season 4, episode 1 - #plantwitch life

 

we’ve made it to season 4 of snort & cackle! in our opening episode, host ash alberg celebrates the start of growing season (semi-theoretically, considering this year’s weather) and talks about the role that herbalism and natural dyeing play in their life. learn about your own local colour palette with natural dyeing 101! you can also find other plant-related offerings mentioned in the episode in these places:

each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is babaylan sing back: philippine shamans and voice, gender, and place by grace nono.

take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!

support future seasons of snort & cackle by joining the creative coven community.

transcript

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. And each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world, a better place. 

Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender and Place by Grace Nono.

Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.

Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]  

Hello, and welcome to the start of season four of Snort and Cackle. I can't believe that we are here. It is officially a year as of this season that Snort and Cackle has been out in the world and that is incredibly exciting. Also a little, I would say, daunting, but I think it's more just like surprising? [Chuckles.]

I'm excited that this season is coming out and into your ears. I also honestly don't know what Snort and Cackle is going to be looking like after this season. And for a little bit more about what I mean by that, then you can go back one episode in your feeds and just listen to the special in between season announcement of where we're at and what we're anticipating.

Realistically this podcast began largely as a response to COVID-19 and the desire to have deep conversations with really smart people and bring more of those conversations out for the rest of you all to hear and learn of these folks, what they do and what they offer to the world.

And maybe be inspired by them, as I find myself inspired by them. And I have done that in the past with From Field to Skin and that that particular project involved video interviews and especially with, and I'm sure if you've listened to some of the episodes of Snort and Cackle where our guests have lived in rural locations, then it's, the internet is not always that great. And therefore the sound quality is not always that great. 

And when you're trying to do a video episode, it's even trickier. I always found with From Field to Skin that it just, it brought a whole other dimension to the work to be able to go and film on location in people's places where they were practicing. And I think especially for From Field to Skin, it's important for that, with the fibershed advocacy being at the core of it. 

And so being able to show, this is what these people's lives look like. This is what their homes and studios look like, what their farms look like. That was really important for From Field to Skin. And with Snort and Cackle, the excitement, I think, came in being able to have those important conversations and not necessarily needing to visit people and in like … not embracing the restraint of no travel brought on by COVID-19, but in approaching it as an opportunity and a challenge to challenge back at and to say fuck you, I'm gonna have these conversations anyway.

We got some grants to support that initial start and I knew it was gonna take a lot. I also didn't realize how much it was gonna take. And so now we're in this position of here we are with season four. This particular season is unfunded at this point in time. And I can't keep doing that long term.

I also am not willing to give up on providing essentials like the transcripts for you. And those cost money and even if I donated all of my time and labor, like it's just we need to figure out some way of making these seasons sustainable. And right now, they cost about $10,000 each season to develop. And I currently don't have that $10,000 in my pocket. 

So, season four is at this point in time, possibly our last season for the next little while. I'm hoping not forever. I doubt it'll be forever. But all that to say that I hope that you're really excited about these upcoming episodes. If you really love them, please consider supporting us financially so that we can continue bringing you more episodes.

But even if we don't, there will, as of the end of this season, be a year's worth of incredible conversations that you can listen to and re-listen to and share with folks. And I hope that you have enjoyed them as much as I have enjoyed recording them. And I am feeling energized despite the fact that this project feels like it's perhaps on unsteady footing.

And perhaps part of that is because it is Beltane season and Beltane, which has just passed us when you are listening to this episode, is the other time of the year, other than Samhain, when the veil is very thin. So if you've been noticing some ghosties and some spirits kicking around a little bit louder than usual, it's not just you, it is the season.

And it's fun because Samhain is definitely the time of year where we witches expect to be hanging out with more of the ghosts and where there's a lot of cross-cultural ancestral, intentional ancestral acknowledgement happening. But Beltane is also a season of activation and especially here in the Northern hemisphere, and when you live as far north as I do, it's the time where everything is starting to bloom.

And we've had maybe some green for a little while. Where I live in zone three, we're not putting annuals or new babies into the ground quite yet. That'll be still about a month away, at least a few weeks away.

