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Ep 11. Wildly Accessible Food & Medicine: Foraging Edible Weeds & Bush Foods with Pat Collins

11/5/2020

 
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Foraging for edible weeds is an accessible and inclusive healthcare practice, and a skill our grandparents and great-grandparents were well acquainted with. It's a way of enjoying nutrient-dense food and land-based medicine that does not require the degree of privilege that buying a $15 superfood smoothie does. Pat Collins is a highly experienced herbalist, natural health practitioner and bush craftswoman with a passion for sharing her foraging know-how and instilling in people a deep appreciation of edible and medicinal weeds: nature's gifts. 
​
​In this episode:
  • How being able to support her children’s health by making at home remedies motivated Pat into studying herbal medicine formally
  • Why familiarity with the abundance of edible foods around us - and how to harvest and use them - is so valuable, especially at this time in history
  • Why Pat published her book The Wondrous World of Weeds (it wasn’t because writing books pays well!)
  • “Once upon a time we were all wise women” – the need to take back our power by reclaiming our knowledge of foraging
  • The many uses of Chickweed (Stellaria media) and Paddy’s Lucerne (Sida rhombifolia)
  • Weeds grow where the soil is right for them, and will tell you what is wrong with your soil
  • Herbs in the time of COVID-19: Some of Pat’s favourite weed allies and ways to use them, to support immune and respiratory health, and to calm our nerves when “it all gets too much”
  • Which native Australian bush foods are in season right now, how can to use it – think, lemon myrtle cheesecake and bunya nut curry (!)
  • Pat’s views on MLM essential oil companies doTerra and Young Living, concerns about the safety of ingesting essential oils, and more affordable, practitioner grade alternatives to these brands
  • The beauty of using whole herbs
  • Menopause: How Pat views this powerful life stage, helpful plant allies (Withania!), organ systems to take extra special care of, and how St John’s Wort helped Pat through her surprisingly tumultuous peri-menopausal years 
  • “If we as a culture respected our elders, we’d have far fewer problems with menopause”
  • The call for wise, old women

Links:
  • Pat's Website & Facebook
  • High quality, affordable alternatives to MLM essential oil companies:​ New Directions, Sydney Essential Oil Company, Essential Therapeutics
  • Funky Forest Apothecary
  • Casey's blogs:
    • Chickweed: Medicine & Magic
    • Rock Your Menopause
    • The Call for Wise, Old Women

About Pat:
​Pat Collins is an experienced herbalist and owner of the Total Health & Education Centre in Muswellbrook, NSW Australia. She grew up in the bush and on dairy farms, and when her children were young she completed her diploma of herbal medicine, the first of many natural health qualifications. She has a passion for teaching - Pat has taught herbal medicine in multiple settings from wise woman gatherings to tertiary level, and she written several books including the latest, The Wondrous World of Weeds, a beautiful full colour book and guide to foraging edible and medicinal weeds in Australia. When she’s not seeing clients she is teaching herbal workshops and bush tucker camps and formulating her own herbal products for clients.
​
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Chickweed Magic & Medicine: Soother of Fires, Maiden Strength, Priestess of Inner Knowing

10/5/2020

 
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Chickweed. Softly spoken, yet with an equanimity as clear and bright as the vast blue autumn sky. Able to distill clamour into calm, she stores her power, waiting patiently for the right time to act. When she does respond, she does so quietly and clearly even in the face of aggression. True to the Maiden archetype, she lives from the heart, un-jaded by the pain and inequity of the world, and feels empowered in her unique strengths and gifts. 

With soft cooling hands she soothes the fire of inflammation and anger. She dissolves long-held cysts, and long-held grudges. She is not afraid to create boundaries to maintain her wellbeing, and bestows the knowing that you can be as gracious when you say no as when you give your agreement. She reminds one to never be cruel, or snap or condemn simply because it would be easier to do so. She restores grace, levity, and peace. ​
It's autumn, and Chickweed (Stellaria media) has been popping up in semi-shaded glades and pockets of dark, rich soil all around the countryside where I live in South-Eastern Queensland. I have been waiting for six months for this delicate little plant to reappear, eager to ask her to lend a soft and soothing hand to the wind-burnt, dry skin and irritating eczema that plagues my family as the weather gets colder and drier.

On a deeper level, I have found that Chickweed has a vast ability to soothe not only physical maladies where inflammation and dryness is involved, but emotional and interpersonal ones. Wherever long-held hot anger is involved, a once vivacious spirit has been desiccated by the whipping winds of unfair judgement, or one has simply lost their way amidst an emotional storm, Chickweed softens hearts and dissolves grudges.

​No sooner had I harvested my first basket of Chickweed that an ongoing family feud came to loggerheads, and I needed her soothing, gentle but firm spirit more than ever. More about that in a bit.


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