There are three guiding premises of this time of decent into northern hemisphere darkness. This is winter season of decline and decomposition, activity below ground and general shadowyness. They are:

• Everything comes into this world hungry.
• Everythiing wants to be digested.
• Everything flows towards soil.

Everything comes into this world hungry.

Bacteria are the underlying living structure of all life forms including ourselves. They are the primary alchemists transforming structures of life into other structures. Bacteria shall here to for be known as ‘beasties’.

Everything is constantly being biochemically altered as enzymes already present in an organism break down form within, microorganisms, namely bacteria (but sometimes fungi too) settle in to eat and excrete, transforming a pear on your counter, a pile of leaves on the sidewalk or a corpse (animal of your choice) consumable by larger organisms read insects, rodents, worms, etc. who eat and excrete until a lovely pile of biological goo or soil develops on the spot the pear/leaves/corpse was resting. It is the end of the line in one way, but the beginning of another too. In other words the snake eats her own tail. It’s nature’s law.

Beasties make milk into cheese, fruit juice into vinegar and wine, vegetables into pickles, beans into miso etc. fermentation is basically setting up a habitat for beneficial bacteria and fungi to set up shop , eat and excrete until they are done or you deem it time to stop them because the wine or cheese or pickles are delicious at that point.

Everything wants to be digested.

Digestion Illustration - take I

Take a slightly bruised fruit, or peelings of fruit (not a gorgeous piece of fruit, save that for eating) place in a glass jar, add sugar, screw on top and shake a bit. The mixture needs to breathe, so remove lid and place rag over the jar and secure with rubber band around ring of jar. Leave in a dark, room temperature space for ten days or two weeks so the beasties can eat in peace. At this point you should taste a bit of the mixture. If you like the taste, strain out the fruit and put in the fridge. This will slow the fermentation process. You have just made unfiltered pro-biotic fruit scrap vinegar.

Securing and processing food for storage used to consist of simple, sometimes labor intensive but entirely petrochemical-free processes which I will list as you might not remember what some of them are - slow evaporation, smoking, fermenting, and preserving in oil/vinegar/honey/salt/alcohol or using in ground storage. These low techie but completely safe methods were used extensively until the mid 19th century when pasteurization was discovered.

Pasteur (and the little mentioned Bernard) took much of the wind out of popular magic belief when they discovered pasteurization which fueled modern germ theory. The paradigm shift saved lives, but his theories also contributed to our general fear of soil, our bodies, our bodies waste and the food that the industrial food system connected to us via our local grocery stores cultivates in us. Pasteurization, besides changing the availability and existence of certain nutrients, rids all bacteria from food, meaning it also kills the good beasties that help keep our raw food safe from eating and our internal gardens of beasties and mushrooms healthy.

Canning technology started a few decades earlier when a French candy maker, Nicolas Appert won the contest out forth by Napoleon Bonaparte to come up with a method to feed his troops in the field.

Digestion illustration - take two

Chop veggies/wild greens/roots whatever you want to pickle. Make a brine with non-chlorinated water and sea salt. brine should be near saturation. toss denser material (i.e. roots, garlic cloves) into brine and and swirl it around a bit. drain veggies saving brine. Mix pre-brined veggies and less dense material (i.e. greens). Pack a glass jar with your mix and pour the brine over it submerging all material. Work out trapped bubbles with a stick. Fill a small bag with extra brine and use as a water bladder to keep material submerged. leave the jar open to allow the beasties to eat for at least three days. Taste and eat, let them keep eating for a stronger taste or keep the jar in a cool place like that 38 degree box called a refrigerator and slow them down.

And finally August Wilhem von Hoffman discovered formaldehyde in 1867, it was introduced to the new wave of modern embalmers and remains the choice of embalmers. Stopping what was the ‘exploding casket syndrome’ a phenomena of union troop corpses making that long hot train ride back to their families in the North. Formaldehyde is a far cry from the older embalmers choices of spices/salt/herbs human pickling. Indeed it is a biocide that forms from the oxidation of methane and as bodies decompose (because the bacteria does get into those caskets eventually) it leaks into the groundwater and without too much imagination you can guess the rest. Lucky for Europeans that the EU happened to last year ban its use.

