Sitting here exhausted, but very pleased with today's foraging run! The highlight of today's outing was actually catching harvest season for the wild strawberry for the first time in years! This weekend, we are at Schubert Centre for their summer market, then we are back at the Rutland Flea Market. We've purchased a 4ft folding table that we hope will be big enough to handle a tighter version of the layout we had at Lumby Days. The Lumby Days Indoor Craft Fair blew our socks off! The way the Lumby Days booth setup looked, we are becoming a veritable roving wildcrafted tea parlor with a side of medical insight to help people make choices that benefit their situations. Several times so far this spring, and several times at both major fairs this month, we've been asked if we have a storefront. As of yet, we do not, but we realize that if sales continue as they are, we will be in need of more processing space that can allow for a foodsafe kitchen, processing area, and expanded drying area so we can expand available quantities of the teas we offer, and potentially branch into other wildcrafted goods for sale. If you are reading this and you are in the Central Okanagan region, and if you believe you know someone who might help in some way, drop us a line with that information. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/06/18/foraging-tea-sales-and-long-term-conundrum/

THAT was a weekend! We were at Creative Chaos in Vernon over the weekend, a three-day massive craft fair bringing vendors from across Canada! We were able to reconnect with a herbalist who got us started on our wildcrafted herbal journey 10 years ago on Canada Day. That had to be the biggest highlight of the entire weekend, being able to say hi, then later thank him for sharing the tidbit of advice that sent us down this engaging, fun, lifetime of learning! We debuted a new product to the Ashtree Wildcrafting line: Sample Collections! We are occasionally asked if Ashtree Wildcrafting sells cups. We went thrift store crawling and found some beautiful English china! This past weekend was the last opportunity to register for the Thistle Workshop happening at the end of June. We have two registrants and looking forward to making a wild thistle version of artichoke dip, and making breaded thistle spears to eat it with! The next workshop coming up is July's Purslane Advanced Foraging Workshop on July 26th. We will learn about the benefits and uses of Purslane while gathering and then making a couple different dipping sauces. The deadline to register for the Purslane workshop has moved to July 12th! Catch us in person at Lumby Days Indoor Craft Fair June 14th and 15th, Schubert Centre craft fair June 28th, Fintry Manor July 19th, and in August, the garlic festival on the 10th and Fintry Manor on the 17th. Hope to see you at one of those events if you are in the area! Final note for today, due to various people at wellness fairs and even at craft fairs asking if we are 7th Day Adventist, no we are not. We are evangelical in our Christian faith. A basic Statement of Faith is now added to my website in two places, the Spiritual Wafare right-hand menu, and up under About in the main menu. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/06/09/wildcrafted-tea-chat-or-is-that-a-coffee-chat-amazing-rendezvous-and-summer-outlook/

Time for an update! 2025 continues it's crazy trajectory and we've now hit full throttle! People continue to hint at me writing books about our wild food and medicine escapades. The textbook idea is taking shape, and I've decided the herbal compendium will be a trip through history as we follow herbal medicine as far back as we can. Currently, that promises to be a food and medicine list of at least 217 foods, herbs and spices, just under half the current number of plants in my nutrtional/medicinal wholefood database. Just today, someone hoped my foraging notebook had more in it than just the basics of how to forage for wild foods. So I may take parts of my "textbook" and build both a "herbs in the Central Okanagan" book, and either share in it or share in yet another book, the experiences we've had with using wild herbs as our pharmacy at home. ANNOUNCEMENT TO CENTRAL OKANAGANITES!!! The Advanced Foraging Workshop: Thistle Dip and Breaded Thistle spears, is coming up June 28th and we have two people already registered! The last day to register is June 7th. For those who like to pay in person, come see us at Booth 105 in the Vernon Rec Centre in the hallway between the Auditorium and the gym. If you want to catch us in person before Creative Chaos, come to see us at the Rutland Flea Market on June 1st. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/05/25/book-fair-and-workshop-update/

