OUR TEAM
Welcome to our Everyday Forage Team. We are a group of dedicated foragers, herbalists, plant lovers, and foodies dedicated to relationships built on reciprocity.
We strive to assist you in connecting, conserving, and remembering relationships with the land. Our motto is Conservation through Connection. Welcome!
Forager Guide: MIMI
Mimi is a Kichwa chakrawawa/seed carrier, and community organizer from the Antisuyu and Kuntisuyu territories. Her work as an indigenous farmer utilizes the anatomy of indigenous food kinship and birthwork to support the health of agricultural and seed practices. Co-founder of Inside The Husk Foodways. Born as a commitment to communities and the land.
My Story
Mimi's Plant Story:
I have come to understand that as I grow, there is a need to understand life in different forms. My prayer is to not learn alone but with the land's support. And these relations have come in the form of plants. Mugwort is a herb that I've grown, fermented, and dried for moxibustion. Birth is a sacred process that opens worlds for families. Sometimes those worlds remain open after the little one's been brought earthside. That spirit can bring warmth and support to the organs that are accommodating. It is a component of my practice that I honor. Along those lines, mugwort has followed in different territories I've been invited to. The most recent was in Willow Alaska, where we were tasked with propagating wild mugwort in protected areas.
Forager Guide: SARAH
Sarah has been exceptionally passionate about plants, animals, and all things natural since she was a young teen, always weirding her family out by bringing home wild animals or swearing off shampoo and laying in the kitchen with her head in a bowl of herbs (for the record- she does use shampoo now). After nearly a decade working as a wildlife rehabilitator and a few years with the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, she couldn't fight the call any longer and has turned her focus from her love of animals to her love of plants!
Based in Chicagoland, she is a home herbalist, forager, cycle tracking educator, and nanny. After training in folk herbalism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and currently Western Herbalism and Energetics, foraging naturally became the next passion as many of the herbs she knows and loves grow right at our feet! She also teaches workshops to women on how to confidently track their cycles, empowering them to take charge of their fertility- whether they are trying to conceive or not! In her walks there will be a heavy focus on plant ID, weedy plant friends who grow in abundance, medicinal, as well as edible uses. She will try to put you in the mindset of a forager in the hopes that you will leave feeling inspired and more confident in your ability to get out and forager yourself!
My Story
Sarah's Plant Story
I have been having a many years long, meandering love affair with the beautiful Linden tree, otherwise known as Basswood, Tilia americana. When I was a brand new budding herbalist, I used to buy all my herbs; I hadn't yet learned that many of my soon to be favorite plant friends were growing all around me. So, drinking my Linden tea that I had purchased, I would walk past these trees growing near my house year after year. When they would go to flower, which only lasts a short while, they became absolutely intoxicating, the most amazing fragrance would blanket the block with beautiful, light yellow dew drop flowers drooping down.. I would walk by and swoon, and I mean swoon over these trees. BUT, I never knew who they were (this was pre-phone ID app days and I didn't have many tree ID books), so, alas, I would just swoon for that short while and not think too much of it until the next swoon season.
Fast forward a few years, I had moved to a new place, still in love with my Linden, when I came to find out- those beautiful trees I had been swooning over year after year? They were Linden. I couldn't believe it, I just laugh/smiled to myself. What a world. I now see them everywhere, and I still (and always will) love to swoon over their fragrance, love to drink in the soothing, calming, tender tea that the flowers provide. I love to stand under the blooms and watch the many bumblebees close up, drinking in the nectar; never have I seen such a display of adorable fuzzy little native bumblebees of all shapes and sizes in such close quarters! I love the strength you can imagine from hanging out under such a wonderful tree- rooted I rise. Ahh Linden, how I admire you so!