Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Coffee blossoms are a brief candle of the coffee tree. They open after the first good rains, bright white, breathing out a perfume that sits somewhere between jasmine, citrus, and honeyed vanilla. Inside those petals are the same energetic signatures that move sap through the plant, guide bees to nectar, …
As a child I never thought of the pomegranate tree as medicine. For me it was play. I would crush the red seeds and paint my lips and cheeks with their juice, pretending I had lipstick and blush. It was silly, but I remember how the color stained my skin …
Horseradish is one of those plants that carries memory in its roots at least it has for me. The ones growing here in my Ecuadorian gardens at home and the Project Site actually came from my old land in Canada. Fourteen years have passed since I left that soil, yet …
Vitamin C is one of those nutrients that has been misunderstood in the modern world. Most people think of it as ascorbic acid or citric acid, but those are only the shell of something much more complex. They are the empty frame of a living compound that nature designed as …
There is something deeply moving about working with plants in their most concentrated form. To distill their essence into a small bottle is like capturing the soul of the garden. Each drop carries not just aroma but the story of the soil, the care of the hands that tended the …
There is a simple pleasure in creating with my hands. Working with the beeswax, the herbs I have grown, and the oils I press or infuse brings me a kind of peace that only nature offers. I grow these plants, I tend them, and then I carry them into the …
I never imagined that I would one day use banana flowers as medicine. But, here in Ecuador, they hang in the garden, bold and purple, their petals opening one by one to reveal tiny hands of bananas inside. They looked more like ornaments than remedies, too grand to be anything …
We have all heard of taking turmeric (curcumin) with black pepper (piperine) to enhance the bioavailability and absorption of curcumin. Piperine, the bioactive compound found in black pepper, has been shown to significantly increase the absorption of curcumin by inhibiting metabolic enzymes that break it down and increasing intestinal permeability. …
Chaga is a medicine of paradox. It hides for decades in the heart of a tree, unseen and unnoticed, and then suddenly bursts outward in a rugged black form that looks more like charred wood than mushroom. It grows slowly, deliberately, intimately intertwined with its host, offering itself as both …
Reishi has always held a certain mystery for me, the kind of presence that feels both ancient and majestic. If Chaga is the king of mushrooms, then surely Reishi is the queen. Her polished, lacquered body glows with a deep red sheen, shaped like a throne or a crown, rooted …