Welcome

Welcome to my site! I keep on getting asked for a website for people to go to, so here it is.

First off, a little bit about me. I grew up in far southeast Texas and far southwest Oklahoma. My mother was born in 1915 and retired from being a lawyer and adopted me the next year. My family has always foraged. She and her five sisters and one brother grew up during the great depression.

People from all over would come to my grandmother and great grandmother when they needed help. This was the time of the circuit doctors when you might have one doctor in the entire county and he’d be in town one day a month. My family was who you went to when you got hurt, when the baby came in the middle of the night, or when you were starving and needed help. I have innumerable stories of people riding in on horses in hunting accidents, or stories that stuck with my mother from back when she was tiny of how the blood was dripping off the side of the horse. Stories of people paying in chickens or cabbages or a nickel a week for years… and that’s all they could afford. My family didn’t charge for services. People paid what they felt was right.

I was taught this from before I could walk. It is who we are. Knowing the plants and what they are good for is deep in my blood and bones. It is my fondest memories… and my weird little hobby that I can’t help but do. And all of a sudden, there was people saying they were interested in it. They wanted to learn! I was (and still am) in shock. You want to learn my weird little family hobby? AWESOME! Let’s go!

First thing I want you to know is I really don’t do mushrooms. Pick a poisonous look alike, and it will kill. I don’t mess with them simply because mistakes are deadly. And I’m not going to say “No mushrooms ever” because I am fascinated with them. But we’re not going to focus on them either.

Second is I also don’t teach all of what I know. There’s some plants that the usages were needed for pain killers in dire circumstances that we don’t need to know. The dose makes the poison. Repeat that in your head over and over again. And there’s plants and preparations that were used that could be abused and I don’t need that on my conscience.

Now with that said, there’s enough plants in north Texas alone to keep us occupied for a lifetime. If we start looking at different regions – Hill country, south Texas, central Texas each alone is just as biologically diverse, and the Big Thicket of east Texas is one of the most biologically diverse places on the continent. We’re not ever going to be lacking for subjects to talk about.

Lastly, I am not against modern medicine. This is a hobby. As I said earlier, it’s a weird little hobby that was passed down through the generations. I have anecdotes dating back all the way to the 1830s when my great great grandmother led a mule all the way from Tennessee on the Trail of Tears. My family has watched modern medicine grow and learn and we are fascinated by it. I have many doctors and nurses that sprang up in my line. There are stories of my grandmother born in 1890 being absolutely delighted by the discovery of DNA. This isn’t a replacement for modern medicine. I will never tell anyone to throw away their insulin. Use this in conjunction with modern medicine if you like.

At it’s heart, this is about a passion for the living world. A saying and belief that has been passed down through generations that absolutely nothing on this earth is useless. Everything has a purpose. Everything has a use. God doesn’t make useless things. And we were given big beautiful brains and a questioning nature to find out what those uses were. It is our duty to life itself to learn. And you appreciate things so much more when you get to know them, to learn that tiny little flower can save your life if you know how to use it right.

So come and meander the woods with me. I’m not saying hike, because we don’t move that fast. We’ll stop and meet the flowers along the way.