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Life, but Make It Herby with Caroline Parker
388 Plays2 days ago
The episode that nearly didn’t happen for reasons almost too embarrassing to share… but what else is the intro for? 🤷♀️
Today we’re hanging out with CAROLINE PARKER ~ The Cottage Herbalist ~ bigtime girl crush and quite possibly the love child of a 1950s rock star and wiccan goddess.
Caroline is an author, speaker, grower, educator, forager, herbalist and award-winning teasmith who is just TOO COOL.
We bask in her garden eating elderflower cookies talking about treat-os, herbal speed dating, what to cook when you CBF cooking, the cuppa that Caroline would serve to power hungry pollies and why she’s not a prepper.
🧙♀️ LINKY POOS
Caroline’s witchy little home on the web
Caroline aka. The Cottage Herbalist on Instagram
Caroline’s book baby ~ The Medicinal Garden
[FILM] The Nettle Dress
***Support Reskillience on Patreon!***
- Make a garden tea
- Make herby sauce
- Make pesto!
- Make herbal infused oils
- Make a garden balm
- Get into the garden!
- Make time for thyme
- Yarrow, yarrow, yarrow
- Make people in power a cup of love
- Garden with others
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Resculions Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
race scallia Hey, this is Katie, and you're tuned into Resculions, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't. I'm gratefully recording in Jara Country, central Victoria, where the skies are blue, the grass is brown, and it is raining cucumbers.
00:00:28
Speaker
Something I try not to say is, it's a bad day. You know, when this or that goes wrong, perhaps you lose your keys, stub your toe, or hit four red traffic lights in a row, and you start believing the world is out to get you. It seems to me as if labeling a day as bad is a surefire way to make it worse.
Journey to Meet Caroline Parker
00:00:47
Speaker
Having said that, on the day I recorded this interview, I was nearly ready to break that rule.
00:00:54
Speaker
It was a beautiful summery morning and I had to drive about an hour to get to my guest. I juggled microphones and cables and computer into the car with zero minutes to spare, according to Google maps, blazing along the one gravel back road that leads in and out of our place. As I rounded a corner, I came face to face with a road grader, a massive yellow machine pushing a wave of dirt towards me, leaving no space to pass.
00:01:21
Speaker
The driver, high up there in his cockpit, was as cold and remote as the moon and just about as likely to change course. So all I could do was chuck the car in reverse and navigate the winding road backwards with a grader chasing me down. I finally tucked into safety and waited for the roadworks to finish, having ended up just a few hundred metres from home and growing later by the minute.
00:01:46
Speaker
I texted my guest who was super chill and told me not to worry, but keeping people waiting is my least favorite activity.
Inspiration from Caroline Parker
00:01:55
Speaker
So when I finally rocked up at the cottage of the cottage herbalist, I was hot, bothered, and apologetic. Caroline Parker is the cottage herbalist, author, speaker, grower, educator, forager, herbalist, and award-winning tea smith who lives in a cool and misty corner of the wombat forest.
00:02:17
Speaker
Like me, she is a fan of black greyhounds and baked treats and was sliding a tray of elderflower and almond cookies into the oven as I arrived. Caroline is just the coolest. She could be the love child of a 1950s rockstar and a Wiccan goddess with her brown bangs, woolen cardies and botanical tattoos. I instantly fell a little bit in love with her.
00:02:41
Speaker
and head over heels for her elderly greyhound Scarlett, who is the spitting image of my old boy Dave. So at this point, you're probably like, Katie, you were a bit late, so what? Your day sounds awesome. Well, the story continues. With stress hormones still coursing through my system and sweat congealing on my brow, I found it difficult to concentrate on setting up the interview. Caroline and I both felt drawn to recording in the garden,
00:03:06
Speaker
but just as I began piling my gear onto the outdoor table the neighbours rotary hoe roared into life and the air filled with the sound of tilling. Yet more time passed as we waited for him to finish and at this point I was suffering major guilts for taking up so much of Caroline's day already.
00:03:25
Speaker
Maybe it was this chain of small stresses that finally broke my judgment because I decided ah to hell with it, let's just get recording even if there's a bit of a ruckus from the neighbour and the passing cars and no I won't bother with an extension cord to plug my laptop into power because surely, surely the battery will go the distance.
Technical Challenges and Solutions
00:03:45
Speaker
It was a stellar interview with Caroline a meandering and emergent list of herbal suggestions that she seemingly conjured up on the spot, ranging from medicinal pesto recipes and herbal salve hacks to the blend of tea she would serve the powers that be to show them some TLC. We talked for so long and it was so lovely, but as we neared the end, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up with that spidey sense that millennials have that their device is going to die. Any minute now I was certain
00:04:18
Speaker
that my laptop was gonna conk out, but I just couldn't break the conversational connection with Caroline to get up and check. And right as we wrapped up talking, I leapt to my feet to press save.
00:04:31
Speaker
And the screen went black. Caroline was calm and supportive and said, Hey, it'll be okay. But after plugging it in inside and reopening the program, all I found were empty audio tracks. I had lost the whole interview. There is no feeling like fucking up that royally in a completely preventable way. And I attempted to keep it together as Caroline consoled me, but inside I was dying and I drove home crying.
00:05:00
Speaker
and fell into George's arms wailing about being a failure that I'll never podcast again blah blah blah. So after my tears dried I was like well I better double check there isn't some other way of retrieving the files. So I hopped on reddit and it took me three seconds to track down a three-step fix and there sitting in a hidden folder was Caroline's conversation that my clever computer had auto saved.
00:05:25
Speaker
And the bad day was suddenly the best day ever, because it was all okay in the end.
