Well, well, well. . . if that weekend wasn’t another knock-em-out-of-the-park whirlwind! We attended both the Vernon Wellness Fair on Saturday and Sunday, as well as put on a concatenated version of my 3-day Make Your Own Trailkit Advanced Foraging Workshop on Monday!
What made the wellness fair successful wasn’t the sales this time ’round. We barely crested our booth deposit. But it was the conversations we were having on both days that was the bonus!
On Saturday, we had three different sets of First Nations people visit our booth and give us a royal thumbs up! Each in their own way told us we were doing a good job, they were in our corner, and to keep it up! The first set saw one lady basically give us a knowledge quiz, including hearing our philosophy on the act of harvesting itself. Once she heard that we insist on teaching the 5% rule, or “honourable harvesting” as it’s taught to Mikmak students at our local college, she was very happy and very satisfied with us!
The second set of visitors made me want to crawl under our table and hide, because apparently, they are considering putting on an event up near Enderby for their band members, where they’d be paying practitioners and vendors to come and both offer and carry out health sessions with their people! She left our table with my business card and said she might be in touch! Remember that my basis is from Scripture. I come to natural health and herbal healing from a position grounded in God’s Word and science, not First Nations tradition. If she actually does reach out to me, that will be very different and I’ll be asking my prayer partners to petition a double portion of wisdom and discernment for me, to effectively offer my services from God’s perspective, to my native brothers and sisters.
The third set to come by loved what we were doing. The grandmother bought one of my Mom’s Little Black Book of Skincare & Makeup books, and the daughter got very excited, sharing that the elders of her people 3.5hrs southwest of us still actively forage for food and medicine and that perhaps they could teach us things! It is rare that we run into First Nations people who either don’t turn up their noses at us or who think they could offer tips.
Many have either not cared in the slightest, or turned their noses up at us, as was the case with a native lady on Sunday who scoffed when I stated that compounds found in plants will do their job no matter who picks them or sells them. She shot back at me as she left the table “what if the soil is different?!” I told her that is a thing but couldn’t elaborate further as she promptly turned her back on me. The best herbs are what grow around your area, because they pull nutrients from the soil where you live, better enabling you to obtain benefit from them. Their medicinal compounds to some extent will be impacted by the soil, but nowhere near as much as the nutrtional content, so your benefit obtained from herbs is akin to what I say about honey. The best honey is local honey to your area. ALL honey has anti-bacterial capabilities, so you won’t hear me pushing imported honey from Hawaii. Instead, you’ll hear me telling you to get it local to where you live. But I couldn’t share any of this as the lady had huffily moved on.
Ashley and I turned to each other wondering if she equally scoffed at a native mother/daughter duo who forage, then create wildcrafted oils, salves, tinctures etc and sell them. They too were at the wellness fair, and the mother is a master herbalist! We were across from each other last year, and got to talk shop with her a little. She was all smiles when we passed each other this weekend. But Ashley and I wonder now if this other lady that scoffed at me, also scoffed at the native master herbalist too. They were selling what they foraged for from their area just as we do from ours.
The prayer group was there again, and we got chatting with a few of the prayer ladies. Because practitioners steeped in the New age, Paganism, wiccan, Eccankar(sp?), crystals, sound bowls, energy healing, etc also attend these fairs, a Christian should only attend if they are comfortable with spiritual warfare. We are intruding on the dark arts space by bringing the light of Christ with us, and there is pushback. Sometimes that pushback is in the physcal realm, other times, it is in the spiritual realm and you need to be able to handle that. Apparently some people who regularly helped with prayer counselling thought they’d be able to handle the wellness fair and found it was a completely different thing, and it is.
One guy showed up with the sole intent to visit every booth and ask them “what about the after life?!” When he asked me, my immediate response was, “Your location in the afterlife will be decided in this life, by making Jesus Christ your Lord and Saviour!” He bought one of our cookie packages and told me to hold onto it till he was ready to leave the fair. He’d pop back around occasionally, having given away yet another walking stick from the Christian Farmer’s Association booth. They share the Gospel with anyone who stops by for a free walking stick. Attached to each stick is a little bag containing a New Testament, a tract, and a gospel bracelet I believe it is. By the end of Sunday, he’d discovered a number of fellow believers running various booths throughout the fair, and had handed out a total of 8 walking sticks! He was having great fun! Initially he didn’t know about the prayer group, so I told him to go say hi, which he eventually did. When he retrieved his cookie package, we found him sharing it with another vendor and he’d later tell us she too was a fellow believer! We joked that we’re taking over!
