This is where I go deeper. Longer essays on plants, their histories, their medicine and the philosophy behind all of it. If the short form content on Instagram sparked something in you, this is where that spark gets to breathe.

Today I want to talk about sleep. Or more specifically — about the hour before sleep. About what happens in the body and the mind when the day finally stops demanding things of you and you have to find your own way down from it.

The problem with modern sleep

Most of us don’t struggle to sleep because something is wrong with us. We struggle because we have spent the entire day in a state of low grade activation — screens, noise, decisions, responsibilities, the particular mental load of keeping a household and a life running — and then we expect our nervous system to simply switch off because the clock says it’s time.

It doesn’t work like that.

The nervous system needs a transition. It needs a signal. It needs something to tell it that the doing is done and the being can begin.

That is what the nervine herbs are for.

What is a nervine?

In herbal tradition, nervines are the plants that soothe and steady the nervous system. Not sedatives — not herbs that knock you out. Nervines are gentler and more intelligent than that. They ease the grip that stress takes on the body. They slow the mental chatter without heaviness. They bring you back to yourself.

They are the herbs you reach for when the day has wound you tight — when the tension has settled into your jaw and your shoulders and behind your eyes. When the mind won’t stop turning. When you need to come down from the noise of it all without reaching for a glass of wine or a sleeping pill.

They have been doing this work for thousands of years. Long before pharmaceuticals. Long before anyone had a word for anxiety.

The Nervine Tea

This recipe is from The Feral Apothecary Recipe Companion — my recipe book for making your own medicine at home. I’m sharing it here because I think it’s one of the most immediately useful things in the book, and because so many of you have asked about sleep.

It was made for the end of the day. For the woman who lies awake running through tomorrow’s list. For the mother who gets woken through the night and needs to drift back off rather than lying there with her mind churning. For anyone carrying that particular end-of-day tightness that turns into a headache if you take it to bed with you.

Passionflower — the primary herb, and the quiet-mind herb. She slows the mental chatter without heaviness or grogginess. One of the most well researched nervines for anxiety and sleep.

Skullcap — goes to the tension. The physical grip that stress takes on the body — the jaw, the shoulders, the headache behind the eyes. Skullcap eases that.

Rose — opens the heart and softens whatever has been clenched. She brings emotional gentleness to the blend.

Lavender — settles the senses through scent alone. Use sparingly — she is powerful and can overwhelm the other herbs.

Damiana — optional but beautiful if you have access to her. Warm, grounding and gently mood lifting. She brings you back to yourself.

What you need:

• Passionflower — the primary herb, use generously

• Skullcap — equal parts to passionflower

• Dried rose petals

• Dried lavender flowers — sparingly

• Damiana — optional

• Raw honey to taste

As a single cup:

1. Place 1 heaped teaspoon of the blend per cup — or a generous pinch each of passionflower and skullcap with a smaller pinch of rose, lavender and damiana

2. Pour just-boiled water over the herbs. Cover immediately.

3. Steep for 10 minutes — covering the cup matters, passionflower and lavender carry much of their medicine in volatile oils that escape in uncovered steam

4. Strain, add honey if desired

5. Drink slowly

As a pre-mixed blend to keep in a jar:

1. Combine equal parts passionflower and skullcap

2. Add half parts rose petals and damiana

3. Add a quarter part lavender

4. Store in a sealed jar away from light

5. Use 1-2 heaped teaspoons per cup

How to use it:

Make it 30-60 minutes before you want to be asleep and drink it slowly — in bed if you can, or somewhere quiet away from screens. If you feel the day’s tension arriving in the evening, drink it then. For mothers woken through the night, keep a pre-made jar of the blend beside the bed for a quick cup during a night feed to help you settle back to sleep more easily.

Consider avoiding passionflower during pregnancy. If you are taking pharmaceutical sedatives or anxiety medication check with your healthcare provider before adding this tea.

Make it slowly. Sit with it. Let it be the signal to your body that the day is done.

That act of making — the kettle boiling, the smell rising from the cup, the sitting down finally after a day of doing — is itself part of the medicine. The ritual matters as much as the herbs.

This is what plant medicine actually looks like. Not a capsule taken with water. A cup of something warm, made with your own hands, from plants that have been doing this work for thousands of years.

This recipe is one of 28 in The Feral Apothecary Recipe Companion — my practical guide to making your own medicine at home. Salves, infused oils, tinctures, syrups, honeys, teas and more. If tonight’s post made you want to start building your own home apothecary, this is where you begin.

And if you want to go even deeper into the plants themselves — The Feral Apothecary covers 22 medicinal and magical herbs, the medicine, the magic and the folklore of the plants already growing around you. The perfect companion to the recipe book.

Both available now as ebooks

Find Them Here ✨

A print version of both books is also in the works — join the waitlist at the same link to be first to know when they’re ready and to lock in a special early price.

💜 Sarah

This is The Feral Life.

There’s a jar on my kitchen bench right now, deep magenta, faintly fizzing every time I walk past it. It’s beet kvas — one of the oldest, simplest ferments there is, and one almost nobody talks about anymore.

Kvas comes out of Eastern European and Russian folk tradition, where beets, salt, and water were left to do what they’ve always known how to do: transform. No starter culture, no fancy equipment. Just time, salt, and the wild yeasts already living on the beet skin.

I make mine a little differently to how it’s traditionally done — I add in whatever’s abundant in the garden that week. Nettle. Parsley. Garlic. Ginger. A few caraway seeds. Partly because that’s what “wild-crafted” actually means to me — not a rigid recipe, but a conversation with what’s growing around you. Partly because each of those brings something to the ferment beyond flavour.

Why beet kvas, why these herbs

Beetroot is famous for a reason — it’s rich in nitrates and betalains, and traditional use leans on it as a blood tonic and liver support. Fermenting it doesn’t just preserve it, it makes those nutrients more bioavailable and adds a whole living culture of probiotics on top.

Nettle is one of the most mineral-dense plants you can put in your body — iron, calcium, magnesium — which is exactly why it’s traditionally paired with blood-building ferments like this one.

Parsley isn’t just a garnish. It’s high in vitamin C and traditionally used to support digestion — which pairs well with a ferment that’s already doing digestive work for you.

Garlic brings its own antimicrobial punch and helps guide the fermentation in a good direction, crowding out anything you don’t want in the jar.

Ginger warms the whole thing — literally and in the old herbalist sense — and helps things along if your kitchen runs cool.

Caraway is the quiet one. A traditional digestive carminative, it’s there to make sure your gut is happy with everything else going on in the jar.

The method

You’ll need:

• 2–3 medium beets, scrubbed and roughly chopped (skin on — that’s where a lot of the wild yeast lives)

• A small handful of fresh nettle leaves (wear gloves handling raw nettle!)