But that doesn't mean that the perennials aren't happening and bringing themselves out of winter hibernation and the early blooms are popping up and the pollinators are waking themselves back up and there's more bird song happening. The birds that migrate have come home. And it's all exciting.

And for me with my plant witch life, this is also the start of what feels like a fairly busy season for me. I've had seeds that have been getting started at home inside for a number of weeks now. My plant beds that had perennials are waking back up. I'm trying to remember what the fuck I planted in which plant bed. I remember some other ones, not so much.

And we just wait to see who appears. And it honestly, probably won't be till June or July that I'm like, oh, that's what's in there. But in the meantime, I'm having fun reacquainting myself with my plant buddies who have been buried under piles of snow for way too long this year.

And it's exciting because I am just slowly, I live as many of … I live in the middle of an urban in space. I have a postage stamp-sized amount of property. I do have the privilege and benefit of living with a bit of green space. But I do live in an area of the city that is notorious for our small yards.

And so I'm slowly trying to build as large of gardening spaces as possible while also dealing with the fact that Willow is as big as she is and she needs space to hang out and do her thing. And figuring out how do we live in our mini with her and her dog buddies and my plant babies.

It gets interesting. She's on really good terms with the nettles. So I think, she's got her really relationship with the plants fairly well established. The juniper and her have a slightly different relationship. She seems a little bit intent on bringing them out of the ground.

We're constantly trying to balance with that as I try and get the juniper established and full enough that she leaves them alone. But all of that to say that this is a time of year where I am very much into my plant brain. And this is as someone who like, I have never considered myself to have a green thumb.

I grew up with parents who very much loved their gardens. I grew up on also a almost an acre of land and a lot of that land, a lot of it was like, kind of lawn space. But a lot of it was also very intentionally gardened space. And there were huge old trees. And my parents planted some trees that at that time were new and now tower many stories above the houses.

And my parents definitely have green thumbs and they continue to. It's cute now, I think. Especially through COVID I've really enjoyed seeing my parents have time in the spring and summer, and then into the fall where they get to focus on all of that green space. Especially where they haven't been able to go places and they've been stuck at home and my dad is in a wheelchair.

And so the kind of gardening that they used to do is just, my parents are almost in their seventies at this point. They're in their late sixties, dad's in a wheelchair, it's a lot of land for them to be maintaining. And it's cool to see what they do with it and what they plant in order to have the ability to tend things through the season and then what other things they plant, because those plants are gonna just really establish themselves and just have a time.

Like my mom has been encouraging her hops and her lilacs and her honeysuckles and they are just having a time. And I love it. And so yeah, I grew up in a family that definitely valued gardening and growing plants and having relationships with plants that were intentional and kind. 

But I don't think that I necessarily knew in so many words about the reciprocity of tending plants myself, even with my house plants until the last few years. And that has certainly overlapped with more of a diving into my herbalism practice, as well as my natural dyeing practice. And particularly like building relationships with the plants around me. Like I, I definitely have more of a foraging practice when it comes to my natural dyeing than I necessarily do a gardening practice.

And, but I think that foraging and living in the same area for enough of a chunk of time, I moved quite a bit when I was younger. It like, as a younger adult. Moved quite a bit, was never necessarily in a place long enough to be able to tend plants easily. Like I wouldn't even necessarily be in one place for a full summer to even consider like a short term harvest.

And then, I bought my house, I got Willow. I started walking the neighborhood and I have just slowly been kind of developing relationships with the plants in my neighborhood and starting to get good at recognizing who comes back year after year and where they come back year after year. And also seeing they’re resilient. When somebody else will cut them down or cut them back and then they, give them a week or two and of a sudden they're back again. 

Like the nettles in my neighborhood are just resilient little fuckers and I love them for it. And that being a foundation for me to then be diving deeper into my relationship of tending plants and coming to value them more for medicine, for sure. But also I feel like especially for my dye pots, because with medicine and the amount that I necessarily need to be harvesting for my personal use because I don't sell that much in terms of medicines. 

