Linda Conroy - Integrating Herbs in Your Daily Life.

[00:00:06.120] - Candi Broeffle, Host
Good morning and welcome to Green Tea Conversation, the radio show that delves into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine to bring you the local experts who share their progressive ideas and the latest information and insights needed so you can lead your best life. I'm your host Candi Broeffle, publisher of the Twin Cities edition of Natural Awakenings magazine, and I am honored to bring these experts to you. Today in our studio, we are visiting Linda Conroy, owner of Moonwise Herbs out of Stoughton, Wisconsin.

 

[00:00:36.450] - Candi Broeffle, Host
Linda is a practicing herbalist who provides herbal education workshops and apprenticeships, as well as individual consultations and herb store. Linda is a community organizer and the founder of the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference. Welcome back to the show, Linda. We are so excited to welcome you.

 

Thank you, Candi. I'm happy to be here.

 

[00:01:00.480] - Candi Broeffle, Host
To get us started, you are always such a wealth of information for us. You were with us last fall and you were sharing with us information about mushrooms. And so today, we asked you to come back and share with us some information about herbs, and in particular, because 2020 has been 2020, and now coming into 2021, it has been such a difficult time for so many people, has added so much stress and a prolonged sense of stress for people.

 

We thought that we would ask you to come back and share with us maybe some information you can help us with regarding herbs and how we might use that for our health and wellness.

 

Sure, absolutely. I appreciate the focus on the topic. It's something I try to keep in mind myself for dealing with so much stress and anxiety, and even nightmares of people telling me they're having nightmares. So there are just a lot of disturbance and herbs are so beautiful and helping with this kind of thing. There are so many herbs that can help us calm and relax and, you know, to kind of take it, take a little time out.

 

[00:02:18.900]
So there are many ways to administer those words, which is kind of fun. So you can drink to make sure you can put herbs in your bag. I'm a big fan of taking footbaths. So that's a really fun way to relax and incorporate herbs. And one herb that I often what I teach in person and I have groups of people, I'll say to everybody, "How many of you have either a chamomile tea bag or a cat or or a carton of chamomile in your cupboard somewhere in your kitchen?"

 

I do.

 

I see and this is what I would say, and 90% of the people in the room raise their hands. So I think it's a good place to start because it's so accessible. And Chamomile is certainly one of our best relaxing, calming herbs that we can incorporate. And whether it be that we drink a tea or like I said, we can put it on our bath. And when you put an herb in your bath, you'll get a lot more benefit and more effect if you actually make a tea or the tea in your mouth rather than just, you know, throw bourbon there. Plus, it's less messy and

 

less to clean up afterward.

 

Who wants to relax the cleanup or the stress? So, you know, make a really big container of tea and actually pour the tea on your behalf. And that's just lovely. And and that makes a great footbath. It's a nervon so it affects the nervous system. And through our feet, we can affect our nervous system immediately. It's just such a nice way. So you could do your footbaths while you're drinking your you chamomile tea.

 

And even for the people who don't actually have a cup of tea bag in their kitchen or pantry, which, you know, we would say probably 90% of the people do, it is so easy to go to the store, get some kind of a meal at least, or even conventional stores are going to have tea bags on their shelves. So I keep talking about how accessible this herb is and how important that is. And also, a lot of people don't realize the chamomile helps with an upset stomach and helps to calm digestion.

 

So it's a it's a little better in the background. It can taste sweet initially, but if you let it steep for a while, it gets a little better. And that better really helps to support digestion and calm digestion. And that sometimes comes with anxiety and stress...it's kind of an unsettled stomach.

 

Right

 

So you can see this herb is so useful and accessible. So that's why I wanted to emphasize at the beginning of this conversation.

 

And then just I'm doing a couple of programs next week on growing herbs. Everybody's starting to think about, you know, spraying and ordering plants and seeds and so Chamomile would be one that's really easy to grow into the aster for some seeds down or get some starts. It's super easy to grow. So, you know, I'm not only thinking about buying or purchasing everything, but you could also grow it if you were inspired to do that.

 

So let me ask you something. When it comes to growing chamomile, what is the where is the best place to do that? Are you looking in-ground or are you looking in a pot? Can you do it in the sun?

