A lot going on in this particular newsletter-style blog post. From workshops and trail tours to foraging runs and upcoming fairs we'll be at, there's lots to catch up on here, as well as photos of various wild herbs in the area. Join the adventure by clicking here for the full report: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/04/20/more-foraging-escapades-two-workshop-trail-tours-upcoming-events-this-spring/

So April 6th was our first spring foraging run. We came back with a bit of yarrow, but not without gathering a full cloth grocery bag of fallen, still-green, fir sprigs! Then we spotted a Ponderosa pine with very loose bark layers. These layers are what I've been experimenting with as a cinnamon-like spice. Looking around at the base of a few pine trees reveals that the trees shed this layer regardless. We can either let it go to waste and become forest fire fuel, or we can do our part in reducing fuel for forest fires while also reducing our need to buy imported goods from overseas. Discovering that Lamb's Quarters are a spinach substitute whether raw or cooked, is another ingredient that doesn't need to be trucked the last mile if it is found growing nearby, or only the price of the gas spent to go get it, which for us, is equal to the cost of gas running to the store. Of course, the fewer runs to the store, the less gas spent. Money saved all around. Maybe this week I'll get around to trying out powdered pine bark in place of cinnamon in a cinnamon roll recipe. If it works, I'll share the recipe and call them pine rolls instead. We will be at the Vernon Wellness Fair April 11th and 12th, with a sniff sample available of Wild Apple Spice. If you live in the Okanagan, hope to see you at the fair, and we look forward to more foraging runs, workshops, etc, as the year progresses. Don't forget that we are available for various bookings this year. See the booking card below: For the full foraging report with photos, click here: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/04/06/first-spring-foraging-run/

Coming up for air as I continue efforts on my textbook before the foraging season kicks into high gear! I realized I haven't posted any new blog articles for literally an entire month! Oops??? This coming weekend, we are at Vernon Shoparama at the Vernon Rec Centre. We will be in the rec centre's gym. In April, we will be back at the rec centre for the Vernon Wellness Fair, and then at Maplefest downtown Kelowna the last saturday of the month. May's craft fair schedule has run off the rails, BUT. . . we end the month at our very first ever Ren Fair!!! As I type, Ashley is working on a leather corsette belt for me! Comparing apothecary outfits to 1850's bar tenders with the age if piracy, and in all three image searches, it was apparent that as an English rider, Ashley's outfit was prebuilt just riding her horse! She had made herself a waspy corsette a few years ago, and that completes her look. The Penticton Ren Fair is happening May 30th! Do keep tabs on our 2026 Where We'll Be card, and/or to the website calendar, clickable from the main menu bar across the top of my website. We've also discovered the wonders of turning pine bark into a spice similar to cinnamon, with a flavour profile similar to cinnamon as well. It lends the same flavour style to things like apple fritters, apple crumble, pumpkin spice blend, etc. We are changing up the tea packaging by the way! This is more cost effective for us, takes the same length of time to put together as the current packaging, but takes up less space, and is easier to use. Just keep the string for your own storage as you will need it to close the package. Wild Apple Spice is the first tea to use this packaging. With plants coming to life around the valley, now is the time to be planning for foraging workshops. It's going to be a knock-em-out year this year (on many levels)! Here's hoping if you live in the Okanagan, to see you around at various fairs we'll be at! https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/03/24/coming-up-for-air-update-on-book-efforts-spring-outlook-news/

So Tuesday afternoon's Pine Syrup Advanced Foraging Workshop ended up with more adventure than originally planned. Click here to read all about it and see some of the pictures. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/02/18/wintry-pine-syrup-adventure/

Ontario elementary teachers union restricts workshop to “racialized members”! A teachers’ union leadership conference is offering workshops on how art can be used as “a tool of resistance, identity and joy” and only “racialized members” of the union are allowed to partake. 🇨🇦#MarkCarneyCantBeTrusted🇨🇦 🇨🇦#SayingTheQuietPartOutLoud🇨🇦 🇨🇦#JustSayNoMore🇨🇦 🇨🇦#CarneyLies🇨🇦 https://www.junonews.com/p/ontario-elementary-teachers-union

How AI Helps Our Students Deepen Their Writing (Yes, Really) (Opinion) Since ChatGPT’s release, we have witnessed generative AI’s potential to push our 9th grade English students in ways that have surprised us. With ethical safeguards and guidance, they rise to the challenge of analyzing and questioning AI’s responses. Rather than viewing the technology as a way to cut corners or an unquestionable authority, our readers and writers use its responses to deepen their writing and thinking. For a number of years, we have used in our classrooms the workshop model where the emphasis is always on process and discovery. Whether our students are drafting a personal narrative or crafting a polished argument, we guide them to embrace the messiness of writing. The workshop model is not just a structure for our classes but an educational philosophy that centers student ownership and authentic voice. In that frame, we present AI as another tool within the workshop, one that offers insights that may or may not be applicable. Visit For More:- https://vexrobotics.ai/how-ai-helps-our-students-deepen-their-writing-yes-really-opinion/ #AI #AIinEducation #ArtificialIntelligence #EdTech #FutureOfEducation #EdTechAI #EducationTechnology