Caroline Parker: Herbalist's Journey
00:05:31
Speaker
So there you go. Today you will have the pleasure of hearing from Caroline Parker, the Kody turbulence, because a nerd on the internet had my back.
00:05:39
Speaker
And I'd like to thank the patrons of the podcast too, who also have my back, supporting the show rain, hail, shine, and sensationally unprofessional stuff ups. This episode features road noise, mic noise, and melodious birdsong, which I really hope doesn't distract too much from Caroline's truly delightful shares, which will definitely lift your spirits.
00:06:02
Speaker
Happy holidays if you're holidaying, and simple pleasures to those who are simply plodding along. There's one more episode in this series before I take a little break, and I reckon it'll either be an absolute ripper or mildly awkward, but you just have to come back next Monday to find out for yourself. See you then.
00:06:24
Speaker
We've got tea, we've got biscuits. This is like, yeah, it's lovely. Yeah, I was so excited to come and hang out today. Oh, thank you for asking me. Yeah. I think I've been meaning to for ages. Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I realised the only time we'd met in person was at the Nettle dress screening suit. I need to ask you about that. Briefly. Oh, yeah. I want to, um would I'd like to do a screening. Yeah. You can make Nettle, I love the Nettle suit. That was delicious. That was great. Nell and Miso soup is such a winner.
00:06:54
Speaker
nettle like I love chilled nettle infusion or nettle and savory things, but I actually struggle to dress just drink hot nettle tea. There's something about it. It's so rich. It's almost meaty.
00:07:05
Speaker
If it's fresh, I can do it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dried. It's like, ooh. Strong. It's a meal. It's potent. It's like the Guinness of... Maybe we'll chat about it. Maybe to start with, we can set a bit of a scene so that when the cars drive past and when that beautiful fairy wren sings their lovely song, people can kind of get a visual on where we are through their ears and imagination.
00:07:30
Speaker
Would you like to like describe this beautiful abode and garden? Yeah, welcome to my little miners cottage. We're surrounded on three sides by the Wombat Forest. We're on Jajawarung and Wodawarung country.
00:07:49
Speaker
kind of a bit of a badlands borderland. So it kind of crosses crosses over a lot. I've got a little miners cottage shack and we're on half an acre and we're on the south side of a hill. So I've slowly been learning about the lay of this land and weather plays a lot up here. So we're on the south side of a hill and today we're in the sunshine yeah i can feel it sizzling the back of my neck which i can hear the skin cancer clinic telling me off but i can hear all of my optimal health friends saying that it's great for vitamin d and i'm just gonna go with that even though i'm a delicate ginger it probably needs like three minutes max a day yeah yeah i'm just i've turned into a sunseeker the sun's like precious precious to me now so anytime i can be you'll find me yeah
00:08:45
Speaker
out here in my garden and this little table we're sitting at, it's like a dining table, a morning cup of tea table that I've had too much admin inside. I'll bring it outside the table where I can listen to the bees buzzing and the birds singing. And do you always have a plate of almond cookies by your side for such things? I do like a tree toe.
00:09:13
Speaker
A treat-o? A treat-o. The o makes it extra cute, that's it. It makes it a bit more special and not... I think lots of people think of sweet treats as being naughty but I'm like this is a treat-o and it's so nourishing and... It's just a little bite to make my day a bit more special. But no, not always, but I've usually got a cup of tea. Yeah. Can I get your current naturopathic opinion on treatos, like the bigger picture on treatos? Because I was a heretic naturopath who recommended that people ate ice cream, like the best quality ice cream, or homemade ice cream. And I saw it as not only like an antidote to
00:09:58
Speaker
the insidious diet culture that so many of us swim in and actually stresses us to a point of ill health but also a complete food like egg yolks and milk and yes like energy supporting sugar in the right quantities and whatever other like herbal flourishes were added to the ice cream and people would be like are you serious you want me to eat ice cream I'm like yes I think it'd be great for you because you're probably like too far down the health, like the orthorexic end of the health spectrum. Definitely. You've just nailed it. ah that's that's That's my perspective instead of I think lots of
00:10:35
Speaker
people might see practitioners in our profession and we want people to make all of these changes and we have their best interests at heart but I think most of us are struggling to get through day to day let alone going to see a naturopath who might go okay right we can't do this and can't do that. I think Perhaps, you know, when there's a time and a place where we want to be really pointed in a and our treatment and our support, but we also need to enjoy our life.
Gentle Approaches to Health
00:11:04
Speaker
fan And to me, you know, these little almond cookies are just as as nourishing, like I'm sitting here with a friend in the sunshine.
00:11:14
Speaker
and I don't care how many calories that has or that it has white sugar in there but you know there's eggs in there from my chickens and powdered elderflower from ones I picked last year because now I can use them up because elders flowering again and I think that's much more gentler um and I think trying to incorporate these huge big health changes in a world where we're really kind of struggling is challenging. yeah So it's like I'm here to support people a bit more slowly and a bit more gently. Yeah and so many times I've yet to disprove this working theory
00:11:57
Speaker
that I try and apply it to as many areas of my life as possible. But I don't ever get far if I try and force myself to do anything like white knuckling my way through a diet protocol or even a job that I don't like or a friendship that doesn't feel right. Like I always find that trying to align heart and mind and action.
00:12:17
Speaker
and also come from a gentler space. That works out for me. And there's always like a swing back if I'm putting lots of energy into my willpower and like resistance or rules. I don't know how that works. It's gonna be more sustainable. Yeah. It's like you can swing to that, that extreme of trying to, to be the way, you know, that you think you should, or, you know, someone has told you that is the way you should be, but we're all individual, but you'll,
00:12:46
Speaker
mentally and physically swing back to an equilibrium yeah to balance it out. So ah let's just find the middle way. I actually don't know your health slash herbal story. How did you find your way into the realm of plant medicine?