 

So you want some somewhere sunny? You could grow it in a pot if you wanted to go inside. You know, we would get very much because it's a sprawling plant and you need a lot of it to get very much because the flowers are really tiny. So you need a lot of it. So you can grow it in on the ground and raised beds and mounds. You could grow it in a box.

 

You know, if you have a window box or planter box and if you just want to grow a little bit of it, like some herbs, if I'm not growing lots of it, I'd like to grow it, just have a relationship with the plant and then I might still purchase because, you know, we can grow everything and and you would need a lot of space to grow a lot of it. So that's just something.

 

And so with Chamomile, are you only using the flower?

 

Right.

 

OK. Interesting. I didn't know that.

 

[00:06:55.170] - Linda Conroy, Guest
It wasn't hurt to have beliefs, but you're mainly using the flowers and then for any of your listeners who are foragers, because we have a lot of people who like to well, we actually have a species. It's the same genus as Chamomile, but different species. And the common name for the plant is pineapple weed. And it works. It's just as affect those same results. And you can wildfire to that plant. It looks a little different than Chamomile and that it doesn't have the right flowers or petals.

 

It just has the center of this flower. But it smells a little bit like pineapple, which is one of the reasons they call it pineapple, but it's in the same genus and it has that same calming effect. So it's kind of fun to know we have this wild plants. So that might be more appealing to some people is to go and forage for the wild plants.

 

[00:07:48.840] - Candi Broeffle, Host
Oh, that's a great, great tip. And I imagine that that, too, is found in more sunny areas.

 

Yes, it looks...sunny, sunny areas. And unfortunately, it really likes gravel for some reason. Sometimes, you find it places you don't want to harvest it because it may be, you know, in a parking lot or something like that. But, you know, it works other places, too, but yeah, like the sun.

 

So I had one more question about Chamomile before we move on. So when you're looking at it for in your bath and you're you're just using regular chamomile tea bags to make the tea, how much would you recommend that people use and how long should they let it steep?

 

Yeah, so for bath I would make it really strong so you could and I would take it depends on how much you want in your bath, either fourth or a half-gallon jar pot or something like that. And for a fourth, I would probably put like for tea bags in there and let it sit for an hour, two hours, do it ahead of time and prepare. And you could you can even make that up days ahead of time and just throw it in the fridge and then pull it out and warm it up and put it in your bath so it won't spoil if you make it up I the time.

 

And I suppose the longer it sits, the more strong it'll get and

 

If you leave the bags in there. Yeah. You get stranded. So the other way and I tend to work with Loose herbs...so I would be utilizing loose herbs so then I would have to strain the air about but two bags you know that's fine if you want to if that's what you have. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Very good. So what is another tip that you have for stress? And we're going into a break here in a little bit, but at least we could get started.

 

Yeah. So I want to mention Chamomiles into a category of verbs called nerve lines. And so it affects the nervous system. And so there's a whole bunch of different neurons that we can utilize so two. Categories of herbs that I like to talk about when we're talking about stress or in our writing so we can talk a little bit about those and then we can talk about a category called adaptogens, which help our bodies adapt to stress. So just a quick mention another or the people could borrow that would be really easy and tasty and pretty easy to access would be an herb called lemon balm and of

 

lemon balm.

 

[00:10:26.290] - Linda Conroy, Guest
by just smelling it.

 

It's beautiful. Yes.

 

I love a botanical plant that is named Melissa. So I feel like I have like "Ah! I'm on a first-name basis call her Melissa when I see with the results of so that you know, it's in the family. So it's very easy to grow, it spreads and it moves around the garden to find its place. But you can make a tea with that. You can do all the things that I mentioned with chamomile you can also do with lemon balm.

 

And so, you know, footbaths, tea, you know, it's nice. Like if you're getting ready for bed, lemon would be a really nice tea to drink as you're winding down. And it just creates this incredible sense of calm around. And, you know, with smelling, you could put it in a pot on. I have a woodstoves, I put it on my whatso, but even on your stove and just boil it and let it into the air for the common.