• A small handful of parsley

• 2–3 garlic cloves, lightly crushed

• A thumb of fresh ginger, sliced

• 1 tsp caraway seeds

• 1–2 tbsp sea salt

• Filtered water, non-chlorinated

• A clean glass jar with a loose-fitting lid or cloth cover

Method:

1. Layer the beets, nettle, parsley, garlic, ginger, and caraway into your jar.

2. Dissolve the salt into your filtered water, then pour over to fully submerge everything.

3. Cover loosely — you want air to escape, not build up.

4. Leave on the counter, out of direct sun, for 3–5 days. Taste from day 3 onward; you’re looking for a pleasant tang, a bit of natural fizz, and that distinct earthy-sour kvas flavour.

5. Once it tastes right to you, strain and move to the fridge. It’ll keep well for months, and the flavour will keep mellowing and deepening over time.

A small glass a day is the traditional way to take it — starting the morning, or alongside a meal.

As always — I’m not a doctor, and this is folk tradition and my own kitchen practice, not medical advice. If you’re pregnant, nursing, or on medication, it’s worth checking in with a professional before adding a new ferment into the mix.

Loved this ferment? Beet kvas is just one of the wild foods and herbal remedies I work with — if you want more (28 of them, to be exact: tinctures, syrups, infused honeys, salves and more), they’re all in The Feral Apothecary Recipe Book.

Find it here 🍀

The real story turned out to be so much stranger and so much more interesting.

The WW2 Carrot Conspiracy

In 1940 the RAF had a secret weapon — airborne radar giving their pilots extraordinary accuracy against German bombers at night. But radar was classified. So the British government put out press releases claiming their pilots could see in the dark because they were eating enormous amounts of carrots. They attached the story to real RAF ace John “Cat’s Eyes” Cunningham — crediting his 20 night kills to his carrot consumption rather than the radar guiding him. Walt Disney helped spread the campaign. Britain also had a massive carrot surplus they needed people to eat. The propaganda served two purposes at once.

But here is the part that stops me — ancient healers had known about the connection between carrots and eyes for thousands of years before any government got involved.

Slice a carrot across the middle. She looks exactly like a human eye — the pupil, the iris, the radiating lines all visible. Ancient healers used this visual resemblance as a guide to which plants heal which parts of the body. They called it the doctrine of signatures.

What Is the Doctrine of Signatures?

The doctrine of signatures is one of the oldest principles in the history of plant medicine. The belief — found across ancient Greek, Chinese, Ayurvedic and European herbal traditions — is that plants carry visual clues written into their form about what they heal. That nature is not random. That the appearance of a plant — its shape, its colour, its texture, its growing habit — is a kind of language.

Paracelsus, the 16th century Swiss physician, wrote that “nature marks each growth according to its curative benefit.” Dioscorides, the ancient Greek physician whose work shaped Western medicine for 1,500 years, described plants by their appearance as a guide to their use.

The philosopher Jakob Böhme — a cobbler who experienced mystical visions in 1600 — took it even further. For Böhme, the external form of any created thing was a window into its inner spiritual life. The doctrine of signatures was not just medicine. It was a way of reading the mind of God written into the living world.

Whether you read it as divine intelligence, evolutionary encoding or something else entirely — what is remarkable is how often it turns out to be true.

The Examples That Keep Stopping Me

Walnuts look exactly like a brain — two hemispheres, a wrinkled surface, a protective shell. They are extraordinarily rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are the primary structural fat in brain tissue. Modern neuroscience has confirmed what ancient healers always knew.

Carrots sliced across the middle look like a human eye. They are rich in beta carotene which the body converts into vitamin A — essential for the pigment that allows you to see in low light. The British government’s WW2 propaganda was accidentally true.

Tomatoes have chambers just like a heart and are rich in lycopene — a compound specifically cardioprotective. The red colour itself was read as a signature for blood and circulation.

Avocados are shaped like a uterus and take exactly nine months to grow from blossom to fruit. They are extraordinarily rich in folate — the nutrient most critical for preventing neural tube defects in early pregnancy.

Kidney beans are shaped like kidneys. They are high in potassium and magnesium which support kidney function.

Figs are full of seeds resembling sperm. Traditionally used to increase male fertility — and there is actually early research suggesting compounds in figs may support sperm motility.

The Heart Shaped Plants

This is where it gets truly extraordinary — the number of plants with heart shaped leaves or seed pods that turn out to have a genuine affinity for the heart, the blood or the womb.

Linden — Tilia cordata — has distinctly heart shaped leaves and is one of the finest herbs for the cardiovascular system. A nervine and vasodilator, it relaxes anxiousness, lowers blood pressure, eases arterial tension. It is literally called the tree of lovers in Slavic tradition, planted in the centre of villages for centuries as a gathering place. The heart shaped leaves are its signature. The medicine confirms it.

Shepherd’s Purse is a tiny weed growing in every disturbed soil, footpath crack and garden bed across Australia right now. Her seed pods are perfectly heart shaped — and she is one of the most powerful herbs for bleeding, for the womb and for the cardiovascular system. Her other common name is Mother’s Heart. She is used for heavy periods, postpartum bleeding, nosebleeds and blood pressure regulation. The womb has long been called the second heart — and shepherd’s purse, with her heart shaped seeds, serves them both.

Herbalist Nicholas Culpeper wrote of shepherd’s purse in 1653: “Few plants possess greater virtues than this, and yet it is utterly disregarded.” She is growing as a weed in most people’s gardens right now and most people pull her out.

Heartsease — Viola tricolor — has heart shaped leaves and flowers whose face seems to express emotion. She was traditionally used for all ailments of the heart — both physical and emotional. A general heart tonic and a herb for grief.

What Does It Mean?

I don’t think the doctrine of signatures is infallible. There are examples that don’t hold up, connections that were wrong, plants that were used based on superficial resemblances that turned out to have no medicinal basis.

But the number of cases where it does hold up — where ancient healers looked at a plant, read something in its form, and turned out to be correct — is extraordinary enough that I can’t dismiss it as coincidence.

Maybe it’s evolutionary — that plants developed colours and forms to communicate with the creatures that interact with them, and humans learned to read that language over thousands of years of close observation.

Maybe it’s something else entirely. A kind of intelligence encoded into the living world that we are only beginning to have the scientific tools to verify.

Or maybe — as Böhme believed — the world is itself a kind of language, and the plants are speaking to us in it. Not metaphorically. Actually.

The carrot knew before the British government did. Shepherd’s purse has been offering her heart shaped medicine to anyone who would stop and notice her for thousands of years.

The language has always been there. We just forgot how to read it.

If this kind of ancient plant wisdom speaks to you — The Feral Apothecary ebook covers 22 medicinal and magical herbs and the forgotten knowledge that surrounds them. The recipe companion ebook will show you exactly how to turn that knowledge into medicine for your family at home.

