Ep 11. Wildly Accessible Food & Medicine: Foraging Edible Weeds & Bush Foods with Pat Collins

​Foraging for edible weeds is an accessible and inclusive healthcare skill. Pat Collins is a highly experienced herbalist, natural health practitioner and bush craftswoman with a passion for sharing her foraging know-how and instilling in people a deep appreciation of edible and medicinal weeds: nature's gifts.
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In this episode:

• How being able to support her children’s health by making at home remedies motivated Pat into studying herbal medicine formally
• Why familiarity with the abundance of edible foods around us - and how to harvest and use them - is so valuable, especially at this time in history
• Why Pat published her book The Wondrous World of Weeds (it wasn’t because writing books pays well!)
• “Once upon a time we were all wise women” – the need to take back our power by reclaiming our knowledge of foraging
• The many uses of Chickweed (Stellaria media) and Paddy’s Lucerne (Sida rhombifolia)
• Weeds grow where the soil is right for them, and will tell you what is wrong with your soil
• Herbs in the time of COVID-19: Some of Pat’s favourite weed allies and ways to use them, to support immune and respiratory health, and to calm our nerves when “it all gets too much”
• Which native Australian bush foods are in season right now, how can to use it – think, lemon myrtle cheesecake and bunya nut curry (!)
• Pat’s views on MLM essential oil companies doTerra and Young Living, concerns about the safety of ingesting essential oils, and more affordable, practitioner grade alternatives to these brands
• The beauty of using whole herbs
• Menopause: How Pat views this powerful life stage, helpful plant allies, organ systems to take extra special care of, and how St John’s Wort helped Pat through her surprisingly tumultuous peri-menopausal years
• “If we as a culture respected our elders, we’d have far fewer problems with menopause”
• The call for wise, old women

Links:

• Pat's Website & Facebook
• High quality, affordable alternatives to MLM essential oil companies:​ New Directions, Sydney Essential Oil Company, Essential Therapeutics
• Funky Forest Apothecary
• Casey's blogs:
  • Chickweed: Medicine & Magic
  • Rock Your Menopause
  • The Call for Wise, Old Women

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