I took a breath. A month-long one.
I harvested fruit, started making preserves, and brought home a peeping box of chicks to add to the flock. I spent time outside, doing the things that remind me why I started all of this in the first place. And I stepped back from this page to take stock of what has accumulated, what I’ve learned, and where it should go next.
Two years ago, there were ten of you here.
Ten.
Today, more than 30,000. I’ve checked the number more than once.
Back then, I was talking into a void (and to ten beautiful people), wondering whether anyone else was as curious about the plants growing beneath our feet as I was. I had no idea who, if anyone, wanted to spend their time learning about weeds.
This all started with curiosity: I wanted to understand a plant differently. Could I gather every piece and silo of knowledge I could find on a single plant? Could I put the folklore beside the science? Could traditional knowledge sit beside cutting-edge research? How much science is there? What is the strength of the science? Are there gaps in the research? Could citizen science help fill some of the gaps?
Could I take that mountain of knowledge and distill it into something useful to someone standing beside the plant?
What if the herbalist, the farmer, the ethnobotanist, the scientist, and the plant-curious, all had a seat at the same table? Then you could bring a question about a plant and find an answer examined from as many sides as it needed. The point was never for me to tell you what to do. If I could provide enough vetted information and present it in a way that could allow you to decide for yourself how to steward the ground in front of you. That ground might be a pot on a windowsill or 5,000 acres. Either way the goal is the same: a better relationship with the plant.
Along the way I also discovered the remarkable abilities and personalities these plants have, and new questions took over: could you become as curious about a plant as I am? How do I share it? If I could change the way an adult sees a plant, could I reach a child before the label does? What if kids grew up seeing plants as allies instead of weeds or enemies? Those questions became a children’s book series, Cedar and Twig. A year ago I couldn’t have predicted any of this.
This Substack has grown in directions I never planned. It’s become a place where I can follow my curiosity about a plant, spend time with what we know, and explore the questions we still can’t answer. I enjoy making the monographs. What surprised me was how much joy I found in writing the Cedar and Twig books. They’ve brought back memories of feeling connected to nature, and some of that feeling has found its way into the stories.
They may seem like a departure from the research, but to me they’re another plant growing from the same roots.
One is written for someone who wants to understand the science behind a plant. The other is for someone who hasn’t yet learned to call it a weed.
Both begin with curiosity.
I’ll keep sharing new plants here, with seven to eight more planned this year for weedy Wednesdays. My hope for the Cedar and Twig series is to create a new set of four books each year and see where these small adventures take us.
Here’s a peek at Cedar and Twig. Available now on amazon.
Here’s the part I’ve always wrestled with: can I earn a living chasing this passion?
Not by selling knowledge. Most of what I draw on already exists, scattered across journals, historical texts, and the field. It just rarely sits at the same table.
What takes the time is everything in between. A single plant can lead through hundreds of papers, historical texts, conflicting claims, promising studies, and long stretches where the honest answer is that we simply don’t know enough yet. Sifting through all of that is the first job. Then comes the harder part: bridging what the herbalist knows with what the scientist has measured, connecting the dots, and explaining what it all means for someone trying to make a decision on their own land.
That’s the work. And the question I’ve asked myself more than once these past two years is whether it has value to anyone but me.
I’m truly grateful to those of you who have chosen to become paid subscribers. Your support has made it possible to devote more time to research, writing, and building this library. And I’m equally grateful to those who read, share, ask questions, challenge an idea, or introduce Holistic Farming to someone else.
You have all contributed to what this has become, in different ways.
With that in mind, I’m going to make the distinction between free and paid subscriptions a little clearer.
I want the free side to remain genuinely useful. Somewhere you can come with most of your questions about a plant and leave knowing more than when you arrived.
The paid side will go deeper, particularly for people who want to put that knowledge to work.
That might be someone managing a vineyard, an herbalist exploring a plant’s traditional and researched uses, a homesteader trying to reduce purchased inputs, or someone tending a few raised beds who simply wants to understand the living world around them.
For some, that knowledge may help save money or earn a living.
For others, the value is understanding what is happening beneath their feet and making more informed decisions.
I spend a remarkable amount of my research time trying to access scientific papers locked behind paywalls, and I find it frustrating.
Knowledge exists, but accessing it can be expensive. Sometimes prohibitively so. I don’t like the idea of reproducing that same barrier with my own work. Yet I also want to find a way to support the time it takes to research, question, write, and keep building. I haven’t found a perfect answer to that contradiction, so here’s where I’ve landed.
The free material will continue to offer useful answers and a way to understanding each plant. The deeper research library, complete monographs, and practical guides will support the paid side.