Both available now

Find them here 🍀

This is The Feral Life.

That is the uncomfortable truth sitting underneath so much of modern life. The systems we move through every day — the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical system, the beauty industry, the wellness industry — are not fundamentally oriented around your health, your freedom or your flourishing. They are oriented around your continued dependence on them. And a dependent person is an enormously profitable person.

This is not about individual people within those systems trying to do the right thing. Many of them are. This is about the direction of the thing itself. The overall current. And that current flows toward profit. It always has.

You cannot make billions from someone who grows their own food. You cannot make billions from someone who knows which weed in their garden treats inflammation, which one builds iron, which one soothes a child’s fever at two in the morning. You cannot make billions from someone who trusts their own body, makes their own medicine and understands that the earth has been providing everything we need for as long as humans have existed.

That is the whole point.

During World War One the British government issued advice to ordinary women and families on the home front telling them to eat rhubarb leaves from their own gardens during food shortages. People were poisoned. Deaths were reported. The recommendation was withdrawn.

Most of us don’t have to look too far back in our own memory to find an example of governments overreaching their authority over our bodies, our movement, our medical choices. Some of us lived through it in ways that were so extreme they changed us permanently. That experience — of being told what to do with your own body by people in offices far away — is still sitting in many of us. And it should be. It was a reminder that this has always been the direction of travel.

Your health. Your body. Your food. That knowledge was always yours. It was never theirs to manage.

Somewhere along the way we were convinced that healing was complicated. That it required credentials and prescriptions and products we could never make ourselves. That the right response to a sick child at two in the morning was a pharmaceutical, not a plant. That the weeds pushing up through our garden paths were nuisances rather than medicine. That the ancient domestic arts of growing, foraging, fermenting, drying and making were primitive rather than sovereign.

We were sold a story. And the story made a lot of people very wealthy.

But the earth didn’t get that memo. She just kept growing exactly what we need, exactly where we need it, in the cracks of our footpaths and the corners of our gardens and the neglected edges of our lawns. Asking nothing. Giving everything. Waiting for someone to finally notice.

What I am talking about is not conspiracy. It is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition.

The pattern is this — every time humans have moved away from their relationship with the land, with food, with plant medicine, with the ancient knowledge of how to sustain and heal a body using what the earth provides — someone has stepped in to fill that gap. And they have charged us for it. And they have made us dependent on their version of what we already had for free.

Big food replaced the kitchen garden. Big pharma replaced the apothecary. Big beauty replaced the herb-infused oils our grandmothers made. Big wellness is now selling us back our own ancestral knowledge in supplement form at extraordinary prices.

And we have walked through all of it as willing participants because we forgot. Because the knowledge was taken from us over generations — slowly, systematically, replaced with convenience and the promise that someone else knew better.

They don’t know better. They know profit.

The way back is not complicated. It does not require a qualification or a budget or a perfectly curated homestead. It requires only the willingness to remember what your ancestors always knew.

Grow something. Even one pot on a windowsill. Learn one plant — the weed pushing through your path, the herb at your back door, the tree dropping fruit on the footpath. Make one thing with your hands. A tea. An infused oil. A batch of fermented vegetables. A loaf of bread from scratch.

Every one of those acts is a reclamation. Every time you feed your family from your own hands, heal something with a plant rather than a product, choose knowledge over dependence — you step a little further outside the system that profits from keeping you inside it.

You become harder to sell to. And that is a radical act.

I want to be clear about something. I am not here to become another system you depend on. I share as much as I can for free — through these reels, these articles, this community. What I have put into my books is the distillation of years of learning, offered at a price that reflects the work but not a profit motive that requires your ongoing dependence. Buy them once. Learn from them forever. Then go outside and use what’s free.

If you want to start — The Feral Apothecary ebook will introduce you to 22 medicinal plants already growing around you. The recipe companion ebook will show you exactly how to turn them into medicine for your family at home. Both available now. Link below.

Sovereignty doesn’t always look like a protest. Sometimes it looks like a kitchen that smells of herbs and a garden that feeds your family. Sometimes it looks like string and a weed and a ceiling. Sometimes it looks like your nan’s rhubarb crumble — made from a plant that has been healing people for five thousand years, growing free in her garden, asking nothing in return.

The knowledge is not gone. It is dormant. It is waiting in you right now — in the part of you that already knows, before anyone told you, that something real lives in plants. Something that cannot be patented or packaged or sold back to you at a premium.

Trust that knowing. It has been there longer than any of the systems trying to replace it.

Come be feral with us.

This is The Feral Life.

Ready to start reclaiming your power?

The Feral Apothecary — a beginner’s guide to 22 medicinal and magical herbs already growing around you. The medicine, the magic, the folklore and something simple you can do today. This is where you begin.

The Feral Apothecary Recipe Companion — simple, beautiful recipes for making your own medicine at home. Salves, infused oils, tinctures, honeys and more. The practical companion to everything you just read.

Both available now:

Grab them here ✨

Photo credit: @unfurl.photography

That is not a coincidence. That is the whole point.

We have been handed a story about our own bodies — that they are fragile, that healing is complicated, that we need experts and institutions and products we could never make ourselves to survive. That story has made a lot of people very wealthy. And it has made a lot of us very dependent.

But the earth didn’t get that memo. She just keeps growing exactly what we need, exactly where we need it, in the cracks of our footpaths and the corners of our gardens and the neglected edges of our lawns. Asking nothing. Giving everything. Waiting for someone to finally notice.

I have not always been able to articulate why I felt this way. But looking back, the thread has always been there.

As a child I had a deep, instinctive unease about being told what to put in my body. I couldn’t name it then — I was too young to have the language for it. It was just a feeling. A quiet resistance that nobody around me seemed to share or understand.

As a teenager I had a significant reaction to something I was told was safe and necessary. My body told me otherwise in ways I couldn’t ignore. From that point on I stopped trusting blindly. I started asking questions that made people uncomfortable. I stopped accepting “because the doctor said so” as a complete answer.

In my late teens and early twenties I fell into a different way of living — more nomadic, more communal, closer to the earth. I met people who grew their own food and made their own medicine and treated their bodies as something to be nourished rather than managed. I watched plants do things I had been told only pharmaceuticals could do. Something in me that had always been quietly awake fully opened.

And then, years later, I found myself sitting across from a doctor who handed me a prescription for something I didn’t need, delivered in a way that served the system far more than it served me. I became dependent on it without warning. When I tried to leave it I was met with resistance rather than support.

That was the nail in the coffin.

Not the beginning of my distrust — the confirmation of it. The moment I understood with absolute clarity that the system is not designed around your wellness. It is designed around your compliance. And your continued need for its products.