 

Oh, and it's so beautiful. I love that. So for people who want to learn more about what Linda does, visit moonwiseherbs.com. To read the online version of Natural Awakenings magazine, visit natural TwinCities.com. You're listening to Green Tea Conversation on AM950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota. And we will be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversation, where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle, and we are visiting Linda Conroy, owner of Moonwise Herbs in Stoughton, Wisconsin, and founder of the Midwest Women's Conference. So, Linda, we're so glad you're with us today. And just before the break, you were starting to tell us about a class of herbs called nervines which can help with stress, especially the stress that we've been under all over the last year or so, that prolonged sense of stress.

 

Yes.

 

So we started off talking about chamomile and then lemon balm. But you had a couple of other herbs to share with us as well.

 

Right. So I want to talk about the Nervine. That's actually basically a tonic. I think this is this is one I've been talking to people a lot about this year, and I've gotten a lot of good reports back from people that it has been really supportive and that would be in our strong. And Strohl is just the dry notes, the stuff that we make into a strong infusion and drink it. And it's a nourishing nervine and it's basically terrifying or strengthening to the nervous system.

 

[00:13:29.080]
So basically what it does, it helps the nervous system be more flexible and adaptable. Certainly, we've all had to be more adaptable in ways we probably a year ago couldn't even imagine.

 

Exactly.

 

So drinking seems to be really, really helpful. And I've always struck out for this reason, but even have amped up my intake that have encouraged other people to do that, as well as even a couple of my apprentice students reported back to me that they I had mentioned, I think during the break that I have been hearing from a lot of people that they're having nightmares. And that's understandable, trying to process what's happening. It's hard to assimilate at all.

 

And so it makes sense. But a couple of my students started drinking straw every day and told me that they're actually diminished or eliminated their nightmares. 

 

Oh, and so where do you find it strong

 

So you can buy it at any apothecary or a lot of different health food stores, then you can also order it online from different companies and apothecaries. And of course, my favorite thing to say to people is you could grow it if you want because it's a grass and it's super easy to grow. So you just drop a bag and further seed down, make sure you're covered so the birds don't get it because the birds like the seed.

 

So cover it while it's sprouting and then you harvest it when the seeds are green, actually. So if we were going to harvest votes for rodents, we wait until the seeds are mature, but for our purposes we harvest or when the seed is green and we harvest all the aerial plants, the top parts and dry it, and then we utilize that for cheese. Or really I like an infusion of this. And the difference, like lemon balm, what we talked about earlier and chamomile are great made of a typical tea.

 

We think of one teaspoon of herb to every cup of water and that's your tea. But with an infusion, with a nourishing nervine, we actually use more plant material longer. So we do an ounce of herb and we pour boiling water on top of that and it's an ounce of our record of water. And so it's a lot of plant material because we're looking to nourish and tonify not just calm and not just they are coming. They certainly are, but they're more I always call them like an energizing column.

 

So it's not necessarily it just helps you feel more grounded and it's fortifying to the body and the nervous system helps the nervous system, like I said, be more flexible and adaptable. Now, some people will take the green tops and we'll take them and put them in alcohol and take that as a medicine. And in that case, it's more of a calming, soothing nervine. But with the infusion, because it's so strong and so concentrated and so much, you're going to get that nourishing, nervine characteristic, which really with the kind of stress we've been dealing with, that's really preferable.

 

So how much do you have to drink of the infusion and what does it taste like?

 

So it tastes sweet, which is kind of nice. I've been accused of putting honey in it when I haven't when I share it with people because I'm. A lot of my classes of people taking these infusions, so they get familiar with them and straws when I like to serve the people first because it is very appealing, it has a little sweetness to its calming. It really is. It has a nice texture in your mouth. It's really nice. It's very pleasant.

 

So. So, yeah, I really like it. What was that you asked about the taste and what was the

 

and for the amount? How much?

 

Yeah. So I usually suggest at least two cups a day. I drink up to fourth in a day and so, and I drink that with other ones. I actually rotate different infusions. Another nervine that I ingest on a regular basis, prepared similarly as an herb called Lyndon. And I use that. We're utilizing the flowers from the Lyndon tree or bass. What is the other name for the Nather and Chili as this is the genus name.

