Yeehaw…I’m getting back into making videos!
Over Christmas I went on an awesome trip with 12 of my family members to explore and adventure through New Zealand. Going by airplane, foot, sailboat…it’s always an adventure traveling with us! My stores of dog rose (Rosa canina) hips are already gone and the elderflowers are now blooming on Maui. The New Zealand flax (Phormium sp.) was so cool to see growing all over the country, this part of the video was shot on Great Barrier Island…awesome island with huge tree ferns, crazy bird calls, and a wild spirit. Lambsquarters were growing all over the place and provided many large feasts along the way. I’m so excited because my fiance and I now have our production for pro video and music going. We’ve been making music with our band ‘Sunny and the Ryan’ and are trying to have original music in all our upcoming videos….yeehaw! The video below is a sneak peak into bi-weekly video blogs I’ll be doing for Veria

After a long hiatus from filming Hot on the Trail with Sunny Savage, I just signed my newly amended contract with Veria…with the addition of being Associate Producer this go-round! We’ll be filming the final 9 episodes of the second season in coming months. Veria is also paying me to make video blogs…so there’s added incentive. They will be launching their new and improved website www.veria.com in early March, so check in with them to find recipes/videos/comments/etc.

Another great year at the Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. This was our 4th Annual gathering and this year we had a spontaneous music recording with all the awesome musical talent attending. Listen to the Wild Food Summit song as you watch the video!

Processing acorns! Everyone does it a little bit different, and for me it seems like every year I’m somewhere different and do it in a little bit different way. This year I was in north central Texas, and luckily had myself some great help. You’ll follow from picking them up, to shelling them in my handy sheller, to letting them dry so that the papery sheaths can be removed, to grinding them up in my hand crank/hand powered blender, to leaching them with cold water to remove the tannic acid.

Click here for a recipe for Puffy Acorn Pretzels. Click here for a recipe for Acorn Black Walnut Bread. Click here for a recipe for Acorn ‘n Sagebrush Chicken. And click here for Acorn Hummus.

Here is the second video of 3 from the Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Reservation. Be sure to stay tuned for part 3 in this series of videos. Click here to see part 1. Or click here for part 3.

Here is the second video from a wild plant retreat I attended with Doug Elliott and Frank Cook. Based out of the Sunnybank Inn, which sits along the Appalachian Trail near Hot Springs, NC, we traveled to some amazing places nearby and learned a wealth of information from these two astute mountain men. Doug Elliott is a gifted storyteller and musician, and we start this video off with his Dandelion Song. The remainder of the video highlights Frank Cook of www.plantsandhealers.com. Frank has an encyclopedic knowledge of the plants, and the real beauty lies in that he blends this knowledge with love and wisdom. Frank travels the world learning about and teaching about plants, and he has a wonderful way of bringing truth’s out and making you think about your own evolution. Please check out his website to see some of the articles he’s written, books he recommends, and his tour schedule.

I really fell in love with those Appalachian Mountains, and send a big thanks to all the plants, the people attending the retreat, and our amazing teachers!

Here is a long-overdue video from my time spent in the Appalachian Mountains with Doug Elliott and Frank Cook, during the late part of April. I attended an absolutely wonderful wild plant retreat with these gentle giants of the plant world and learned so much from them both. Doug is a gifted mountain man who, in addition to his knowledge of the natural world, shares his enthusiasm for it through stories and song. He is a national treasure…keeping the stories and songs alive, and I would encourage you to visit his website www.dougelliott.com to see the wide range of CD’s and books he has available. Doug is a tender-hearted man, with a lifetime of experience living off the land and staying attuned to the plant world.

One of my favorite things I learned from him was that when you are walking through the forest and you go through a spiderweb…well, that’s the forest imprinting your face! And when you step over one of those rocks that tips and wobbles a bit…well, that’s the forest figuring out how much you weigh! And finally, when you stumble upon one of those jack (or jill) in the pulpit’s…well, that’s the microphone of the forest and they’re listening to your words. It’s alive!!! Please check Doug’s website for his class schedules, and stay tuned for part two.