The system profits from your dependence. It does not profit from your knowledge. A woman who knows how to grow her own food, make her own medicine and trust her own body is very hard to sell to. And that knowledge — the knowledge of plants, of food as medicine, of the ancient domestic arts of drying and infusing and making — is not complicated. It was never complicated. It was just taken from us and replaced with a subscription.

You are more powerful than you have been led to believe. The tools are already growing around you. The knowledge is already in you — dormant, waiting, older than any institution that tried to replace it.

Sovereignty doesn’t always look like a protest. Sometimes it looks like a kitchen that smells of herbs and a garden that feeds your family.

If you want to start reclaiming it — I’m here. The Feral Apothecary will introduce you to 22 medicinal plants already growing around you. The recipe companion book will show you exactly how to turn them into medicine for your family. Both are available now.

Link below.

The Feral Store

Come be feral with us.

20 year old me, the beginning or the end

This is The Feral Life.

The Feral Apothecary Recipe Companion is officially out in the world.

I’ve been working on this one quietly for months — in stolen moments, with a newborn on my chest, in the evenings after everyone was asleep. It is the book I wanted to write alongside The Feral Apothecary from the very beginning.

Where the first book gave you the knowledge — the medicine, the magic, the folklore of 22 plants — this one gives you the doing. Simple, beautiful recipes for making your own medicine at home. Salves, infusions, tinctures, honeys, oils and more. The kind of thing those wise women always knew how to do, and that most of us were never taught.

It even includes my special medicinal dandelion and burdock chai powder recipe!

It’s on presale right now for the next 48 hours at a special price before it goes up. If you’ve been waiting for the practical companion to go alongside The Feral Apothecary — this is it.

Link below. 🍀

Grab it here ✨

I’m so glad you’re here.

Sarah

The Feral Life

When the first bloom finally opened she was filled with so much pure, uncomplicated joy. Last year she spent an entire season picking them — gifting flowers to me, to her extended family, to complete strangers at the local shops, to anyone walking past on the footpath who would take one from her small outstretched hand. There is nothing quite like a four year old’s conviction that everyone deserves a flower.

There is something beautifully timed about camellias. They show up right when almost nothing else in the garden is flowering, and their first blooms tend to line up almost exactly with the winter solstice — a quiet little gift from the earth right at the darkest, stillest point of the year. We do almost nothing to care for our three shrubs. I trim them back from the front porch maybe once a year and that is the extent of our involvement. In return, they reward us with months of flowers through the very part of the year that needs them most.

Tea’s overlooked cousin

Here is the part that surprises most people, including me the first time I learned it. That flowering shrub blooming away in your garden right now is, quite literally, family to your morning cup of tea.

Camellia japonica — the ornamental variety filling gardens everywhere, prized purely for her flowers — shares her genus with Camellia sinensis, the true tea plant the world drinks black, green and white tea from. They are close enough that japonica’s leaves actually contain caffeine and catechins of the same kind found in sinensis. The chemistry overlaps. She was simply never selected and refined for drinking the way her sister was, so she stayed in the garden being beautiful instead.

In Japan she is called tsubaki, and she has been treasured there for well over 1,300 years — first written about in the Nihon Shoki, Japan’s earliest chronicles, in the year 720, where she was praised specifically for her resilience. She became woven into symbols of love and devotion, and tied to the samurai tradition as an emblem of honour and bravery — partly, I think, because of exactly what my daughter has watched happen outside our window. She blooms boldly and abundantly through the coldest, quietest, most dormant months of the year, when almost everything else has gone still.

Quiet medicine

Beyond her beauty and her surprising tea lineage, camellia has carried her own traditional medicine for centuries. In Japan, Korea and China she has long been used as an anti-inflammatory, and her oil has been treasured in hair and skin care — prized for its lightness and nourishing qualities, traditionally used to protect and condition both.

She asks for almost nothing from us and gives so generously in return. A flower blooming through winter, carrying medicine most people will never know she holds, handed out like treasure by a four year old who simply believes everyone deserves something beautiful.

If plants quietly carrying more than anyone realises is something that lights you up the way it does me, The Feral Apothecary covers 22 medicinal and magical herbs in full depth — the medicine, the magic, the folklore and something simple you can do today.

Available now here : grab it here

Or via email the Link in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life

This is The Feral Life.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you’ve ever walked through a patch of cleavers you know exactly what I mean. She latches onto everything — clothes, socks, dog fur, small children who can’t resist running straight through her. She is also known as sticky weed, and for very good reason.

I remember playing with her as a child myself — picking handfuls of it and throwing it at my friends , having full blown cleavers fights in the garden until we were both covered head to toe. My mum cursing it constantly, pulling it off her pants after weeding.

It was medicine the whole time. None of us knew it.

The medicine hiding in plain sight

This is what I keep coming back to with so many of these plants — the best medicines are often the ones we never noticed. Free, abundant, growing literally on our doorstep, dismissed as a nuisance for generations while quietly being exactly what our bodies needed.

Cleavers is one of the great lymphatic herbs. She supports your body’s waste removal system — the lymphatic network that clears toxins, reduces congestion and keeps everything moving as it should. She has been used historically for eczema, acne and psoriasis, and her anti-inflammatory properties mean she has traditionally been reached for on stubborn or slow-healing skin spots as well.

She is also completely edible. A nutritious green you can add to soups, blend into a smoothie or juice fresh while she is young and tender.

How to make cleavers infused oil

This is the simplest way to start using her medicinally, and it is exactly what we did with the jar full we gathered on our walk.

You will need:

∙ A generous handful of fresh cleavers

∙ A carrier oil — olive oil works beautifully

∙ A clean glass jar

Method:

Lay your fresh cleavers out somewhere airy and let her wilt for 24 hours. This step matters — fresh plant material has too much moisture and can cause your oil to go mouldy if you skip it.

Once wilted, pack her loosely into a clean jar and cover completely with your oil. Seal and place on a sunny windowsill for the first week or so — the gentle warmth helps draw out her medicinal compounds more efficiently. After that, move the jar somewhere dark and cool to finish infusing for the remaining weeks, giving it a gentle shake every few days.

Strain through muslin and bottle into a clean jar. This is your cleavers oil — ready to massage onto irritated or inflamed skin, or anywhere you are holding tension or swelling. Armpits and groin are traditional areas for lymphatic support, alongside any patch of skin that needs her gentle, cooling attention.

A plant that has been trying to help us the whole time

Next time cleavers sticks to your jumper, or your child comes inside covered head to toe in her after an afternoon outside — try saying thank you instead of cursing her. She has never been trying to annoy us. She has simply been waiting, generously and patiently, for someone to finally notice what she actually is.

That, more than anything, is what this whole journey back to the plants has taught me. So much of what we have spent generations trying to remove from our gardens has been quietly offering itself to us the entire time.