My herbal remedies, I primarily rely on other folks who have been harvesting, because I know that I only have so much space to be growing things. I do look forward to, and especially now that I have learned how to distill my own essential oils, thanks to Benil with Abode, I look forward to the future and having enough space to grow the plants that I use regularly in my herbal lines and being able to make them all from scratch, basically.

That's an exciting thing that I look forward to. It's not something that I feel like I need to do right now. But the … when it comes to my dye pots, it is, it takes so much to dye a small amount, and there is so much value in each color that we get. And each year as I dye my harvest collection on sock yarns, I am just like perpetually amazed at the rainbow of colors that I get and how lucky I am to build relationships with these plants, that they are able to give me enough to get those colors, like that is such a gift.

And the reciprocity, I think, in tending a plant and coming to know it and coming to know what it needs from you and what it wants from you and having that relationship with them and coming to understand the way that it talks to you in its plant way is really a beautiful gift and very heavy in magic.

I think, especially as someone who in their like late teens, early twenties, spent many years as a vegetarian vegan because of how I felt about the meat industry, the commercial meat industry, until I learned enough about how the food industry as a whole is very fucked up at the industrial level and also that my body needed meat, and so coming to the acceptance of the fact that I was going to need to consume meat, and so learning how to build that relationship back in because my body physically needed it. 

And doing what I can within my, within my power and my privilege at any given time and learning that those compromises are just part of being a human. And now fast forward 10 years or so building these relationships with plants and realizing that all of those concerns that I had for animals also need to be there for the plants as well. And that plants also are talking to us and talking to one another and have these like complex realities and relationships that we just don't understand necessarily.

Or we're not as tuned into. It takes a little more effort. And that the hypocrisy that is at play when we prioritize some living creatures over others. And the hypocrisy that specifically comes from the judgment of others who choose to do different things than we do. That's a thing that I am just finding really interesting to sit with these days.

And some plants are really fucking subtle. And then there's other ones like my nettles, who I love them because they are not subtle at all. They are so fuck you, you have hurt me. You were not paying attention to me. You were not careful and I am letting you know. 

And I really came to appreciate my nettles last season, the first year that I was growing some from seed, because every time I would go to water them or when I was transplanting them and, moving them into bigger spaces, if I wasn't careful with them, they let me know. And I really appreciated that from them because it's one of the things that I love about nettles, is how strong their boundaries are. 

And it's a thing that I'm coming to recognize with each of the plants in my life of what lessons they have to teach me, and also that I will have different relationships with different plants and that just because one plant is really popular for some reasons doesn't necessarily mean that I am going to have that kind of relationship with it. And that is okay. 

And that also the plants that I have, am like really drawn to, I just look for opportunities to engage with them deeper and to potentially be able to grow them from seed or be able to tend them, even if this is not the climate that they thrive most in. To figure out like, how can I make an environment for you that makes you really happy and lets you thrive? 

And I think also this year was really the first winter that I came to really value my house plants and the way that even if they're not, you know, serving the same medicinal or dye pot uses that so many of my other plants do, that they offer other gifts and teach us other lessons and are resilient, but still they're not, they're not impervious to everything. And so they still require intention and care and a different kind of attention than my weeds that grow outside do. 

And I think, I'd be remiss to not acknowledge the fact that indigenous folks around the world are, have maintained this knowledge. They have kept that alive and books like Braiding Sweetgrass and Plants Have So Much to Tell Us, All We Have to Do is Ask. Like these books offer so much to everyone, no matter what their background is.

And also when we look far enough back, no matter where in the world we're looking, that same level of intentional relationship with plants has existed. And it is supremacy, white supremacy, colonialism, the kyriarchy, patriarchy like that has impacted our relationship with these plants. And I think especially something that I am fascinated by and am still in just like such embarrassed, like understanding of at this point is ancestrally for me how so much of these beautifully deep plant relations and interrelations are rooted in femme-driven witchcraft.