00:13:02
Speaker
I've got a pretty conventional regular family and the health practitioners in our family are like nurses and physiotherapists. Although my granddad was a physio before it was kind of pretty mainstream. okay I think he came over from Scotland to teach physiotherapy. So a lineage of health, health-adjusted people. But I've always just been a garden fairy.
00:13:25
Speaker
playing in the playing in the garden with like matchbox cars and coming up with you know imaginary worlds. and But how did I get into herbalism? I've always loved tea and I think in my 20s I started getting massages and the lady I was getting massages from did a room of therapy and just all these little tasters were kind of popping up through my life. A pottering kind of gardening family so we were off to garden centers on the weekend. ah Mum wasn't a fan of like bribing us with sweet treats, but she'd bribe us with a packet of seeds. or
00:14:04
Speaker
a seedling and um for some reason I just went straight to the to the herb section yeah and then you know you'd read the back of those and be like mint oh you can drink this as a tea and so I started that way so it's kind of always been there but I didn't realise it until I look back when someone like you asks me that question. I'm always curious because I feel like there are um so many ways into health and herbalism A really major one that I see and I know for myself is you have a health crisis or you feel like shit and so you're leaning on these beautiful kind of folk medicines to help you feel better and then you want to help other people feel better too. And then there are people who are born with some little herbal seed deep inside them and they just sprout kind of naturally.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's like when I think I was in my mid-20s when I decided to study naturopathy. I think I wanted to do Chinese medicine first because I was doing qigong at a local Buddhist temple in your 20s. Yeah, I should say that I was working in a in an organic cafe. And that's a gateway. It's all just kind of seeping in at all these different points in my life and I was doing qigong and then exploring Chinese medicine and getting acupuncture but I think the college wasn't offering the full degree and they're like become a naturopath you can learn about everything. So you've just released your beautiful book.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah. I'd love to know what that process was like of bringing that into being. I tucked myself away for a whole winter and it was a big, a big time. Writing, writing a book, it still feels, I still feel kind of like, oh wow, did that just happen? Is it happening? But I think for me it was once again just sharing the world of herbs just for the everyday kind of person. Like you don't have to become a barefoot hippie and wear patchouli to get into herbal medicine you can still be like a city person you can still have a balcony you can wear shoes and like wearing makeup and fashion and things like that but incorporate this in so it's like a tasty little introduction to the world of herbs it was really challenging to condense like one plant into like three sentences for like what perhaps that plant is useful for
00:16:28
Speaker
very very challenging so I like to think of it now as like a it's like speed dating or it's like a little tasty entree and you kind of get get a tiny little snapshot of what that herb is and you're like oh I might like to go on a second date with that It's this slow slow unraveling, so then you get to go on the journey and you can go off and find some other books and other people who can share that and develop your own little relationship with that yeah that plant.
Connection with Plants
00:17:00
Speaker
Because it includes 40 plants, is that right? Yeah there's, I've forgotten to count how many. Yeah there's around 40 and I tried to make sure that they were herbs that you could pretty readily get seeds or seedlings from. yeah So when I found out that it was definitely happening I did a little brainstorm on my train ride home and then I think I wrote down about 60 herbs off the top of my head and then I'd be like do do some searches like can I find this at a big hardware store? Can I find it at a garden center?
00:17:32
Speaker
So beyond having to distill each of those herbs down to a few sentences for the book, what is the fringier side of your relationship with plants? Like, how do you experience being in the garden or um relating to these green the green community that is all around us right now? What wouldn't you put in a book that, like you say, is for the everyday person? Like, what do you actually feel on the inside when you're talking to you your herbs and out here? Oh, that's it. I talk to them.
00:18:02
Speaker
aha Yeah it's like they just become friends almost. To me they're still a living being and you can access them on all kinds of levels so you could go right this is like you know the way this herb is going to act on a physiological level this is the way it's going to act on an energetic level so you can kind of jump in there wherever you see fit and they're all okay and sometimes you might just start off with a there's this herb for that but then that might lead you into actually it's a lot more complex and in-depth and it's it kind of unravels unravels itself so yeah for me it's probably yeah I talked to my plants. And everything looks really happy what do you think those, does Scarlet need attention? Yeah. Is she okay? Can I go get her? Yeah yeah you can.
00:18:57
Speaker
the joke One does not simply leave a greyhound inside while a podcast conversation is being recorded. This is where Carolyn got up to retrieve Scarlett and install her on a big bed in the sunshine as we continue talking. i have this vision of us in the same way that animals used to be completely disregarded and um we didn't have any empathy for what they were actually experiencing. And I think that we still have such a ah strange kind of um hierarchy of how animals feel and what they feel and who feels what. And, you know, we're happy to ascribe like a lot of our experience to beautiful pups, but not like mollusks or earthworms or I hate that hierarchy. I really do because like we don't know their experience. So obviously like anthropomorphizing is not helpful.
00:19:43
Speaker
But they they're living creatures and they're sacred and so I do feel the same way about plants and obviously we have no idea what what goes on in their trunks and stems and leaves and relationship with the air and I don't know but do you have a feeling around maybe in the future we'll have a lot more concern for plant welfare? I mean we treat them as slaves in industrial agriculture.
00:20:04
Speaker
Yeah, I've been reading lately, was it like the language of trees? The woman who discovered like the mycelium oh yeah network of them communicating with each other. So I think it'll filter its way out into our conventional way of thinking, fingers crossed. And then it's really interesting, last night Leon was chatting to me about plant communication and he's just like, it's not his his his thing, but he goes, well, even David Attenborough knows that plants.