Good to know that embalming is not required by law in the United States. There’s no need to rob food from the living beasties.

Everything flows towards soil.

MAY DAY!: 'LEANING IN' TO OURSELVES, OUR WASTE AND OUR OTHERS

Weedeater - nance klehm

When Mexico City manages to close its shop doors and empty its streets of 20 million, it is darkly impressive. In a city that was once floating and whose main environmental pressure was flooding, current advice of frequent hand washing was exacerbated by one of the main water pipelines of fresh water shut down the previous week affecting a quarter of the city’s population of 5 million. This is not the first, nor the last drastic water rationing for this populace.

With a high level of street culture where informal interactions are inexhaustible and richly layered (In my deepest belly, I xox Mexico City even though I usually come out bruised after a prolonged stay.) I can’t help to ask how do we ‘lean in’ when social distancing is becomes policy, however temporary.

In Egypt, pigs are not only a food source for the non-Muslim population, they are the “clean up crew”, an integral part of the solid waste disposal system in Cairo.

The pigs in Cairo are mostly handled by the Zabaleen (Arabic for ‘garbage people’). The Zabaleen are landless farmers who migrated to the city 50 years ago from northern Egypt and became the unpaid grassroots garbage collectors of the city. The 60,000 or so Zabaleen make their living absorbing, sorting and reintroducing as usable 30% of Cairo’s waste. Raw materials such as steel, glass, plastic, etc. are resold and other materials are repaired, reused or burned as fuel. Their low-tech, metabolic system represents a 80-90% recovery rate.

Pigs are kept in apartment courtyards and fed food and other waste where they process it and return that fertilizer to earth as well as produce food for the people.

At the start of this year, Egypt hired foreign multinational contractors to manage Cairo’s waste stream replacing the Zabaleens and existing systems and resulting in higher disposal fees and a much lower recovery/recycling rate of materials.

And now Egypt is in the process of slaughtering all of the 300,000 or so pigs in the country.

Why would a country hire a transnational at a high cost when they have for decades had a highly effective grassroots labor of an indigeonous group do it voluntarily?

In light of all this panic around a possible ‘pandemic’, my seed saving pal Damon recently reminded me of an herbal anti-viral elixir, the historic anti-plague remedy called ‘4 Thieves Vinegar’. The story distilled from many versions goes like this: In France, during the bubonic plague of the early 1600’s, poor mountain folk were hired as gravediggers to dig mass burial pits and thieves made busy looting homes of dead families. It was a few individuals from both of these groups that had some herbal knowledge around anti-virals and put them to use ensuring their ability to ward off the deadly virus. It is said that a few surviving thieves who were captured for their crimes were released when they shared the elixir’s recipie with the authorities.

How to make a Four Thieves Vinegar

Use a quart jar or larger vessel, gather equal parts of dried or fresh thyme, peppermint, rosemary, sage, and lavender, a teeny bit of clove if you’ve got it and if you’re a believer in the stinking rose, you could also add some garlic. Pour enough of your homemade fruit scrap or cider vinegar to just cover the herbal material. Put the lid on tight and keep it someplace that you pass every day like near your coffee maker or bed so you can shake or stir it once or more a day. Do this for as many days as you can up to six weeks (optimal tincturing time). Strain liquid form plant material and drink a teaspoon several times daily or wipe down skin and surfaces with it for disinfection or do both as you feel necessary.

Viruses do not contain the enzymes that are needed to live – so they need to have host cells which could be a plant, or an animal or even a bacteria in order for them to “live”. Outside of a host, viruses die.

Many of the plants in this remedy are anti-virals – others are also anti-bacterial and/or anti-fungal – I’ve included a full list of easily forageable and cultivatable anti-viral and flu foe plants below.