And that this is like ancestral knowledge that we know in our bones and that we trust and that we use to heal and that we also use to protect when we need. And there is something really fucking magical about that, to the extent that like I have literally drawn garden plans for my someday home that I dream of and in the meantime and figuring out, what are the mini versions of these, but having specific plants that I plant on the land that I am stewarding because of the gifts that they offer, whether that is protections and boundaries, whether that is medicine, whether that is heart healing, whether that is food, whether that is respiratory benefits, whether that is money magic, whether that is creativity and sensual experiences. 

And for me and for my family and for others who visit us there is, there's so much that plants have to offer us and especially in urban environments, I think it's really easy to become very separate from each of those things. And yet, you look down in the sidewalk and plantain and yarrow and goldenrod and dandelions and these plants that are so medicinally incredible. Like I remember last fall going out of the city, but up to Grindstone, which is in the, I guess the middle third of the province, or like upper, low third of the province?

And I was at this boat dock place that was about as industrial as it got out there where we happened to be. And it was like gravel everywhere and these like piles of rocks to that had been built up for the dock. And there was this one mullein plant and it was just having a time.

It was like seven feet tall and dusty from all of the gravel and everything and just thriving. It was like, fuck you. This is where I am. This is where I've planted myself deal with it. 

And I just, I fell so in love with that mullein plant. And I'm, I'm hoping that the mullein that I've planted next to my front steps grows as happily and more happily if possible. And I'm excited to see how much my nettles decide to take over the yard this year. And same with my mugwort. I grew so much mugwort last year and I'm excited to see how much mugwort comes out this year. 

And it's this like just moment of pride and just like joy and having some role to play and also recognizing that it's not all about me. There are some things that I can do and I can pay attention and I can do my best to help out when I see that there is a need. But also trusting that if I get a little too involved, that's actually gonna hurt my plants and that they know what they need best.

And it's my job to listen to them and to offer them what they need when they tell me they need it and to otherwise back the fuck off and let them do their thing. It's like raising kids. [Laughs.] I think. There's like certain things that we're like nope, you're root-bound. You do need a bigger pot. I'm telling you, you'll feel better. 

And then the other times where it's okay, all right, you said you had enough water. Got it. I'll back off. Or you've got enough sun. I understand. Okay, got it. I will let you do your thing. 

There's something just so delightful about that. And I think, especially in the world that we're living in these days and how despondent we can become with just everything, there is so much hope and resistance and resilience in choosing to plant seeds and tend plants and harvest as harvests come because we trust that there'll be a tomorrow and that something will survive.

Even if it's not necessarily us, that by planting seeds, we are offering something up for the future. And there's something really incredible about that. And also recognizing the limitations. And that, I think especially when you start growing things that you are using for yourself, you become extremely aware of the realities of both abundance and scarcity and what actual abundance and scarcity look like and what to do when you have that abundance, which is that you don't hoard it.

If you have 300 tomato plants and they all end up growing and they all produce fruit, like you're … unless you have a gigantic multi-generational Italian family and everybody loves marinara sauce all the fucking time, you're … and even then, like you, there is a point where there are too many tomatoes for just your bubble or your family to be eating.

And so what do we do? We give what … when we have enough, we give what is left away to others. And simultaneously when there are things outside of our control, like climate weather disasters, like unexpected blights, and that scarcity appears and we don't have enough to get us through the season, that we value what we have so much more.

And we also recognize that we are going to have to supplement with something and that, at the, you know, extreme side of it, it becomes life or death, but at the less extreme side of it what does scarcity actually look like? And when we are in that scarcity mode, what tools do we have at our disposal to mitigate that?

And have we built relations with the folks around us, where if we are experiencing scarcity, that they are in a position to help us and that we return that favor. I really loved, last year, my neighbors, we were all growing various things and there was just this like gifting of harvest throughout the season.

I had one neighbor who brought me basil and tomatoes regularly through the season and another one who gifted me peppers and peas, and I was gifting chutneys. And there's this beauty in growing something and providing for communities. And I think like the victory garden concept is a great example of this, where we grow victory gardens to sustain ourselves and also to sustain others around us and to sustain our communities. 

