Morgan Sjogren writes about Western lands and water through a lens of history, culture, science, and adventure. She is the author of Path of Light: A Walk Through Colliding Legacies of Glen Canyon (Torrey House Press 2023); 2025 Utah Book Award Winner and Library of Congress "Great Reads from Great Places" selection.

Read her stories in Archaeology Southwest, Arizona Highways, bioGraphic, Fast Company, Reasons to be Cheerful, Runner's World, and Sierra Magazine. Her work has been supported by the 2022 Water Desk Grant for reporting on the Colorado River and a 2024 Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Independent Research and Creative Works Award. She was the 2024 Entrada Institute Writer-in-Residence.

Sjogren shares her Wild Words and explorations on Substack and on Instagram @morgan.sjogren. She is based in Utah's canyon country and migrates seasonally throughout the Southwest.

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

• the importance of the context of the colonial history of the lands of the west when advocating for them

• some resonance I find in Morgan's work and our shared paths being nomadic, living on public land, being a similar age, and pulling together threads that weave culture, ecology and place in our work

• Morgan shares more about her book "Path of Light" and the goal of following Bernheimer's expedition through the desert to better understand his time and place contextualizing it to now.

• We reflect on what has changed with public lands in the west since Morgan wrote 'Path of Light.'

• We discuss issues of the Colorado river from Morgan's perspective, given her time on the ground in the field exploring this issue in her work (This will resonate with folks who are fans of the episode I did with Jeff Wagner of Groundwork 'We all eat the Colorado River'

• The importance of personal connections to landscapes even if our deep heritage is not from those lands, in order to be inspired to protect those places from extraction and privatization for energy industry, even 'green' energy

Links:
Support Francis of Mother Marrow's health journey! Morgan's website

Morgan's substack: Wild Words

Vibrant Earth Seeds : Regionally adapted to the Southwest. Use 'GROUNDSHOTS10' at checkout for 10% off seed orders (your buying seeds also supports the podcast!) Ground Shots Ecologies Substack : Subscribe here Bookshop : recommended books for you (buying here helps support the podcast) Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn website archive and extended shownotes: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Music: original song for this episode! Lucy Wild:  Vocals and lyrics Ted Packard:  Uncle Steve's Acoustic Guitar, Bowed and Plucked Banjo, Semi-Sentient Pedalboard, recording and production in Logic, with gratitude to Luke Kantola  Annika Fae:  lyric and watercolor Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #88 of the Ground Shots Podcast is with Trevor Warmedahl, who tuned in to this conversation from Albania where he was mending from a broken leg.

Trevor Warmedahl is a traveler who spends his time documenting the worlds cheesemaking, dairying, and pastoral traditions. In his work as a researcher and cheesemaker, he explores the intersections between traditional and modern practices, from nomadic herders to innovative cheesemakers on the forefront of artisan cheese. 

Full show notes found here

Links:
Support Francis of Mother Marrow's health journey! Trevor's Substack publication: Milk Trekker Trevor's website where you can find Sour Milk School classes when they are scheduled, and where you can pre-order his new book "Cheese Trekking" : Sour Milk School Vibrant Earth Seeds : Regionally adapted to the Southwest. Use 'GROUNDSHOTS10' at checkout for 10% off seed orders (your buying seeds also supports the podcast!) Ground Shots Ecologies Substack : Subscribe here Bookshop : recommended books for you (buying here helps support the podcast) Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn website archive and extended shownotes: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Music: various field recordings by Trevor in his milk trek travels. Milking and pastoral sounds, Sardinian music. Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

 

full shownotes here

Samantha Zipporah is a midwife, author & educator in service to healing & liberation. Sam's path rises from an ancient lineage of midwives, witches, & wise women with expertise spanning the continuum of birth, sex, & death. She is devoted to breaking the spells of oppression in reproductive & sexual health by connecting people with the innate pleasure, power, & wisdom of the body. Her praxis weaves scientific & soulful inquiry that integrate modern medicine & data with ancestral practices & epistemologies. Sam's most recent publications & offerings center the radical reclamation of contraception & abortion. Her online membership, The Fruit of Knowledge Learning Community, features access to her heart & mind via books, courses, Q&As, curated resources & more.

Sam's website and Fruit of Knowledge Learning Community Article mentioned by Sam: A Place for Herbal Ab0rtion in Clinical Herbalism Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West Natural Liberty by the Sage Femme Collective Vibrant Earth Seeds : Regionally adapted to the Southwest. Use 'GROUNDSHOTS10' at checkout for 10% off seed orders (your buying seeds also supports the podcast!) Ground Shots Substack  Bookshop buy me a book! Bookshop : recommended books for you (buying here helps support the podcast) Amazon wishlist for Kelly's trailer renovation Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast  Music: Mother Marrow Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

See full show notes here

Family loving, community enthusiast Jacquie Hill is a plant person doing planty things on the Western Slope of Colorado. After practicing her blend of story-rich, folk herbal medicine for 10+ years, she took her studies to academia, earning a bachelor's degree in botanical sciences from Bastyr University in 2019. While there she made the most of the opportunities and gleaned from teachers, mentors, and nature taking, every field class offered and immersing herself in the wonders of western Washington. With a deep love of opposing forces, Jacquie keeps one foot in the scientific as well as the nonlinear. Jacquie has a GMP certificate from Herbal Medics which comes in quite handy as the owner and maker at her small batch herbal product company, Of the Hill Botanicals.  In her free time, Jacquie spends her time exposing her children to the magick of the natural world with her husband Allon, contemplating the role of plants as myth keepers, and performing with her puppet troupe, Singing Bone Medicine Show.

Jacquie's instagram: @jacquieofthehill Native American Sacred Trees and Places The Legacy and Misappropriation of Henrietta Lacks Bacon's Rebellion Bastyr University Paonia Apothecary Vibrant Earth Seeds : Regionally adapted to the Southwest. Use 'GROUNDSHOTS10' at checkout for 10% off seed orders (your buying seeds also supports the podcast!) Ground Shots Substack : Subscribe here Bookshop buy me a book! Bookshop : recommended books for you (buying here helps support the podcast) Amazon wishlist for Kelly's airstream trailer renovation Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn website archive and extended shownotes: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Guest Music: Mama Lingua Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #76 is a conversation with Calyx Liddick of Northern Appalachia School in southern Pennsylvania. 

(trigger warning, this episode may contain content that could be triggering to some as we address the history of scientific racism and the eugenics movement)

read full show notes and resources here

Calyx Liddick is a bioregional herbalist, ethnobotanist, holistic nutritionist, wildcrafter, writer of poetry and prose, wildlife tracker, and mother of two. She was born and raised in the mountains of Central Pennsylvania.

     She is an outspoken advocate for accessible education, social and ecological justice, and ethical practice in plant work. As an educator in bioregional herbalism, Calyx is passionate about bridging the gap of perception between the personal body and the ecological body, and illuminating the wisdom of place and the potential of the direct reciprocation of health and wellbeing present in ecological stewardship. She is committed to integrating plantwork as a life way, helping others develop a rooted relationship with the land and its more-than-human community, and healing the damage from extractive and hierarchical relationships between people and plants. In her practice, she integrates the long, rich history of traditional herbalism with modern, scientifically sound research. 

Calyx's website at Northern Appalachia School Calyx's Instagram: @northernappalachiaschool Ground Shots Substack : Subscribe here Bookshop buy me a book! Bookshop : recommended books for you Amazon wishlist for trailer reno Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Guest Music: Bridget Downey and Soren Knudsen  Venmo Bridget Downey : @Bridget-Downey-3 Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

Read extended show notes here

(photo of Sylvia taken by Ricardo Nagaoka, used with permission from photographer. )

Episode #76 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Sylvia Poareo from Connecting Within, out of Ashland, Oregon.

Sylvia Poareo is a gentle Curandera/Consejera (healer/spiritual counselor) whose work is rooted in guiding and supporting each individual in their own liberation within collective healing. Informed by the Chicano experience and growing up as an orphan in SoCal, her life was an initiation into deep trust in and reliance on Spirit/Creator.

Connecting deeply into the heart, to the cosmos and nature as a pathway to healing, she recognizes the profound wisdom, resilience and fortitude we carry in our bones. She supports ancestral remembrance and remembering parts of ourselves, our innate humanity and cultures of origin as a path to truth, healing and wholeness.

(read full bio and show notes through the link above)

Links:

Sylvia's website: Connecting Within

Ground Shots Substack Publication

Bookshop account: buy me a book!

Bookshop account: recommended books for you (adding a backlog of recs soon)

Amazon wishlist for trailer renovation

Laying Groundwork, late summer ecology classes

Venmo to support the podcast: @kelly-moody-6 Guest Music: Tránsito, El Feo, and Medley: Pastures Of Plenty/This Land Is Your Land/Land by Lila Downs Hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

 

Hey ya'll,

This is a quick and dirty solo podcast episode where I update you on some of the things I'm doing this summer including offering in-person ecology immersions in western Colorado on the Grand Mesa.

I give a little overview of some of what we did in my last immersion that was 4 days, focused on riparian ecology.

Talk on travel, loneliness post-pandemic, the grief of ecological destruction, the importance of community around that grief

Some talk on the 'abodes' geologic formation in the region

Human impacts on riparian ecological zones

Support the podcast! A few ways:

Substack : groudshots.substack.com

Patreon : patreon.com/ofsedgeandsalt

Buy me a book on Bookshop

Sign up for an in-person ecology course with me or Nikki Hill (Scholarships available) located on the Grand Mesa in western Colorado

read the entirety of the show notes for this episode here. Episode #73 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Alex Zubia (XeF) out of Fresno, California.

Alex Zubia, who goes by "Xef" is a Chef by trade. Born and raised in Fresno, CA (yokuts Land). Alex attended The California Culinary Academy in San Francisco (Ramaytush Ohlone land) in 2007. His passion for cooking came with his passion for eating. From 2008-2015 he worked at Community Regional Medical Center's Emergency Room as a Patient Liaison. During that time he witnessed people from his community dying from diet related issues. That realization led him to opening his food truck, which  focused on healthier, farm to fork versions of familiar foods. In 2015, Alex moved to Santa Barbara (Chumash Land) to further his skills as a chef. There, he discovered that so much of the beautiful produce he was cooking with came from Fresno. He wondered why he never saw all this produce available in Fresno. Alex moved back to his hometown in 2021 to fight for food justice as a Food Sovereignty Director at Fresno Barrios Unidos. Alex's goal is to bring his community back to eating and cooking their indigenous foods which are so plentiful in the Central Valley.

In this conversation with Alex, we talk about:

• food apartheid (or 'food deserts') in Fresno, California, which is in the Central Valley of California, a place where so much food is grown yet not a lot of local food is available for the folks who live there

• food is medicine, culturally and physically

• Alex's journey doing work with food, cooking in Santa Barbara and Fresno

• the corporate industrial food complex as it intersects capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy

• Alex's work as a patient liaison at the Community Regional Medical Center's Emergency Room and how it changed their perspective and what they observed as harmful aspects of the hospital industrial complex

• The importance of love, community, and good food for good health

• Navigating the nonprofit world when trying to do food justice work

• some raving on TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) Chico and Ali Meders-Knight's model of land tending in California

• regenerative agriculture stems from indigenous practices

• The four R's and more on Transition US (Resist, Repair, Reimagine, Regenerate)

 

Links: Sign up for Summer 2023 field ecology classes in the southern Rockies Late Spring Terratalks Ecology study group, for late April and May

 

Fresno Barrios Unidos Transition US Alex/Xef's Instagram: alexander_fresno Transition US' instagram: transition_us Fresno Barrios Unidos' instagram: fresnosbarriosunidos My Homie's Kitchen instagram: myhomieskitchen Guest Music: "Walk Away" by Ambeeka  

Episode #73 is a solo episode with Kelly Moody, Ground Shots Podcast regular host.

I get into a slew of things on this episode, reflecting on camping near the Mexican border and the implication of borders, water, fire and ecological disturbance, summer field immersion programs I'm doing in Western Colorado this season and more.

A shorter episode with just me and some sweet banjo tune by Mandalin Sattler as background music.

Links for this episode:

Ground Shots Substack publication, subscribe for free

Patreon Support for the Podcast if you want to support that route

Terratalks philosophy and ecology online 3 part class, late Spring Session Waitlist

Field Ecology Programs Western Colorado Spring/Summer 2023 in collaboration with Groundwork, sign up here

Elderberry's Center in Paonia, Colorado, Lisa Ganora's Herbal Education Center

Lisa Ganora's Herbal Constituents Online course, starting at the end of March. Sign up here with my discount code 'KELLY' for 10% off and using it also helps support the Ground Shots Podcast!

Music for this episode by Mandalin Sattler  of Water Daughter  and @mossymandalin on Instagram

Sign up for my spring mini study group starting February 10 (sign ups open for a limited time!) here: Terratalk sessions Episode 72 of the Ground Shots Podcast is with Lisa Ganora, herbalist and plant chemist, out of Paonia, Colorado. Lisa and I got together at her Elderberry's Farm spot, on the edges of Paonia, Colorado's town limits. On a cloudy day with intermittent rain and snow, we sat in her herb lab, drinking hot tea, to do an interview. Lisa Ganora began studying traditional Western herbalism in the '80s. Later, she lived and wildcrafted in the Appalachians where she studied with folk healers and created herbal products to sell as she traveled the festival circuit with her herb booth. After practicing as a community herbalist for a decade, Lisa returned to college and graduated from UNCA summa cum laude with multiple awards in biology and chemistry. After graduation, she focused on studying pharmacognosy and phytochemistry. In addition to directing the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism from 2012-2020 and managing Elderberry's (a Rocky Mountain herbal education center in Paonia, Colorado), Lisa has also served as Adjunct Professor of Pharmacognosy at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and has lectured and taught classes at numerous schools and conferences. She is the author of Herbal Constituents, 2nd Ed., a popular textbook on practical phytochemistry for natural health practitioners, which is used by herbal schools and universities worldwide.