Cleavers is one of the plants growing freely around most of us, just waiting to be gathered. If this kind of forgotten plant wisdom speaks to you, The Feral Apothecary covers 22 medicinal and magical herbs in full — the medicine, the magic, the folklore and something simple you can do today.

Available now here:

The Feral Apothecary ebook

Or via

Link in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life

This is The Feral Life.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

In 1885 Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton created French Wine Coca — a tonic containing coca leaves, kola nut and damiana, marketed as a cure for nervous exhaustion, depression and headaches. When temperance legislation forced him to go non-alcoholic he reformulated it. Damiana was dropped. The result became Coca-Cola.

One can only wonder what kind of world we would be living in if she had stayed in the recipe.

Who she is

Damiana — Turnera diffusa — is a small shrubby plant native to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. She has been used by the Aztecs and Mayans for thousands of years as a mood enhancer, a nervous system tonic and a ceremonial drink sweetened with honey. Her botanical name is literally Turnera aphrodisiaca. Mexico has classified her as a national treasure and banned her export as a live plant.

She was in John Pemberton’s formula alongside coca and kola nut — three plants that together were marketed as a remedy for what the 19th century called neurasthenia. What we might now call burnout, anxiety, nervous exhaustion, depression. Pemberton claimed astounding medicinal properties. He wasn’t entirely wrong.

When he went non-alcoholic in 1886 damiana was quietly removed. The coca stayed a little longer. The kola nut became the caffeine hit that made Coca-Cola addictive. But damiana — the mood herb, the joy herb, the herb of presence — was gone.

She went back to being what she had always been. A plant most people had never heard of. Growing quietly in the Mexican highlands. Waiting.

What she actually does

When I worked in herbal retail damiana was consistently one of our biggest selling herbs. Women found her and didn’t let her go. That tells you something.

Herbalists classify her as a thymoleptic — an herb that lifts and sustains mood rather than simply masking symptoms. She works on the nervous system gently and cumulatively. She is not a stimulant. She does not force anything. She is more like a gradual remembering of what it feels like to be okay.

Her reputation as an aphrodisiac is real but widely misunderstood. This is not a herb about physical desire. This is a herb about remembering what joy feels like. About unclenching. About putting down the weight of the mental load for long enough to actually inhabit your own life again.

The ancient Mayans understood this — they didn’t just use her for the body, they used her in ceremony, in community, in celebration. She was a herb of presence. Of showing up fully to your own life.

For busy mothers especially — the ones so deep in the doing and the managing and the worrying that they have forgotten what it feels like to just be — she is extraordinary. She helps you step out of your busy overthinking mind and back into the light. Back into connection with the people around you. Back into living from the heart instead of from the to-do list.

My personal experience

I want to share something personal here because I think it matters.

I ended up on an SSRI antidepressant when I was younger during a really difficult and lost time in my life. I was vulnerable and the prescription was handled unethically — I was given something I didn’t actually need and then found myself physically dependent on it in a way I hadn’t been warned about. Stopping it made me profoundly unwell. When I asked for help coming off it I was met with resistance rather than support.

I am not sharing this to make any claim about medication — only to share my own experience. What I needed in that moment was someone to help me find my way back to myself. Damiana was part of that journey for me.

What helped me — alongside very slowly and carefully reducing the dose — was damiana. She was one of the gentlest and most effective allies I found. Not a numbing. Not a forcing. More like a hand on the shoulder saying — you can come back now. It’s safe.

She brought me back to myself. And I have never forgotten her for it.

How to use her

Damiana is widely available from health food stores and online herbal suppliers across Australia. Make sure you are buying Turnera diffusa — not Turnera ulmifolia which is sometimes sold as damiana but is a different plant with different properties.

As a tea: Steep one to two teaspoons of dried damiana leaves in hot water for ten minutes. Drink one to two cups daily. She is warm, slightly bitter and aromatic — some people find her pleasant, others prefer to blend her with other herbs.

As a honey infusion with rose: Pack dried damiana leaves and dried rose petals loosely into a jar. Cover completely with raw honey. Leave for four to six weeks in a warm place, stirring occasionally. Take a teaspoon daily or stir through warm water as a tea. This is one of the most beautiful and nourishing ways to take her — the rose softens her bitterness and adds her own mood supporting medicine to the blend.

As a tincture: Available from herbal dispensaries and health food stores if you prefer not to make your own.

She works cumulatively — give her four to six weeks of consistent use before assessing. She is not a quick fix. She is a slow return.

A note on safety

Damiana is considered safe for most adults in normal amounts. Avoid in pregnancy. Avoid in large medicinal doses if you have liver conditions. If you are currently on medication — particularly antidepressants — please work with a practitioner before adding her. This is not because she is dangerous but because any mood supporting herb deserves to be introduced thoughtfully alongside existing treatment.

I am not a doctor or naturopath. I am a woman who has lived with plants for a long time and found her way through difficult terrain partly because of them. This is my experience and my knowledge freely shared. It is not medical advice.

The herb they dropped from Coca-Cola. The one most people have never heard of. She deserved better.

And if you find her — give her time. She will bring you home to yourself.

The Feral Apothecary covers 22 medicinal and magical herbs in full — the medicine, the magic, the folklore and something simple you can do today. Available now.

Link here: The Feral Apothecary

Or

in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life or reply to this email and I’ll send it straight to you. 🌿

This is The Feral Life.

Image credit: @unfurl.photography

And then we rub something from a plastic bottle into our scalp without reading the ingredients at all.

What you put on your skin goes in. It absorbs. It enters your bloodstream. Your scalp especially — thin skin, rich blood supply, sitting right there at the top of your head. Whatever you apply to it doesn’t stay on the surface. It travels.

This is why I make my own hair oil. Not because I’m precious about it. Because I want to know exactly what I’m putting on my body and because the plant that does this job better than almost anything I could buy is growing in my garden right now for free.

What the research actually says

In 2015 a randomised clinical trial compared rosemary essential oil directly to minoxidil — the active ingredient in Rogaine, the most widely used pharmaceutical hair loss treatment on the market. After six months both groups had the same increase in hair count. Same result. No statistical difference in effectiveness. And the rosemary group reported significantly less scalp irritation.

One study. But a well designed one. And it confirmed what herbalists have known for centuries — that rosemary stimulates circulation to the scalp, activates dormant hair follicles and creates the conditions for healthy hair growth in a way that is measurable and real.

Minoxidil requires ongoing use, costs a significant amount over time and comes with a list of potential side effects. Rosemary grows in your garden. You can make your own treatment for almost nothing and know exactly what is in it.

That feels like sovereignty to me.

How to make rosemary infused hair oil

This is the simplest thing in the world.

You will need:

∙ A large handful of dried rosemary — fresh works too but dried reduces the risk of mould

∙ A clean glass jar with a lid

∙ Enough olive oil to cover — olive oil is affordable, accessible and has been used on hair and scalp for thousands of years. Jojoba is lighter if you prefer.

