When many of us think of the pharmacy
this is what we think of.
But the truth is the medicine here
can actually make the earth,
our plant and animal relatives,
and us a lot sicker in the long run.
Today, I am going to take you to
a pharmacy that has a whole different take
on health and wellness.
Welcome to Walden FARMacy
where they have a whole different take
on health and wellness.
It is located in a surprising place,
just outside of Birmingham, Alabama.
Here they believe that healing ourselves
comes as we heal the earth.
Thanks for having me at the farmacy.
Yeah thank you so much for being here, Rob.
That is really what belief we were founded on,
is that you can not heal the people
if you are neglecting the land.
That we really exist as one organism.
So we grow food for our family on our farm
as well as medicine for our community
in a way that is regenerating the land
that we are farming on.
All right, let us meet the plants!
Come on!
So we have elderberry here,
which is not quite ripe yet.
I feel like we just have to start with elderberry
because elderberry syrup is some of my
favorite medicine.
Yeah we grow and wildcraft at least 50
medicinal herbs here on the property,
including goldenrod, ella campaign,
pleurisy root, passion flour, turmeric,
ginger, nettle, violet, solomon's seal,
hibiscus, elderberry, poke, wild lettuce,
skull cap, blue vervain, yellow root,
echinacea, plantain, peach, lemon balm, and reishi.
Wow nature's pharmacy is truly alive here.
So, back to the elderberry,
this is something that I love
and that is elderberry syrup.
So I am gonna have a try of this medicine.
Ooh that is good!
So tell us a little bit about the medicine behind elderberry .
Yeah it is definitely one,
as you can see,
with good patient compliance,
because it tastes pretty great.
Even our kids love it.
So that is why it is our go-to immune booster
when they head back to school.
It really helps prepare the body to deal
with any coughs, colds, and flus,
and can lessen the duration of them.
And it sounds like the ducks are just
about as excited as I am about it.
So let us move on to the next medicine.
All right, what plant friend do we have here?
This is Solomon's seal.
It is definitely my go-to for any
ligament, tendon, or joint complaints.
You can use it internally as well as topically.
So we have it here topically
as one of the ingredients in
our muscle and joint salve.
A salve is an oil extract of the herb
that we have then added beeswax to
and melted it down and let it solidify
into a container, so you can carry it
around with you easily.
Violet, here, is one of my personal favorites.
It is one of the ingredients in
our sore throat spray.
It is a gentle lymphatic.
Safe enough for children.
It can really help increase the drainage
when you have stuffy ears,
or congestion around the throat.
So it is in there along with echinacea,
which is growing right beside it.
So I have been here for the last couple days
and I arrived with a bit of a sore throat.
I have been working with the sore throat spray.
I have to say it has really worked wonders.
So thank you for sharing your medicine with me.
Happily.
We are here with our turmeric in our greenhouse
and it is one of the medicines that,
I think, has gained a lot of mainstream
attention just because of its ability
to reduce inflammation,
which is the root cause of so many disease.
So we use it for that in our joint relief bitters.
We also use it for stimulating digestion.
It is great liver and gall bladder support as well.
So this is the joint relief bitters, right?
Yeah
Okay, so I am gonna have a dropper of that.
Bitter.
Yeah, it is.
So I just have to say that turmeric is
one of the most important medicines to me.
During my year of growing
and foraging all of my food,
this was such an important daily medicine.
It is so great to be here connecting with this plant.
You can smell the medicine that we are in right here.
Yeah, this is our abundant patch of holy basil.
We love this medicine personally,
because it is great at helping you cool
off on a hot summer day,
which we are very familiar with
here in Alabama.
Basils are also known as heart exhilarant
so they increase feelings of joy.
I would say this is the easiest-to-grow adaptogen.
Those are plants that help you cope
with feelings of stress and just help
your body be a little more resilient.
Well I can feel the stress just releasing
and I can feel the joy.
So here we have the medicine in a tea.
Mmm!
So, as you can see, our medicine can be
growing freely and abundantly all around us.
It can be accessible.
In fact, it looks like there are more like
a hundred different plant medicines here, than 50.
Would not you say?