To see more show notes and what we talked about summaried on this episode, go direct to our blog page for the episode, here. 

Links: (for extended links list, go to our episode page, linked above)

Lisa's website for Elderberry's Educational Center

Herbal Constituents website

Instagram for Elderberry's

Support the podcast on Patreon 

Ground Shots Substack Publication

Donate to support this work: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Susan Tweit is a plant biologist with a calling to restore nature and our connection with the community of the land especially close to home. Plants are her people, as she says, fascinated by the myriad ways they weave the world's living communities, forming the green tapestry that covers this planet. Susan began her career as a field ecologist studying sagebrush, grizzly bears and wildfires. She reveled in the work and the time outside in the west's expansive landscapes, but eventually realized she loved the stories in the data more than collecting those data. So, she learned how to tell those stories, not an easy trick for a scientist schooled in dispassionate and impersonal prose.

Susan and I met at the Paonia Books opening event in Paonia, Colorado in late fall 2022. During the event, we ended up getting into a conversation about plants by the hard cider sample table, and decided to try at some point to do an interview for the podcast. I was curious about Susan's work as a writer and botanist, ecology scientist and was excited to dig deeper. We managed to meet up a few weeks later and recorded a conversation in Paonia Books' back room where they hold writing workshops.

She has written a handful of books on a variety of themes. Some of her titles include 'Barren, Wild and Worthless, Living in the Chihuahuan Desert,' 'The Rocky Mountain Garden Guide,' and 'Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying.'

read the blog post for the episode, here Links:

Susan's website

Paonia Books

Support the podcast on Patreon  For one time donations to support this work: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 

 Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Interstitial music: Old Maid's Draw by Riddy Arman Hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #70 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Sarah Galvin of the House of Yore who was a past guest on the podcast. 

direct link to episode on our website

Listen to Episode #54: Sarah Galvin of House of Yore on the need for madness and chaos medicine in our culture here. You might want to pop over and listen to that episode first before this one to get more context for Sarah's work, but you can also listen to this episode standalone.

In this episode of the podcast, Sarah and I talk about:

• mothering in the modern era

• attachment wounds that begin at childbirth and how they are passed down through ancestral trauma lineages

• how changing ancestral traumas that are passed down happens incrementally, and we do the work for the people who come after us

• giving birth in her cabin in Alaska without much assistance

• tracking internal and external landscapes as self-work for healing

• how living in victimhood narratives even if we are victim to things that have happened to us perpetuates trauma and carries those wounds on

• radical self-responsibility and self-accountability as a path to healing

• breastfeeding and birth humor, and more

Links:

Sarah's website: House of Yore Sarah on Instagram: @house.of.yore

Charity of Mother Marrow's GoFundMe

GoFundMe for the podcast and transmission replacement for Kelly's truck

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this work: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 

 Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Interstitial Music: 'New Futures' by Prae Hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

birthday fundraiser for the podcast Episode #89 of the Ground Shots Podcast was recorded in the gallery at Dixza Farm and Rugs in Teotitlan de Valle, Oaxaca Mexico, in early February.

It was recorded with Samuel Bautista Lazo, past podcast guest, and Mandalin Sattler, whose music has been featured on the podcast in the past.

Rock Old Woman

Samuel is Benizaa (Zapotec) and lives Xiguie'a (Teotitlán del Valle), located in the Central Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Samuel, his family and community come from a long line of weavers and farmers who have been tending the same land for thousands of years. This region is considered one of the cradles of civilization. Samuel has a Ph.d. in Sustainable Manufacturing from the University of Liverpool.

Mandalin is an environmentalist focused on regenerative ecological living, direct action activism and community organization working through the lens of restoration, education and design. She enjoys helping communities, individuals, and families connect with the rhythms of Earth through hands-on land stewardship development & resiliency practices. She is a land steward, birth worker, teacher, artist, musician & nomad.

 

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

• culture, impermanence, being food for rock woman, thinking outside of dualities

• cultural contradictions in Mexico and beyond

• what ills us in modern culture: isolation and individualism

• to live you must live in the grief

• how do we trace the threads back in a system that oppresses us and free ourselves from it?

 

Links: Dixza farm and rugs Samuel's instagram Vibrant Earth Seeds : Regionally adapted to the Southwest. Use 'GROUNDSHOTS10' at checkout for 10% off seed orders (your buying seeds also supports the podcast!) Ground Shots Substack : Subscribe here Bookshop buy me a book! Bookshop : recommended books for you (buying here helps support the podcast) Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn website archive and extended shownotes: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Music by: Mandalin Sattler and Samuel Bautista Lazo Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #69 of the Ground Shots Podcast was recorded in southern Oregon this past August among old Juniper trees tucked just below a special Tableland mesa, with Nikki Hill of Walking Roots, and Sigh Moon assisting in the conversation.

Link to our website where you can donate to the podcast, and find the blog post on the podcast episode with photos and bios of Nikki and Sigh Moon as well as a few photos from where we recorded the episode: www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/lithiummine

We talk about:

• What is a tableland or mesa?

• Nikki's intention in doing survey work at Thacker Pass, a place in Nevada slated to become a large lithium mine

• Questioning the sustainability of lithium

• Seeing wild gardens and patterns on the landscape that reflect historical relationships of indigenous peoples and places

• How deserts have been hard for European ancestored folks to conceptualize and how this makes it easy for us to consider it a wasteland to be inverted to perpetuate modern culture

• Considering certain lands sacrifice zones comes from the idea that we are separate from land and that we can actually have an effect

• the effects of private land ownership on the water table and water flows on land

• seeing through a lens of botanical archaeology

• how archaeology is often focused on 'settled' life evidence not nomadic life evidence

• how do we start to re-see why plants are on the landscape in relationship to human historical tending of those plants?

• the misinformed idea that hunter-gatherers (gatherer-hunters) were not sophisticated in their tending

• what is the point in caring about anthropogenic landscapes?

• Nikki's plant survey process at Thacker Pass in Nevada and some of the plants she found like Yampah, Biscuitroots, Mariposa Lilies and more.

 

Links:

Nikki's Website: Walking Roots

Counterpunch article by Nikki: "Botany as Archaeology, to Stop a Lithium Mine'

Nikki's instagram page: walking.roots

Sigh Moon's Instagram page: tenderwildeyes

Sigh Moon's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrmu0A77ja3o8DZ32ttOsIA/videosSave

Thacker Pass Campaign website

'The Ecology of Eden: An Inquiry into the Dream of Paradise and a New Vision of Our Role in Nature' book by Evan Eisenberg, a book I read in college on critical ecology that feels relevant to this episode

"The Void, The Grid & The Sign: Traversing The Great Basin" by William Fox, all about concepts of void and land value in the Great Basin Desert, a fascinating book

"1491" and "1493" by Charles Mann, alternative histories to North and South America mentioning anthropogenic landscapes including 'terra preta' in the Amazon, mentioned on the podcast

Save Oak Flat and the Apache Stronghold Campaign

Angela Moles Ground Shots Podcast interview mentioned on the podcast: Episode #57: Gabe Crawford interviews Angela Moles P.h.D. on the rapid evolutionary responses of plants due to climate change, challenging scientific dogma

Past episodes of the podcast featuring Nikki Hill:

Episode #31: Wild Tending series / Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford on the basics of wild-tending

Episode #33: Wild Tending series / Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford on re-thinking the concept of invasive plants

Episode #59: Is there such a thing as an "Invasive Species"? A conversation with Matt Chew Ph.d. hosted by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford

Music for this episode: Reverie, Spires and The Undergrowth by Juniper Blue This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #68 of the podcast is a conversation with Adam Larue of Sharpening Stone Gathering, out of Grants Pass, Oregon.

visit our blog post on the episode to see a few photos of the land where we interviewed: https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/2022/6/12/episode-68-a-conversation-in-a-camas-meadow-adam-larue

Adam and I recorded this conversation in a Camas meadow adjacent to his land after I taught wild-tending and critical ethnobotany plant plant walks for a week at the Sharpening Stone Earthskills Gathering, which Adam helps run.

In this episode with Adam, we talk about:

• How Adam got the land that he lives on and runs the Sharpening Stone Earthskills Gathering

• Some of the methods and madness of logging in Oregon which happens all around Adam's private inholding near Umpqua National Forest, the herbicide spraying and GMP tree planting replacing forest diversity

• the downfalls of profit-centered thinking vs. ecological centered thinking

• some info about the Sharpening Stone Earthskills Gathering which takes place on the land we do the interview on

• Re-wilding as a hot topic and trend right now

• dancing with modern technology while trying to reconnect to land

Links: For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Interstitial Music: 'I'm Moving to the Mountains' by Adam Larue Theme Music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody Sharpening Stone Gathering on Instagram Becoming Wild on Instagram Sharpening Stone Gathering Adam's Youtube project: 'Becoming Wild'

Direct link to episode with extra photos and Ted's poetry: https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/tedpackard

 

Ted studied History and Anthropology at Christopher Newport University, got a Master's in Teaching, went on the road with the Momentary Prophets band, and then went to study with Alderleaf Wilderness College and Wilderness Awareness School. He taught various program for youth around the greater Seattle area for many years before relocating to Durango, Colorado to dry out, as he says. After some years of a break, Ted just started up a new nature connection program for youth in the Durango community. Ted does lots of things, including various handcrafts, refurbishing guitars and other instruments, music-making, writing, wood-burning and more. As college peers, we spent a lot of time together researching things like mushroom cults, the esoteric origins of Judeo-Christian religion, the anthropology of psychedelics, zen koans, and more. We both have lived in different places since and woven in and out of each others' lives so we spent some time really checking in about how we think about things now vs. when we were radical activist driven neo-pagan coyote-trickster troubadour mind-melters.

 

  In this episode with Ted, we talk about:

• Ted's nature connection mentorship work with youth in Washington and Colorado

• Ted's upbringing in northwestern Virginia

• Our experience in college of community: artists, philosophers, musicians, activists, and neo-pagans and our reflections on that time now

• seasonal ritual as a somatic map

• ways that Ted's anger at an eco-cidal culture has transformed over the years to a yearning for finding points of connection vs. telling someone they are wrong or how to live

• what is a community of mutuality in a broken society that emphasizes hyper-individualism?

• activism can look many ways and can even be in small moments of advocacy

• awareness of the isolation of capitalism is often crippling

• the reality that financial security is generally not available to our generation (millennials)

• Ted's musical projects which include Momentary Prophets from his early 20's, that had a coyote-troubadour element with community driven instigation, as well as his own solo projects

• paying attention to 'nature' bringing you closer to crazy synchronicities that become signposts to keep going

• weaving a web of interrelated ideas and ecologies as a way of being

• trauma, neutrinos, quantum physics intersecting eastern philosophy, bodies as multiplicity, the mycelium nature of everything, music as ecological channeling

  Links: The Emerald Podcast, mentioned on the podcast Daniel Quinn, author we mention on the podcast Mystic Moon of Norfolk, VA, pagan community mentioned Terence McKenna, mentioned on the podcast Mountain Justice: organization dedicated to ending mountain top removal in Appalachia Momentary Prophets on Facebook Momentary Prophets on Bandcamp (Interstitial music featured on the episode) Ted's music on Bandcamp (he is putting out a new album RIGHT NOW, his individual music featured in the intro of this episode) Wilderness Awareness School Living Earth School Sophie Strand Ted's Patreon for his music, art, writing Ted's revived blog of writing (do yourself a favor and read and savor) Ted's Venmo if you'd like to donate to help support his musical projects : @Theodore-Packard Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Music: by Ted Packard and Momentary Prophets This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody and Ted Packard

To access full blog post on the episode, full show notes and a photo diary, click below: https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/dougelliott Doug Elliott is a naturalist, herbalist, storyteller, basket maker, back-country guide, philosopher, and harmonica wizard. For many years made his living as a traveling herbalist, gathering and selling herbs, teas, and remedies. He has spent a great deal of time with traditional country folk and regional indigenous peoples, learning their stories, folklore and traditional ways of relating to the natural world. In recent years he has performed and presented programs at festivals, museums, botanical gardens, nature centers and schools from Canada to the Caribbean. He has been a featured storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival. He has lectured and performed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and conducted workshops for the Smithsonian Institution. He has led ranger training sessions for the National Park Service and guided people on wilderness experiences from down-east Maine to the Florida Everglades. He was named harmonica champion at Fiddler's Grove Festival in Union Grove, N.C. He is the author of five books, many articles in regional and national magazines, has recorded a number of award winning albums of stories and songs, and is occasionally seen on PBS-TV, and the History and National Geographic Channels.

 

  Links: Doug Elliott's Bandcamp page, where you can listen to and download all of his full length albums and story recordings: https://dougelliott.bandcamp.com/ Doug Elliott's website and blog: https://dougelliott.com/ Doug Elliott's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKpxmzq7RqmnGeW2R0UnfpQ Todd Elliott's 'Mushrooms of the Southeast' book mentioned in the podcast

Article on Bessie Jones, whom Doug mentions in a story on the podcast, national treasure and African American singer (also see video alongside others, displayed on blog post page for this episode)

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody and Ted Packard

Episode #65 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Dave Meesters and Janet Kent of the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine out of Madison County, North Carolina.

https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/terrasylvaschool

After trying to get together for a conversation all summer, we finally met up in the early fall at Dave and Janet's herbalism school classroom at the Marshall High Studios, in Marshall, North Carolina. It was a frigid fall day and when I arrived, they had tea going and snacks out on a table in their beautifully lit and decorated studio space. It was obviously curated and inhabited by herbalists.

Dave and Janet run the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine with Jen Stovall, and have a clinical herbalism practice in the rural area where they live and the nearby city of Asheville, NC.

