06/13/2026
There will seldomly be pictures taken while I’m in the forest. I keep phone use minimal out there because I prefer to stay present with the environment, the animals, and the work.
Yesterday we were out in the forest planting medicines and hanging out with the bees, and we came back covered in ticks and feeling deeply alive and grateful. Connecting with the forest in this way leaves you grounded in a different way. Giving back rather than taking
I’m really looking forward to spending more time in this place.
We’ve recently moved the bees to a new forested area, and it feels like a much better fit. There’s a real sense of life and abundance here, surrounded by wild space, gardens taking shape, and honest people learning and sharing in the practice of beekeeping and land based teachings.
Our previous location had good people, but it was surrounded by industrial farmland, which wasn’t ideal for the bees or the kind of ecosystem we’re trying to support.
This new space feels more aligned with what we’re building healthier habitats for the bees, deeper connection to the land, and a slower, more intentional way of working with nature.
I’m grateful for the transition and for everything this place is already teaching us. I’m looking forward to continuing the work here and seeing what grows from it.
-Not harvesting can be as profound an experience as harvesting. Saying “no” need not feel or be constrictive. It can be as liberating as saying “yes,” and so long as our responses to the world are based on experiences of deep connection and communion with the community of life, we can move with more certainty and integrity as integral components of the Earth. But for processes such as this to be truly grounded and aligned we must also engage in critical reflection and work to heal and transform the personal and cultural traumas we all carry. That said recognizing and accepting the ways climate change is already affecting the life-sustaining balance of the ecosystems in which wild plant communities thrive, we must as wildcrafters ask ourselves some serious questions about the ways we engage with the world. How are rising temperatures, extended periods of drought, erratic seasonal transitions, and other factors of the Earth's changing climate impacting wild plant communities and the ecosystems in which they/we live? How will we adapt our harvesting practices to reflect this new reality? As we bear witness to the increasingly evident human-caused planetary crises spurred on by techno-industrial civilization, is it enough to simply alter the way we assess and plan for the long-term health and vitality of ecosystems from which we harvest wild plants, or might we simultaneously practice wildcrafting as a way of transforming the fundamental ways we conceive of and interact with wild nature and the community of all life? And how might adopting regenerative harvesting practices help us perceive the world in ways that will allow us to more deeply connect and intimately engage with local and bioregional ecological intelligence? Answering questions such as these not only requires assessments of physical ecological processes but demands that we restore cultural frameworks that allow us to access the inherent ecological knowledge that has guided and continues to guide traditional cultures all across the globe. By consciously developing relationships with the living world we can be present to the Earth community in more mutually enlivening ways that increase our understanding of already existing processes of ecosystem regeneration. We may even come to rethink, as we follow these lines of inquiry, the notion of working with plants and ecological communities, which is certainly more appropriate than taking from them, and consider that our actions if they are to be truly regenerative require us to work as integral parts of the ecosystems within which we live, work, die, and receive sustenance. Wildcrafters have a profound responsibility. Every teaching we share about wildcrafting must be accompanied by lessons on rewilding and giving back, going beyond simple gestures like laying down to***co. Every picture and wildcrafting experience shared online is seen by people who may not understand the relationships and traditional ways of our ancestors. This widespread sharing, though not well documented, is causing significant harm to the ecosystem as these practices become commercialized on a large scale.