I’ve taught you how to make fruit scrap vinegar (“Breaking it Down” Weedeater column in ARTHUR #32) and Molly has talked about the uses of apple cider vinegar in past editions of print Arthur. If you have some of that around then use this as a base if not – make some so you always have some on hand. (Vinegar is so healthy and antiseptic, not to mention delicious, it behooves you to have some on-hand.)

As per my conviction, I only include plants that are easily forageable, cultivated or ubiquitously in any neighborhood store urban or rural. This is a decent list but not an inclusive list. I encourage you to do more research around anti-virals and the listed plants.

ANTI-VIRALS

• Aloe Vera — Wound healer extraordinaire that is also anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and when the juice is drunk helps repair digestive track and soothes ulcers. Always have this plant or a leaf on hand.
• Eucalyptus — You lucky Californians! The oil from this common weedy tree is also anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. It breaks up and expels mucous, relieves congestion and cools fevers.
• Garlic - The ubiquitous garlic is antiseptic, anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic, anti-fungal, immune-stimulating and anti-protozoan. Growing garlic is easy… try it!
• Ginger — Yummy and fairly easy to find, ginger is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, diaphoretic, anti-spasmodic, circulatory stimulant, anti-arthritic, anti-inflammatory and more. Can also be used in baths to warm the body and promote sweating.
• Hen of the Woods – Forageable mushrooms -Yummy!
• Lemon — Again this is a ‘forageable’ for the Californians… Lemon helps fight infections and stimulates immune system
• Shitakes - Easy to grow indoors. Investigate this!
• Thyme — Chases mucus from the body. Thyme is antiseptic, antibiotic and anti-microbial.
• Wildflower Honey – In its original undiluted state, there is no shelf live for honey. If you don’t keep bees, or know someone you do, work on either of these relationships this season. Honey is anti-biotic, anti-inflammatory, immune stimulant, anti-carcinogenic, laxative, cell regenerator, anti-fungal… etc.!

FLU FOES

• Clove — Anti-bacterial, anti-septic, anti-microbial, bactericidal. Useful for infectious diseases and respiratory infections. This is something you pick up off a grocery shelf. Invaluable pain killer. I have used this on tooth and gun aches with huge relief.
• Common Sage — wonderful for throat and upper respiratory infections.
• Hyssop — This is most delicious as a tea. It relieves congestion, cough, sore throats and the constant beautiful blooms makes bees deliriously happy.
• Juniper — Anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, antiseptic. Useful for upper respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, candida, salmonella, e. coli… maybe I we should burn this by our dry toilets… forageable
• Oregano — This common culinary herb is an anti-infectious agent and an immune stimulant. Who knew? Easy to grow too.
• Peppermint — Fights infections, relieves congestion, clears sinuses – yumyum and so easy to grow.
• Rosemary — Anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic. Also for respiratory infections. I love to bathe with this plant. The steaming of this plant also helps relieve migranes. Forageable for you west coasters.
• Walnut – A bitter as heck blood cleanser, anti-inflammatory an anti-parasitic. Forageable.
• Western Red Cedar – Binds wounds, helps on clearing lungs, diarrhea and an antifungal. Forageable.
• Wormwood — Here is my friend Artemesia again, though not the common weedy one. It’s her cultivated cousin of yore…. Wormwood is anti-malarial, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory. In public gardens and therefore forageble with discretion.

Agriculture and the grid was about opportunity, an equitable share of wealth, a stake in the land and a home place. The Land Act of 1797 measured and divided all land in the public domain into a gridwork of survey lines leading to the distribution of land where all parcels we considered the same ignoring natural topography and water ways.

Weeds have followed the plow. They are artifacts of our modern food culture, Agriculture. The way we eat and live by ripping and removing the living soil of the indigenous deep rooted-structure of tall grasses, trees and shrubs exposes soil to wayward seeds. The most assertive weedy seeds settle into these open patches of soil and establish themselves. When the Mayflower arrived in 1620, there were no dandelions in North America. By 1671, they were everywhere. Weeds are our reward for not going native.