 

And so that is very sweet. It's almost like it's very flowery. It's almost like a jasmine-type type of tea. So if you like jasmine tea, you're probably like Lydon and Lydon. There's so much fortifying as it is. It's just really calming and relaxing, and it's also pain-relieving and reduces inflammation. So it has a lot of characteristics that I think one of the things we do know about Covid is that one of the factors in developing more severe disease state is inflammation.

 

And so when I've been looking at the different nervines that I can bring in for different reasons, I'm looking at how could these things overlap? Because a lot of times herbs offer multiple different benefits, like, for example, we talked about lemon balm, about earlier and lemon balm has antiviral qualities here. We might be ingesting Hanford's nerve qualities, but we might get some benefit for antiviral qualities as well. So with Lindon, we would get some extra added benefit because it has anti-inflammatory qualities as well.

 

So do you make infusions with like a couple of these at a time? So would you put lemon balm in with?

 

No, don't do that. And I'll tell you why, because Lemon balm and Chamomile, which we talked about, are to be made like a tea and these other herbs we're making as infusion. And the difference is a tea is shorter amounts of time and less water. And the reason is because you're trying to get the aromatic aspects of those plants and you don't want to get strongly behind the cell wall. If you steep it too long, it'll get really bitter.

 

We had mentioned that chamomile would start to get bitter at these other herbs. We're trying to get behind the salt and pull out the nutrition and there is no better quality. So that's a difference between an infusion and a Tea and people can read about that on my website. I have instructions at Moonwiseherbs.com blog  people want to read more about.

 

That's great. Well, thank you. We're going to go into a break right now, but we will be back in just a bit to learn more about the work that Linda does. Visit Moonwiseherbs.com. To read the online version of Natural Awakenings magazine, visit NaturalTwinCities.com. You can find a podcast of this show on AM950 Radio.com, on Apple and Google podcast on Spotify. And anywhere you get your podcasts. You're listening to Green Tea Conversation on AM 950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota. And we will be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversation, where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise and natural health with you. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle.

 

And today we're visiting Linda Conroy, owner of Moonwise  Herbs in Stoughton, Wisconsin, and founder of the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference.

 

So, Linda, just before the break, you were sharing with us some different herbs that we can use for stress. And we were talking about a category called nervines. And now I'd like to have you delve in a little bit into a category called Adaptogens So what are some of the adaptogens herbs that can be used for stress?

 

For me, again, some herbs that we can grow like a big one that is Holy Basil. You have mentioned to me during the break that you love Basil and the Holy Basil is one of our advantages. Of course, it's not exactly like your garden variety, but it is very sweet if you've ever had Holy Basil, or Tulsa is the other name for it, tea. But it's so delicious, sweet, and calming, and is an adaptive genic herbs so adapted to herbs are a category herbs that help to help our bodies deal with unreasonable stress.

 

And they work on the physiological level, not just on the nervous system, not just on the emotions. A lot of times we think about stress and trying to deal with calming the emotions or that kind of thing. But this actually literally deals with the kind of stress a person would get from having their stress hormones just continue, you know, adrenal fatigue, where your stress is just really unprecedented and taking over the top and you're exhausted. So that's what adaptive genes really help our bodies to physiologically rebound and recover and be strengthened so we can take them proactively or prophylactically.

 

But we also can take them to try to recover. And so the year that we so many you know, we've all been through, we've all have this experience, you know, some more than others. But being under this physiological unreasonable amount of stress and so, like drinking Tulsa or holy basil tea or taking the tincture on a daily basis can just help us to rebound more easily from that and our whole system. And then another I know I was here talking about mushrooms in the fall.

 

And so one of the things that a substance is adaptogenic is the Reishi Mushroom and a lot of mushrooms are adaptogenic. But I was particularly like Rishi right now? Because for our particular circumstances, because like I was saying earlier, a lot of times are herbs overlap in their actions. So Reishi is adaptogenic, but it's also really helpful and strengthens to the respiratory system or to the lungs specific. So in Chinese medicine, it's considered to be a tonic, but it's also considered to be a respiratory remedy.

