Herbalist Annie McCleary is the director of the Wisdom of the Herbs School in Woodbury, Vermont. The school offers experiential learning programs focusing on wild plants, holistic health, and sustainable living skills, including harvesting and preparation of wild edibles and herbal home remedies.

Studies also include ecology and natural history. The Wisdom of the Herbs School website explains, “The emphasis is on integration of the intuitive and scientific, in a relaxed, magical and grounded atmosphere.” The following interview for Vermont Commons was conducted by Kayleigh Blanchette.

Wisdom of the Herbs School's Annie McCleary.

What do you see as the role and work of Wisdom of the Herbs School here in
Vermont?

Annie McCleary: At the school we focus on local, wild, edible and medicinal plants, holistic health, and sustainable living skills, which I see as essential knowledge and tools for living on the Earth in these changing times. We offer a unique blend of perspectives including ecology, natural history, healthy life-style practices and making herbal home remedies, plant-spirit communication, and even the role our thoughts play in our health and healing. Our programs are hands-on and experiential; we dig, wash, chop and blend, and, of course, eat! We encourage learning from the heart as well as the head. A strictly scientific approach to plants can be dry and boring, and a purely intuitive approach can be ungrounded. I find the combination of the two very powerful.

How did you come to be involved in this work?

AM: I have been working with wild edibles and medicinal plants for over 25 years now. In the beginning, I studied medicinal herbs to learn how to improve health and vitality naturally. I founded a small herbal extract business, which I’ve since passed on to a student. When I lived on an organic farm in the Northeast Kingdom I cultivated Echinacea and goldenseal, and wild-crafted yellow dock, burdock, dandelion and St. John's Wort for my herbal extract business. In 2003, I founded Wisdom of the Herbs School, now located here in Woodbury. I’m currently focusing on wild edibles, a truly basic bit of knowledge that everyone these days would benefit from having in their toolkit.

Who inspires you?

AM: Farmers. Organic farmers, to be precise. Farmers possess a wisdom of the earth, so to speak, a brand of intelligence, and an understanding of life that I respect. I want to be a farmer when I grow up!

How do you apply your expertise to your own life?

AM: I think it’s more that my life informs my expertise! I am a fairly intuitive person, and I tend to study-up after inspiration has struck.

What do you love most about food and cooking naturally/locally?

AM: There is something really satisfying, and, well, primal, about gathering local wild food, growing your own, and eating with the flow of the seasons. It’ really only relatively recently, with the age of oil and reliance on transportation, that we have not eaten primarily local foods. Last fall, I became particularly enamored of the wild and cultivated apples on this land. It was a great apple year. I put up 14 quarts of applesauce and made a great many really good apple crisps! We know the trucks will eventually stop bringing in food from afar, so it’s not only satisfying, it’s necessary that we learn to eat what grows here, whether its wild or cultivated food.

What would you say is the hardest part about living off of all-locally grown foods and medicinal plants? Are there setbacks to this way of life?

AM: We are a culture currently accustomed to eating foods and using medicines from all over the planet. It will be quite an adjustment to switch over to primarily local food and medicine. For one thing, many people in our culture are addicted to processed foods, packaged foods, and non-foods, which usually contain refined sugars. Refined sugars and processed foods are not only a psychological habit, but are actually addictive to the body. Refined sugars create an acid condition in the body, and the body's attempt to regain balance results in the loss of important minerals including sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. Constant rebalancing from this overly acidic condition causes stress, and stress causes disease.    

It takes a fair amount of determination to give up refined sugars and deal with the social as well as physiological pressures involved. I recommend giving up refined sugars and processed foods now, rather than waiting until these items are no longer trucked in and being forced to go cold turkey under what may be difficult circumstances. Once the shift to local food is made, we will become, I believe, a much healthier people.   

Shifting over to primarily local medicine presents major challenges as well, because, again we are accustomed to having a huge range of remedies, drugs, and procedures at our fingertips. Whatever our opinion of the current major medical system, the fact remains that many in our communities rely on this high-tech, pharmaceutical, and surgery-based system, and some people are dependent on this system for their very lives. The medical system in turn relies heavily on unsustainable petroleum products. Pharmaceuticals and medical materials are, by and large, made from petroleum derivatives, and access depends heavily on transportation. High-tech medical systems, tests, and lab work depend on tremendous amounts of energy. We would be wise to shift our health care needs over to a much lower-tech, localized system, incorporating local plant medicines and simpler healing techniques. Yes, it's a huge task, and to use a phrase I have been hearing a great deal these days – now is a good time to start.

What is the most important thing you do at the Wisdom of the Herbs School?

AM: I think we humans have gotten ourselves into this crazy, untenable state of affairs by seeing ourselves as separate from nature, rather than a part of nature. The changes we are going through will bring home to us what our relationship to the Earth and all beings is really about – that we are just one species among many and we need to live in harmony and balance with all beings. At Wisdom of the Herbs School our students have the chance to immerse themselves in this emerging paradigm.

How is the Transition Movement of Montpelier making a difference for your cause?

AM: The Transition movement is acting as a spark, a catalyst, for folks who see the profound shifts coming in the face of peak oil, climate change, and economic instability, and are working toward resilience, relocalization, and reskilling in their communities. The experiences and tools that we offer at Wisdom of the Herbs School are an excellent foundation for this profound time. Just knowing about wild edibles alone is an absolutely core skill. Our programs are filling up quickly this year and I am sensing excitement and urgency in those who are signing up for our classes.

What makes you truly happy in life?

AM: Many things please me: working in the gardens, harvesting wild edibles, contra dancing, hanging out with friends and taking a gentle canoe ride across the pond. I am deeply grateful to be alive and to be in the hills of Vermont during the changes. And I am greatly encouraged by the efforts to become resilient that I see in the communities around me – to grow our own food, put up our food for winter, and generally move beyond fossil fuel and relocalize our lives.   

But happiness? Happiness is an inside job!

Do you support Vermont nonviolently seceding from the United States and becoming its own independent republic?

AM: I can easily see Vermont as an independent republic. and I sense that this will evolve without our effort as things fall apart. So at this point in the process, I prefer to put my energy toward the Great Reskilling, to use the language of the Transition movement – relearning basic skills that our grandparents took for granted, that are needed to survive and thrive in the post-oil era. That's where I am putting my time and energy.