And there is a balance at play there. And for so long, we have been so out of balance and by being in deeper relationship with plants, we become so much more aware of those delicate shifts and become so much more aware of what a gift it is to receive the fruits of these, like the literal fruits of these other beings and these efforts involved. 

Gardening is physical work and it's not accessible to everybody. But most of us, even if we don't have, even if you like live on the 28th floor of a high rise building in the middle of a city, you can still grow plants on your windowsill even if you can't walk out onto a balcony. And if you can walk out onto a balcony, you can grow your own victory garden and have plenty of fruits and vegetables for a small family, just in that tiny space. 

You don't need acres and acres of land. And if you have acres and acres of land, what is your relationship with that land? How are you stewarding it? How are you giving offerings back to the land to help it maintain a healthy balance? Especially as things that we have less control over like climate crisis. We have some control, but there's also things that we can't undo certain things. We can't stop a tornado that is already coming to us. 

We can potentially try to reduce the amount of tornadoes, but if a tornado hits, you can't undo that. And what do we do to help ourselves and protect the earth? And what is the cost of that? It's so complicated and it's also so simple. 

And I think about this also in terms of with my natural dyes and the plants that are used in my dye pots, the amount of dye that is needed compared to what would be needed for culinary uses or medicinal uses, it's so much more. And when you start growing plants yourself, you come to realize just how much is involved. Like for me, and the amount of coreopsis that I grow, which is a few plants’ worth, one whole season's worth of plant, of blooms will dye a couple of skeins of wool.

And my marigolds, I've got a little bit, more of those. They tend to be a little more prolific. Also, I have more people in my life growing marigolds and gifting them to me. But I still like, there's a limit and especially, I'm dyeing at a commercial quantity and so there's limits. 

And it's also why, at this point I dye my harvest collection on sock yarn. There's certain harvests that I will also do on my other bases, but my other bases I'm typically dying sweater lots. And so with sock yarns, if I only have enough to dye one skein, I can dye one skein and there's a beauty in that. 

And there's like a level of extra preciousness in that, that the color on this skein of yarn that will become a pair of socks or maybe a shawl, but let's go with socks, it took a whole season to grow. And how fucking incredible is that? Or in the case of my madder, it took three years to harvest those roots, to then dye that one skein of wool and how precious is that? 

And I think when we start to value those things and come to recognize just how much effort and how much sacrifice was involved in that, then we come to value the colors in our lives more. And we come to value the materials in our lives more and our clothing more. 

And especially when we think of the fact that natural dyes, up until the second half of the 1800s was when the first synthetic dye was created and patented, and it was the early 1900s that synthetic dyes took over. Before that it was natural dyes. For everything. All over the world. 

And the fact that it wasn't even that long ago that was the case and we have already completely shifted our idea of what is color and what do we expect from color and this idea of color fastness and a color needing to stay in place for decades and decades. And that's normal. 

Yes, there's been innovation on the synthetic dyes front, and they are getting better at creating dyes, specifically for different types of fibers so that they last better and longer and are sometimes less toxic, but not always. And that we're gonna put that same kind of pressure and expectation on natural dyes.

And I … Kathy Hattori from Botanical Colors has this analogy that I fully subscribe to, which is the twinkie analogy. And that is that yeah, a twinkie has a shelf life of a few decades, and that is longer than the homemade muffin that is sitting on my counter. But which one do I wanna to put into my body? 

And thinking the same way when it comes to our natural dyes, like color fastness should not be the sole way that you are identifying the value of a color. And as a commercial dyer, I also am of the opinion that especially right now where the industry is, there … it is quite muddy. People don't understand natural dye. They don't understand the differences with natural dyes. 

They’re still thinking of natural dyes as being those like, it like, yes, it's coming from plant material largely, but it's also like super toxic with chrome and tin and dah dah dah. That's not the way that natural dyeing happens now. And if you're reading those older, traditional recipes, then yes, those are the recipes that you're reading. 