00:20:33
Speaker
communicate with each other and it was something about everything being energy down to you know like that the the ions transferring between a flower and a bee and then the flower somehow switches it what it's putting out to let the bee know that it's had all the pollen so the next bee that comes along knows that that flower hasn't got anything for it I'm not sure if I've paraphrased that correctly but it was along yeah along along those lines and I was like well that's that's a communication that's got like a sentience exactly yeah it's a huge conversation happening so with that in mind I'm just like it's not like I have a conversation with them the way that you and I are but it's more of like a ah feeling
00:21:24
Speaker
of just being still and being with it and just being like soaking up. It's like at the moment I'm looking at that variegated sage and it makes me feel so happy. like The colours, it's yellow and green and it's it's so vibrant and so I just have that try and hold it like an appreciation. Yeah. and I don't know, maybe like an empathy and a loving kindness towards this thing that how its existence makes my life better, whether I use it or not. So, you know, there's plants in my garden that we could ascribe as being medicinal, but I don't necessarily make a medicinal preparation out of them. It's just the fact that it's there sometimes is enough for me. And that's that's not in the book.
00:22:16
Speaker
yeah that's like perhaps that's another book yep yes currently we want that kind of tangible thing to take into our body and maybe feel an effect of but we can evolve medicine to a point where sitting with the plant or being growing it from a seed is also the medicine and we consider that in the same category as a chemical that we you know, intake. Like sitting here and appreciating that is having like an effect on my brain. Like what kind of neurotransmitters and hormones it's releasing into my body. Yeah. Yeah. Without me even imbibing that herb. Yeah. And like how cool is that? It's pretty incredible. Yeah, when my friend and I were running some herb circles, we had this little, it's wild fennel, and we would have the wild fennel. I so need to come along, can we start that again? Yeah, we've let it, it's fallowing at the moment, but maybe in the new year. Everything has a season? Yeah, we'd read the wild fennel ways, and one of them was how our language can help us.
00:23:21
Speaker
You can change our perspective on what a plant, plant, plant. You know when you spend time in Adelaide and you say plant and then it's actually plant and then you seem like a gazer for changing it up. Anyway. But now you're in Castlemane instead of Castlemane. Oh my gosh. And I grew up in Newcastle, so I feel like a big fucking wanker when I say Castlemane, but that's how the locals do. um Anyway, being, ah in our wild fennel ways, we had one that said, um let's use who.
00:23:47
Speaker
when we speak about plants and maybe it feels tokenistic but isn't it different when you say who like who is that or what are they up to rather than it or I know that's that's also how we speak and it's normal but just using that who language around i plan in my garden it's like oh they're it's a being they are a being it's inconvenient to hold that animist style of at least a curiosity because it means your actions and interactions carry a lot more weight and I'm forever spending time letting the bugs run off my salad or out of my elder flowers and
00:24:28
Speaker
people might laugh at that and say just get on with it but I see every little tiny creature as it's its own world and if I was that little creature I would want a moment to scurry off the flower so that I wasn't turned into cordial but at the same time that might be a bloody beautiful way to go.
00:24:44
Speaker
Carolyn, I would love to hear whatever we dream up for your 10 things, whatever comes out of the woodwork for these 10 herbal things, and with respect for a computer battery, which I'm really happy to let kind of dictate yeah yeah the container of this conversation. So why don't we start with your first invitation for someone in the new year?
Herbs in Cooking and Personal Care
00:25:07
Speaker
I'm all about tea, hey? So let's...
00:25:14
Speaker
Maybe just get in the garden and pick something and make a cup of tea out of it. Make a fresh tea? A garden tea. It's a great way to get to know a plant. You don't need special equipment. You don't need special solvents. It's just like water.
00:25:31
Speaker
meat plant sit for a while and then you can drink it and you can taste you can taste it you can smell it what does it look like it's like an invitation it'll bring that analogy back of going on a date with a plant you know it's like that nice little introduction to it how does it how does it feel when it's going down your throat how does it feel in your tummy what does this smell make your brain think of how does it make your heart feel. So perhaps on New Year's Day after you've had your celibritary elderflower champagne or medicinal gin and tonic and the the next morning you know have a refreshing cup of tea it's way more fun than water.
00:26:16
Speaker
Like, I'm so shit at drinking, you know, how many liters of water I'm meant to drink a day. It changes all the time, but um maybe it doesn't. But I'm really bad at that. And something different happens. I can drink pots and pots of tea. So there's my number one tip for New Year's Day to stay hydrated and perhaps counteract all the fun you had the night before. Are there any particular herbs that lend themselves to a garden tea?
00:26:46
Speaker
usually those really nice aromatic ones so perhaps if you don't even have a medicinal garden like I don't even really think of my garden as a medicinal garden it's just a garden and perhaps I'm looking at my plants in a different way But I think a really easy way to start is anything with our mint, mint family. yeah It's a gateway into the world of herbal medicine. yeah I think that's probably the first herbal tea that I drank was mint. So perhaps go from having the mint tea in your cupboard to having like, you know, if you've just got a balcony, you can have a pot of mint. And then some people when they have a garden, they still want the mint in a pot because it can,
00:27:31
Speaker
Go a bit wild and take over where you may not want it, but That's not a problem for me. I don't mind. I'm like take over my garden, please Moving on from tea. It's like what can what other ways can we use it? Like let's make a mint minty salsa verde kind of green sauce to put on our salads or can you can you use it in other ways did you just swagger into point number two or is that a point is that a 1a we'll make that point two yeah yeah yeah go with like herby sources and seasonings so i'm a fan of
00:28:10
Speaker
adding more in at every opportunity so I have some we'll just have like a hypothetical situation of Caroline has some new baby potatoes that we've boiled up for our dinner and growing up we would have just smashed some butter and milk into them um but I'm like okay how can we make that Herbie?