 

Just so Reishi mushroom, even though it isn't an herb, technically brings it into our practice. And then

 

Just to ask you before you move on with the Rishi mushroom, what is the best way to use that as

 

Thank you for asking that. So the easiest way is and attention because it's not the kind of mushroom that you would sautee in a pan. It's a very hard. And so it needs to be either ground up or chopped up into pieces. And obviously, I harvested a mushroom one time and we had it was so hard. We have to break it apart with a hatchet that mushroom is. So if you get a powder or pieces, just appreciate whoever actually of the way they did that work for you.

 

But yeah. So take it picture or some people to drink the tea. A lot of people are drinking as a coffee beverage, a coffee-style beverage, and I find it a little better personally, but some people like it that way. Or another way is to if you make broth or some stocks, like I make a lot of broths, mushroom stocks and vegetable broth, and I'll put Reishi mushroom in my stocks of broth.

 

So that's another way to get that herb into your body is for stocks and for us or your or

 

Is it something then that will soften enough that you or do you? or Just get rid of,

 

remove

 

bits of broth, OK.

 

Because when I'm making a stock out of everything I put in usually gets strange because it's not so that I'll take that stock and then I'll make a soup. So I might make a mushroom soup of other edible mushrooms, but not for Rishi.

 

And all mushrooms appear to have some adaptogenic qualities. So, you know, you might remember me saying last time, my motto is a mushroom with every meal we had the apple a day, a mushroom, a meal, because I'm really encouraging people. So, you know, a lot of mushrooms and so. So, yeah. So those are some of the adaptations. There are others, like American ginseng, for example, is a more energizing adaptogen.

 

So when you're picking an adaptogen for someone. I usually look at the different adaptations and look at how the stress is affecting them because some people are really wired. You can't sleep. So I probably wouldn't give them, it suggests that they take American ginseng because it'll give them a little maybe too much energy whereas somebody who is more lethargic and, you know, their energy levels, really low American ginseng might be a good choice. It's not stimulating like caffeine, but it's just a little more energizing whereas somebody who is really "I don't like Tulsa or Holy Basil" might be a better choice for them because it would just bring them into a coma state. So adaptations are interesting that way because they really lend themselves to looking at the person and bringing herbs. And that's what I say. Sometimes a herbalist is an ambassador between people and the plants because I know the plants really well and I'm familiar with people to some degree. I actually have, I don't know if I've said this before, but I have my background.

 

My academic background is in social work. So when I work with people, I do have some of the skills of Balerina and looking at "what kind of stress are you experiencing?" And then finding the herbs that really is going to help support the person with the type of stress they're dealing with because we certainly all deal with stress. You know, some people can't sleep and have insomnia. So then we might want to help them with an herb that would help them go to sleep and something a little stronger.

 

Like I often work with words on a spectrum, whereas Chamomile and Oats are all common, you know, like easy. There's really no downside to taking those whereas down here we do some herbs that are pretty strong that might have more of a downside to them, but they might be one. They might be herbs like Valerian, for example. That herb has some downsides. You can feel groggy in the morning. You have a little bit of a hangover from it.

 

But if you need a good night's sleep and Valerian is your herb and Valerian, it also isn't the right arm for everybody because 25% of the people who take it and studies have shown, get hyped up from it. So they have to be careful about who takes what. But if Valerian is a herb that you resonate with, it might help you get a really good night's sleep and it might be worth being a little groggy in the morning.

 

But then, you have other people to sleep when they're stressed.

 

[00:29:31.450] - Candi Broeffle, Host
Yes. Actually, I'm one of those people. I get very, very tired when I get really stressed. And I know I just need to take a nap. I need to relax because otherwise, I can't do anything anyway. I'm just exhausted.

 

Right. And that's important. So Ostara would be a much better choice for you because it we give you a little bit more energy, a little more fortification. And then as far as an adaptive gene is concerned, I would say like Rishi would be a good one because it's not too stimulating and you wouldn't Holy Basil might not be the best because it might make you more a little more, you know, not drowsy, but just a little more relaxed. So so that's just off the top of my head.

 

Of course, I usually like to get more information from people, but we have constitutions and the plants have qualities and we're bringing our constitutions and the plants qualities together. So with adaptogens, that's really helpful to identify the best adapted because there's a whole list of them. You know, I've named a few, but there's so many more so than you have.

 

You have such a vast amount of knowledge for people in your website is is full of awesome information. But you also have some classes coming up. And I really want people to learn about your classes that you have. So why don't you give us a quick overview of a couple of the classes that you have coming up in the next month or so?