Dave Meesters grew up in Miami, Florida and attended college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He moved to Asheville, North Carolina in the winter of 1998. In 2003, his formal herbal training began with an apprenticeship with CoreyPine Shane at the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine, and since then his experience has included organizing and staffing a free clinic in New Orleans in the months after hurricane Katrina, and starting and practicing at a free clinic in Asheville's homeless day shelter. Dave has plans to be involved with another herbal free or low-cost clinic in the future, but until then he sees clients privately and provides care to the mountain folks in his rural Appalachian neighborhood, most of whom would rather see an herbalist than a doctor.

From 2013 to 2016, Dave was, with Janet, the director and primary instructor at the Terra Sylva School's summer apprenticeship program, which was held on the communal mountain land where he resides before the school moved to Marshall. He and Janet are the founders of Medicine County Herbs, an herb apothecary, medicinal plant nursery, and blog.

Dave sees herbalism as a way to provide a more appropriate, accessible, pleasurable, and effective form of health care than the dominant model, and as a means to bond and integrate ourselves with plants, the garden, and the wilds. His herbalism is wedded to a life-long resistance to the forces of domination and alienation, especially domination of and alienation from Nature. His practice and his teaching reflect a deep evolving holism attained by listening to, honoring, embracing, and collaborating with the whole of Nature, and by his study of the threads connecting holistic physiology, energetics, ecology, gardening, systems theory, magic, alchemy and permaculture.

 

Janet Kent is a clinical and community herbalist, educator, gardener and writer. The child of two naturalists, Janet grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, learning the amazing diversity of regional wild flowers at an early age. She began studying the medicinal uses of plants when she moved to a rich Appalachian cove high in the mountains of Madison county, North Carolina fifteen years ago. She did not set out to become an herbalist, but as she learned over the years in her forest home, if we are open, we do not change the land we inhabit as much as it changes us. The transformative healing power of the plants around her turned an interest into a calling.

The vast power to heal through reconnection is the medicine she most seeks to share. Whenever possible, she encourages her students and clients to grow their own herbs, to make their own medicine, and most of all, to experience the more-than-human world first hand. Here is where deep, foundational healing is most profound.

Janet views herbal medicine as a means of reconnecting to the long tradition of plant medicine in rural Appalachia. This tradition has become more relevant with the ailing state of the dominant health care system and the rising cost of herbal medicine. Janet considers herbalism the best option for addressing injustice in health care. Herbalists, being outside the biomedical system, can avoid its inequalities. Affordable care, medicine and education are central to this paradigm.

In addition to being co-founder and a core faculty member at the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine, Janet also runs a medicinal and native plant nursery, apothecary and blog, Medicine County Herbs with Dave.

Terra Sylva combines the experience of herbalists who've done their work in very different regions: rural Appalachia and the city of New Orleans. Dave Meesters and Janet Kent founded and run Medicine County Herbs in the mountains of North Carolina and publish the Radical Vitalism blog, while Jen Stovall is one of the herbalists behind the Crescent City's Maypop Community Herb Shop. Despite the geographical separation, this team have been partners in herbalism for over a decade, going back to the first herb classes Jen & Dave taught together in New Orleans in 2004. The Terra Sylva School fulfills a dream we've nurtured for a long time, to meld our diverse strengths and perspectives to create a comprehensive, dynamic program well-suited to equip and inspire the next generation of herbalists to practice in the 21st century. Our teaching reflects both Janet & Dave's land-based herbalism practiced in a rural setting and Jen's experience caring for folks in the big city.

  In this conversation with Dave and Janet, we talk about:

 

• some of the culture of the holler Dave and Janet live in deep in southern Appalachia

• pros and cons of living remotely in Appalachia

• how herbalism tied them to the land they live on and kept them there when other folks involved in the land project didn't stay

• teaching herbalism online vs. in person

• the magic of tuning into one small piece of land year after year

• Dave and Janet's wild-tending and land-tending work over 20 years in Madison county

• the problem with human misanthropy in punk culture or the 'humans suck' mentality

• the importance of human tending on land and Appalachia specifically

• the effects of capitalism on wild harvest of medicinal plants and the complex nuances of this, and effects Michael Moore's books and teachings had on wild plant populations like Yerba Mansa

• we geek out on Pedicularis as an example of a plant that is tricky to wildcraft because of its inability to be cultivated

• some of Dave and Janet's views on 'invasive plants' and land-tending and the responsibility of human engagement

• why it is important to ask where the garden begins and ends?

• how land-tending and restoration can't be about going back to a past that is impossible to recreate due to loss of topsoil and keystone species (think Chestnuts in the east) but about working with a compass of creating diversity and resilience in a rapidly changing world, tending to baselines of the past and ever-shifting baselines of present

• What can disempowering the engines of disruption with other disruption look like?

• some thoughts on changes in 'western' herbalism from a focus on the individual to a focus on the collective and cultural mending

• using 'biomedicine' vs. 'allopathic' to describe mainstream western medicine and some history around the use of these words

• Dave and Janet's podcast 'The Book on Fire,' what it focuses on and why they facilitate it

• we do a mini overview of the book 'The Caliban and the Witch,' a book they review and deconstruct on their podcast (book linked in Link list below)

 

Links:

Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine

Radical Vitalism essay by Janet and Dave on their underlying philosophy

To Fulfill the Promise of Herbalism Dave's piece on the power and potential for grassroots herbalism

Uncontrollable Night: Herbs for Grief Janet's piece on working with herbs to ease the phases of grief

The Book on Fire podcast

"The Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation" book by Silvia Federici mentioned on the podcast, reviewed in detail by Dave and Janet on their podcast 'The Book on Fire'

"Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World" by Emma Marris, briefly mentioned in the podcast, also mentioned in GSP Episode #53 :  Wild Tending Series / Gabe and Kelly on ecological history, anthropogenic landscapes and the negative side of conservation

Mountain Gardens, a regional Appalachian botanical sanctuary run by Joe Hollis mentioned on the podcast

Mountain Gardens Youtube Channel, mentioned on the podcast

Donna Haraway "Staying with the Trouble", mentioned in the podcast, a book Dave and Janet review on their podcast 'The Book on Fire'

 

 

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Guest music: Little Wind and Sea by Village of Spaces This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #64 is a conversation with Mary Morgaine Plantwalker of Herb Mountain Farm in Weaverville, NC.

This episode was recorded in person in the gardens of Herb Mountain Farm August 2021.

Mary Morgaine Plantwalker is one of the main caretakers of Herb Mountain Farm alongside her partner, Hart Squire.

Located in the oldest mountains on earth, Herb Mountain Farm was established in 1970, originally as an organic vegetable and flower farm, by Hart Squire and his family, in Weaverville, North Carolina.

Herb Mountain Farm was a piece of land that had been overgrazed, logged and farmed unsustainably for over a century and needed a lot of conscious stewarding to build up the soil that had been washed away to the Mississippi Delta. Hart, with the help of many hands over the decades, brought in organic matter and plant diversity.

For decades, Hart sold vegetable and flowers from the farm to local markets, restaurants and grocers, then built an earth-bermed warehouse on the property for the organic farmers in the area, called Hart Distributing, which eventually grew into a distribution center for organic ale and wine – long before Asheville was beer city! Hart spent several years in California, opening one of the first farm to table restaurants called 'The Seasons' in the 1970's. 

In 2005, Mary Morgaine (aka Mary Plantwalker) came to work on Herb Mountain Farm's garlic production crew and first met Hart. She worked there for a few years before starting her own business, Earth Dancers, where she taught an array of "Plants as Allies" classes and workshops. In 2010, Buchi Kombucha took over the warehouse and began what grew into a very successful fermented health drink business. Buchi remained on the farm until they outgrew the space in 2016.

In 2011, Hart and Mary Morgaine reconnected and fell in love. They married in 2012, and their union birthed the vision to transition the farm into a Learning Center and Botanical Sanctuary. In 2013, their daughter, Nadia, was born and has been absorbing the gardening and plant knowledge of her parents since day one and gives Hart and Mary Morgaine the inspiration to keep sailing on for the future generations.

Herb Mountain Farm's website Herb Mountain Farm on Instagram United Plant Savers

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project 

 

For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Guest music: 'Overflow,' 'Entropy,' and 'The One' by Cole Sullivan This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #63 is a conversation with Marissa Percoco out of Barnardsville, NC.

Marissa (she/her) is an avid fermentation enthusiast who has spent the last 10 years exploring community and the wilds, as well as living deeply with various fermented cultures and local plants, and learning how it all comes together. Traveling through the wild places of Tennessee, Florida, the Southwest, California, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and most everywhere in between with her four amazingly adventurous children, Marissa has gathered cultures from far and wide. Deeply rooted in the Earthskills movement and committed to co-creating a new culture within which we, our children and all beings thrive, they are now nesting in Barnardsville, NC, and she humbly offers her humorous experiences to you. She is also the Director of the Firefly Gathering.

In this conversation with Marissa, we talk about:

• rural Appalachia dynamics and gentrification in a valley outside of a hip city, Asheville, NC

• some stories of Marissa's moving from the bay area of California to the rural south in the early 2000's and what it was like initially, the culture shock

• shifting from years of nomadism to mainly tending one small place in community

• some of Marissa's childhood experiences in California with chemically bonded parents and plant loving grandparents

• farming in west climates vs. arid climates

• tending tropical plants in a subtropical four season place, and pushing the edge of what is possible during rapid climate change

• the perspective gained from travel and having an awareness of the plants in those places

• Marissa's time in the Gila wilderness doing walks and we geek on plants we found there

• the pros and cons of isolation living in wilderness areas, co-dependency, addiction and depression wrapped in idealism, and how can we contribute to society living 'out there?'

• Marissa's mead brewing practice on the road over the years, capturing place through brewing plants

• how facing the immediacy of death changes perspective

 

Firefly Gathering, sign up for year round classes or attend the annual gathering: http://www.fireflygathering.org Firefly on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/fireflygatheringnc Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #62 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Chama Woydak of Homegrown Families and Dancing Springs Farm, out of Asheville, North Carolina.

 

Chama and I have a relationship that spans over a decade, which began when I landed on her farm in 2012 to go to herbal medicine school. We ended up farming together for a few years before I hit the road, and I owe a lot of my knowledge about growing food and caring for animals to Chama who has dedicated the last few decades to these practices alongside her work as a doula and childbirth educator. As you'll hear in this interview, her work as a farmer tending life and death is inextricably linked to her work as a doula re-humanizing care for others' births in a society that doesn't prioritize it or see it as vitally important.

 

In this conversation with Chama, we talk about:

• Chama's journey into childbirth education and birthwork

• The role of doulas in childbirth

• The difference between a OBGYN, doula and midwife

• The problematic nature of the medical industrial complex in relationship to birth

• how doulas can re-humanize care in a culture and system that dehumanizes from the bottom up

• raising the bar of birth experiences

• the intricacies of complex medical trauma and how it trickles into our society

• taking a restorative justice approach to birthwork

• the connection between farming and birthwork

• how tending space in nature can help teach us how to tend and care for our human systems (we are nature)

• doula work is inherently justice work

• the power of small adjustments and interactions in making big change and how tending land can teach us about this

• how death and birth are parallel initiations

   

 

 

Chama on Instagram: @chamawoydak Homegrown Families on Instagram: @homegrown_families https://www.ashevillehomegrownfamilies.com/ Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Interstitial Music: Ebb and Flow, Finger and the Bone by Brown Bird This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #61 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Jill Trashley out of Asheville, North Carolina.

...

...

Earlier in the Spring, Jill and I met up in Asheville to distill some Lemon Balm together. First, we went to her friends' house, down the road from hers, where we had permission to harvest Lemon Balm from their very abundant gardens right in the city. 

The Lemon Balm was in it's prime. 

Jill comes to their house often to help in the gardens and harvest extra herbs to distill or to make medicine. 

Stepping into their yard, I thought for a moment that I was suddenly in Berkeley, California, where gardens and quirky folk abound, tucked into an urban weaving of lush flowering plants and treehouses, Redwoods and backyard nooks. 

But no, this was Asheville, and the treehouse was in a big healthy Eastern Hemlock tree, the carefully placed rock walls abound, the exposed dirt southern red, the hand built greenhouse off the back of the house full of desert plants one wouldn't expect deep in Appalachia.

 

We gathered Lemon Balm by cutting bunches and dug up some young plants to transplant elsewhere. Lemon Balm tends to spread easily in some environments and Jill's friends wanted us to take some away. I later transported some of these plants back to the land where I'm living for the summer and tucked them into an empty bed and wished them well.

We took our harvest back to Jill's house, where we had some mid-day Mertails drinks. (Mertails are elixirs that can be used as mixers instead of alcohol, or with alcohol if you desire, Jill talks more about this company she co-owns on the podcast) I felt so good after having one of these, as my drink was very hydrating on what was a hot day.

We started then setting up the copper still Jill owns and got it heating up to prepare for distilling the Lemon Balm into hydrosol. In the time while we were waiting for the still to heat up, we sat down to chat about some of Jill's projects over the years, including working with trash disposal at festivals, starting a mobile elixir bar, living on the road with intention and more.

 

...

...

Blog post for this episode which includes a photo diary of our Lemon Balm distillation and meetup: www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/jillofnohm

  Jill on Instagram: @herban_urbalist   NOHM on Instagram: @thenohm   The Mertails on Instagram: @the_mertails   Shop Jill's apothecary   The Mertails online   Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow   Interstitial Music: "Clay" by Rising Appalachia   This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody   Produced by: Kelly Moody

 

 

Episode #60 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a solo episode with Kelly, glimpsing into a window of Spring in southern Appalachia.

 

 

In this episode of the podcast,

 

• I chat about paying attention to details of place and how those moments of attention become stories of reverence.

• Some observations late May on the current land where I'm spending time

• Info on and experiences with Nettle, Wood Nettles and Nettle relatives

• The everyday journey of land-tending in different environments and playing with cultivated/wild tending dynamics

• How land-tending looks so different in different places

• Plants are old friends!

