remember that it's all part of a great circle. So that there are people who are really called to be clinical herbalists and others who are called to be community herbalists and there's people who want to start big businesses and others who want to do local agriculture.
So long as we each remember to bring integrity to whatever we're being called to, they're not conflicting. It's all part of the big circle and that we don't want to we want to have differences and we want to honor those differences.
We don't all want to be doing the same thing for sure, have the same mindset. That would be freaky and scary.
And so there's a lot of what I see is that the fracturing is beginning and to me that's very sad because if we can't be supportive in the differences, how can the world be. And so it's finding a way to really embrace and to be thoughtful about how we communicate and how we all support one another. I don't say this in a preachy way at all because I have to admit I'm always learning this lesson myself, but it's remembering to listen respectfully and that if somebody is wanting to see, I think what comes up for me is that there is a strong movement to want to legalize herbalism and I'm really that isn't my what I see as my as a good path or the vision because I look at bureaucracy and to me it's like I don't see things that are really coming together and that in fact most of the institutions right now are crumbling.
And so I don't want to model herbalism after things that aren't working. I want to create something that's wholly indifferent and that can withstand the test of time, which the way that we have been doing herbalism for the last thirty five or forty years in this country has been very organic and very grassroots and it's been marvelous and very creative and it's allowed so many different possibilities to emerge from game boards to teaching children to clinical work and hospital work and science and all of it has been accepted.
And when you legalize something and you then put it into straight track of laws and regulations, it doesn't create the freedom that we need for healthcare.
And so but in that, but as part of that I want to say that there is very respectful conversations that can happen and should happen in very respectful ways and people forget to do that. So that's all I want to share is I think that we need to remember that it's not one community, it's many intersecting communities.
It's not one mind, it's many, many minds and one heart and those minds think differently, but the pounding of the heart is the same, it's the rhythm of the earth. And that when we put something into place right now, we have to think about how it's going to affect the seven generations. We really have responsibility to look into the future. And I've heard I've had this discussion with people and they say, well, we can't think about that. We have to think about how it's going to impact us and it's like no, that's really the wrong thinking. We have to think about what our actions are and how they're going to impact the seventh generation as our elders and native people here did.
So I think that it's very we're in a very critical and crucial place in herbalism right now and we've done marvelous in caretaking it to this place. I'm hoping that all the young people, I don't mean age wise young, but all those people who are just stepping into herbalism can really understand the importance of what they put into place.
For me, I think the solution is that herbalism is like it's spiritual work, it's like a religion. People are they should have the right to practice their healthcare choices in the same way that they have freedom of religion. And so I really am into healthcare, Health Freedom Act state by state.
I think that's how we can assure that people not only have the choice to choose the healthcare they want, but practitioners can be protected from being criminally charged.
So anyway, that's as I said I'm not sure that it's words of wisdom, but it's what came to me when you asked.
Right, right. Well, thank you.
Yes, that importance of and then in all of that, if that brings up stuff for people, just remember, stay close to the earth and enhance your relationships as you do with the plants, garden, pick some chickweed, put in your salad, you know, have fun, right?
Yeah. Absolutely. Play the board game.
Exactly. Especially when especially when you have six feet of snow outside. Yeah.
Really.
Not me. I'm out there picking things.
Let's stop rubbing it in.
So before I finish up here, I just want to remind folks to hang on.
Don't hang up after I finish the official call part because I'm going to hit the stop record part and then we're going to do the end of the call, fun. If you didn't think this was fun enough, oh, no.
So I just wanted to, say too I apologize if we didn't get to everyone's questions. There were a lot. And, hey, you know, we've got a very awesome forum on user forum on Herb Mentor and I hope you can take your questions over there. Also reference Rosemary's book, Family Herbal is for a lot of the questions that I saw as well.
And don't forget to visit Rosemary on the web at sagemountain dot com and find out when all those cool symposiums are happening and seeing what's happening there on Sage Mountain. You can see all the various books there and all. And also your home study course. Oh, yeah.
Study course. You're forever encapsulated in a study course.
So that's great. It's an excellent one. I've seen I saw someone else's materials. I want to get it sometimes so I can look through.
And you have an online newsletter there too?
Yes.
On your site and that's great. So and everyone remember to if you can go on and donate to United Plant Saver sometime that would be great and the Herb will love you for it. And, let's see. Oh, yes, because tonight as well as giving away all this stuff, I'm going to give one hundred dollars membership to United Plant Savers in one caller's name, unlucky caller's name as well.
So you can be part of that organization and they send you really nice materials and all. So Rosemarie, I have to say thank you so much for your time. It's just been an honor to meet you and to hear all your wisdom about health and the plants and community herbalism. It's been just a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, really. Thank you for all the good work you're doing and your support of United Plant's favor.
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