Weeds adapt the condition at hand, make use of marginalized soils that agricultural plants can’t. They optimize vitamins and mineral contents within their bodies, create passageways through the soil for water and air to flow via their deep roots and create forage for animals and insects. Weeds prevent further degradation of soils by covering the land’s tilled surface, they prepare and heal the soil for other plants. Weeds are the first step in ecological succession. Weeds enhance our internal and external landscapes’ capacity to support themselves.

photo by Becky Pflueger

ELIMINATION
LUBRICATION
RESTORATION

DANDELION (Taraxacum officinale)

Dandelions are windborne seeds of perennial indestructible roots. It disperses surplus fluids and moves stagnation. Dandelion helps the kidneys retain potassium and supports the liver. Roots, leaves, buds and flowers are medicinal.

BURDOCK (Articum lappa)

Burdock is in the dandelion tribe. Terrestrially, its deep roots pull nutrients up to topsoil – you can burn and add to your compost to enhance its mineral content. The root is dark brown while inside a dense white. Burdock is a guardian of inner flows. It helps the liver process oil and increases bile production. Burdock moisturizes tissues and supports blood. A single burdock plant can bear 400,000 seeds it’s second year. The root and seeds are used as well as young leaves.

NETTLES (Urtica dioica)

Nettles naturalize around septic systems, outhouses and manure piles. It utilizes these protein wastes to build its protein content. Nettles help the liver metabolize and the kidney eliminate. It is very high in calcium and magnesium. Nettles restore our overtaxed adrenals.

BLOOD AND WATER

The liver relates to blood the kidney to water. Both organs actively change the structure of and are nurtured by the blood that feeds them. They are stewards and beneficiaries of the body’s abundance.

The liver stores and metabolizes carbohydrates, proteins and fats. It is a detoxifier protecting our inner ecology of drugs, pollution and stress. The liver is a nutrifier of the blood. It is the organ of Planning and Strategy.

The kidney is a sorter keeping what is useful and letting go of what is not. It maintains the environment of the body conserving water while passing on only a little bit to the bladder to help dissolve waste. It also regulates the pH of the blood and the salt in the body. The kidney is the ocean of the body. It holds Essence and Will.

(you can imagine the why for. this is the how to.)

nance klehm

procure roughly one quart of raw milk if possible from any healthy lactating animal. if you don’t have connection to an animal, grocery store vitamin d wholemilk (unfortunately homogenized and pasteurized) will do. it’ll need to do. you will need no more than a quart’s worth as a larger amount will make the process less comfortable. you will also need to have a spoonful of room temperature yogurt saved from your last batch or some beautiful homemade yogurt from a wonderful armenian/egyptian/iraqi/greek/bulgarian, etc. grocer or neighbor. this is essential.

one half hour or so before going to bed, pour the milk into a saucepan and heat it gently and slowly, stirring all the while until it reaches 110 degrees. you do not want it forming a skin.

pull the pan off the heat and gently and slowly cool the milk to 90 degrees by just allowing it to lose heat.

drop your spoonful of room temperature yogurt into a jar and pour in the warm milk. screw on the lid and shake the jar once. wrap the jar tightly into a soft wool sweater and climb into bed alone or with animal or human companion. tuck jar against your skin. keep it as close as possible. hug or snuggle the jar. body heat is what allows the culture to educate the milk to become yogurt, bacteria colonize in the constant heat of your body/ies

come morning, you should have a quart of human-incubated yogurt.

linda's brother
(single serving/weird measurements)

• 1 tbs. dried lentils
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1 tsp. buddah
• 2 chives or equivalent amount of udder onions, chopped
• 1 large egg
• half a dozen violet leafses, chopped
• enough H2O to cook the beans, 1/4 c., maybe
• salt to taste

In a no-stick pan, bring the washed & sorted beans, the water, and salt to a boil then simmer, lid on, for 15 or 20 minutes over low heat. Saw up the un-yun(s) and the leafses. When the beans are al dente, add the oil and buddah, let things spread out and come back to temperature, then add the veggies and get the onions transparent and the leafses wilted. I covered the pan for this step, too. Dial the heat up and scramble the egg into the mix. When the egg's cooked, it's soup yet.