00:28:30
Speaker
So I'm going to like put a dash of olive oil and go out into the garden and look at what is abundant and so you know at the moment might be like some parsley and some mint and some oregano and um chop them up and put them in there, garlic of course, and then pour that over my crushed the potatoes so it's like It's tasty. I'm all about food. I'm always thinking about what my next meal is. And then i' I'm also thinking about yeah how I can make it tastier and value added. Can you say anything geeky about what's in the herbs that makes them awesome to add in?
00:29:10
Speaker
Oh it really depends on the hurt oh yeah um the herb but like if we just look at those kitchen herbs that most people would be familiar with so the the times and the sage and the oregano and the rosemary so they're like what we call aromatic herbs or they've got volatile oils in them and most of those compounds are like, they're anti something. In a good way. Yeah, yeah. The best kind of anti. So like antimicrobial, antibacterial. So just having those in at like ah a daily level has to be a good thing.
00:29:44
Speaker
yeah I always really loved the those traditional food pairings that then made kind of medicinal sense when you pulled back and looked at them through that lens like roast lamb or a fatty cut of meat with a rosemary or something with those volatile oils and communatives and maybe they're stimulating the liver so that you can actually digest the fat so it had this digestive function kind of the traditional pairing also really helped you access the nutrition that would have been in that protein or there's just like this elegant old-school logic in all those condiments and things. Yeah, or they were preservative. Yeah, because we didn't have a fridge to stick things in. Yeah, but the other one that just popped into my hands like horseradish. Yes, you know to cut through that like really heavy fatty Help us digest it. Yeah. Yeah nice
00:30:31
Speaker
and so the herbs that you can make used to make a garden tea you can most certainly add into a salsa verde or some green screen sauce cool it'd be it'll be awesome to take one or two and befriend them in these different ways yes try them out in all the ways yeah so and then moving on from salsa Verde or green sauces would be like the next one would be pesto's So to me they're a seasonal thing. Can we make that number three? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's the difference? Can you? um Distinctify them so for me like a green sauce would be like a
00:31:07
Speaker
like an olive oil base with with herbs, perhaps some vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper. Yeah. However you want to, you can blitz it up or just chop it up, shake it up, dance in the kitchen while you're shaking it. Most important. Yeah. Whereas a pesto, we're kind of adding in some some nuts and some cheese, or you could use nutritional yeast if you're a vegan.
00:31:31
Speaker
ah It's a bit more kind of substantial, a bit more nutritious. It's not just like a condiment, it can be like, it's it's my can't be fucked cooking dinner dinner. Because I can just head out in the garden and whip it all together so it's like seasonal herbs, whatever nuts in the cupboard, olive oil.
00:31:52
Speaker
good old block of cheese. It can be your cheddar, yeah it can be a hard cheese, um olive oil, always garlic and lemon juice or whatever citrus is around and blitz it up. Nice. Stir it over some pasta, chuck in a tin of beans. sorry god and teay grain So sauce, pesto, what are we thinking for number four?
00:32:17
Speaker
Number four, herbal to-do list for 2025. If you're feeling adventurous, lately I've been really enjoying making herbal-infused oils and trying to make them not seem scary. say What is scary about them? Is it the possibility that they'll go bad and you'll die of botulism? Are these topical or internal?
00:32:40
Speaker
topical. Oh yeah, be cool well that's less scary. Yeah, I think some people just are a bit scared of making herbal preparations. I think like a folk way of making it is just basically having some dried herb and oil and letting it sit there for a while. So the dried herb so that it's not full of water and therefore it won't go mouldy. I think we go back to primary school science and it's like oil and water doesn't mix. There's special ways that it can but you know I'm still figuring that out. yeah There's some people that's there that's their and they're really good at that but I've been enjoying making herbal infused oils because I find it really satisfying. I came about it because I've been doing lots of gardening jobs and I wanted to make um some balms for like you know hands that have splinters in them and they're dry or
00:33:34
Speaker
Like this time of year my friends who are massage therapists are booked out because everyone just goes nuts in their gardens and then just go, oh no I can't walk the next day. Because you just get on a roll and you've you've gone too far so I wanted to make a a nice balm for that but to make a balm you need to have an infused yeah oil and it needs to sit for about six weeks usually on that folky kind of method and I'm like no I need to speed that up so I kind of use dried herb freshen it with a little dash of vodka just the best you can like the highest percentage you can get on the shelf when you say freshen it what do you mean um just put a splosh in so the dried herb is like um a wet sand consistency okay
00:34:20
Speaker
top it up with oil and then I put it in my yoghurt maker for a few days. Ah yeah. Like a little bit of heat. Oh and so with your herb material you've chopped that up as finely as possible. yeah Not like powdery because that can be hard to strain but yeah pretty fine. yeah And I mean I haven't tested the the constituents in it but just visually looking at it it's like looks pretty potent so I've been making comfrey oil and yeah because that's a a good one for sore sore muscles and bruises and bumps I'm very uncoordinated so I'm like where did that bruise come from? so Is that the root? Or the leaf or both? um Just for me the leaf at the moment because sometimes when you're using the roots you've got to dig the whole plant up yeah and then you've got to have a new plant or divide it so it's not quite using the whole plant. But yeah, just the leaf yeah is easy. yeah And the ratio of oil to plant matter? I usually try and do like half to three quarters of plant and then fill the rest of the yeah fill the full container up.
00:35:26
Speaker
I feel like that's one, I know I do this myself, but I see other people not putting in enough plant mattering, even, yeah, if they're making an infusion or the potency, getting that potency is kind of important, yeah isn't it? Using enough. Otherwise it's not really going to have an effect. What other oils have your attention at the moment?