I don’t know if it’s due to one of the fair organizer’s assistants moving on to plan her own psychic fairs recently or not, but this weekend’s wellness fair seemed to have more evidence/science-based wellness offerings than metaphysical this time. The hallway that is normally overtaken with psychics, maybe had one or two there this year.
It is possible to engage in natural health without inviting trouble from the spirit world at the same time.
It seemed that some believers we ran into this weekend, needed to vent and were so relieved to find a Christian offering natural health! A pharmacy technician at the end of the day, unloaded some of the heart-wrenching scenarios she regularly sees walk through where she works every day. I bolstered her view that many of the conditions people buy medications for, could be dealt with just by a change in one’s average daily diet. Her heart breaks for the kids whose parents start them on prescription drugs so young, for stuff that wholefood as medicine could just as easily deal with.
Speaking of mainstream medicine and young children, we ran into a case of medical kidnapping this weekend as well. A fellow believer with three kids in tow came by our table, with another child at home and a fifth having been recently kidnapped by the medical system right here in BC! I have heard of these stories down in the US in various states, but while I’d heard of unjust, uncalled-for and unnecessary removal of kids by Child and Family Services in the past (at least one of those older stories also happened to a Christian family my parents were pastoring years ago), medical kidnapping was something I’d never as of yet heard of here in Canada. That just changed! If you are a born-again Christian reading this, lift this family up in prayer that God would fight on their behalf against the medical and legal establishment here in BC. This has to be a God thing because our courts are bought and paid for by Big Pharma the last 5 years have shown, as well as by anti-Christian sentiments decades prior have shown.
This mother managed to get herself into our homeschooling workshop on Monday, and she and her kids had a great time! Her second oldest didn’t like me telling her to stay away from the Spurge we found on a walk at the end of the workshop. The child appears to be the type to pick everything, which in this case, could have sent her to hospital too, and I wasn’t going to have that happen on my watch if I could help it! The young one found a rock a bit up from the path, and sat there and sulked for a bit. When it was time to return to the road, she took off ahead of everyone and we briefly thought we’d lost her till she was found at Mom’s car. Whew!
Monday’s workshop went over VERY well! The game I created had some kids baffled. Two eventually figured it out, and others decided to check out the herb movement card deck. I was perfectly ok with that because that deck taught what it was about each herb that was in the trailkit, the seasons they grow in, where they grow, etc.
I saw some flipping through the rule book, and a mother helped them out a bit as well. I was busy teaching the parents while the kids were playing the game, so I couldn’t walk them through it myself. Maybe next time I bring out the game, I can walk them through how to play.
We also had an assortment of colouring pages available, and these activities were engaged in when the kids weren’t checking on their double boilers as various herb packets were being turned into medicinal oils for their trail kits!
During lunch, one of the host kids grilled us on how well we can identify various herbs. When she exhausted another game’s card deck, she ran up to her Mom’s garden and started quizing us there! That was amusing.
The host asked us to set up a small version of our table setup, so we brought a riser and our teas. We were also requested to bring our Curly dock fir cookies. As we ran out of culinary ash the day I baked these, I couldn’t make a very big batch. The host cut them up into squares and everyone was able to have at least one piece. We need to make more culinary ash!!! I have two large tubs of lamb’s quarters dried leaf to burn, and it is a bear to burn! Even with a weed torch! If I owned my own property, I’d ring it with Lamb’s Quarters!!!
Everyone went home with a trailkit minus the leather bag, herb info sheets, and I need to order more info booklets. I thought I had three, but two turned out to be for the equestrian kit which we weren’t making yesterday.
I was later told to charge more, that the value they received drastically outstripped what they’d paid to attend!
We came home tired, but feeling like it had been a really good weekend overall.
Now we dive into our own foraging, starting this coming Thursday. Things are growing now, and what we need right out of the gate for some of the teas on the table is now growing. We have to wait for the chokecherry bushes to leaf out before we can start harvesting their leaves. Normally we wait to gather them at the same time we gather the berries, but not this year. . . We’ll have to start gathering their leaves earlier this year.
Today is Tuesday, but it is my Monday, and tomorrow it is Ashley’s Monday (Wednesday). Days to crash, rest, relax, and recharge ahead of what promises to be a very busy foraging season!