But if you’re genuinely looking for an answer and discover it’s behind the paywall, please ask. I’m happy to arrange complimentary access so you can look around.
My goal has always been usefulness first, the $8 a month second.
And if the work proves valuable enough that you decide to support it, wonderful.
What’s on the shelf
I said at the top that I’d stepped back to take stock. This is what I found on the shelf. Two years of following curiosity adds up faster than you’d think, and since many of you arrived in just the past few months, it seemed worth showing you what’s already here and what it’s for.
The complete library: 28 plants and growing. Each one is a full profile or monograph, with the cost-saving uses, what the plant can replace, feed, or fix on your land, the science behind the folklore, and where the evidence runs out:
Bindweed · Blackberry · Burdock · Canada Thistle · Chickweed · Comfrey · Common Vetch · Dandelion · Dock · Goldenrod · Gumweed · Horehound · Horsetail · Knotweed · Lamb’s Quarters · Mallow · Mullein · Oregon Grape · Plantain · Purslane · Red Clover · Salal · Saskatoon · Shepherd’s Purse · Sow Thistle · Stinging Nettle · Sunflower · Wild Lettuce
The amendment guides — working documents, written to get dirt on them:
Comfrey · Horsetail · Nettle · Plantain · Yarrow
Plus Horsetail for Powdery Mildew and the Sunflower Growing & Stewarding Guides.
With them you can:
Make and apply plant ferments — FPJ, teas, tonics
Time your interventions to key plant and crop cycles
Support garden, orchard, or vineyard health without reaching for the bottle
Cut external inputs while building biodiversity
Turn common “weeds” into soil-builders that feed everything around them
The soil guides:
Healing Soil: A Guide to Biological Restoration · Reading the Land: A Regenerative Coaching Guide
They’re written for every scale, from a backyard bed to acreage, and they evolve with the seasons, because the work does too. A new plant arrives each week.
Pick the plant you’ve got the most of right now, the weed you keep pulling, the one that won’t quit, and start there. That’s the land already telling you where to look.
Tomorrow I’m returning with one of my favourite plants to explore: fireweed.
There’s something fitting about it right now.
Fireweed readily establishes itself on ground that’s been burned, cleared, or otherwise opened. It’s one of those plants that can begin occupying a space while the wider plant community changes around it.
A plant associated with beginnings after disturbance.
That feels about right for this moment.
Friday, October 16: Fireweed
The next plant summary will be unlocked in full.
You’ll be able to read the entire piece, including where the paywall would normally fall, and decide for yourself whether the deeper material is something you’d find valuable.
It will also link to the Fireweed monograph, more than 80 pages of collected research from which the summary was developed.
Sunday, October 18: The Complete Fireweed Guide
Identification, the plant’s year above and below ground, what happens when ground opens, harvesting, the kitchen, the cup, craft, and what the health research actually says.
Plus six practical tools for exploring fireweed on your own patch of ground.
It’s a new layout, built to help you understand this plant and maybe fall in love with it. It’s the kind of material that would ordinarily sit in the paid library.
The rest of October
Next week we’ll meet Tumbleweed, which should be blowing across parts of the landscape this month, and then finish October with Spotted Knapweed, just in time for Halloween. Some plants have a remarkable talent for becoming the villain in someone else’s story.
November 1 to 4: Cedar and Twig
Four days, four children’s books.
I’ll introduce one each day and share a few pages so you can meet Cedar, Twig, and the plants they’ve been discovering.
I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I’ve enjoyed making them.
One last thought
I started this journey wanting to understand plants better. Two years and thousands of pages later, I feel as though I’ve only begun. The more I learn, the less comfortable I become with simple labels. Good plant. Bad weed. Useful species. Useless species.
Nature rarely fits so neatly into the categories we make for it. There are relationships we haven’t noticed, questions we haven’t thought to ask, and knowledge scattered across disciplines that seldom speak to one another. And there is still so much we don’t know.
But I find that exciting.
Because every time I understand a plant a little better, I find myself looking at the ground around it differently. Maybe that’s where meaningful change begins. Not necessarily with a new product, a new technique, or a new intervention. Sometimes it begins with paying attention to something we’ve walked past a thousand times.
Thank you for being curious with me.
And before you go, I have a question: which plant would you like to have a better relationship with? Hit reply.
Your answers help me decide which guide I may build for next year.
Thanks
Jay
Below is a short video of what’s coming with fireweed tomorrow.
I would like to have a good relationship with mugwort.
Purslane. I want to love it. So far, I have pretty much failed!