Finding the path

In this series titled "The Path," I'll be writing about ways I approach nurturing some land to organize an ecosystem to support medicinal herbs and a little food.

On one hand, I'd like to produce a lot of herbs and share them widely and make a living wage doing that work.  On the other hand, I don't want to use the destructive, unsustainable, fossil fuel intensive ways to force the land into your desired shape.  I also don't want to loose track of the relationship I have with all these fellow living things.

I plan to gently walk the paths between my plants, beginning with tall bushes like elderberries, and watch what medicinal weeds pop up in their shadows and the sunny areas around them.  I will cull the less useful, encourage the more useful, and mulch and fertilize with organic material which will come mostly from the same land -- ramiel wood chips made from the nutrient dense small branches, grass clippings, and shredded leaves.  Those will all enhance the fertility for the crops.

Slowly, I will continue introducing selected medicinal and food species to layer ecosystem functions.  That layering will employ the available sun, soil surface, and rain to nourish these plants.  I only use natural, organic, low-till cultivation, harvest, and processing techniques.

I will employ technology on a limited scale where it makes a healthy, safe, and clean product possible or allows careful monitoring of growth, harvesting, and processing of the plants.

This is a journey to understand herbal medicine, ecosystems, and sustainability while getting closer to nature.  I'm looking forward to sharing this journey with you.