Book, Fair, and Workshop Update – Biblical Natural Health Coaching

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Time for an update! 2025 continues it’s crazy trajectory and we’ve now hit full throttle between attending fairs, prepping for fairs, foraging to catch up on ingredients we’d run out of, BUT. . . we’re starting to indeed catch up! Which is a good thing as we have Creative Chaos bearing down on us the first full weekend of June!

We’ve been able to make some very good hauls of alfalfa growing wild on a couple private properties this spring. This has allowed us as of this last weekend of May, to get a few teas back out on the table that required alfalfa. We are slowly harvesting chokecherry leaf, and hoping to get some of those teas back out on the table for June 1st at the Rutland Flea Market.

I spent 3 days this past week doing nothing but crush, store, blend and bag a number of teas, and start putting aside stock for Creative Chaos. That effort will continue this week, although this week also includes a few foraging runs as well. We are going to hit a wild zone where we’ve found raspberry growing wild, and we’ve found more desert parsley there too, so that’s our first stop on Monday.

We ran into a trail buddy today at the Rutland Flea Market who put his finger in our faces and told us to get back out there! The trail we often run into him on is one we haven’t actually gotten to yet this year. . . His dog loves us to bits, so it was cool to run into him today.

Ashley is bantering around seeing if she can create a wild spice tea, and one of our ingredients was crushable when we got back home today. If her idea works, it will be in the Rare Tea category because of a couple of the ingredients it would use. No promises, because we aren’t even sure this will work, but if it does, it will be a new tea on the table.

People continue to hint at me writing books about our wild food and medicine escapades. The textbook idea is taking shape, and I’ve decided the herbal compendium, while focused on western herbs that can be found in western grocery stores, gardens or the wilds, will be a bit of a trip through history as we follow herbal medicine as far back as we can. Eastern medicinal traditions won’t be covered, as that is covered plenty in almost all herbal colleges, but the oldest known records of herbs in medicine will geographically travel to the cradle of civilization as it has been called. I am tickled to have come across information that will help us trace medicinal herbal use through history from that far back! Currently, that promises to be a food and medicine list of at least 217 foods, herbs and spices. This is just under half the current number of plants in my nutritional/medicinal wholefood database, but the student will be encouraged to purchase that database to round out the course content.

We delve into the differences between traditional herbalism, clinical herbalism, and western herbalism. The Christian aspiring herbalist will get a rundown on terms they will encounter in the health and wellness space, and the Scriptures to help them deal with that understanding. There is a brief section on the making of various infusions, extractions, salves, and syrups. How and why plants do what they do will be covered from a scientific and Scripture-based perspective.

After the compendium is written, examples of how herbal medicine can replace your local pharmacy will be given. These are examples only, because while some herbs seem to universally benefit everyone, other herbs do something for one and nothing for another. Everyone crows about how useful echinacea is, but it doesn’t do much for me personally, at all! Lavendar is a sedative for many, but it wires my daughter, just as two examples of why the OTC-replacement section is to be taken as example only, once it’s written.

As the lead-up to the compendium is already over 80 pages long, and the compendium itself will be at bare minimum, at least 217 pages (more than likely much larger), and as I have no idea how long the final section with the OTC replacements will be, this “textbook” could end up being three. Couple these with a growing supplemental resources folder, and a reading list to round out the herbalist’s training, the makings of my own herbalism program are staring me in the face. I would just need to build a series of quizes, tests and exams to go with it.

Just today, someone hoped my foraging notebook had more in it than just the basics of how to forage for wild foods. So I may take parts of my “textbook” and build both a “herbs in the Central Okanagan” book, and either share in it or share in yet another book, the experiences we’ve had with using wild herbs as our pharmacy at home.

I’m almost ready to start the herbal compendium portion of my “textbook”. This is being done in down time when not foraging, working on fair prep, etc.

ANNOUNCEMENT TO CENTRAL OKANAGANITES!!!

The Advanced Foraging Workshop: Thistle Dip and Breaded Thistle spears, is coming up June 28th and we have two people already registered! The last day to register is June 7th. The cut-off date is earlier this time, because we have Creative Chaos from the 6th to 8th, then Lumby Days the following weekend, and Schubert Centre the Saturday after that, so we aren’t giving ourselves much time to gather materials, print handouts, etc. So the earlier I know how many I am preparing for, the better.

For those who like to pay in person, come see us at Booth 105 in the Vernon Rec Centre in the hallway between the Auditorium and the gym. We are right beside the entrance to the gym unless they shift us somewhere else between now and then.

We have a spot on a service road picked out for this workshop if it happens in Kelowna, but do not, as yet, have a trail in mind if it happens in Vernon. We need somewhere where both Canada Thistle, and Scotch thistle grow, as those are the two thistles we will use that day.

If you want to catch us in person before Creative Chaos, come to see us at the Rutland Flea Market on June 1st.

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