It is not how most of the natural dyers, any of the natural dyers that I know are operating. And it's also not how natural dyers moving forward are going to be operating because we are, there are new knowledge bases in terms of sustainability and in terms of environmental responsibility and health that is … forces us to change the way that we are doing things. And that's a good thing. 

It also means that as a commercial dyer right now, there are certain dyes that I won't include in any of my yarn offerings that I sell, because I know that they are more fugitive and I know that the chemical bonding at that molecular level is not significant enough that I could comfortably put that into a regular person's hands at this point in time. That doesn't mean that I don't still see value in that. 

I found some wood sorrel growing out of my sidewalk a couple of summers ago and I got the most incredible blue from it. And was it color fast? No, of course not. It faded within probably about a year, you could tell that there had been a bit of a shift in the vibrancy, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't valuable as was, and that it wasn't beautiful. And that wood sorrel wasn't … like it didn't offer a gift. It was absolutely a gift.

And so adjusting our expectations of what color is meant to be and what role it plays in our lives, and what role color fastness serves. I think if we can start to adjust our ideas of what we expect and that it's okay that things shift over time in the same way that as our dogs age and their muzzles get grayer or whiter, that doesn't mean that our dog is any less beautiful.

As we age and grow crow's feet and our hair changes color and our skin loses elasticity, that doesn't make us less valuable. And in the same way, with natural dyes, as a piece of cloth or yarn or leather, whatever, gets used and ages and is experiences different things, gets splashes of different things on it and gets washed for whatever reasons after whatever adventures, that is part of the story. And that makes it more beautiful, I think. 

And yeah, maybe it's not quite as bright as it used to be, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't still have value. And it also doesn't mean that you can't over-dye it. If you haven't damaged the fiber, you can absolutely over-dye it. Use your color theory accordingly. But I think we have this like unrealistic expectation that things are supposed to happen and then stay that way forever. And that's literally not the way that anything works.

It might take something more time than something else to change, but change will happen. And it's fucking hard. Doesn't mean that it's comfortable or easy or nice, but it's a fact. And it's a factor. And it's a fact when it comes to our plants as well, and our relationships with our plants as well.

So on that note, if you are interested in natural dyeing, I have several offers because I am a total nerd and I am perpetually trying to find more things for my own library and to grow my own knowledge and resources, and I like to pass those things along to others because I do believe that the more knowledge that we all have collectively, the better that we all can respond to climate crisis, honestly.

And so if video teaching is a way that you like to function, Natural Dyeing 101 is my pre-recorded video class. It's got oodles of extra resources so that you can continue your learning after taking the class and watching the videos. You can also binge through the videos and in the course of a weekend have learned all of the baselines that you need to, in terms of safety, in terms of working with imported dyes, in terms of ethical foraging, growing your own, what the basic chemistry is, how to get a beautiful rainbow. 

And if you just wanna make something a pretty color it'll teach you how to do that. And then all of those resources will still be waiting for you when you decide that you're ready to go beyond just making something a pretty color. And if learning by reading and then doing is a way that you prefer, there's a natural dye supplies section of the web shop that includes several options, including some fabulous books and also the Natural Dyes E-bundle, which all of those resources are in Natural Dyeing 101 as well. But if you prefer to just go a slightly cheaper route and learn by reading and then putting into practice, you'll learn all of those same basic things with the Natural Dyes E-bundle. So that's an option for you as well.

If you are Queer or trans and/or BIPOC and financially those options are out of reach for you, then the Crush scholarship is definitely something to look into. It was made in memoriam of a good friend of mine who I met when she attended one of my natural dying classes. And we lost her way too soon.

And she was such a light and was just constantly learning and also teaching others. And so the Crush scholarship was created in her memory and with that energy at its core. And so you can apply. There are oodles of scholarships currently available. Also for every Natural Dying 101 student who joins the class that actually adds one new natural or one new Crush scholarship to the fund. 

So it's a really great way of just giving back and it's naturally built in a way where the more students we get in Natural Dying 101, the more scholarships we can offer and so we are able to just make sure that knowledge stays accessible for as many people as possible, regardless of finances and other barriers. 

