What’s In The Works – Herbalist At Large

Writing sucks, mostly.

philosophical revamp

I mostly haven’t been up to very much that’s public-facing because of a major problem with my work–i’ve drifted away from my values.

A few weeks ago I posted this instagram story:

I am currently in the process of developing a manifesto and rewriting my website copy in order to align better with these ideals.

And it is exhausting. I don’t like theory. I don’t like writing it, I don’t like reading it–I build my worldview primarily off conversations with the people around me and that’s a-ok with me. However, as the piece I’ve started from scratch five times now states, I’ve gotten to a point where it’s very important to me to actually communicate what I’m about and where I’m coming from.

Teasing new projects

The MOST frustrating part of trying to write a manifesto is that there’s an offering I’ve been developing in secret (with the help of a dear comrade) that I am SO thrilled about; but I feel like I need to keep the project on hold until I have my own issues worked out 🙁 Hopefully, I’ll be able to announce it in the next few weeks.

AAFH waitlist, I guess?

Interest in hardcopies of An Anarchist Free Herbal is ticking up again, aaaand I’m actually out, so I’ve made an appointment at the printer’s and am currently running a waitlist.

…not to mention the current itch.io analytics which make my heart flutter in my ears.

If you want to join the waitlist, just shoot me an email with your address! I should get copies out mid april.

Practitioner workshop

Aaaand since this post seems to be all about projects that feel like they’re in a perpetual state of unfinishedness, I’ve logged a good handful of hours this month working on the practitioner version of the herbal emotional support and regulation workshop.

The pilot session is still well over a year away–not only am I taking my sweet sweet time with it, but I want to open registration at least six months before the first session due to both the time commitment and prerequisites.

While subject to change, my current plans are for a six-week class, with 2hr sessions and 1-2 hours of homework every week. I strongly believe that any radical practice of herbalism HAS to be deeply rooted in personal experience, so some form of prior experience with self-regulated, autonomous herbal/chemical emotional support is required–which is why I want to offer a few sessions of the individual workshop out ahead of time, to help people fulfill that requirement.

The practitioner class will focus a lot more on research and communication skills instead of offering an out-of-the-box framework–I’ll guide participants through building their own materia medica and practicing non-hierarchical consultation.

And I think that’s about it that I’ve been up to. The sun is coming back, things are looking up… and I just have to finish writing this damn essay.

Yeaaaaah…. Hi y’all.

Some variety of catastrophic failure befell my website, ending in me having to reinstall WordPress entirely…and, uh. I never backed up my damn posts. Luckily, this site was pretty new, and the only thing I really lost was my post about Oxymels, which I will recreate at some point.

We’re due for a what’s in the works, though, so what better time to rebuild!

Winter 2022 herbal emotional support & Regulation workshop

As of earlier today, we wrapped the winter session of the herbal emotional support & regulation workshop! It was lovely. I will likely write a reflection post in the coming days.

self-check guide (1.0)

Finally finally finally, I am releasing the self-check guide I’ve been working on since December. Here is the post with a PDF.

I feel the slightest bit conflicted about releasing this piece, honestly. I think it’s better than it used to be, for sure, and enough people have asked me for it that I feel like it’s the right choice to release it instead of sit on it for another few months, but at the same time I worry. Self-policing is an issue I don’t think is taken seriously enough, and I have major concerns about presenting to the world half-cocked practices that give a veneer of mad liberation but fail to actually dismantle the ideas that western psych rests on.

Suffice to say, new and updated versions will be coming.

Summer planning

Extremely excitingly, I will be spending the summer on a breathtaking patch of land in the Appalachian mountains, re-establishing and encouraging native plants (including a breathtaking array of woodland medicinals), and building trails and… well… a whole-ass cabin.

Internet privacy and good sense dictates I not share too much about this project, but I am so, so, so thrilled. I have never tended a garden I knew would still be there in a year, much less potentially lasting for generations, and to do so surrounded by friends (human and otherwise) is the greatest honor I can think of.

A lot of my plans are heavily dependent on site assessments, and considering I’m 2k+ miles away at the moment it’s been difficult. I’ve done quite a lot of research though, and there’s tons more to learn before I return to the holler.

For the cabin we (my compatriots and I) and building, we’ve decided to go UNDERGROUND–this is because 1) There is no flat land that doesn’t flood in the holler and 2) I’m heading up this particular construction project and I would rather dig than fuck with trying to build level above-ground platform. This will be the first permanent structure on the land, and it’ll basically just be a big kitchen–massive stone fireplace included :Hearteyes:. The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House book by Mike Oehler and Chris Royer (link) has been a fascinating starting point. Despite being sexist as fuck and having the worst opinions about carpet on god’s green earth, this book has some really valuable insight about eliminating the drainage problems of underground houses. I’m especially excited about the construction method they suggest, which incorporates terraced gardens and as much grow-able outdoors space as indoor space.

The main goal on the land is forest gardening, but having some easy-to-access more developed space as a nursery and for growing food close to the kitchen will greatly lower the energy needed for long-term occupancy.

Ideally, I’ll be able to finish the cabin at the beginning of fall, in time for fall seed sowing. Even if the terrace gardens aren’t finished, I’ll be getting native ginseng sowed in the forest this fall so-help-me-god in order to repopulate the area that has been wracked from decades of overharvesting. Other exciting plants on the list include wild columbines, maypop and wild yams snaking up the terraces, and wood betony (a hemiparasitic plant) interplanted with the native sedges that are going in as structural support for the terraces and cabin roof.

I FINALLY GOT A DAMN HORI HORI

Is it worth this kind of update? Probably not. But I’ve been wanting a hori hori for months and FINALLY got one, so I wanted to share.

Category: What’s In The Works

What’s In the Works: march 2022