∙ Optional: a few drops of rosemary essential oil added at the end for extra potency — this is closer to what the clinical study used

Method:

Pack your rosemary loosely into the jar. Pour your oil over until the rosemary is completely submerged with an inch or two of oil above it. Seal the jar and place it somewhere warm — a sunny windowsill is perfect. Leave for four to six weeks, shaking gently every few days.

Strain through muslin, bottle into a dark glass jar and store in a cool dark place. It will keep for up to a year.

How to use it:

Massage into your scalp two to three times a week. Use your fingertips to really work it in — the massage itself stimulates circulation which is part of the medicine. Leave for at least an hour or overnight if you can, then wash out thoroughly.

Results take three to six months of consistent use. The same timeframe as the pharmaceutical version. Patience is part of the medicine.

On what we put on our bodies

So many of us have made the shift with food — organic where possible, reading labels, thinking about ingredients. And then we reach for a shampoo or a serum or a scalp treatment without a second thought.

Your skin is not a barrier. It is a gateway. Everything you apply to it is in some way absorbed — and your scalp especially, with its thin skin and rich blood supply, is one of the most absorbent areas of your body.

Making your own oil means you know exactly what is in it. One ingredient. Maybe two. Nothing you can’t pronounce. Nothing that requires a pharmaceutical company to exist.

This is what the apothecary tradition was always about — not complexity, not credentials, not expensive equipment. Just plants, oil, time and the knowledge that you are capable of making your own medicine.

You always were.

The Feral Apothecary covers rosemary in full — the medicine, the magic, the folklore and more simple ways to use her at home. Along with 21 other plants just as ancient, just as accessible and just as powerful.

Available now.

Here: The Feral Apothecary

Or via Link in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life 🌿

This is The Feral Life.

Blowing dandelion clocks. That specific ritual of finding a perfect seed head — round and white and impossibly delicate — closing your eyes, making a wish and blowing with everything you had. Watching the seeds lift and scatter and drift away on the air like tiny parachutes carrying something important to somewhere unknown.

We called it making a wish. But I think we were doing something older than that. I think we were setting intentions and scattering them into the world, the way children do when they haven’t yet been told that magic isn’t real. The dandelion knew. She always knows.

The plant nobody wanted

Dandelion is the most persecuted plant in the suburban garden. Pulled, poisoned, dug out, cursed at. Councils spray her along roadsides. Gardeners wage war on her taproots. She is the definition of unwanted.

And she keeps coming back. Through concrete, through gravel, through compacted clay, through every attempt to remove her. She pushes up through cracks in footpaths and grows in the rubble of demolished buildings and appears in the middle of manicured lawns as if to say — I am still here. I will always be here.

She is not coming back to annoy you. She is coming back because the soil needs her.

What she is actually doing in your garden

This is the thing almost nobody knows about dandelion — she is not just surviving in your garden. She is actively healing it.

Her taproot goes deep. Genuinely deep — sometimes 30 centimetres or more into compacted earth that most plants can’t penetrate at all. As she grows she breaks up that compaction, aerating the soil and creating channels for water and air and the roots of other plants to follow. She is doing the earthworks your garden needs without being asked.

And as she grows she pulls minerals up from those deep layers — calcium, potassium, iron, magnesium — nutrients that have leached below the reach of shallow rooted plants and would otherwise be lost. She brings them up and deposits them in her leaves. When she dies back those leaves decompose on the surface and return those minerals to the topsoil where everything else can access them.

She is not taking from your garden. She is feeding it.

The animals always knew this. Bees love her — she is one of the first flowers to bloom in late winter and early spring, providing nectar when almost nothing else is available. Rabbits, chickens, goats — given the choice they will seek her out. They have always understood what she is.

What she is doing in your body

Every part of dandelion is edible and medicinal. The young leaves in salads — bitter and bright and more nutritious than almost anything you’ll find at a supermarket. The flowers in fritters or infused into honey. The roots roasted and brewed as a caffeine free coffee that is genuinely delicious and deeply supportive of the liver.

She is a powerful digestive tonic. Her bitter compounds stimulate bile production, support the liver, improve digestion and gently move things along. She is a mild diuretic that supports kidney function without depleting potassium the way pharmaceutical diuretics do — because she is so rich in potassium herself that she replaces what she removes.

And the gut-skin connection is real. A sluggish liver and poor digestion show up on the skin. Dandelion works on the root cause. If you are struggling with your skin, start here.

The wish was always an intention

I think about those childhood afternoons blowing dandelion clocks differently now. The seeds travelling on the wind to wherever they needed to go. Taking root in unexpected places. Coming back year after year from deep roots that nothing could destroy.

Maybe we understood something then that we forgot later. That she was worth honouring. That the wish mattered. That some things are persistent not because they are weeds but because the world genuinely needs them.

Next time your child finds a dandelion clock and closes their eyes to make a wish — let them blow every single one. They’re not making a mess. They’re setting intentions and scattering medicine into the world.

Dandelion is one of 22 plants in The Feral Apothecary — my beginner’s guide to medicinal and magical herbs. The medicine, the magic, the folklore and one simple way to connect with each plant today. Written for the woman who knows something real lives in plants and is ready to begin.

Available now. Link here:

The Feral Apothecary ✨

Or in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life or reply to this email and I’ll send it straight to you. 🌿

This is The Feral Life.

Not metaphorically. Actually. The kind of medicine that stops bleeding, soothes a sting, clears a chest infection, calms a frightened child at two in the morning. It was just there. It had always been there. Growing in the most unlikely places, asking nothing, giving everything — waiting for someone to finally notice it.

That is what this book is about.

We have been sold a story. The story goes like this: your body is fragile, illness is inevitable, healing is complicated, and you need experts and institutions and pharmaceuticals to survive. You are not equipped to care for yourself. Leave it to the professionals.

I don’t believe that story anymore.

I believe that nothing was placed on this earth by accident. I believe that the plants growing in your garden, your footpath, your local park — the ones you have been pulling out and walking past and ignoring your entire life — are part of a system so intelligent and so generous that it staggers me every time I think about it. We are nature. We always were. We just forgot.

This book is for the women and mothers who feel that forgetting in their bones. Who have been quietly questioning the mainstream narrative they were handed — about health, about medicine, about what it means to care for a family — and who are ready to start asking different questions. Who want sovereignty. Who want to stand in their own garden and know that they have tools. Who want their children to grow up understanding that a plantain leaf pressed to a bee sting is not primitive — it is ancient, effective and free.

I am not an expert. I am not a doctor or a naturopath or a formally trained herbalist. I am a self-taught woman who fell deeply in love with plants and never recovered. I have been learning from them for years — through my herbal apothecary, through running an organic store, through growing and foraging and making medicine in my own kitchen with my children watching. Through reading everything I could find and then going outside and testing it with my own hands.