00:35:47
Speaker
So i may I've been making one that has like all of the things in one oil because like lots of us don't have the space to have like you know five different oils going on. So I'm trying to think of ways that we can kind of like speed it up and streamline the process. So my garden balm is kind of making use of what's in the garden at the moment. so I've got comfrey for the bruises and the bumps. I've got plantain, ribwort which is good for drawing out splinters and and healing. An interesting one I tucked in is lawn daisy.
00:36:22
Speaker
hello And really good for bruises. The little tiny white. The little tiny white one, yeah. And the lawn's up here. um It's perhaps a not as strong as like Arnica, but um yeah we can use it in a similar way because I'm like, what's in our backyard that we can use? yeah And what else did I put in there? Calendula. It's like a favorite of mine. Beautiful. Yeah. And so I've just made an oil and then sometimes I don't even get around to making a barm because I just forget or get distracted so I just pop it in a little bottle with a dropper ye and post shower have a little massage with that or you know while I'm sitting listening to a podcast or watching a show just give myself a little massage where it's where it hurts before I go to bed and this is I'm gonna be like the devil's advocate or the voice of cynicism but how effective are these things because
00:37:16
Speaker
Sometimes I honestly am just like, I fully believe in this stuff. I've done all the reading. I learned, I went to school and I know how powerful herbs are. And then I catch myself being like, yeah Yeah, I do the same. Or when it works, I'm like, oh my god, that's magic. It worked! Just give your oil to other people and they come back and go, Caroline, that worked really amazingly. true So yeah a friend recently had some small fractures in her ribs and called me up desperate, so that's why I wanted to make one that didn't take six weeks. so I didn't have any on hand and so I managed to
00:37:52
Speaker
Make that up for her and she said she felt better Wow, you know for myself sometimes it could it could just be the massage that's making it better, but that's okay. I don't really mind Okay, do you have an idea for number five Number five. Well, we'd have to say the act of gardening. Getting out in the garden. Get into the garden. Get into the garden. Even if that's just, you know, perhaps you use basil in your cooking or parsley in your cooking and you go to the supermarket and you buy it. It costs 11 trillion dollars. And by the time you get home, it's given up on life. Plus, it's usually probably got way too much packaging.
00:38:36
Speaker
So if you can grow those herbs in a pot at home, you can grow it from seed if you want. No shame if you get it from a seedling. I buy heaps of seedlings. You've saved a lot. yeah And you've got it there in your backyard. And there's nothing more satisfying than kind of just using something that you've watched grow.
00:38:58
Speaker
to you know chopping it up and having it in your dinner and I think that whole process is a medicine to me in itself so you've had some time outside like we are probably a bit too much now but um we've got vitamin D some kind of fresh air hopefully and a moment away from a screen and artificial light and just just being yeah yeah I'm realizing more and more if you're receptive to what the garden or what a single plant in a pot is looking like and therefore telling you gardening is quite easy. like um I mean I know there's higher echelons of of serious elite level gardening but at the same time I just go outside now and it's like what who needs attention and what's happening and I can see where I'm needed and therefore
00:39:55
Speaker
I'm given jobs by the garden and there's like a benevolent dictatorship where the plants are like hey mate like need some water right now I need a bit of a a trellis or like it's kind of here yeah yeah it's I can be in a flow of just responding rather than having to go with an agenda or some kind of head full of book smarts about how that's going to look.
Community and Resilience
00:40:18
Speaker
Or the garden will undo all those book smarts.
00:40:21
Speaker
and that's kind of what I think when people say plants are teachers ah perhaps that's what they mean that's what it means to me it's like I can read it in a book and perhaps theoretically understand it but it's not till you kind of have your hands on a plant or you're in the garden that you can kind of like figure this stuff out properly yeah yeah and that's that's cool you kind of go oh didn't quite turn out the way that I thought and that's been the best teacher for me yeah just chuck stuff in and go oh yeah did that work cool and if it didn't then reassess the situation yeah
00:41:02
Speaker
I'm enjoying your acknowledgement of the slapdash nature of many of your endeavors because I feel the same and then I beat myself up for not being one of those deep divers who wants to get to the bottom of things and know every single speck of detail and information because I don't know I don't really work like that but hearing someone else say it to me I'm like ah but you're cool and you do that so maybe that is okay. yeah Oh, it's like we've only got so much time as well. And I think, you know, I was really lucky to be able to have the time at some point in my life to go and study herbal medicine. But, you know, now I've got a got to do things so I can earn some money and put food on my table or pay for my bills and stuff. So you've just got like...
00:41:45
Speaker
You just can kind of do stuff on the run, so to speak. Dive in and dive out. All right. What's catching your eye for number six? Do you know what's really catching my eye? Like, I haven't really stopped, besides looking at you and the almond biscuits, is I've got a thyme shrub. That is just... It's a mess of flowers, so we'll make thyme for some time.
00:42:14
Speaker
Because I know you love a pun as much as I do. I do indeed. Yeah, it's just a really versatile herb and um people often go, what what's your top five herbs? And it changes for me depending on the season and the mood I'm in or what's kind of going on. but I just keep going back to those lovely aromatic kitchen herbs and time I'll put it in my garden tea it tastes really nice with mint it's really refreshing but for me if I've got a a cold or a cough time is just like a really specific herbal medicine for that like it's one of those anti herbs. Get your lungs in order.
00:42:55
Speaker
Not only having it as a tea for like the kind of kitchen medicine DIY stuff is have a herbal steam inhalation. I think it's been underrated. Like my mum used to come at me with a jar of Vicks. You know, anytime you had any congestion or a cold, you'd be like, I don't want to go to school. And she'd just come at you with the jar of Vicks. You're like, oh, I'm okay. Or or you would you would do it. But she'd put so much in that your eyes were just like watering.
