One of my many goals in this endeavor is to grow a robust supply of plants that heal the body, mind and emotions.

In the world that we live in now, most people are only familiar with pharmaceutical medications. You have an ailment, you go to a medical doctor, the medical doctor asks a couple questions, and sends you to a pharmacist with a recommendation for a mass-produced, patented chemical.

This isn’t WRONG. Pharmaceutical medications have their place, but they very often have extensive side effects that can be as problematic as the original ailment. One of the reasons for this is that they are synthetic. A plant or natural substance cannot be patented – God holds the patents on those already – so in general, a single component of a plant or naturally-occuring compound will be isolated and synthesized, patented and produced for profit. The body doesn’t recognize the synthetic substance because it isnt “real”, so toxic side effects happen.

The pharmaceutical industry was begun by Carnegie and Rockefeller. In the interest of profit, they established Medical Schools with exclusive curriculum specifically designed to push their own patented, petroleum-based drugs. The old, established practice of using herbs to heal fell out of favour. Herbal practitioners were labelled ‘quacks’ and ‘charlatans’, and the BigPharma Industry was off to a booming start.

But before there was pharmacy, God “gave unto them the plants of the field for medicine.” He placed on this earth a vast array of plants with properties to heal and nurture. There are books and treatises on their use going back many centuries. Those plants are still around, we’ve just largely lost the knowledge of how to use them. For several years now, I have been studying plants for healing.

You can, of course, BUY just about any herb you want these days. The internet and global shipping has made that possible. But, another part of the goal of this place is to reduce or eliminate dependance on the supply chain. So, to that end, I am attempting to grow as many of my own herbs as possible, a bit at a time. I have to purchase seeds, of course, but that is a single purchase, as opposed to repeated purchases of dried plant matter.

What amuses me is that many of the plants that are healthful and healing are considered weeds by the world at large. They aren’t necessarily showy or pretty or interesting to look at. They may be aggressive or untidy in their habits. So we rip them out, poison them, set them on fire and replace them with attractive plants that have little to no use because they LOOK better.

So, when I am done (or at least a few more years down this road), my garden may, to the undiscerning eye appear to be an unholy tangle of weeds. In reality it will (prayerfully) be a glorious jungle of God-given medicine, food, and flowers.