• Some thoughts on invasive plants and biological invasions in the South

 

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project    For one time donations to support this work:   Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn   VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6   Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject    Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com    Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast   Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes   Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project   Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow   This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody   Produced by: Kelly Moody

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

the biodiversity of agaves, some of the issues with cultivation under pressure of capitalism, and private land ownership

complexity of the commons in Oaxaca under pressure of modernity

agave use for textiles, wild and rare species, and benefit of planting in polycultures

we speak to ideas about wild tending in Oaxaca and the issues that come up when trying to reintegrate old ways of tending land in modern times

the fact that oaks are not wild tending here or eaten but used to be long ago, what could people here learn from indigenous peoples to the north and vice versa— who tend oaks or piñon pine for food

this episode was catered to the local village audience of Teotitlan de Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico, on the local radio, so listen with this in mind.

It is a language in Spanish and English, if you are a Spanish speaker, you will get a richer experience from this episode

Dixza farm and rugs

Samuel's instagram

Damien's contact: Teléfono Celular: 9515196315 gabdamian12@gmail.com

Radio show facebook page where you can listen

Buy me a coffee

2025 birthday fundraiser for the podcast

Vibrant Earth Seeds : Regionally adapted to the Southwest. Use 'GROUNDSHOTS10' at checkout for 10% off seed orders (your buying seeds also supports the podcast!) Traditional Tanners online hide tanning courses, naturally tanned hides and tool supplier Ground Shots Substack : Subscribe here Bookshop buy me a book! Bookshop : recommended books for you (buying here helps support the podcast) Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn website archive and extended shownotes: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Music by: Mandalin Sattler on flute, music from town Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #59 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Professor Matt Chew, and is hosted by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford.  
Dubbed a 'gadfly of invasion biology' by Scientific American, Matt Chew is known for critiquing ecology's overreliance on societal metaphors and conservationists' misapplication of notions like 'nativeness'. Dr. Chew has a B.S. Environmental Interpretation and an M.S. Range Science (Ecology) from Colorado State University, and a Ph.D. in Biology from Arizona State University. As statewide Natural Resources Planner for Arizona State Parks, he coordinated their Natural Areas Program, researched wildlife issues, and served on interagency committees, one of which also included his future wife, plant ecologist Julie Stromberg. Julie was recently featured as a guest on Kollibri terre Sonnenblume's podcast, Voices for Nature and Peace. With Julie's encouragement, he abandoned government work to earn a biology Ph.D. based entirely on historical research.
Currently employed at Arizona State University, Dr. Chew conducts a field course in 'novel ecosystems,' lectures in 'history of biology' and 'biology and society', and works with postgraduate students. He was awarded an Oxford research fellowship in 2014. His articles in "Nature," "Science" and other publications have been cited in over 200 different journals.  
Former podcast guests, Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Gabe Crawford, and Nikki Hill host this episode.

 

 

Nikki Hill has a degree in environmental science and has worked in restoration and agriculture. Currently she invests her energy in wildtending efforts. Nikki and Kollibri co-authored a zine together called, "The Troubles of 'Invasive' Plants," which you can download for free on Kollibri's blog, linked in the show notes.

 

 

Kollibri terre Sonnenblume is a writer, photographer, podcaster, tree hugger, animal lover, and cultural dissident. Past experiences include urban bike farmer, Indymedia activist, and music critic. Kollibri holds a BA in "Writing Fiction & Non-fiction" from the St. Olaf Paracollege in Northfield, Minnesota. Kollibri hosts and curates the Voices for Nature and Peace Podcast. You can read his writings focused on ecology and politics at Maska Moskska press, linked in the bio.

 

Gabe Crawford was raised on a small homestead outside of Durango, Colorado and started learning about plants from an early age. He got launched on his plant journey by studying with Katrina Blair at the Turtle Lake Refuge in Durango. He moved to Sandpoint, Idaho where he worked with Twin Eagles Wilderness School and Kaniksu Land Trust mentoring kids. Through this, he started naturalist training which opened him up to the world of wild tending, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the ancient and intricate relationships between humans and ecology. Gabe spent time with Finisia Medrano learning about the ancient wild gardens of the west that were and still are tended by indigenous peoples and was taught how to tend these first foods and plant back for future abundance. He collects the seeds of native foods plants, fruit trees, berries and other exotics to plant feral orchards and wild gardens.

 

In this conversation, Kollibri, Nikki and Gabe take a deep dive into the history of "invasion biology" and reveal its scientific shortcomings and its cultural biases.  

This is a crossover episode with Kollibri's podcast, Voices for Nature and Peace, so we are airing it on both podcasts at the same time. I highly recommend checking out Kollibri's guests and the breadth of what he has been covering lately visiting the intersections of social action, politics, the environment, animals rights, land justice and more. Also check out Kollibri's weekly column read out loud on his platform Radio Free Sunroot. You can also find Voices for Nature and Peace on most mainstream podcast streaming platforms.     Links:   Kollibri's website where you can find his writings, zines and more: Macska Moksha Press

 

Radio Free Sunroot and the Voices for Nature and Peace Podcast

 

Gabe Crawford on instagram: @plumsforbums

 

Nikki Hill's website, Walking Roots

 

Voices for Nature and Peace Patreon page  

 

Call the podcast and leave a message (while you're there, if your ok with us airing it on the podcast, give us verbal permission):

 

1-434-233-0097

 

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project    For one time donations to support this work:   Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn   VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6   Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject    Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com    Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast   Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes   Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project   Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow   This episode hosted by: Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford   Produced by: Kollibri terre Sonnenblume and Kelly Moody

Episode #58 of the podcast features Sean Croke, who runs the Hawthorn School of Plant Medicine in the Pacific Northwest.

 

 

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

• Sean's herbalism practice

• herbalism during covid and the gain in interest in natural medicine since the pandemic started

• some special characteristics of Cascadia and the Pacific Northwest

• Sean's school, the Hawthorn School of Plant Medicine based in Olympia, Washington, a little bit on how it started and how it has evolved over time

• Sean's focus on propagating wild plants before wildcrafting

• the Olympia Free Clinic and how it used to function

 

Links: Hawthorn School website Understory Apothecary

 

Want to share something? Call the podcast and leave a message (while you're there, if your ok with us airing it on the podcast, give us verbal permission): 1-434-233-0097

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project 

For one time donations to support this work: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Interstitial Music: Losgrinn by Vaughn Aed Hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #57 of the podcast is a conversation between Gabe Crawford and Dr. Angela Moles.

 

Gabe Crawford, a former podcast guest, hosts this episode of the Ground Shots Podcast.

 

Gabe has been conducting research on the history of anthropogenic landscapes, ecology, botany, and ethnobotany, and discovering bias and racism in those fields that have carried into our understanding of human relationship with the land today. This research also inevitably brings one to diving into the science and culture of invasion biology, a fairly new field of study. If you're a regular listener of the podcast, you know that we have spoken a few times on anthropogenic landscapes and visit the often controversial topic of invasive plants.

 

We spoke about this with Nikki Hill on Episode #33 of the podcast, and on more recently on Episode #53 of the podcast. After diving into this controversial topic and realizing that it is complex and requires looking at a lot of different perspectives, Gabe decided to reach out to Dr. Angela Moles, whose articles he discovered in his research. Angela Moles in an Australian scientist doing research on plant morphology and rapid plant evolution and many of her findings are challenging previously held as true assumptions in the scientific community about the ways certain plants function under certain conditions.

 

Professor Angela Moles is the director of the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre at UNSW Sydney in Australia. Her research aims to improve understanding of plant responses to climate change, and to quantify the ways introduced species change when they are introduced to new ranges. Angela is also a mother, and a surf lifesaver.

 

 

In this episode of the podcast, Gabe and Angela talk about:

 

Angela's research with the Global Herbivory Project and in evolutionary biology and ecology

 

how plants and animals can evolve and change faster than we previously though, and Angela's quantifiable research on this

 

the change in cultural attitudes towards introduced species in the last hundred years

 

some history on the Acclimatization Society, which encouraged the introduction of non-native plants from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries to lands being colonized, as a way to bring familiarity to settlers and with the assumption that this practice enriched foreign ecologies

 

dogma present in the scientific community

 

how ecosystems are dynamic and don't just stay in one place

 

how difficult it is for scientists to make paradigm shifts

 

some Australian anthropogenic landscape ecology, fire, colonization

 

whether it is the invading plants that are the issue or the change in disturbance regimes of landscapes

 

including native folks in ecology and urban ecology work

 

the gridlock between the need for assisted migration or 'natural' self-led plant migrations due to climate change, and the fear of invasive plants harming ecosystems

 

 

 

Links:

 

Gabe Crawford, guest host, on Instagram: @plumsforbums

 

Article by Angela Moles and research team: "Invasions: the trail behind, the path ahead, and a test of a disturbing idea" Journal of Ecology. 2012. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2011.01915.x

 

I highly recommend perusing Google Scholar and reading other academic articles written by Angela Moles, of which there are many, to get more perspective on her groundbreaking research.

 

Angela's UNSW Sydney webpage

 

Acclimatisation society

 

Angela's Global Herbivory Project

 

Call the podcast and leave a message (while you're there, if your ok with us airing it on the podcast, give us verbal permission):

 

1-434-233-0097

 

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project   For one time donations to support this work:

 

Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn

 

VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

 

Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject    Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com    Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast   Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes   Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project   Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow   This episode hosted by: Gabe Crawford   Produced by: Kelly Moody

In this episode of the podcast, Gabe Crawford, a former podcast guest, catches up with Dan Nanamkin, who was featured previously on Episode #39 of the Podcast.

 

 

Dan Nanamkin is from the Chief Joseph Band Of Wallowa, Nez Perce, and Colville Confederated Tribes of Washington State has been an advocate/teacher for indigenous culture, community unity, youth empowerment, racial equality, and peace for several decades. Prior to Standing Rock, Dan took one of the leads in helping to restore ancient canoe culture of the northwest plateau tribes, the River Warriors. This inspired him further to connect with the Water, something that led him to Standing Rock. He endured months of peaceful front line action at Standing Rock from September 2016 until March 2017. Dan has since traveled across the nation speaking with his two dogs and band, the One Tribe Movement. ​ Dan advocates for people to be better informed, to get more involved, to resist racism and violence, and to support the movement to protect Mother Earth. He is a public presenter, musician and author who remains active in bringing forth awareness of Native culture. His mission is to connect modern day people with the traditions that are still absolutely relevant and critical to life today. Dan hopes to bring back traditional knowledge of the earth/plants/medicines and survival in a way to encourage healing, wellness and respect for balance with Mother Earth and all living things.

 

 

In this conversation with Dan and Gabe, they talk about:

 

• Dan's new podcast "Honor All Life"

 

• update on Sovereignty Camps and the name change to Young Warrior Society

 

• organic food access on the reservation

 

• how Dan's community stepped up during Covid to support one another

 

• some #landback talk from Dan's perspective

 

• the difficulty of being able to tend and harvest native first foods with how land is now split up in modern times due to colonization, racism, access issues

 

• some updates on Dan's land projects

 

  Links:

 

Dan's link-tree page with links to all of his projects: https://linktr.ee/nanamkin

 

Guest Host, Gabe Crawford's instagram page: @plumsforbums

 

Call the podcast and leave a message (while you're there, if your ok with us airing it on the podcast, give us verbal permission):

 

1-434-233-0097

 

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project   For one time donations to support this work:

 

Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn

 

VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

 

Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 

 Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

 

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast

 

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

 

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

 

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

 

Interstitial Music: "I am a Bird" by Fen Swale

 

This episode hosted by: Gabe Crawford

 

Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #55 is a conversation with Téo Montoya of the Indigenous Futures Podcast.

 

Téo was our guest on episode #48 of the podcast. Episode #48 was a series of recordings from his joining Gabe Crawford and I on the Colorado Trail last summer for a couple days during our Plant-a-go walk.

 

After that episode went out, Téo and I chatted about doing another episode together where we get deeper into some of the topics we touched on while talking candidly on the trail.

 

Téo Montoya is a Lipan Apache(Ndé) Writer, Indigenous futurist, Electronic Music Producer, Human Design Analyst, Traditional Ecological Knowledge Student, and Educator. After completing his BA in Food and Medical Anthropology, with a focus on Indigenous diets and health disparities in Native American communities, Teo spent 5 years exploring the worlds of plant medicine, Ancestral Health Coaching, Djing and Producing music, Information Technology, working with a Native-Led Non-profits, and completing his Human Design Training. As a writer and creator he has begun the long process of writing a speculative fiction series and media project imagining future worlds and societies built upon indigenous values, ideals, and cultures. Teo believes imaging the future, specifically a future grounded in indigenous knowledge and technology, will provide us with the solutions to meet the largest challenges to the Earth and our Humanity. Today, Teo lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, writing, producing music, and supporting people on their personal and spiritual health journeys.

 

 

In this conversation with Téo, we talk about:

 

• Téo defines indigenous futurism more in-depth (you can also learn a lot on his new podcast, The Indigenous Futures Podcast, here)

• the role of indigenous futurism in envisioning a new relationship with land moving forward

• we get deeper into the concept of transcommunality, what it means, who writes about it, and how we can take cue from the ideas for community building

• intersections of religion and spirituality in how we see the land and treat one another

• religion and power

• the importance of having a relationship to land

• some talk on #landback and land reparations and how that connects to spirit

• technology, techné and religious awe and some philosophy of technology in relationship to Indigenous Futurism

• the importance of myth in creating cosmologies of reciprocity

• some words on Téo's current art + story multimedia projects

• some indigenous-afro futures writers and artists of note

 

  Links:

 

Téo on Instagram: @humandesignreadings

@indigenousfuturespodcast

@teo.montoya.nde

 

The Indigenous Futures Podcast

Octavia Butler's work

 

  Call the podcast and connect with us by leaving a message (while you're there, if your ok with us potentially airing it on the podcast, give us verbal permission): 1-434-233-0097

 

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project 

 

For one time donations to support this work:

 

Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn   VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6   Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 

 

Shop the Ground Shots apothecary currently open  

 

Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com   

 

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast  

 

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes  

 

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project  

 

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow  

 

Interstitial Music: by Téo Montoya  

 

Hosted by: Kelly Moody  

 

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Téo Montoya

Episode #54 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Sarah Galvin, who hosts and creates with House of Yore, formerly Forest and Fjord. Sarah hosts exploratory ancestral workshops through House of Yore, as well as sells small batch bioregional herbal medicine.