00:43:23
Speaker
and burn but it is really decongestant but you can do the same with those those are aromatic herbs so I got back from a little interstate adventure and was feeling a bit sniffly and so I went actually I'm just gonna do that so I picked picked some thyme and some peppermint and some what else we got sage rosemary crushed them all up poured over some boiling water in a big bowl and made a little herb tent me and the herbs and a dash of salt and just like really breathed breathe that in right to where it needs to be and like how inexpensive and easy is that yeah so make time for time have time growing and then create a steam experience when you're feeling a bit stuffed up or congested and especially chesty yeah a few times a day
00:44:17
Speaker
yeah like we should all take time off when we're not feeling well yeah let our body do what it needs to do instead of trying to soldier on yeah so to me that like it's another another opportunity to just take a moment to to be yeah if you have to make a little steam inhalation like five five minutes yeah it's the act of carving out that time too isn't it that makes a statement it's restful you know you're not you can't be writing an essay or working or figuring out sums or whatever people do. Yeah, I don't know what people do. Who knows? They're such great role models too, in Thinking of Time and Sage and Yarrow and Lavender, they're so hardy.
00:45:09
Speaker
They are resilient to the max. You know, they'll grow in really tough conditions and don't actually require that much from you and give so much to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This corner of your garden really has it going on. It's a bee party. It is. All right. Let us continue. What number are we up to? I think we're up to number seven. Number seven. I think I might just keep going with plants. Do it. Because you said yarrow. That's your prerogative.
00:45:37
Speaker
Yarrow, yarrow, yarrow. I am in love with yarrow. Me too. Like i I can't imagine not having it in my garden. um At the moment it's about to burst into flower but I love its fluffy fronds. You know I kind of love getting my hands in there and feeling that that fluffy. Have a frondle. Have a frondle of the fronds, a fondle of the fronds and yeah you're saying it's really hardy like I think I must have harvested some wild and had them on this table and it's dropped seeds so now I have there's a patch that pops up in in the gravel. Oh my gosh. Leon hates that but I was like don't touch that patch but so far we've just been digging it up and putting it somewhere else and it just takes you can ignore it. Yeah, so Yarrow, I've been using for cuts and overwinter leeches. Yeah, it's a real repellent. Yeah. So Yarrow can kind of help stem bleeding, not like if you've chopped your leg off. You might want to seek a bit more than backyard medicine for that. But for leech bites or you know, you've had a little
00:46:57
Speaker
run in with a the it can kind of slow that bleeding down, plus it's a little bit antiseptic. yeah Scarlet, my greyhound, loves me sticking yarrow on her little paws when she's had a leech on there. because She gets leeched? She gets leeched. We had leeches in a on the other side of our property this winter and she'd come back from going to the bathroom and be laying on bed and next thing there's like a pool of blood and you're like what the hell has she done? It's so dramatic. It is very dramatic, good old leech anticoagulant and so we just chuck a bit of yarrow on there and she's pretty compliant patientess. And Greyhounds have such thin skin, Dave was forever being nicked and shredded. Yeah in summer I've got a little like bush walking
00:47:45
Speaker
bag that I take with me it's got a snake bandage the arrow is probably not going to cut it for that but um I have just some little jar of powder that you can just pop on any little cuts and stuff yeah because sometimes I'll just be walking and a stick attacks me or something It's such a good first aid in that way and so you dry it and powder it and that is a direct sprinkle on the site of the injury. yeah And it's tasty. It is. So like Leon's favourite little you know comfort food is spaghetti bolognese and like I put all the aromatic herbs in there but I've taken to just picking a couple of yarrow fronds and popping them in there because they're really aromatic as well. but yes So I like to think of yeah ways to use herbs besides just herbal preparation. So I was like, yeah, let's chuck this in some pasta and it works. I love it. And tea. So every herbalist will know a staple called yep tea, which is yaru, elderflower and peppermint. And every time I say I think of those guys off Sesame Street, they're like, yep, yep, yep, yep, ye yeah yep, yep, yep, yep.
00:48:52
Speaker
and that's really good. It's tasty, number one. To me it's always about taste and then the like added bonus is that it's great for um cold and flu season but it's also really good for spring hay fever as well.
00:49:07
Speaker
Yeah, true that. yeah And Yarrow, do you ever use it as like a mo mouthwash in that antiseptic? Yep, dried. quality And then you can kind of steep it in a little bit of like vodka and make your own homemade health mouthwash. yeah Yeah, nice. Yeah, it's such a versatile tincture. Yeah, chucks some peppermint in though because that makes it taste better.
00:49:31
Speaker
like yeah yeah she's quite strong yeah in the event of an apocalypse how resilient do you feel in terms of your herbal not only practice but manufacturing and making are there ingredients that you rely on that you'd be worried about getting or are you cool with like you've got kind of most of those parts of the picture covered I reckon it'd be like the solvents beyond water. I mean, even water could be like what kind of apocalypse. Perish the thought. Yeah. But you know, olive oil, like I don't have olives or make olive oil.
00:50:10
Speaker
um I do have a still, I could potentially make it, haven't tried it yet. Like I'm still i'm still learning these these things. I've got herbs in my yard, but do you know what I feel like prepares me the most for potential apocalypse? It's like the the friends and neighbours and community that I have around.
00:50:32
Speaker
Yeah, like I think it's not just like me out for me. It's like I think I'm resilient because of the people around me. So yeah, sorry I'm not going to give you any herbs on that one. It's like my answer is is um is the community.