THAT was a weekend! We were at Creative Chaos in Vernon over the weekend, a three-day massive craft fair bringing vendors from across Canada! We were able to reconnect with a herbalist who got us started on our wildcrafted herbal journey 10 years ago on Canada Day. That had to be the biggest highlight of the entire weekend, being able to say hi, then later thank him for sharing the tidbit of advice that sent us down this engaging, fun, lifetime of learning! We debuted a new product to the Ashtree Wildcrafting line: Sample Collections! We are occasionally asked if Ashtree Wildcrafting sells cups. We went thrift store crawling and found some beautiful English china! This past weekend was the last opportunity to register for the Thistle Workshop happening at the end of June. We have two registrants and looking forward to making a wild thistle version of artichoke dip, and making breaded thistle spears to eat it with! The next workshop coming up is July's Purslane Advanced Foraging Workshop on July 26th. We will learn about the benefits and uses of Purslane while gathering and then making a couple different dipping sauces. The deadline to register for the Purslane workshop has moved to July 12th! Catch us in person at Lumby Days Indoor Craft Fair June 14th and 15th, Schubert Centre craft fair June 28th, Fintry Manor July 19th, and in August, the garlic festival on the 10th and Fintry Manor on the 17th. Hope to see you at one of those events if you are in the area! Final note for today, due to various people at wellness fairs and even at craft fairs asking if we are 7th Day Adventist, no we are not. We are evangelical in our Christian faith. A basic Statement of Faith is now added to my website in two places, the Spiritual Wafare right-hand menu, and up under About in the main menu. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/06/09/wildcrafted-tea-chat-or-is-that-a-coffee-chat-amazing-rendezvous-and-summer-outlook/

Time for an update! 2025 continues it's crazy trajectory and we've now hit full throttle! People continue to hint at me writing books about our wild food and medicine escapades. The textbook idea is taking shape, and I've decided the herbal compendium will be a trip through history as we follow herbal medicine as far back as we can. Currently, that promises to be a food and medicine list of at least 217 foods, herbs and spices, just under half the current number of plants in my nutrtional/medicinal wholefood database. Just today, someone hoped my foraging notebook had more in it than just the basics of how to forage for wild foods. So I may take parts of my "textbook" and build both a "herbs in the Central Okanagan" book, and either share in it or share in yet another book, the experiences we've had with using wild herbs as our pharmacy at home. ANNOUNCEMENT TO CENTRAL OKANAGANITES!!! The Advanced Foraging Workshop: Thistle Dip and Breaded Thistle spears, is coming up June 28th and we have two people already registered! The last day to register is June 7th. For those who like to pay in person, come see us at Booth 105 in the Vernon Rec Centre in the hallway between the Auditorium and the gym. If you want to catch us in person before Creative Chaos, come to see us at the Rutland Flea Market on June 1st. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/05/25/book-fair-and-workshop-update/

We are a couple days away from the Arrowleaf Balsamroot Advanced Foraging Workshop on Saturday. Registration closed for this one back on May 3rd. The next Advanced Foraging Workshop is June 28th, and will cover making yummy foods with the flower buds of Canada Thistle, and the leaf ribs of Scotch Thistle. Right now, early registrants for the Thistle workshop are in Vernon. As I do not know the trails around Vernon very well, I am open to anyone telling me where they've seen both canada Thistle and Scotch or Bull Thistle on public-use land. Foraging has exploded this year. We are seeing evidence of other foragers, so for those reading this who also forage, remember the 5% rule! Never take more than 5% of any given patch so that animals and people coming behind you can avail themselves of the abundance too. The textbook-writing idea is slowly taking shape. I've come to the conclusion that we are not traditional herbalists, we are phytotherapeutic herbalists! As I start writing my textbook dig up research to confirm what I want to say and verify or add to it, discovering why colleges teach backward herbalism, labelling it as Traditional, is a slap in the face and explains why so many believers are so wary of anyone who claims to be a Christian AND claims to be a herbalist or healer. My textbook will teach a version of Western Herbalism I am terming: The Phytotherapeutic Herbalist! The working title for the book is A Christian Perspective on Western Herbalism. If you know people who would like to be kept in the loop about this book, tell them to register for this newsletter. They can visit the site to do that, or you can forward my newsletter emails to them and they can respond asking to register for the newsletter. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2025/05/15/foraging-escapades-writing-and-workshops/

2024 was an Amazing Year! We could also call it "The Year of Expansion"! Selling our teas by the cup this year was a major hit! Sales of our teas went so well over the course of 2024, that we are doing our first ever Top Five Tea Report!!! We are now looking at our calendar and figuring out just how much more foraging will need to be done to prepare for the fairs we want to attend this year! As it is, some of our ingredients got dangerously low that we harvested last year, which may mean putting various limited-run teas on our table if the growing season starts out slow again. Do keep an eye on our web calendar. There are a number of fairs pencilled in offline that will begin appearing once they are registered for. We were asked multiple times about advanced foraging workshops, which will be headed up by Marilynn from her Biblical Natural Health Coaching website, if this interests you, drop her a line at bnhc@naturalhealthcoaching.ca and she'll send you the draft list that you can share your feedback and months you'd like to attend. Various homeschooling parents have also shown interest in our introductory foraging workshop as well. If those interest you too, send an email to Marilynn as well. We have a feeling that 2025 is going to be a busy year for Ashtree Wildcrafting! We wish you the best of health this year, and look forward to seeing you in person at a fair or event. Click through to read the full report and see a few pics: https://ashtreewildcrafting.ca/wp/blog/2025/01/04/2024-year-in-review/