From Earth Comes Our Nourishment
From sea and soil come our nourishment. Even through a simple walk in the forest or through an urban park, we can study the different plant families around us, and begin to learn about the ecologies we are part of. Even if life is busy, we can make that connection every day, to both wild and cultivated ecosystems.
Why the Forest is Important
With every stand of forest cut down, we lose our ability to regulate ourselves. Nervous systems deregulate, road rage increases, hospitalizations due to trauma and anger increase, cardiovascular fitness of our communities decrease, anxiety, depression, social isolation, and suicide increase. The forest holds us and grounds us and gives us room to breathe. It's not just what's outside of us that's lost. It's what's inside. And what's between us. And what our communities are made of.
Forage Ecology: Oyster Mushrooms
Pleurotus, or oyster mushrooms, are saprotrophic mushrooms that help the forest digest wood. They also absorb compounds from trees that help us with immunity. And they are very tasty!
Oyster mushrooms: Forest medicine and food
Why Oyster Mushrooms?
As saprophytes, they break down dead wood, returning nutrients to the forest. For us, they offer immune support and deep nutritional value. This is nature's reciprocal relationship—their role in the ecosystem mirrors their role in our healing.
Foraging Practice
Learning to identify and harvest wild plants is learning to speak the language of your local ecology. Each plant brings a gift.
Nettles
Nettles stabilize soil, provide food for insects, and shelter for birds. Humans have built a relationship with nettles over thousands of years. They are a great medicine, full of bone building vitamin K, calcium, and iron.
Nettles: Food, medicine, and ecosystem builder
Chickweed
Chickweed grows humbly in many places. And it's very nourishing. This gentle plant appears almost everywhere—in gardens, fields, and roadsides. It teaches us that medicine and nourishment are not rare or exotic, but abundant and accessible.
Chickweed: Humble nutrition, widely available
Peppercress
This delicious mustard green is an abundant and nutritious healing herb. With a peppery bite and deep nutrition, peppercress shows us that the most healing plant medicines can also be culinary delights. Forage it, grow it, cook with it.
Peppercress: Abundant, delicious, healing
Community Supported Agriculture
CSA programs connect us directly to the land and the farmers who tend it. By supporting local agriculture, we strengthen our communities and our resilience. We vote with our food dollars for the kind of world we want to live in.
When we eat from local land, tended by known hands, we participate in the healing of both soil and community.