 

[00:30:58.330] - Linda Conroy, Guest
Sure. So next week I'm doing a couple of programs on planning your Apothecary Garden. So that'll be really fun and interesting and those are listed on my website. So if people are interested in those evening programs, I'm going to talk about planning your apothecary garden. What might you want to grow? Where would you grow up? Where you're ready to source your seeds or your starts? Those kinds of things and planning and then and designing.

 

It's fun to design like I always every year I have gone to different locations and spiritual gardens for people, and that's fun. So they're so fun. So and they're actually fairly simple. People think they're going to be complicated to build and they're not really that too complicated. And so there's are some programs. And then I know next weekend I'm doing a program as part of our Midwest Women's Urban Wellness series, and people can join just one workshop they don't like.

 

They don't have to do the whole series. And I'm doing a workshop called Stirring the Cauldron Herbs for Vitality. So I'll be talking about how to incorporate herbs into your life on a regular basis, both for food and teas and infusions. And that's on Saturday and it's an afternoon class. So that'll be it's a three-hour class. So it's a deep dove, which will be really nice about how to prepare, how to create, and how to think about incorporating the stuff into your life on a daily basis.

 

So that's coming up. And then I have some apprenticeship starting. I have a virtual year-long apprenticeship that'll start March 14th, which will be a deep dive for anybody who really wants a weekly mentoring experience in the urban realm. And there's lots of homework out with the plants actually making stuff and doing that kind of thing. So those are some things. I also have a weekly in-person apprenticeship that starts at the end of March as well. So I have lots of things coming up.

 

[00:32:59.650]
But my calendar, I'm constantly updating my calendar.

 

Yeah, you have you have such a wide variety of classes. It's really interesting. So I highly, highly recommend people go to your website. I was just saying to you, you know, as soon as we hit thirty degrees in Minnesota, everybody starts planning our garden center. So now the perfect time to start looking at that.

 

And it's time to plan but just don't plant them.

 

Great. Planning not planting.

 

Because so many people get so excited plant to soon. You know they say almost regions don't plant after Mother's Day.

 

Exactly. Well, thank you. So for people who want to learn more about what Linda does, visit Moonwiseherbs.com. And when we come back, we are going to start talking about the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference, which is coming up in May.

 

To read the online version of Natural Awakenings magazine, visit Natural TwinCities.com. You can find a podcast of this show on AM950Radio.Com on Apple and Google podcasts. And anywhere you get your podcasts, you're listening to Green Tea Conversation on AM950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota. And we will be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversation is where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle. And today we're visiting with Linda Conroy, owner of Moonwise Herbs in Stoughton, Wisconsin, and founder of the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference.

 

Well, Linda, we finally get to hear about the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference, which is something that I think people are going to be really excited about. You have a great group of speakers and in particular, your keynote speaker is Vandana Shiva.

 

Yeah, she's an activist from East India who has written a lot of books and she's written about food sovereignty and about farming and the food system and her concerns about how life systems are being developed and how we relate to our food and our and the earth and the planet. She is an eco-feminist, so she talks about how, you know, the segregation of the Earth is also something that's happening to women around the world. And so she really brings a nice breadth of knowledge and wisdom and advocacy to to the table.

 

So we're super excited to have her join us. And we're going to be in our keynote with her is going to be a conversation. I'm going to have the opportunity to interview her and talk to her about her work and how she sees her work overlapping with health and wellness because we're an urban conference. So we're really interested in having that conversation with her and seeing, you know, how she views our health and relationship to the Earth and how we can, what kind of steps and things we can do to to support ourselves.

 

That is really great. And I do want to be sure to mention to people that this is a virtual event. This is an online event, and it's your second year doing this. Last year, you were kind of thrown into it. And I had this surprise called Covid hit. But you have really you did last year's event virtually. Then you did the mushroom conference virtually. You've been doing most of your classes virtually. So you've really kind of figured out what works well in this in this realm.

 

We really have. And it's fascinating to me that we can create a community in this room, our mushroom event that we did in the fall called Mycelium Mysteries, which this year will be in its fifth year. And our conference is in its 10th year because the rat grew out of the conference, actually. But we in the fall, I was really surprised at the feedback we got about people who were going out and identifying and harvesting mushrooms right away and cooking with them differently right away.