This is a simple book. It is not trying to be everything. It is twenty-two plants — some you already know, some you have been ignoring, some you will meet for the first time — and an invitation to begin. To plant something. To make something. To taste something. To stop waiting until you know enough and just start.

Because the plants are there for all of us. That is the whole point. The dandelion doesn’t check your credentials before she grows in your lawn. The elder doesn’t ask if you’ve read the right books before she gives you her berries. The lemon tree at the back of the neglected suburban yard just keeps producing, year after year, for whoever shows up.

That ancient wisdom is not gone. It is dormant. It is waiting in you right now — in the part of you that already knew, before you even opened this book, that something real lives in plants. Something that cannot be patented or packaged or sold back to you at a premium.

Trust that knowing. It has been there longer than any of us.

Welcome to The Feral Apothecary.

The Feral Apothecary launches this Sunday on the new moon.

Twenty two medicinal and magical herbs — the medicine, the magic, the folklore and something simple you can do today. Written for the woman who is done outsourcing her power and ready to begin.

Presale is open now at a special price until Sunday.

You can buy it here:

grab it here

OR You can find the link in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life

This is The Feral Life.

Image: @unfurl.photography

It feels like an act of preparation. Of care. Of saying — I see winter coming and I am ready for it.

During WW2 the British government mobilised an entire nation to harvest rosehips from hedgerows because they knew what we have largely forgotten — that rosehips contain up to 20 times the vitamin C of an orange. When citrus imports were cut off they turned to the rose bush. By 1943 they had collected 500 tons and made 2.5 million bottles of syrup to keep their children healthy through the war.

The rose bush in your garden right now is the same medicine. Free, seasonal and extraordinarily generous.

A note on straining

The most important thing to know before you make rosehip syrup — always double strain through muslin cloth. Rosehip seeds contain tiny hairs that are an irritant to the digestive system if consumed. Try not to squeeze or press the pulp through — let it drip naturally for the cleanest result.

Rosehip Syrup

Makes approximately 750ml

You will need:

∙ 500g fresh rosehips, washed and topped and tailed

∙ 1.5 litres water

∙ 250g sugar — brown for a richer flavour, white for a clearer colour

Method:

Wash your rosehips well and top and tail them. Place in a pot with the water and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until the hips are slightly mushy — about 40 to 60 minutes depending on your variety.

Remove from heat and mash well with a potato masher — consider it your arm workout for the day. 😂

Double strain through muslin cloth into a clean bowl. Try not to squeeze or press the pulp through — let it drip naturally for the cleanest result.

Return the strained liquid to a clean pot. Add your sugar and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until you reach a syrupy consistency.

Pour immediately into sterilised glass bottles and seal. Store in the fridge for up to 3 months or freeze in portions for longer storage.

Dosage: 1 teaspoon daily for children, 1 tablespoon daily for adults through autumn and winter as an immune tonic.

A few notes:

Any unsprayed rose variety will work — heritage and old garden roses produce the most abundant hips but your backyard rose is perfectly fine. The one rule is no pesticides or chemicals.

Don’t worry if your syrup goes brown rather than deep ruby red — the colour depends entirely on your rose variety and ripeness. The medicine is exactly the same.

Brown sugar gives a richer, more molasses flavour. White sugar gives a cleaner, clearer syrup. Both work beautifully.

If you want to go deeper into the medicine and magic of rose — the folklore, the emotional healing, the full plant profile — she has her own complete entry in The Feral Apothecary. Along with 21 other plants just as ancient, just as close to home and just as generous as she is.

Presale open now at a special price. Link here: https://payhip.com/b/oPh7X

Or in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life 🌿

This is The Feral Life.

From a distance she is an insignificant tree. Scraggly, thorny, easy to overlook. But walk up to her slowly and something shifts. Stand close enough to actually look — really look — and there is magic there. Something ancient and quiet that you feel before you understand it.

She gives you everything across a year if you pay attention. Flowers in spring — clouds of white blossom so sweetly heavy they scent the whole garden. Shade in summer when you need it most. Berries in autumn, deep red and abundant, ready just as winter arrives and your body begins to ask for medicine. Every part of her marks a turn of the wheel. The flowers, the leaves, the berries, the bare thorny branches of winter — all of it a map of the cycles within us as much as the cycles of the year.

I notice her now on the sides of roads and along old paddock fences — long rows of hawthorn planted by English settlers and pastoralists who brought her with them from home, who understood instinctively that she belonged near the places where people lived. They may not have been able to tell you exactly why. But their hands knew.

The Tree the Fairies Lived In

In Celtic tradition the hawthorn was never just a tree. She was a fairy tree — a dwelling place and meeting ground of the Sidhe, the fairy folk of Irish mythology. Solitary hawthorns standing alone in fields were the most sacred of all. To cut one down was to disturb the fairy folk and invite their wrath on your family — death, misfortune, cursed land.

This belief didn’t fade with modernisation. It didn’t get quietly replaced by rationalism and progress. It survived completely intact into the present day because the Irish knew better than to test it.

In 1999 Ireland rerouted an entire motorway rather than cut a single hawthorn down. Engineers worked around one solitary tree in County Clare for ten years. The M18 motorway between Limerick and Galway has a visible kink in it to this day — the tree stands in the median strip, fenced off and protected by law, untouched. The County Clare Council had it written into the construction contract that the tree could not come within five metres of the road. No matter the cost.

And then there is John DeLorean. When he built his luxury car plant near Belfast he bulldozed a lone hawthorn that stood in the way — despite the protestations of every local worker on site who begged him not to. His company collapsed spectacularly not long after. People still connect those two events. The Irish do not consider this a coincidence.

The white hawthorn blossom carries a strange unsettling scent that has always made people uneasy. Scientists eventually traced it to trimethylamine — a compound the human body also produces during decomposition. The folklore knew something the science would take centuries to name. It almost always does.

The Medicine

The Celts weren’t protecting a superstition. They were protecting a plant they understood to be sacred because it was powerful — genuinely, measurably powerful in ways that herbalists have known for thousands of years and that modern research is now quietly confirming.

Hawthorn is the supreme heart medicine. And I mean that in every sense of the word heart.

I don’t want to give away too much here — hawthorn has her own full entry in The Feral Apothecary and she deserves the space. But I will say this: if you have ever experienced the kind of grief or exhaustion or heartbreak that settles into your physical body rather than just your emotional one — the kind that makes your chest feel genuinely heavy — hawthorn is the plant I would reach for first.

She has been used by herbalists across cultures for thousands of years for exactly this. The tree they would reroute a motorway for turns out to also be one of the most profound medicines available to us. Growing in hedgerows. Growing along old paddock fences. Growing on the side of the road.

Waiting to be remembered.