We are a couple days away from the Arrowleaf Balsamroot Advanced Foraging Workshop on Saturday. Registration closed for this one back on May 3rd. The next Advanced Foraging Workshop is June 28th, and will cover making yummy foods with the flower buds of Canada Thistle, and the leaf ribs of Scotch Thistle. Right now, early registrants for the Thistle workshop are in Vernon. As I do not know the trails around Vernon very well, I am open to anyone telling me where they've seen both canada Thistle and Scotch or Bull Thistle on public-use land. Foraging has exploded this year. We are seeing evidence of other foragers, so for those reading this who also forage, remember the 5% rule! Never take more than 5% of any given patch so that animals and people coming behind you can avail themselves of the abundance too. The textbook-writing idea is slowly taking shape. I've come to the conclusion that we are not traditional herbalists, we are phytotherapeutic herbalists! As I start writing my textbook dig up research to confirm what I want to say and verify or add to it, discovering why colleges teach backward herbalism, labelling it as Traditional, is a slap in the face and explains why so many believers are so wary of anyone who claims to be a Christian AND claims to be a herbalist or healer. My textbook will teach a version of Western Herbalism I am terming: The Phytotherapeutic Herbalist! The working title for the book is A Christian Perspective on Western Herbalism. If you know people who would like to be kept in the loop about this book, tell them to register for this newsletter. They can visit the site to do that, or you can forward my newsletter emails to them and they can respond asking to register for the newsletter. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/05/15/foraging-escapades-writing-and-workshops/

This devotional article just got a major update thanks to recent information shared by Faithwire Magazine! It would appear that biophotonics begin at conception and carry straight through to death of the body. We look at additional Scripture as well, that Faithwire offered as suggested reading. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2024/02/17/is-your-bodys-biophotonic-behaviour-strong-or-weak-a-devotional-commentary/

Sometimes when I introduce myself online or in person as your Biblical Natural Health Coach, I'll tag onto the end of my short speel, "Don't worry! I won't make you go vegan!" This is because of a discussion I rarely ever see coming out of the vegan space, and I read magazines that sometimes push the vegan diet, with articles written by trainers, dieticians, nutritionists, sports coaches, and others. That discussion is the issue of bioavailability. I discuss this issue, along with sharing research papers around why certain nutrients are best obtained from meat and dairy, often red meat more than pink or white, and fish. Though this article focuses more on red meat. I just updated this article again! It's been updated a few times now since it was first written in 2022, and additional links for further reading are given at the end of the article. Today's update was a second voice speaking up around the issue of PUFA's in the modern processed diet, but sharing how damage done can be reversed. If you've recently read this article, scan to the end for the latest update: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2022/06/10/the-benefits-of-meat-in-your-diet/

When you make an update to a previously written article, then try to share that update and it becomes a small blog post in it's own right! There are two links in this article, one to the update and one to an article on my author blog about similar subject matter. Be aware, and wherever you can, take action, for the physical, mental, emotional, and social health of you and your household! https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/02/13/where-you-live-and-work-part-three-a-lengthy-update-notice-to-part-two/

What do you do with soured milk? Make cheese!!! I typically make my own cheese salsa dip these days, but for some time now, I've been wanting to make a batch of wild-herbed ricotta. It even passed the taste test with my son, who isn't the easiest to please. My daughter's idea of a cheesecake made me think of adding one of my wild syrups to the cheese such as fir, chokecherry, saskatoon berry, or pine mugolio and making a wild-flavoured cheesecake. I might try that idea the next time there is a heavy cream container cheesing itself in the fridge. Click here to read how the experiment played out: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/01/26/wild-herbed-ricotta-cheese/

Realities like this in Kelowna, are why I encourage you to consider my Natural Health Monthly Retainer, or my newest offering, The $5 Question. Both offerings are not intended to handle emergency situations, but to handle queries to either help you over a non-emergency situation or help you in figuring out preventive measures to avoid a situation. If you keep returning to the same question though, I will recommend we switch over to the coaching so a plan of action can be put into place and monitored for improvement. Take a load off mainstream medical's doctor shortage and overworked emergency personnel, by learning how to handle more health issues for yourself. Here's the link to the latest clinic closure here in Kelowna: https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/529288/Spall-Medical-Clinic-to-stop-taking-walk-in-patients And here are the links to my monthly retainer, and The $5 Question: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/product/natural-health-monthly-retainer/ https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/the-5-question/

Apparently, even in the world of natural health, you have your stalwarts who know what they know and refuse to entertain any change to what they know, and who get threatened enough to slander and lambaste anyone who questions it. The level of lambasting and slander by a so-called herbalist, reminded me of the medical terminology problem rearing it's head out there. Let me wrap this up now. You will find me using modern terms for conditions the human body has suffered for millenia. I don't apologize! The herbs that helped way back then, continue to help now in the exact same ways for the exact same conditions under different names. If modern research calls into question long-held understandings, and that research isn't trying to sway the disillusioned masses or swing over to eastern concepts of medicine, I will consider it. Click to read the full article here: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/01/20/clearing-the-air-around-modern-versus-historical-terms-and-references-in-medicine/