***

In this conversation with Sarah, we talk about:

***

• Sarah's traveling years starting with leaving home as a teenager to live in Europe

• Sarah's experience working on various farms across the country and some pros and cons of WWOOFing (Worldwide Working on Organic Farms)

• How she ended up in Alaska and some of her 'dark nights of the soul' experiences there living alone on a remote island in an off grid cabin, and what she learned about facing demons and her greatest fears

• The need for chaos medicine in our culture, and how making space for that instead of pushing it away is needed

• Sarah's experience growing up with Ayurveda and her training in it, as well as how this framework helps her see the world, especially in regards to honing in on what our individual roles are on earth

• How Sarah's Irish ancestry helps her connect to so-called Alaska and pastoralism

• Some history talk of colonialism in Alaska, and how rapid climate change is occurring there

Links: Sarah's website: House of Yore

 

 

Sarah on Instagram: @house.of.yore

 

Call the podcast and connect with us by leaving a message (while you're there, if your ok with us potentially airing it on the podcast, give us verbal permission): 1-434-233-0097

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this work:

 

Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn

 

VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

 

Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 

***

Shop the Ground Shots apothecary open until the end of February!

 

***

 Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

***

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast *** Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

***

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

***

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

***

Interstitial Music: 'Remedy' by Lindsay Clark

***

'Talk to the Dead' by Soleil Ouimet

***

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

***

Produced by: Kelly Moody

 

This episode of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation between Kelly Moody and Gabe Crawford.

 

We haven't done an episode together since we were on the Colorado Trail this past summer. So, we wanted to talk about the research we have been doing since we got off of the trail, and while hermiting a bit in our bell tent camp along a riparian corridor, outside of Durango, Colorado. We've been thinking a lot about what land tending means, and definitions of 'wildness,' and 'wilderness' since hiking the trail, and wanted to spend some time looking into the literature out there on conservation, ecology and agriculture. We've only touched the surface with our research, but wanted to talk about it on air with ya'll here, and connect some distant tendrils of what we're finding through conversation. Above all, our goal has been to try to understand why anthropogenic (human tended and co-created) landscapes are ignored in scientific literature, hence why 'wild-tending' seems far-fetched to some folks. And, we want to understand the deeper origins of the invasion biology field of conversation and how it may be connected to ethnocentrism, racism, unexamined colonialist assumptions in the fields of history and science, and more.

Since this episode was recorded and edited, we have migrated to where my family is in southern Virginia for the rest of the winter and are trying to adjust to a different culture, climate and navigating the pandemic without public land.

 

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

 

• the oppressive colonizing force of the Christian church institution in Europe and how this influenced the suppression of land based spirituality

• some etymology of 'heretic,' 'heathen,' 'villan,' and 'pagan'

• how the disregard for historic anthropogenic landscapes is connected to the obsession with 'pristine' ecology and 'wilderness' notions

• how Eurocentric ideas about agriculture influenced what colonists saw as 'uncivilized' or 'cultivated' on turtle island and how these ethnocentric biases ignored anthropogenic landscapes

• the white supremacy inherent in the western scientific interpretation of human cultivation, land management and indigenous influence on ecology

• biases in the historical accounts of indigenous cultures and the landscapes of Turtle Island, South America, etc. by European explorers yet many of these accounts are used to determine ecological baselines in conservation goals

• some of the origins of emotive, moral and value based language in invasive biology and conservation fields

• the roots of why conservationism is wary to include indigenous peoples in its preservation of 'pristine wilderness' and how the creation of baselines that doesn't include indigenous land management practices, even though the ecological baselines that might be their goals were anthropogenic landscapes

• the history of national parks extirpating natives off of their land in order to 'preserve' an idea of 'wilderness' and how they continue to ignore how the humans there were a part of creating and managing the landscapes

• the affluence associated with conservation culture and the western ideas of the museumification of 'pristine land'

• the misinformation in the academic literature of invasion biology created through confirmation biases and disproven theories continuing to be referenced as facts

 

Links:

A slew of resources related to what we chatted about on the podcast can be found below. Subscribe to our email newsletter, found at the bottom of this link section, for updates on when we will be offering some classes related to these topics.

"Rambunctious Garden : Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World" by Emma Marris

"Beyond the War on Invasive Species" by Tao Orion

"Keeping it Living: : Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America" by Nancy Turner

"The Burning Times" by Jeanne Kalogridis

Southwest Colorado Wildflowers entry on Triteleia grandiflora (Wild Hyacinth, Large-flowered Onion), where the botanists mention the likelihood that the Utes brought it through trade from the Pacific Northwest and planted it to eat, given it is a very disjunct species from where it is normally found

"The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants" by Charles Elton

"Charles S. Elton and the Dissociation of Invasion Ecology from the Rest of Ecology" by Mark Davis

"Don't Judge Species on Their Origins" by Mark Davis and Matthew K. Chew

"1491": New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" by Charles Mann

ECOLOGISTS, ENVIRONMENTALISTS, EXPERTS, AND THE INVASION OF THE 'SECOND GREATEST THREAT' by Matthew K. Chew

"The rise and fall of biotic nativeness: a historical perspective" by Matthew K. Chew

"Invasions: the trail behind, the path ahead, and a test of a disturbing idea" by Angela Moles

"Is rapid evolution common in introduced plant species?" by Angela Moles

Torreya Guardians website: "Assisted Migration (Assisted Colonization, Managed Relocation, Translocation) and Rewilding of Plants and Animals in an Era of Rapid Climate Change"

"Quantifying Threats to Imperiled Species in the United States: Assessing the relative importance of habitat destruction, alien species, pollution, overexploitation, and disease" by David Wilcove (this article is routinely cited as the reference for invasive species being the second greatest threat to biodiversity when it doesn't even say that, alongside Edward O. Wilson's 1992 book, "The Diversity of Life")

"Invasion Biology : Critique of a Pseudoscience" by David Theodoropoulos

"Environmental determinism": This is a wikipedia article on the history of environmental determinism in the contest of western colonialism and how this philosophy was used to justify abuses to human rights.

"How conservation became colonialism" BY ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK

"Forgotten Fires : Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness" by Omer C. Stewart

 

Call the podcast and leave us a message (you give us permission to potentially air it on the podcast): 1-434-233-0097

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this work: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 

 Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Interstitial Music: "Big Ivy" by the Resonant Rouges Hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody and Gabe Crawford

This episode of the podcast features the host, Kelly, solo, speaking about her upbringing in the south and her journey towards starting the Ground Shots Project and Podcast. Find the FULL transcript for this episode on our Patreon page, here.

This episode of the Ground Shots Podcast is a first! It's me, Kelly, the podcast host, speaking solo about my upbringing in the South and how it plus other experiences I've had into adulthood, influenced the creation of the Ground Shots Project as an ecological art project, and the Ground Shots Podcast, a ecological storytelling project featuring guests from all over.

I start off the episode speaking a bit about where I grew up, and some of my basic experiences in the enviroment where I was raised. I grew up in southern Virginia, and I even linked my hometown in the shownotes if you want to get a glimpse.

I go into how my life evolved into adulthood, studying Philosophy formerly, working on organic farms, studying with herbalism teachers, and my general influences. I talk about how I originally started traveling, though there is so much more to the story than what I tell here.

I speak about how my time farming, walking the Camino de Santiago, spending time with my grandmother as a child, and meeting people on the road, influenced the creation of my project.

I answer some questions posed by folks who submitted them on Instagram about my project and relationship with plants, travel, connecting to place.

A note: we now have a phone line where you can call the podcast and leave messages. PLEASE leave us one! If you do, you give us permission to potentially broadcast your messages on air. If you can, please give us verbal permission when you leave a message. I'm excited about this!

I produced this episode entirely on my own this time, with a new program I'm trying out. It's not perfect, but I'm playing around and seeing how it goes. So, if it sounds different in any way, this is why! Also, I got a new microphone, so my voice is clearer than in the past recording from my computer.

If you have a comment, question or inquiry based on what you hear in this episode, feel free to shoot me an email, comment on the blog post for this episode or call our podcast phone number and leave a message.

 

Links:

Kip Redick on CNU talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcXeIgyMUoo

Tao Orion (quoted at the end of the podcast): https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/beyond-the-war-on-invasive-species/

Frank Cook's work: http://www.plantsandhealers.org/

Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine: https://chestnutherbs.com/

Goldenseal Sanctuary in Ohio where I interned: https://unitedplantsavers.org/center-for-medicinal-plant-conservation/

My hometown on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Hill,_Virginia

Call the podcast and leave us a message (you give us permission to potentially air it on the podcast, please be sure to also give us verbal permission):

1-434-233-0097

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 

Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

Donate to the podcast on VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

Donate to the podcast on Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial Music: "Rainbow Waltz" by Cody Fielder

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody

 

This episode of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Ali Meders-Knight, out of Chico, California. Ali Meders-Knight is a Mechoopda tribal member, mother of five, and traditional basketweaver based in Chico, CA. She is a Mechoopda Tribal liaison working to form partnerships for federal forest stewardship contracting and tribal forestry programs authorized in the 2018 Farm Bill. She has been a Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) practitioner for over 20 years, collaborating on environmental education and land restoration projects with Chico State University and the City of Chico. In 2009 she helped plan and establish Verbena Fields, a unique 17-acre interactive food forest and interpretive park in North Chico to help educate the community about the rich ecological heritage of the Mechoopda people.   In this episode with Ali, we talk about:

• what is TEK?

• Ali explains the advanced nature of Traditional Ecological Knowledge which is evolving ecosystem knowledge and land tending techniques acquired by indigenous peoples over hundreds or thousands of years through direct contact with the land

• issues around forest management in California and the U.S. on the whole, and how money has influenced decisions made about management strategies instead of what makes the most sense for the land and the local community

• why forest management should be localized and indigenous led

• the intentions and goals of the TEKChico project: creating a trained workforce that can complete long term contracts with the USDA to manage forests locally

• how disaster capitalism influences land management and doesn't actually take care of people and the land

• the need for fire on the landscape in California

• modern cultural misunderstandings of fire and how trauma and racism play into these misunderstandings

• how the 2018 US Farm Bill increased federal support and opportunity for Native farmers and ranchers, and how this bill links federal land management needs more directly to sovereign indigenous nations

   

Links:

TEK CHICO's website: http://www.TEKChico.org

2018 Farm Bill info: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF11287.pdf

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

Donate to the podcast on VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

Donate to the podcast on Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial Music: "Breathing Tide" by Samara Jade (ft. Aimee Ringle & Alexa Sunshine Rose)

Find Samara Jade's music on bandcamp

"California Hillside" by Stow Lake

find Stow Lake's music on bandcamp

https://www.redbudresourcegroup.org/ 

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

Episode #50 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with the clinical herbalist Anna-Marija Helt Ph.D., who lives in Durango, Colorado. Marija has been studying herbs, mushrooms and essential oils intensely since 2008, training at the Ohlone Center of Herbal Studies with Pam Fisher, at Green Medicine Herb School with Kathi Keville and with a number of other herbalists. Prior to becoming an herbalist, she spent nearly 15 years as a research scientist, with a focus on cancer and infectious disease.  She received her doctoral degree in microbiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine while studying cancer-promoting mechanisms of human papillomavirus, the primary cause of cervical cancer. Her postdoctoral research on dengue virus was conducted in the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley. She was an infectious diseases trainee at the UW Center for AIDS & STD and an infectious diseases fellow through UC San Francisco Division of Infectious Diseases.  Her focus as an herbal practitioner is a low-tech, simple and holistic approach to health that incorporates both traditional herbal knowledge and the latest scientific research.

 

In this episode with Marija, we talk about:

• bridging tradition and science in herbalism, and some history of how this divide happened

• wild-tending Osha- Ligusticum porteri (Apiaceae) in the Rockies and substitutes to use instead of Osha medicinally

• Osha's regional abundance but big scale scarcity, and how keeping plant populations in a bigger picture is a perspective to consider

• Osha's deadly lookalikes - Poison and Water Hemlock Conium maculatum and Cicuta spp. (both Apiaceae)

• several poisonous plants found in the southern Rockies, the greater Rockies and beyond:

  • Death Camas - Toxicoscordion venenosum (Melanthiaceae) or alapíšaš in the Pacific Northwest,

  • Baneberry - Actaea rubra (Ranunculaceae)

  • Corn Lily - Veratrum californicum (Melanthiaceae)

  • Monkshood - Aconitum spp. (Ranunculaceae)

  • Larkspur - Delphinium spp. (Ranunculaceae) or δελφίνιον in Greek

  • Pulsatilla + Anenome - Pulsatilla spp. and Anenome spp. (both Ranunculaceae)

  • and more.

Some photographs of the plants we discuss in this episode, many taken this summer on the Plant-a-go walk I did with Gabe Crawford on the Colorado Trail can be found on the blog post for this episode: 

 

Links:

This episode on the blog, along with photos of some of the plants we mentioned with their scientific names: https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/annamarijahelt 

Marija's website: http://www.osadha.com

Some articles by Marija on Basmati: https://basmati.com/contributor/anna-marija-helt-phd

The United Plant Savers at-risk list: https://unitedplantsavers.org/species-at-risk-list/

Marija on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWNnHwGkEyV3RUNz-eGZqtg/videos

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

Donate on VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

consider supporting the annual fundraiser for the podcast in celebration of my 38th birthday, here. This episode of the Ground Shots Podcast is with Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff.

We did this interview in person this past summer in Paonia, Colorado. I have been sharing studio space with her partner Wild, a woodworker. This summer I was working on some carpentry in my trailer in the yard of the shop, and we retreated here for this conversation out of the heat and the hubub of the wood studio.