 

[00:37:30.010]
And we had a workshop on death and dying at that conference and this woman said it helped her so much. Her grandmother died the next week and it helped her be with her grandmother differently. And she was getting all this feedback that not only are we just giving her information, but we're creating community and people are engaging with information. So that's how our in-person conference has always been. So I wasn't sure how that would translate, but we've really been able to have a translation. I'm just so heartened by that.

 

Well, why don't you tell us? Because I know you have a lot of other really great speakers who are coming up and you have some pre-conference workshops as well.

 

Yes, we do. So our other keynote speakers are a young woman named Wirewood Jones. She's a young indigenous woman who did her graduate work looking at indigenous farming practices. And so she's going to do a presentation on her work and how food and farming practices, and these unseen food and farming practices that have a lot of application for today. She's calling herself the greatest story never told. So we're not hearing these stories. So part of our hope is we really want to platform these voices that have something to offer to help us look at the world from a different perspective and invite us to entertain possibility.

 

That's been my word for the possibility. One of the possibilities and I think Vandana and Lyla really bring this sense of possibility to the table with a lot of strength and a lot of wisdom from both their experience and their cultures. You know, it's really great because one is an international speaker. We wouldn't be able to have her with us if we weren't virtual. So that's a guess. And then our other keynote speaker, we have three of them is Rosemary Glouster, star, who was a verbal pioneer for this country, which is one of our elders.

 

She's in her 70s and she's going to be talking about plants and our relationship to plants and about her work of doing a lot of advocacy work for protecting the health of the soil and the viability of medicinal plants here in the States. So we're super excited about having the three of them speak as keynotes. And then, of course, we have a whole bunch of other workshops in the conference on a lot of different topics.

 

I know the conference is going to be May 7th, 8th and 9th. So it's it's over kind of a long weekend. And a lot of your workshops that you have, there'll be two going on at a time so you can choose the two of them.

 

[00:40:12.380] - Linda Conroy, Guest
Right. And it's free choice. And the moment you can pick whichever one you want to go to? Oh, yeah.

 

You do have an early bird special, I guess you call it an early bird, really seeing by April 1st in order to take part in the event it's ninety-nine dollars for the virtual event only.

 

Right.

 

Or I recommend the 140 dollars and you get all the recording. So now you don't have to worry about do they choose the right one. So they have gotten to the other one because you'll get all the recordings from all of the workshops that are taking place.

 

Exactly, yes. So then you just listen to it later at your leisure.

 

So, yeah, but you won't be stressed about which choice you make because I can't think of a workshop on the list that I wouldn't want to attend.

 

I mean, you have such great even the pre-conference workshops that you have. So the pre-conference workshops have an additional cost to them. These are these are like two-hour workshops for our workshops. Some of them are even longer than that

 

[00:41:21.770] - Linda Conroy, Guest
30 times.

 

Yeah. So you won one by Robin Rollers Bennett called Herb's Rituals and Sacred Ceremony.

 

Yes. So she she wrote a book called The Gift of the Healing Plants, which is a beautiful book. And she's been a speaker of ours in the past. And she just does a beautiful job of talking about and inspiring people how to leave herbs in your daily life as part of ceremony and ritual, and then also how to create ritual and ceremony with herbs for, you know, everyday practice or special events and occasions. And so that's that workshop is going to be a really nice deep dive into that topic.

 

Yeah, that's like an 8-hour workshop. So people can go to your website and they can take a look at all of the different workshops that are taking place and see who some of the speakers are. Kind of get an idea. But I really want people to go, first of all, to your website for your business, which is Moonwiseherbs.com, and see the classes that you're offering? You have a store there. You have so much information for people, but then for people who also want to register for the Midwest Women's Conference, visit MidwestWomensHerbal.com.

 

Thank you, Linda, so much for being with us again today. Our time goes by way too quickly when you're here.

 

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

 

And thank you for joining the conversation as we awaken to natural health. You've been listening to Green Tea Conversation son, AM950 Radio Progressive Voice of Minnesota, and I am wishing you a lovely day!