PROBLEM-SOLVERS
Herbalist group on Yahoo, which dispenses advice like:
Go with the primary sources, available in translation at your library,
rather than secondary sources: Galen, Dioscorides, Hildegard von Bingen,
Albertus Magnus, William Turner, etc. These are the texts that Medieval
herbalists and apothecaries studied. Reading modern herb books won’t
give you the same information and defininitely won’t give you the same
flavor.John Gerard published his Herbal in 1593; Culpepper’s Herbal did not
appear till 1660, so he’s a bit late. ~Old Marian
Tisane, the quarterly newsletter of the East Kingdom Herbalists and Apothecary’s Guild.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED by others:
Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plantlore and Healing
Get this book. It contains, among other things, the Lacnunga
Manuscript, a section of Bald’s Third Leechbook and Old English
Herbarium. Pollington goes into several sources, translations and
the book is extremely well documented. Its invaluable for anyone who
is trying to study early European herbal lore.
FOOD
Seedsaver’s Exchange – Heirloom varieties of seeds, to bolster our food production capabilities against the fragile and exploitative monocultures advocated by the likes of Monsanto.
Bountiful Gardens – Commercial arm of "Grow BioIntensive" research project.
Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group – "To
empower and inspire farmers, individuals, and communities in the South
to create an agricultural system that is ecologically sound,
economically viable, socially just, and humane." Sounds kinda like "how the middle ages should have been."
Path to Freedom – The family DerVaes farms 1/5 of an acre in Pasadena with bio-intensive methods, and gets yields in the thousands of pounds.
Slow Food International – "Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. Today, we have over 80,000 members all over the world."
Local Harvest – Buy seeds and products (even wool!) direct from the farmer. Southern varieties of seeds, most heirloom.