And if you prefer learning live with me, I will be hanging out with my friend Anna at Longway Homestead as part of Field School, of course, this summer, COVID not withstanding. And we'll be outside and distanced and it'll be delightful. 

That was actually, teaching at Field School last year with natural dyeing was the first in person and I think still the only in-person class I've done since COVID began. But I also teach online live classes fairly regularly with the likes of Vogue and Knit City and other fabulous organizations and shops.

And so the best way to hear about that is definitely by checking out the weekly newsletter. Anytime that I'm teaching a class, then that'll be in there as part of the upcoming offers just to let you know. So definitely that is a thing to join so that you just stay on top of that.

And in the Creative Coven community is our fabulous online space for fiber witches, including plant witches, but also is a great way of supporting this podcast, if you are interested. If you want to sponsor the podcast or support the podcast via the Creative Coven community, please just put podcast in your note at checkout so that we know that, you are specifically wanting to support Snort and Cackle and the future of Snort and Cackle via your monthly, your monthly fee with the Creative Coven community. 

And so within the Creative Coven community we have oodles of recipes. There are herbal recipes in there. There are suggestions for different plant practices through the wheel of the year. There's also quite a few resources for natural dyeing in there. There's my herbalism bookshelf. There's a natural dye bookshelf. There's a decolonizing fibersheds bookshelf. 

And also my digital natural dye color journal exists in the Creative Coven community. And so you can find those things 24/7 in there. It's just a smorgasbord of ongoing ever growing resources. And also be sure to check out From Field to Skin if fibershed advocacy is something that you're interested in, if the local textile movement is something that you are interested in. 

There's a lot of great resources there. There's apps, there's book lists, there's study lists. There's interviews with different producers from around Canada. And we have a make along that we host each year. And if you are part of the Creative Coven community, you will actually find additional content added quarterly for that make along. But you don't need to be in the community to just participate in the make along and be eligible for prizes. Lots of offers, lots of fun things. 

I'm just like perpetually deeper in love with plants as I get older. And I just dream of … I say that I dream of the day. Realistically, this is what this season kind of starts for me each year is planting my seeds, starting to see things grow, getting those early blooms happening.

And then just through the summer, I am harvesting. Continually using those harvests for food, for medicine. Tincturing my plant friends and drying plant friends and hanging bundles of herbs from ceilings and from hooks and push pins pushed into the wall. 

I say that I dream of living in a cottage where there's herbs just drying everywhere, but realistically, that's what my house tends to look like at different points in the year. So I'm looking forward to that being the case here again this year. And I'm looking forward to more essential oil and hydrosol distillations and more natural dyeing experiments and more tinctures and more herbal remedies and soaps and salves and smoking blends. And just, there's so much that plants can give us as long as we're kind to them.

So thank you for listening. And you'll also notice that the other two episodes that have dropped today are also plant-related. I am joined by Lourdes Still who is a Filipina natural dyer who lives not too far away from me, actually. Just outside of the city. And so she chats about growing her natural dye farm, and turning her lawn into flower beds.

And then also Liz Migliorelli joins me for a chat about seasonal plant loves and plant relations. You may know her better as Sister Spinster. And we've got some other really fabulous conversations with other plant-based witches. Not plant-based necessarily in that they only consume plants, but in that their practice heavily involves plants in collaboration.

So thanks for listening. And I hope that you enjoy the rest of this season. And our book for this season is gonna be fabulous. It is called Babaylan Sing Back and it is taking us to the Philippines with Grace Nono, who is an ethnomusicologist, which is super cool. She's also a famous singer.  And I'm really excited for that to be our book club book for this season. 

So thank you so much for joining me and please support the podcast. You can sponsor an episode. You can join the Creative Coven community. You can share these episodes. You can give us a five-star review. There's lots of ways to support Snort and Cackle and to help us continue making these conversations available for all of y'all.

So thanks so much and we'll chat soon. 

[Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.

Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.

 
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