The Bounty of Nature

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One of my favourite activities at Eaglenest Sanctuary is the harvest of medicinal and fragrant herbs.

At the end of the summer, we harvested several herbs from the medicinal herb garden in the Sanctuary.

Sometime in the 80’s, I read Alvin Toffler’s “The Third Wave” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(Toffler)). This book had many interesting elements, but what caught my attention most was the forecasted drive towards self sufficiency or auto-consumption.

He stated that a good portion of developed nations would return to auto-consumption after passing the industrial era creed of standardization. We would have enough time to be able to grow part of our own food (‘return to the land’ of the 60’s), make many of our daily items such as preserves, clothing, medicine, etc.

Though this trend has not panned out to be true for a majority of the developed world, a good portion of my life I have strived to include as many things as I can in my auto-consumption.

So one of the items I have been working in the last few years is natural medicine.

I harvest and wildcraft a few plant to use as consumables (medicine as tinctures, herbal infusions and spices).

Above you can see the harvest for my now famous (at least among my friends) herbal tea.

In it you can find a base of lemon balm, several kinds of mint, catnip, thyme and lavender. Also, in smaller proportions I add stinging nettle, and goldenrod. I will now pack it in glass containers and give it for Christmas to my friends.

The medicinal plant garden in Eaglenest Sanctuary was started by my ex-wife Nicola, who is a Medical herbalist. Though somehow neglected in the last few years of construction, the garden grows more than 50 medicinal herbs. There are many kinds of plants for cooking, perfume making, fragrant drinks, mosquito repellant and many medicinal purposes. Over time, I will mark the plants with names and purposes so that guests that are interested in this can learn to recognize and name the different plants and their uses.

Love and light,

 

Ezio Cusi

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