Cara is a Mother, Artist, Author, Professor, Action-Philosopher, Environmental-Justice Organizer

(full shownotes found here!)

Cara's website with writings, photography projects, performance art work

Cara's substack with old and new writings

Cara's youtube channel where you can view some of her performances and videos

2025 birthday fundraiser for the podcast

Vibrant Earth Seeds : Regionally adapted to the Southwest. Use 'GROUNDSHOTS10' at checkout for 10% off seed orders (your buying seeds also supports the podcast!) Traditional Tanners online hide tanning courses, naturally tanned hides and tool supplier Ground Shots Substack : Subscribe here Bookshop buy me a book! Bookshop : recommended books for you (buying here helps support the podcast) Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn website archive and extended shownotes: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Music by: Top Down Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

This episode of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Wren Haffner and Ini Giesbrecht of Mountain Jewel Center for Earth Connection, an 18 acre homestead in the Ozarks.

I've been following Mountain Jewel for a few years now on Instagram, since before Wren and Ini started tending the land they steward.

I've been consistently inspired by Wren and Ini's work on the land, as they have prolifically shared the evolution of their land project on Instagram and through blogging over the years. Wren and Ini have shared the plants they work with and the trials and tribulations of homesteading and building infrastructure that feels in harmony with the land. 

I've been wanting to talk with them for awhile on the nature of their work, what their goals are, some of their discoveries and more.

In this conversation with Wren and Ini, we talk about:

 

• Wren and Ini's traveling life before landing in the Ozarks  and their reasons for landing there

• some geology of the Ozarks and how it influences the ecology

• Mountain Jewel's land-based infrastructure

• natural building in a humid place, and how it might actually be a BETTER option in some instances!

• the perennial native and non-native food crops Wren and Ini have been working with, some include: Chinese Mountain Yam, Gumi, Indigo Bush, Comfrey, Skirret, Sunroot, Figs, Apples, Mulberry, Persimmon, Elderberries, Paw Paws, Chestnut and Ozark Chinkapin, Yaupon Holly, Aronia Berry and more.

• deeper talk about Paw Paws and their flavor, medicine, selected species, propagation

• Wren's new land race seed project focused on Squash, and more talk on land race seeds in general

Links:

Mountain Jewel on Instagram @_mountainjewel_

Mountain Jewel Center for Earth Connection's website where you can buy bare root seedlings of some of the plants we mention in the conversation, read their blog and more: https://ozarkmountainjewel.com/

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

Donate on VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Interstitial Music: "Building a Bridge" by Samara Jade

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

   

Episode #48 of the Ground Shots Podcast is the last recording Gabe and I conducted on our 2020 Colorado Trail Plant-a-go walk. This episode documents a few conversations Gabe and I had with our friend Téo Montoya who came to hike with us for a brief stint on the west side of the Collegiate Loop section of the trail.   Téo Montoya is a Lipan Apache(Ndé) Writer, Indigenous futurist, Electronic Music Producer, Human Design Analyst, Traditional Ecological Knowledge Student, and Educator. After completing his BA in Food and Medical Anthropology, with a focus on Indigenous diets and health disparities in Native American communities, Teo spent 5 years exploring the worlds of plant medicine, Ancestral Health Coaching, Djing and Producing music, Information Technology, working with a Native-Led Non-profits, and completing his Human Design Training. As a writer and creator he has begun the long process of writing a speculative fiction series and media project imagining future worlds and societies built upon indigenous values, ideals, and cultures. Teo believes imaging the future, specifically a future grounded in indigenous knowledge and technology, will provide us with the solutions to meet the largest challenges to the Earth and our Humanity. Today, Teo lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, writing, producing music, and supporting people on their personal and spiritual health journeys.

 

Teo and I met at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in the Spring of 2019 during a multi-week permaculture training.

This episode of the podcast isn't a formal interview or formal conversation with Teo, though I would like to do that with Teo in the future.

This episode features snippets of the conversation between Teo, Gabe and I during dinner and then again for breakfast.

 

In this episode, we touch on:

 

Teo's thoughts on 'transcommunality' and moving forward into the future by learning from indigenous wisdom but also not romanticizing it

a place for modern technology in new visions of the future

re-thinking the 'anti-sacredness' of the urban and complex technologies

some more Russian Olive rants (again I know) and talk more about how our culture uses invasive plants as scapegoats for our mistakes

the need for indigenous wisdom in the Green New Deal talks

Teo's perspective on white folks or settlers wild harvesting food and medicine and the complexity of this practice

problems that arise with the 'white-hands off' perspective on land tending

indigenous peoples are innovative: in the past, present and will be in the future

questioning how we define 'wild' and 'wildcraft' and within the colonialist concept of private land ownership

Teo tells us a little bit about an indigenous futurism media project he's working on and got funding for with a grant in California 

 

 

I know some of the topics we dip into here will be controversial, and I personally am open to multiple sometimes contradictory perspectives at once. It is necessary in a time of such political and social polarization. Some topics require consistent critical conversation and hearing from multiple perspectives, looking at deep time and into the future, and all of the socio-economic-cultural factors at play. I think we need to be able to have different beliefs and try to understand where the other is coming from, even if you know they are totally wrong (or believe they are). 

Teo offers a unique perspective as an indigenous person that doesn't mean all other indigenous people agree. As humans, culturally, we are just as diverse as the plant life that shift and morph from one mountain, forest or meadow to another. 

 

  Links: 'Rekindling Native California Ecologies Part 1" with Redbird (Edward Willie) from the Native Seed Pod Podcast, a teaching we mention a few times Metapod music, Teo's project featured as interstitial music for this episode Teo's Instagram accounts:

@Teomontoya.nde

@humandesignreadings

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

Donate on VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial Music: 'Willow Call' by Metapod

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

 

 

Episode #47 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with artist and creative land-tender Sharon Kallis, who lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

 

Sharon is a community engaged environmental artist.

I met Sharon last year at the Saskatoon Circle ancestral skills gathering in eastern Washington. Before the gathering, one of my good friends had been telling me about Sharon and her partner David and how I should meet them. While at this gathering, they happened to set up their camp right next to the camp I made with my friends.

I have to tell you, Sharon and David are A LOT OF FUN. They make cool things, have a good time, and are incredible people to carry on deep and candid conversations with. After talking for a bit and learning more about their work, I asked Sharon if she'd be interested in sharing some of what she does on the podcast. Sharon and I talked about doing some kind of in-person interview last summer, with the potential of me attempting to cross the border into Canada to visit her gardens and projects in-person, but it never happened. At least, not for now. Also, the idea of dealing with carrying my mobile home across the border with tinctures, bark and animal pelts, had me hesitant.

Sharon gave me a copy of her book 'Common Threads' last summer to read through, and I loved it. I read about her projects with 'invasive' plants for fiber, rope and basket-making, her restoration projects in the city using those said plants, and other community oriented projects. These projects that literally weave art, ecology, place-making and craft skills together really inspired my already deep interest in gleaning what was right in front of me to make work that connects to place. I kept it in my mind to still feature her somehow on the podcast. After getting back from the Colorado Trail Plant-a-go walk this summer, she was one of the first people on my mind to contact. I wanted to hear what she was up to now, and also how the current situation in the world was affecting her mindset and practice.

Our conversation here is just that. A check-in, an exploration of Sharon's work, some art + ecology philosophy talk, some untangling of what decolonizing craft could look like in one way and in one place, and more.

About Sharon Kallis: (From the Earthand Gleaner's Society website)

Sharon is a community engaged environmental artist (in her words).

'With a "one mile diet" approach to sourcing art materials, Sharon works to discover the inherent material potential in a local landscape. Involving community in connecting traditional hand techniques with invasive species, tended plantings and garden waste, she creates site-specific installations that become ecological interventions. Graduating from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1996 she began working materials from the land in 1999 and has exhibited and engaged communities with her practice in Ireland, Spain, Mexico and throughout the United States. At home in Vancouver Canada, Sharon works with Vancouver Park Board, Stanley Park Ecology Society. She is one of the primary stewards of the Means of Production Garden since 2009 which is a community garden that grows art materials. She is also one of the primary stewards of Trillium North Park. Sharon has received numerous Canada Council and British Columbia Arts Council grants for both studio-based and community-focused projects. Her work has been acknowledged as the 2010 recipient of the Brandford/ Elliott International Award for Excellence in Fibre Arts, Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for Studio Design: emerging artist, and the Vancouver Mayors Award Recipient for Studio Design in 2017.

Her book, Common Threads: weaving community through collaborative eco-art," was published by New Society Publishers in 2014 and is used in many post secondary programs as a model for creative engagement in shared green spaces.'

 

 

In this conversation with Sharon, we talk about:

Sharon's creative work and how she arrived at what she is doing today in Vancouver, BC, Canada

how creative folks can be important connection-makers and ecological problem-solvers and how allowing room for them is important

the importance of respecting indigenous peoples' relationships to their cultural weaving and fiber practices

working on community garden projects in urban Vancouver focused on regional culturally significant fiber plants

how 'invasive' plants can be useful for learning to weave and for problem-solving because they are abundant free materials that you can mess up on while experimenting

different 'invasive' plants Sharon has worked with doing community craft projects in Vancouver, BC

the importance of Nettles, Fireweed and Flax as fiber plants and pollinator preferred species

how weeds are often seen as plants that simply don't serve the human agenda

navigating connection to place and the land as a settler

trying to stay buoyant during pandemic, fires and revolution

  Sharon offered a video how-to on Dogbane fiber processing for patrons of the Ground Shots Project. It will be available for subscribers $5 and up! Pledge here to support the podcast and learn more about processing fiber from Sharon.   Links:

Follow Sharon Kallis on Instagram @sharonkallis

Sharon's Facebook page

Earthand Gleaner's Society website

Sharon's Flickr account with amazing photographs over the years of various 'invasive' plant weaving, net-making and crocheting projects in Vancouver, BC

Sharon's book, "Common Threads"

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

Donate on VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6

Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

 

Episode #46 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation between Gabe Crawford and Kelly Moody tuning in around mile 300 of their 'Plant-a-go' thru-hike walk on the Colorado Trail this summer. To listen to their reflections on the first 100 miles of the walk, listen to Episode #43, here.

 

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

redefining 'wildness' and Babylon

the pros and cons of walking and wild-tending

land observations

land readers and books we were reading at that time and how they affected our perspective on the land

what does it mean to have right relations with land?

what does moderate disturbance actually look like?

the struggles that long walks bring up

comparing the characteristics of the east side of the Collegiate Loop to the west side of the Collegiate Loop

the myth of the solitary 'American man' and how it is a very dysfunctional myth

 

Links:

Gabe's instagram: @plumsforbums

Be sure to listen to Gabe's latest IGTV video where he reflects on re-thinking the identity of 'wild-tending' and definitions of 'wildness'

Gabe's PayPal if you'd like to support his wild-tending and seed-saving work: paypal.me/johnnyslug

Kollibri's podcast, 'Voices for Nature and Peace' which I mention in the introduction of the podcast: https://radiofreesunroot.com/category/voices-for-nature-and-peace/

Youtube video where we introduce the 'Plant-a-go' walk on the Colorado Trail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPfcZ0MwiWc

Rocky Mountain Land Reader that we were reading on the trail: https://www.tatteredcover.com/book/9781555663933

'Wilderness Passage' book that Gabe mentions he read on the trail: https://www.amazon.com/Wilderness-Passage-Forrester-Blake/dp/B00DG9PPQ6

Native Seed Pod Podcast, Part 2 with Redbird, Gabe mentions some of Redbird's insights on the podcast, Listen to his words here: https://www.nativeseedpod.org/podcast/2020/ep-11-redbird-part2

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. (patreon.com/ofsedgeandsalt)
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Blog page for this episode, along with a few photos from the campsite where we recorded this episode: www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/ctmile300 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Additional music: 'Work over Time' by Dunkin Hardee, recorded on the Colorado Trail

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

This episode of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with the potter and artist John Mahkewa, Hopi-Tewa elder currently living in Yuma, Arizona.

 

John and I met a few years ago at the Buckeye Gathering, an ancestral skills gathering that usually occurs in the Spring in Concow, California. Since this gathering where I met John and took his pottery class, the Buckeye Gathering has been on sabbatical, due to the Paradise fire and the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

I decided to take John's class at this gathering because I wanted to focus on one craft for the week, and I had been introduced to land-based pottery from my friend Erin Fahey, who is pictured in this podcast episode's main photo. She spoke highly of John, having met him the year before at the gathering and offered to process his clay for him a year in advance because of a recent stroke he had had. Taking his class was a fruitful experience of immense patience and fulfillment.

 

At first, the gathering was rainy, and there were a lot of folks who showed up for John's class, it was hard to get individual attention while working with the clay we the been given. The weather affects everything with pottery. Rainy weather makes it act differently - makes it dry slower and more likely to crack, at the same time, drying a hand pinched pot in the direct sun will also make it crack. John told stories and reminded us that our mindset affects our pots. They were children we had to nurture. Each day the class got smaller as folks got distracted by shorter and more instantly fulfilling classes. As those who stayed dedicated to the process stuck it out, we got more individual attention and feedback from John about how we were working the clay. We made ultra small pots, partly because of the weather, partly because of John's advice to start small as it is less likely to crack and dries faster. Our goal was to pit fire the pots by the end of the week, and the variable weather made it uncertain if it would be successful.

By the end of the week there were less than 10 of us dedicated students showing up to John's class, not that it wasn't a good class, but because often at these skill-share gatherings folks feel FOMO for not trying to dip their fingers in everything and distraction is a reality. During these last few days, John told a lot of stories about his life growing up with his grandmother as a mentor, being hospitalized for polio, being put in a school and being away from his family, his dreams of his grandmother and various saint figures, his time in the military, his death experience(which he talks about a little on the podcast), his work as an adult re-finding his craft and seeing the goodness in humanity.