Yeah, once I am walking around out here,
I am just amazed at how surrounded I am.
Every plant I see almost,
has a use.
Southern Folk Medicine, which I am trained in,
they believed that if you had an illness,
the remedy was somewhere
in your own yard.
If you have an illness,
the remedy is somewhere in your own yard.
It can be as simple as a delicious tea.
All right ducks, we might need you to
quiet down a little bit.
and you too chickens, just for a little while.
So often in today's culture there is this
clear delineation between food and medicine.
We have our food and we have our medicine.
But here at Walden Farmacy,
there really is no separation.
Our food is our medicine and it is
intricately, at the same time,
part of healing our earth.
So tell us about where we are right now .
Yeah, this is our chicken composting system,
where we compost our food scraps
and our garden weeds.
We turn it into a beautiful compost
with the help of the chickens.
So we turn each pile down the hill each week,
and create this amazing, beautiful compost.
Of course, with beautiful compost,
also chicken eggs at the same time.
We are talking about...
[rooster crowing]
This rooster is quite excited.
So we are talking about creating healthy compost,
turning food waste into compost,
and at the same time getting a wonderful
thing, chicken eggs.
So we are out of the chicken composting system.
We are just below it.
Tell us about where we are now, Trevor.
Yeah, so we are in a big bio swale.
A swale is a ditch and a berm on the contour.
It catches water that is sheeting downhill.
So we are functionally, interconnected
with the chicken composting system here
because it is just above the swale,
so water is rushing through
the composting system,
catches in the swale
and then fertigates the system past it.
So rather than the water being,
you know, distributed and shipped off the property
you are trying to keep as much of that
water on the property, as possible,
to water your gardens, to grow food,
and to soak it in.
Yeah, the best place to store water is in your soil.
So this is an awesome way to do it.
All right!
Today, when a lot of people think of
growing food, they think of mono crops,
acres and acres of the exact same food
being grown, such as corn, or soy, or wheat.
They see this behind us,
and they just see a wall of green.
They do not know what it is.
This is food!
Tell us a little bit about it.
Yeah, this is a forest garden,
which is an indigenous technique,
adopted by permaculture,
that mimics a healthy forest ecosystem.
So we have all the layers
of the forest ecosystem here.
We are going to come in
with the ducks to create disturbance
on the ground level and
utilize their fertility and collect their eggs.
So we are talking about dozens
of foods and medicines coming out of
one area all growing together, right?
Yeah.
So we have not talked about the goats yet.
Tell me a little bit about how the goats
play into this entire holistic system.
Yeah, they do some weed management for us.
We have some invasive weed trees
that we coppice, and they will be a
regenerative forage for the goats.
So I used to battle this weed,
but now it is like a regenerative food.
So I am happy about it.
And of course, you have delicious goat
milk and goat cheese?
Yeah.
Poison ivy into goat milk.
Yeah, actually, one of the most interesting
things he was sharing, is that
he used to have poison ivy all the time.
And once introducing goats,
and the goats actually eating the poison ivy,
and then drinking that goat milk
that has the poison ivy or actually
sister ivy, I like to call it,
then you actually seem to have adapted
to the sister ivy.
Yeah, I can roll around in it,
I do not get it at all.
So we are really of the belief that
everything on this planet is here for a reason.
So every weed, or plant, or animal
has a role to play here on the farm
and as the land stewards,
we are really just the conductor
of the symphony of life around us.
It is a beautiful way to look at the
world that we live on.
So this right here,
here at Walden Farmacy,
is proof that our medicine can be
growing freely and abundantly all around us
and that we can do this together as community.
Oh hey!
And that we do not need the
pharmaceutical industry to take care
of ourselves and our community.
So if you found this inspiring
and you want to connect more with
herbal medicine and food as medicine,
The links to Walden Farmacy
are in the description.
And of course, if you want to continue
learning more, make sure to subscribe
to this channel where there will be
many more videos to come.
If you think this is a message
that you would like the world to see,
like it, and comment, share your thoughts
to help spread this out into the world.
We love you all very much and we look
forward to seeing you again soon.
Rob Greenfield Films