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah, yes we foster foster community. yeah And like we've had a mini a mini kind of experience of that. like A few years ago, there was like a really nasty storm that came through here. It was actually like cyclonic winds in winter.
00:51:07
Speaker
And we were without power for about a week. took It took days to get some people out of their properties because of trees down and and things like that. And our whole community came together like, you know, there's always people who have like little tiffs and there's chatter and gossip and stuff, but that all fell by the wayside and everyone came together.
00:51:32
Speaker
like with food with resources and that was so so heartening and I think lots of people get disheartened and go oh humanity's doomed and this and that but I'm like actually and when shit hits the fan yeah sure there'll be people out there who are out for themselves but I think in general it was it was just like it was amazing how affirming yeah Yes, the paradoxical rising to the occasion that we see, we feel in ourselves and we see in other people when shit goes down.
00:52:07
Speaker
Another question that just popped into my head, Caroline, is if you had the, I'm not sure if it would be the privilege or the burden of serving cups of tea to a group of elites, politicians, and people who are just generally making unkind and large-scale decisions that are wreaking havoc on our beautiful planet, what cup of tea would you serve them and why? Is it to make them better or get rid of them? Well, that's the thing. Are you going to poison them or are you going to try and soothe their nervous system?
00:52:39
Speaker
ah um I'll give them a cup of love.
00:52:44
Speaker
That's what I'm trying to cultivate is loving kindness towards all beings. It's hard. um So we'll give them a cup of love and that would have my favourite hawthorn berry, hawthorn leaf and flower and berry. And what else do I put in that one? Rose petals, rose hips.
00:53:05
Speaker
maybe a bit of cinnamon. Yeah, that's going to have like a physiological effect on their health, but energetically just open them up to giving and receiving. Love. And I think just the act of having a cup of tea with someone might disarm them as well. Yeah, hopefully literally. Yeah. Yeah. And just see that they're real people. Underneath we're all kind of the same. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you got to scratch pretty deep, but Well, I feel like I wonder about their state of health and therefore they their fitness to make decisions. like They're probably very dysregulated people and you haven't had a protein-rich breakfast and then they're trying to like manage the world without a stable foundation. Yeah, maybe they need some lemon balm. Lemon balm and some poached eggs on gluten-free toast. yeah
00:53:50
Speaker
You could put some lemon balm on your eggs. No, that's going too far. I love that answer. A hearty, loved up cuppa. Yeah. For the people we need to open up a little bit and soften. Okay. Well, that was a slight deviation. Can we just make that like eight and nine? Okay. Eight and nine covered. All right. Cause I'm like, why are we just like going all adventures? We're cooking in the sun as well. Yeah. Let's, let's round out this list.
00:54:19
Speaker
please Oh this is really hard. What do you want to do more of next year? Sharing gardening? Like I want to do more gardening. At the moment I've been doing a couple of gardening jobs for my bread and butter and that's really nice and like I get to lose myself in other people's beautiful gardens and make them tidy which suits a really particular part of my brain that loves, loves like neatness and precision and things like that. I get to do that for other people but I'd like to kind of share that with people so perhaps have people come gardening with me or like teach in the garden. Yeah kind of share, like I kind of don't feel like I'm a teacher, I'm more of a sharer because
00:55:06
Speaker
You know, quite often you'll find yourself in those situations chatting about stuff and someone else has like, you know, throws in their five cents worth and it's really cool. Yeah. You know, it's like a little exchange. Yeah, but I'd like to be in the garden more. It's been a year of the highest highs and the lowest of lows and the garden has been a constant. Like it reminds me that there's always change, that you can't always control everything.
00:55:35
Speaker
and that hands in dirt is like actually the best, I put that as my number one medicine rather than the actual taking of herbs for me personally. um These last few years the the benefit on my mental health and well-being of gardening and farming has just been like that I can't even put it into words. yeah yeah Yeah, I'm still here because of the garden. So besides in the garden, where can people find you in the next little while? Are you running any workshops? Doing any book events? Yeah, I've always got a few little workshops with people that's on, if you look up the Cottage Herbalist. There's a few in like West Gippsland later, early next year.
00:56:25
Speaker
um There's a lot of things because I just went actually I've got something every month until July next year. Nice. Which is cool and then at the moment I'm making my home studio bigger so you can come and hang out with me in my garden and in my space and we can make yummy herby treats and share cups of tea and laughter.
00:56:51
Speaker
That was the cottage herbalist Caroline Parker, whose new book and forthcoming workshops are all linked in the show notes. I'd like to give a couple of shout outs to this brilliant resilience community, the first being to listener Anne Louise, who sent me a super touching message on Instagram about how the podcast has contributed to a more reflective, grounded and hopeful headspace.
00:57:15
Speaker
I really appreciate written feedback because podcasting is kind of like shouting into a black hole with no way of knowing who's listening and what's landing. So Anne-Louise, huge thanks for taking the time to connect. I also received an email from Blake Bowles, who we heard from in episode three of this series, and he had received an anonymous postcard from a resilience listener.
00:57:41
Speaker
which was just so freaking good. I love that these convos are sparking in real life pen and ink connections around the world. And finally, I want to shout out to Susie Muir, who you will know from episode three, and also Alon, who shared a sweet snapshot from her life as she sorted seeds and listened to myself and Kat Lavers shoot the breeze. That was in the last episode. So these small moments really mean so much for me to hear. So please always feel free to drop me a line at katie at katie dot.com.au.
00:58:15
Speaker
or on Instagram at Katie of the Southern World. And if you're feeling extra motivated, you can leave a written review on iTunes, which really lends oomph and discoverability to resilience so that more folks can sort their home saved seeds while imbibing all of these beautiful, inspiring perspectives. Meet you back here next Monday for our season finale. Thank you so much for listening.