I did some recordings of John at the gathering that are not a part of this episode, but maybe at some point the combination of his teachings and the in-person interview will come out on the podcast. Ever since this meeting several years ago, John and I have been in conversation about continuing our recordings of his stories. I was attached to meeting again in person, but due to Covid-19, I have let go of that for the moment. Our elders are here for us to cherish, and they can go in an instant. Not to say that John is ill or anything, he is very vibrant. Covid-19 has reminded me that older folks are more vulnerable, and their stories go with them when they go. I appreciate John's perspective from our time being Facebook friends since this meeting at Buckeye, and have kept it in my mind to continue to capture his stories. This interview is a Facebook call we did in June that touches on some of the stories John shared a few years ago when I met him. I hope in the future we continue to record stories of his for the podcast as he has a lot to share.

 

In this episode with John Mahkewa, we talk about:

 

John's experiences as a young child hanging out with his grandmother Grace Chapella, who was an acclaimed potter, and some things he learned from her, how she used clay to tell stories

 

John speaks to his death experience in a Jewish hospital after a heart attack over 20 years ago, and how this experience changed his perspective on the world, and reinvoked his interest in clay

 

John speaks to clay as a teacher, and how he processes the clay by hand with no electric machines and tools

 

the DNA connection between clay and humans

 

John reaching out into new art-forms, and branching beyond traditional techniques in recent years

 

Some wisdom from John about his perspective on the Covid-19 pandemic, recent protests and riots

 

some of John's writing projects in the works

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial music: 'Little Flower' by West of Roan

West of Roan's website: http://www.westofroan.com

West of Roan's bandcamp: https://westofroan.bandcamp.com/releases

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

This episode of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Ramona Moonflower Rubin, an activist and forest therapist living in the Bay area of California.

 

Ramona Moonflower Rubin walks a path woven of science, spirituality and activism connecting human and ecological health. Ramona studied Cultural Ecology at the University of Santa Cruz and has a Master's in Public Health from the University of Michigan. She founded Healing Forest Guide to facilitate a deep conversation about how we experience and relate to the natural world. Ramona lives in Berkeley California on Chochenyo Ohlone ancestral land at the ancient settlement of Huchiun. She teaches from her diverse fields of study: ecology, permaculture, California native plants, sustainable agriculture, nutrition, public health, integrative medicine, cannabis science, ethnobotany and forest therapy. Based in her Judaic heritage and influenced by Buddhist, shamanic and earth-based traditions, Ramona's approach to spirituality is open and grounded in welcoming the sensory experience of the present. Her ceremonial practice is based on the conviction that other beings embody an intelligence, and that it is our sacred heritage and right to interact with and experience this intelligence.

I sat down and had a brief conversation with Ramona after we both participated in the march to Oak Flat this past February with the Apache Stronghold primarily organized by the local San Carlos Apache folks. The march to Oak Flat is a prayer-focused walk with the intention of bringing awareness to an unlawful copper mine trying to make it's way on sacred Apache land.

 

In this episode with Ramona we talk about:

 

Ramona's environmental activism work being involved in protecting old growth Redwoods in the 90's in northern California

 

the different motivations behind the Redwood campaign Ramona was involved with in the 90's

 

different ways of approaching direct action

 

the connection between Salmon and the Redwoods

 

how the potential for grief increases the more we feel connected to the land around us in a society that does not feel that same connection

 

forest therapy

Links:

Follow Ramona on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/r_moonflower/

Ramona's website: http://www.healingforestguide.com

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial music: 'The Gray Sea' by West of Roan

West of Roan's website: http://www.westofroan.com

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

Episode #42 features a conversation between Kelly Moody (podcast host) and Gabe Crawford, previous podcast guest.

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss our observations on the first six segments or first 100 miles or so of our Colorado Trail Plant—a-go walk.

We talk about the nature and spectrum of small to extreme disturbances on the land

We look at how disturbance can be a good thing in some situations and bad in others

We talk about some of our favorite areas and some of the plants and animals we noticed

We talk about our intent to walk slower and observe the land more intimately

We talk about the zen of Beaver, and what we thought about when encountering extreme disturbances on the land by Beavers

we speak to walking within the context of colonialization

we talk about our culture shock in tourist towns

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project.  Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Additional music: 'We're Gonna Make It' by Dunkin Hardee, recorded on the Colorado Trail

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

we speak more on re-thinking 'a war' on certain plants and how plants respond to the circumstances at hand

we reflect on how putting lines on the land like 'wilderness boundaries' can affect ecology

we talk about questioning concepts of 'pristine wilderness'

Episode #42 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Charity Cimarron, the main singer and songwriter behind the music project Mother Marrow.

 

Charity and I met in 2013 in Asheville, North Carolina and have been friends ever since. I'm honored to feature her music at the theme song and outro for the Ground Shots Podcast.

In this episode, we launch a new version of the Ground Shots Podcast theme song, featuring an updated version of Mother Marrow's song 'Sweat and Splinters.'

 

In this conversation with Charity we talk about:

 

doing our work in the world while also having enough space of solitude for creative flow and inspiration

charity's relationship with being connected to music and the land 'being born in this world of music'

Charity's time traveling with the band Psalters around the country and in Europe/Turkey,

her time homesteading in rural Missouri

learning to weave

finding community in the Earthskills community

Charity plays two new songs not on her recent album: 'Regalia' and 'Home to Self.' She talks a little bit about the inspiration behind them, and how they came to her over time

how creativity is often a play between different elements with specific parameters, and figuring out how to make them fit together

how craft and music creativity feel like different processes to Charity

Charity's journey with autoimmune struggles and what the illness' have taught her

some of Charity's current and upcoming musical and creative projects

how artists and musicians don't often get an equal exchange for the energy they shar

 

 

Links:

Mother Marrow's website: http://www.mothermarrowmusic.com

Mother Marrow on Bandcamp: https://mothermarrow.bandcamp.com/music

Psalters band: https://psalters.bandcamp.com/

Charity's instagram: http://www.instagram.com/mothermarrow

Mother Marrow's instagram: http://www.instagram.com/the.long.red.thread

Mother Marrow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MotherMarrow/

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Additional music by Mother Marrow

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

Episode #41 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a story documenting my visit with Michael Ridge of Walking with Western Wildflowers August 2019 in Kamiah, Idaho, Nimiipuu country.   In this episode with Michael we talk about:

 

the importance of ecological participation as a way to belong to place

Michael's way of wild-tending nomadically on horseback across the west

planting the seeds of wild food and medicine plants to diversify genetics

some of the plants Michael tends like Sego Lilies, Biscuitroots, different stone-fruits, Camas, Yampah and more. 

 

Links:

Michael's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/walkingwithwesternwildflowers/?hl=en

Michael's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/walkingwithwesternwildflowers/

Michael's Paypal: http://www.paypal.me/MRidge711

Amanda's instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/mountain.manders/

'Tending the Wild' by Kat Anderson https://www.amazon.com/Tending-Wild-Knowledge-Management-Californias/dp/0520280431

The Native Seed Pod podcast https://www.nativeseedpod.org/ features some conversations about wild tending hosted by native folks interviewing native folks.

A few links to learning about colonization in Nimipuu territory :

Flight of the Nez Perce: https://isreview.org/issue/73/flight-nez-perce

Nez Perce / Nimipuu tribal website https://www.nezperce.org/

book by Nimipuu elder: "A Little Bit of Wisdom: Conversations With a Nez Perce Elder" by Horace Axtell https://www.amazon.com/Little-Bit-Wisdom-Conversations-Perce/dp/0806132698

"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn: https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

Episode #40 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Samuel Bautista Lazo, who was a guest on Episode #1 of the podcast which aired several summers ago. Listen to the first conversation we had with Samuel here: Episode #1: Samuel Bautista Lazo on weaving in Oaxaca, colonialism, the importance of making things. Samuel is Benizaa (Zapotec) and lives Xiguie'a (Teotitlán del Valle), located in the Central Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Samuel, his family and community come from a long line of weavers and farmers who have been tending the same land for thousands of years. This region is considered one of the cradles of civilization. Samuel has a Ph.d. in Sustainable Manufacturing from the University of Liverpool.

I met Samuel at the Buckeye Gathering ancestral skills gathering a few years ago. On the first episode of the podcast, during an in-person interview, Samuel and I discuss weaving and natural dyes, some complexities around private land ownership in the community where he is from when the traditional way was communal tending of the land, why making things by hand is a way to combat the pressures of capitalism and more.

This time around, Samuel and I speak via Zoom due to COVID-19. We go deeper into some of the issues of continued settler colonialism and corporate intrusion on indigenous peoples and the biodiverse wild lands in Mexico, as well as focus on dynamics local to the state of Oaxaca and the native peoples who live there.

 

 

Since we recorded this conversation in early May, the world has erupted in revolution in support of Black Lives and in protest of police violence globally. Lest us also not forget the indigenous peoples of the lands we live, walk, protest and love on and the effects our capitalist lifestyles have on these communities as further reiterated by Samuel in this interview.

 

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

Samuel speaks to what life has been like during the pandemic in Teotitlán del Valle

 

Samuel reflects a little bit on our conversation from Lake Concow, California during the Buckeye Gathering several years ago (Listen here: Episode #1 of the podcast: Samuel Bautista Lazo on weaving in Oaxaca, colonialism, the importance of making things) and the fire that has come through since

 

Samuel's perspective on how the pandemic has caused the world to slow down and the land has an opportunity to cleanse and breathe

 

We talk about the destructive corporate energy projects trying to push forth in the state of Oaxaca and the country of Mexico, and the ways in which these projects are abusive towards the indigenous peoples of Mexico and environmentally devastating

 

Samuel speaks from his perspective as an indigenous person who studied industrial manufacturing (he has a Ph.d. !) about the bigger picture of needing to change our consumption and production patterns as a society, especially the U.S. which consumes more than most countries in the world

 

The recent murder of a biology student in Oaxaca (one of many that have occurred), due to his interest in the biodiversity of the region and his love of nature (links to articles about this in the Links section below)

 

Despite a current progressive president, the framework of Mexico's economy is still rooted in destructive resource extraction and development

 

The potentially devastating effects of Isthmus Rail Corridor Project and Mayan Train Project that are planned for the region

 

environmental racism

 

how capitalism can affect indigenous populations

 

Samuel speaks to how rain feeds land and spirit, and connection to self sufficiency

 

coming back to the Corn and the Milpa food systems

 

Milpa farming in relationship to wild-tending, feeding the wild animals, and definitions of agriculture, the recovery of native lands during the Mexican revolution

 

How colonization and western ideas of how land should be taken care of affects indigenous people's ability in Mexico to keep the land they have tended for thousands of years, because it requires them to constantly work it, even though traditionally the land was allowed to rest for long periods

 

how linear systems informed by capitalism that emphasize extraction, production and discarding don't leave room for cyclical land-based world views

 

 

Links:

Dixza Rugs and Organic Farm website

Samuel on instagram: @sam_dixza

Dixza Rugs and Organic Farm on instagram: @dixzarugsorganicfarm

DIxza Rugs and Organic Farm on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dixzarugs/

blog post for this episode: https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/samuellazo2

https://www.latimes.com/espanol/mexico/articulo/2020-05-11/condenan-asesinato-de-joven-ambientalista-mexicano-en-municipio-de-oaxaca "Condenan asesinato de joven ambientalista mexicano en municipio de Oaxaca." (news article in Spanish about the assassination of young Mexican environmentalist Eugui Roy Martínez Pérez, whom we speak about in the podcast)

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2020/05/21-year-old-biology-student-murdered-in.html (News article in English about the 21 year old Eugui Roy Martínez Pérez, young biologist and naturalist killed, whom we speak about in the podcast)

https://justiceinmexico.org/environmental-activists-under-attack-in-mexico/ 'Environmental Activists Under Attack in Mexico' (article in English about several environmental activists and naturalists murdered in Mexico recently or in the last few years)

https://www.bnamericas.com/en/interviews/hold-friday-mexicos-tehuantepec-isthmus-rail-corridor-unveils-more-infra-projects (News article about the Tehuantepec Isthmus Rail Corridor project that Samuel speaks to in the conversation)

https://www.citylab.com/environment/2019/02/mexico-travel-mayan-train-yucatan-tourism-economic-development/583405/ (Mayan Train Project that Samuel speaks to in the podcast)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milpa The Milpa farming system

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial Music: 'Grief in Exile' by Mariee Sioux

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

 

full shownotes and maps to reference in this episode: groundshots.substack.com

Episode #84 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Jeff Wagner out of Paonia, Colorado, director of Groundwork, a regional nonprofit educating about food systems in a changing world and more.

Sign up for my August 2-8 high country field ecology and ethnobotany course in Western Colorado on the Grand Mesa

Groundwork is a place-based education program working to deepen our society's relationships with land, food, and water and to cultivate generative and regenerative ways of living and relating. Our mission is to inspire the cultural shifts needed for a sustainable future.

Rising to meet the challenges posed by climate change, ecological decline, and environmental injustice requires more than new technologies and policies. At Groundwork, we believe it also requires profound shifts in the ways we relate to one another and to the world around us. Groundwork offers educational programs and publications that seek to shift the foundations of the ways we understand ourselves and our place in the world, in order to work towards more just and sustainable shared futures.

A culture, like our planet, is a living ecosystem, constantly shifting and changing based on the values, attitudes, and practices cultivated within a particular community. Groundwork creates spaces to critically reflect upon, challenge, experiment with, and create anew those building blocks of culture. Our offerings create opportunities for the emergence of new kinds of relationships and ways of being within the human and more-than-human world.

We believe that reimagined relationships and practices—in essence, emergent cultures—are the foundations of systemic change.

