Plants and Healers International Summer Newsletter 2016

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Published on Thursday, 30 June 2016 13:15
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Friend on Facebook Follow on Twitter Forward to a Friend Frank Cook's birthday was on June 9th! This always offers a great opportunity to remember him in various ways. He was a prolific maker of various beverages so this year PHI executive director Marc Williams decided to make a liqueur in his honor. This liqueur contains Currants, Raspberries, and Dandelion roots from the garden of an amazing 91 year old lady named Elly who Marc works for periodically. Another addition is Kumquats from Frank and Marc's friend Mycol Stevens and everything was immersed in Apple brandy. It will eventually be sweetened with honey from the legendary Doug Elliott. Frank had a tradition of shaving his beard on his birthday and so Marc decided to honor this tradition by shaving himself on that day as well. Nice that Frank can live on in so many forms of practices that people can continue in their own lives. Another example is the posting of a song by Lydiyah Sea on Frank's birthday that was inspired by him and a picture of his partner Alexis shaving him on his birthday many moons ago that you can see to the left. What do you do to honor Frank and his incredible impact in the world. Let us know! Trip to United Plants Savers (UPS) Sanctuary
Marc recently returned with Hayden Stebbins, his journeyman from last year, to the UPS sanctuary in Rutland, Ohio. The goal was to teach a class on brewing with non-timber forest products to the general public and botany to the interns. The classes were a great success and we are now waiting patiently to taste the fruits of our labors. The mead that was made on site will probably be bottled around the time of Lammas that occurs near the first day of August. The internship program at the UPS sanctuary is a great opportunity for anybody interested in learning about medicinal plant harvest, preparation and conservation. You can see more about the adventure by clicking on the link to Hayden's guest blog on our website. The
Adventures of Robin Harford, PHI Board of Directors member
Plants and Healers International board member Robin Harford has been very busy recently indeed. You can see a blog from his journey to Thailand and time with the indigenous Moken people at the following link. Robin also hosted an event in his home country of England to honor Frank Cook and his tradition of walking the Green Path. Subsequent to that Robin hosted one of Frank's main teachers 7 Song for a number of classes also in England. Robin has a podcast and many videos for anyone that would like to go deeper virtually. Appalachian Institute for Mountain Studies (AIMS)

AIMS is a really neat organization dedicated to maintaining the agrobiodiversity of Appalachia and educating the public on various other subjects as well. The director Jim Veteto is one of the foremost researchers on heirloom seeds and cultural anthropology in the southeast. PHI director Marc Williams is also on the Board of Directors of AIMS. In preparation for our annual retreat Marc visited AIMS along with Mycol Stevens. We have been working for a couple years to inventory all the plants on the land where AIMS is based outside Celo, NC. The list now totals over 300 species after our recent visit. Shane Maxon is the new outreach coordinator for AIMS and together this quartet of fine fellows harvested a bunch of seasonal fruit and made a mead. You can read more about the experience and see more pictures at the following link. follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend Copyright © 2016 Plants and Healers International All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
PO Box 6362
Asheville, NC 28816 Mission

The mission of Plants and Healers International (PHI) is to create a public charity to celebrate and further Frank Cook’s work by documenting his life and supporting activities that promote his vision of advancing human culture in harmony with the natural world.