Colorado Public Radio 'Parched' Series

'Chasing Water' movie

Johnathan Thompson's Landdesk publication on Substack regularly writes on current issues of the Colorado River

Cadillac Desert The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner

Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River by David Owen

Thinking Like a Watershed: Voices from the West by Jack Loeffler and Celestia Loeffler

Glen Canyon Institute

Encounters with the Archdruid: Narratives about a Conservationist and Three of His Natural Enemies by John McPhee

The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive by Martin Prechtel

The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Water Education Colorado

'The uncompromising environmentalist behind the Sierra Club' by Joshua Zaffos High County News article about David Brower

'Western States Opposed TribesAccess to the Colorado River 70 Years Ago'. History Is Repeating Itself.' article by Mark Olalde, ProPublica, and Anna V. Smith, High Country News

Colorado River Compact

Elsewhere Studios

 

Episode #39 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Dan Nanamkin.

 

Dan Nanamkin is from the Chief Joseph Band Of Wallowa, Nez Perce, and Colville Confederated Tribes of Washington State has been an advocate/teacher for indigenous culture, community unity, youth empowerment, racial equality, and peace for several decades. Prior to Standing Rock, Dan took one of the leads in helping to restore ancient canoe culture of the northwest plateau tribes, the River Warriors. This inspired him further to connect with the Water, something that led him to Standing Rock. He endured months of peaceful front line action at Standing Rock from September 2016 until March 2017. Dan has since traveled across the nation speaking with his two dogs and band, the One Tribe Movement. ​ Dan advocates for people to be better informed, to get more involved, to resist racism and violence, and to support the movement to protect Mother Earth. He is a public presenter, musician and author who remains active in bringing forth awareness of Native culture. His mission is to connect modern day people with the traditions that are still absolutely relevant and critical to life today. Dan hopes to bring back traditional knowledge of the earth/plants/medicines and survival in a way to encourage healing, wellness and respect for balance with Mother Earth and all living things.

 

In this conversation with Dan, we talk about:

 

Dan's Sovereignty Camp skill-share project which focuses on educating native youth about traditional skills

how Sovereignty Camp started and Dan's motivations for the project

what skills are taught at the camps

why creating an educational alternative for native youth away from mainstream schooling that includes a focus on cultural education is important

the importance of indigenous led skills-shares

why land skills are important for indigenous sovereignty

Dan's visions for the future of the camps and his land project

how folks can support Dan's sovereignty camp project

 

Links:

Dan's website, where you can learn more about him and Sovereignty Camp: https://www.nanamkin.com/

Support Dan and his projects via Paypal: paypal.me/warriorsong

Dan on Youtube

Dan on Instagram : @dan_nanamkin

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Blog page for this episode: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/dannanamkin

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial Music: 'Our Bodies Are Water' by Holy River (formerly Lobo Marino)

Buy their music at either of the Bandcamp pages below:

https://lobomarino.bandcamp.com/music

https://holyriver.bandcamp.com/

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

Episode #38 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Jim Croft, medieval era bookbinder, hand papermaker and wonderful storyteller. This podcast episode was recorded summer 2019 in Santa, Idaho on his homestead during he and his partner Melody's 'Old Ways of Making Books' class they host most summers. This interview was co-facilitated by Brien Beidler, who was featured along Mary Sullivan on Episode #32 of the podcast.

 

Jim Croft is a Medieval bookbinder and papermaker. He is internationally known for his skills, and he travels annually to various locations in the USA to teach students how to make books with wooden covers and brass clasps. In the summer, he offers a two week intensive workshop teaching students how to spin thread from raw fibers, make paper, create book covers from raw wood, design and make brass clasps, and then how to bind everything together. Jim is always the first one up in the morning, and the last one to retire at night.

Jim has lived in Santa, Idaho on his rural off-grid homestead with his partner Melody Eckroft, who is an accomplished basket-weaver, for over 40 years. They raised three children living close to the land and making their handmade crafts a part of daily life. I've had the honor of spending time on their land the last three summers. I first came to their homestead because I was interested in making things from the 'ground up' after taking a bookbinding, paper-making, and printmaking Spring intensive at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, where many folks had suggested I give Jim a call. SO, I did. And, everything changed from there.

I've been doing natural brain-tanning and bark-tanning animal hides for awhile now, and I'm also interested in other crafts that engage a relationship with plants, ecology and natural materials. My work in brain-tanning and bark-tanning leather caught Jim's attention and we became friends right away. Since he focuses on period specific bookbinding that utilizes natural or up-cycled materials as much as possible, he wanted to learn more about leather and 'shammy' (although, he already knows more than he gives himself credit).

I ended up wandering to Jim and Melody's a year and a half after my Penland experience. I took their two week 'Old Ways of Making Books' class while also facilitating the hide tanning portion of the class so that folks could learn about naturally tanning their book materials. I started the podcast the next year, and then this past summer Jim agreed to record a conversation. I asked Brien to help co-facilitate since he and Jim are colleagues and great friends with many shared experiences and a mutual love of hand bookbinding.

 

About co-facilitator Brien Beidler: From the beginning, Brien Beidler has been inspired by historic bindings, and is consistently delighted by their ability to harmonize fine craftsmanship, quirky but elegant aesthetics, and evidence of the hands that made them. Though traditionally structured and bound with integrity, Brien's bindings seek ways to create new compositions and juxtapositions of these historic precedents.

Naturally, a healthy love of the tools of the trade followed suit, and with the generosity and encouragement of toolmaking legends Jim Croft and Shanna Leino, Brien also creates a limited assortment of specialized hand tools for bookbinding and its related trades.

Over the last nine years Brien has taken and taught a variety of bookbinding and toolmaking workshops, and is an active member of the Guild of Book Workers. In the fall of 2016, he and his wife upped their roots in Charleston, South Carolina and set up shop in Bloomington, Indiana, where Brien works from his home studio with Wren, his curmudgeonly Brittany.

Since Ground Shots Podcast episode #32 where I interview Brien Beidler and Mary Sullivan on bookbinding and papermaking, Brien started a podcast of his own co-hosted with Amy Umbel called Cut the Craft Podcast featuring interviews with craftsfolk. Check it out!

In this conversation with Jim Croft featuring Brien Beidler, we talk about:

stories of where Jim grew up, when he worked on a boat, discovering bookbinding in Europe

 

Jim's classic meandering stories on woodworking, adventures, building, fiber processing, his house fire, meeting Melody Eckroft his partner of over 40 years

 

living off grid in rural Oregon and northern Idaho

 

making and building as much by hand as possible

 

investigating craft and materials through regular experimentation and engagement

 

some history of bookbinding and fine binding, paper-making

 

the importance of hemp and flax for paper, clothing and rope fiber

 

making bone tools

 

using mostly hand tools to make books

 

Jim's relationship with scavenging from logging sites, junk yards, or abandoned buildings for materials to make things

 

book conservation vs. repair

 

Jim and and Jack Thompson making a water-powered hand stamp paper mill in Santa, Idaho (the only other ones basically exist in Europe)

Links:

Jim and Melody's website, where you can contact them about future classes out in Idaho (calling or writing letters is best): https://cargocollective.com/oldway

Brien's website: https://www.beidlermade.com/

Brien's instagram: @bhbeidler http://www.instagram.com/bhbeidler

Jeff Peachy, mentioned in the podcast https://jeffpeachey.com/

Guild of Bookworkers: https://guildofbookworkers.org/

Friends of Dard Hunter paper-making conference: https://friendsofdardhunter.org/conference

University of Iowa Center for the Book: https://www.iowacenterforthebook.org

Paper and Book Intensive: https://www.paperbookintensive.org

Penland School of Craft: https://penland.org/

Stamp Mill for Paper-making, a piece of technology Jim co-built with others on his land https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_mill

Suave Mechanicals: Volume 2 – mentioned in the podcast, a publication Jim wrote a piece for, published by Legacy Press : https://the-center-for-book-arts.myshopify.com/collections/center-publications/products/copy-of-suave-mechanicals-volume-2

 

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 

 

Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our blog post for this episode (featuring photos from the class with Jim in 2019) http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/jimcroft

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

 

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

 

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

 

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

 

Interstitial Music: cover of music by Simon and Garfunkel, Jim Croft, Melody Eckroft and Peter Thomas, live recording summer 2019 in Santa, Idaho.

 

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

 

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

 

 

This episode of the podcast features a conversation with Dara Saville out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dara is an Herbalist and Geographer with a passion for native plants, public lands, and community engagement.  She is the founder and primary instructor of the Albuquerque Herbalism bioregional herbal studies program and a columnist for Plant Healer Quarterly, teaching and writing on medicinal plants, changing ecosystems, and environmental issues.  She has a bachelor's degree from New York University, a master's degree specializing in southwest landscape geography from the University of New Mexico, and is a graduate of Tieraona Low Dog's Foundations of Herbal Medicine Program.  Additionally Dara has many years of fieldwork and resource management experience with the National Park Service and well as a long history of community volunteer service with the City of Albuquerque Open Space and the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program (BEMP).  She is also a board member of the Native Plant Society Albuquerque Chapter, a mother, homeschool educator, gardener, and lover of wild places. I took one of Dara's classes that focused on ecology and climate change in the southwest at an herbalism conference a few years ago in Colorado, and I remembered the teachings in her class that day. I've been featuring conversations on the podcast that visit different ways 'wild-tending' can be interpreted and I thought it would be interesting to feature a little bit about the Yerba Mansa Project and Dara's work with the Albuquerque community restoring the local riparian corridor otherwise locally referred to as the bosque.

 

 

In this conversation with Dara, we talk about:

 

the origins of The Yerba Mansa Project and its connection to Dara's Albuquerque Herbalism project

how the Yerba Mansa Project is helping to repair the local riparian ecology (the bosque) in Albuquerque, New Mexico

why herbalists should also be land stewards

the bosque (riparian area in the city) as a place that brings folks together

why riparian areas, especially in the southwestern US, are at risk

how the Yerba Mansa Project aims to connect local folks to the importance of the local ecology in order to create more folks who will advocate for those spaces

some of the plants they work with or tend on the bosque as a part of The Yerba Mansa Project

why Yerba Mansa is an important plant ecologically and culturally

harvesting Yerba Mansa carefully

how wildcrafting can also mean creating stories of place, it doesn't always mean we harvest

Dara's thoughts on invasive plants

 

Links:

The Yerba Mansa Project

Albuquerque Herbalism

Blog page for the episode: https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/yerbamansaproject

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial Music: 'Odd Bird (Old Man River)' ft. January Mitchell by Damiyana

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative

 

Episode #35 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Zach Elfers, an ethnobotanist who lives in eastern Pennsylvania near the Susquehanna River. Zach runs the Nomad Seed Project.

From Zach's website:

The Nomad Seed Project sets out to research, document, experiment, and propagate wild, native, and perennial plants which have exceptional value to humans and their ecology as food, medicine, shelter, materials, and beauty.

Imagining the world of nomadic gatherer-hunters invokes to mind a patchwork landscape with oases of human habitat along pathways of migration unfolding with the pattern of the seasons, plants, or animals. For thousands of years, humans lived in this manner. Along the way, they gathered useful plants and intentionally spread the seeds as a form of populations management. Ecology has been a co-creation alongside humankind for a long time.

Humans often acted as the legs of important plants, expanding them both in their range and abundance. It was humans who brought the pawpaw (Asimina triloba) out of the subtropics  after the last ice age and spread it around the eastern temperate forests, and it was humans also who spread the sunroot or Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) throughout the continent. Nomad Seed Project is interested in ideas of assisted migration, especially in response to climate change, and as a way to protect and conserve species in the face of a rapidly changing world.

The Nomad Seed Project is a re-envisioning of this old paradigm. By gathering and planting the seeds of native, wild, perennial plants that are important to us, we as humans have the power to impact the ecosystems we are a part of in positive and healthy ways, while also meeting our own requirements for food, shelter, medicine, and materials. Neither agriculture, gardening, nor preservationism, but something in between.

It may be a long time however before we can fully sustain our lives again from the wild plants growing in nature's garden. While prior to colonialism the presence and abundance of plant foods and medicines was much greater, our ecosystems today have been degraded, fractured, or destroyed in the wake of farming, ranching, mining, urban development, suburban sprawl, and the highway system. Now it is more important than ever that we act again as the legs to the plants that we love, helping them gain new ground, ahead of mass extinction and climate change. The Nomad Seed Project describes work that could also be called do-it-yourself ecological restoration, at the hands of citizen scientists acting according to their own conscience. By working with these native plants, with the same stroke we expand our own habitat. There is a lot of work to do, but it all starts with the power of a seed…

In this conversation with Zach, we talk about:

some natural/ethnobotanical history of the Susquehanna River watershed in Pennsylvania where Zach lives

Zach's project 'Nomad Seed' which focuses on his experimental field research with native first food plants

Zach's experience learning plants while traveling and being out on the land and how this helped deepen his understanding of his 'home' ecosystem

specific 'wild foods' / first foods plants Zach tends and his methods for doing so like Spring Beauty, Dwarf Ginseng, Toothwort, American Groundnut, Harbinger of Spring, Eastern Camas, Chestnuts, Hickories, Chinkapins

how fire-stick farming may have been a wild-tending practice in the southeast

the importance of John Hershey's farm in Pennsylvania for preserving native fruit and nut species that were possibly selected at one point by indigenous peoples and Zach's research on how he thinks this happened

the importance of prioritizing the preservation and propagation of bioregional foods

Zach's experiments with and research on controlled 'burn' gardens on the east coast

different ways one can define 'agriculture'

ethnical foraging expanded: learning the plants entire life cycle and encouraging them to become more abundant by working with the plants all year

choosing love over fear in a time of collapse

 

Links:

Zach's website (read his amazing plant profiles!) : The Nomad Seed Project

Zach on Facebook

Zach's instagram @woodlandrambler

Zach's Patreon page for The Nomad Seed Project

Blog page for this episode: www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/ground-shots-podcast/zachelfers

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute to our grassroots self-funding of this project. 
Support the Ground Shots Project with a one time donation via Paypal at: paypal.me/petitfawn

 

 Our website with backlog of episodes, plant profiles, travelogue and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com 

Our Instagram page @goldenberries

Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project

Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Interstitial Music: 'Cold Horn' by Inger S

Hosted by: Kelly Moody

Produced by: Kelly Moody and Opia Creative