The Feral Apothecary covers hawthorn in full — the medicine, the magic, the folklore and exactly how to use her at home. Along with 20 other plants just as ancient, just as overlooked and just as close as your nearest hedgerow.

Presale is open now at a special price. You can find it here https://payhip.com/b/oPh7X

Or via the link in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life or reply to this email and I’ll send it straight to you. 🌿

This is The Feral Life.

I have a rosemary bush at my front door. I planted her there deliberately, the way women have been planting her at their thresholds for centuries — for protection, for medicine, for magic. She has been there through three pregnancies, through the chaos and the quiet, through every person who has crossed that threshold welcome or unwelcome. I trust her completely.

Most people walk past rosemary without a second thought. She is so familiar she has become invisible — the herb you throw on the roast lamb, the one growing scraggly in the corner of every Australian garden. And that invisibility is almost the whole tragedy of it. Because rosemary is one of the most ancient, most powerful and most accessible medicinal and magical plants on earth. She has been hiding in plain sight this whole time.

Her name comes from the Latin Rosmarinus — dew of the sea. She grows wild along Mediterranean coastal cliffs, thriving on salt air and rocky soil, and has been cultivated by healers, herbalists and wise women for over 5,000 years. Hippocrates used her. Dioscorides wrote about her. Greek scholars wore crowns of her leaves during examinations because they understood what modern neuroscience is only now catching up to — that rosemary increases blood flow to the brain, sharpens memory and lifts mental fog in a way that is not subtle.

Shakespeare’s Ophelia carried rosemary for remembrance. Brides wore her as a symbol of fidelity. She was placed in the hands of the dead. Burned for purification. Carried for protection. Mentioned in five of Shakespeare’s plays. There is not a single threshold moment in the human experience that rosemary has not been present for.

And then there is the legend I keep coming back to. That the Virgin Mary, fleeing to Egypt, laid her blue cloak over a rosemary bush to rest. That when she lifted it the white flowers had turned blue forever — and from that day she was called the Rose of Mary. Whether you hold that as literal or symbolic, something true lives in it. Rosemary has always been a woman’s plant. A sacred plant. A threshold plant.

There is also an old tradition that rosemary grows strongest in households where the woman holds the power. By the 16th century men were reportedly uprooting rosemary from their gardens just to prove the contrary. I find that detail endlessly satisfying.

I grow her at my front door. I use her as a hair rinse. I crush her between my fingers when I need to come back into my body quickly — and those volatile oils do their work in seconds, sharpening and grounding me almost immediately. I make rosemary tea at the first sign of a sore throat and gargle it straight. I put her in my cooking not just for flavour but because I know what she is doing in my body while she is there.

This is what it means to actually know your plants. Not just to grow them — but to understand their medicine, their magic, their history, their relationship with the women who came before us.

This is exactly what I wrote The Feral Apothecary for.

The Feral Apothecary is my ebook guide to 21 medicinal and magical herbs — written for the woman who feels the pull toward plant medicine but doesn’t know where to start. Each herb has its own full profile — the medicine, the magic, the folklore, a simple way to use her today. Beginner friendly. Practical. Honest.

Rosemary is in there. So are 20 other plants just as ancient, just as underestimated, just as close to home as she is.

Presale is open now. You can find the link

here: https://payhip.com/b/oPh7X

Or in my Instagram bio @sarah.the.feral.life or reply to this email and I’ll send it straight to you.

Every tiny act makes a difference. Start with one plant. 🌿

This is The Feral Life.

It’s not too late. I know it feels like the growing season is winding down and the moment has passed but May is still absolutely a planting month in cool temperate Australia. Your future self will thank you for it — I promise. There is something so quietly satisfying about stepping outside on a cold grey winter day and finding things still growing, still pushing through, still feeding you. That is the whole point of a winter garden.

We are so conditioned to think of winter as a dead season. A waiting time. But the earth doesn’t stop and neither should we. Winter growing is slower, quieter, more patient — and that’s exactly why it’s good for us. It asks us to slow down with it.

So if you haven’t started yet, start now. And if you have, keep going.

What to Direct Sow in May

These go straight into the ground or a pot — no seedling tray needed:

∙ Broad beans

∙ Peas

∙ Garlic

∙ Onions

∙ Spinach

∙ Silverbeet

∙ Kale

∙ Beetroot

∙ Carrot

∙ Radish

∙ Coriander

∙ Mustard greens

∙ Mache (corn salad)

∙ Calendula

∙ Poppy

Seedlings to Plant Out in May

Start these in trays now or grab seedlings from your local nursery:

∙ Broccoli

∙ Cauliflower

∙ Cabbage

∙ Brussels sprouts

∙ Kale

∙ Silverbeet

∙ Leeks

∙ Lettuce

∙ Celery

∙ Parsley

∙ Chamomile

Planting Guide

Broad beans

Sow direct, 5cm deep, 20cm apart. They’ll romp away through winter and reward you with armfuls of pods come spring. If you do nothing else this May, plant broad beans.

Peas

Sow direct, 3cm deep, 10cm apart along a trellis or wire. Sugar snaps are the most beginner friendly — sweet, prolific and endlessly eaten straight off the vine by small hands.

Garlic

The star of May. Break bulbs into cloves and plant pointy end up, 5cm deep, 15cm apart. One clove becomes one full bulb by Christmas. It’s practically magic.

Onions

Sow seeds direct or plant seedlings 10cm apart. They’re slow but completely unfussy. Set and forget.

Leafy greens (spinach, silverbeet, kale)

Sow direct 1cm deep, thin to 20-30cm apart once established. These are your winter workhorses — cut and come again, frost hardy, completely reliable.

Beetroot

Sow direct 2cm deep, 10cm apart. Beetroot is one of the most satisfying things to grow — every part is edible including the leaves.

Carrot

Sow direct into loose, deep soil, barely cover with a fine layer of soil. Thin to 5cm apart. Patience required — they’re slow to germinate in the cold but worth every day of waiting.

Brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts)

Plant seedlings out now 40-50cm apart. These are cold lovers and will genuinely thrive through winter. Worth protecting with frost cloth if a hard frost is forecast in your area.

Leeks

Plant seedlings 15cm apart in a deep trench. They take forever but they are so worth it — sweet, mild and beautiful roasted whole.

Herbs (parsley, coriander, chamomile)

Scatter coriander direct where you want it. Plant parsley seedlings 20cm apart. Chamomile can be scattered direct or planted as seedlings — let it self seed and it will come back for you year after year.

A Note for Geelong and Surrounds

We can get surprise frosts from late May onward so keep an eye on the forecast and have frost cloth on hand for your brassica seedlings. Everything else on this list is pretty cold hardy and will handle whatever our winters throw at them.

Just get them in. Don’t overthink it, don’t wait for perfect conditions. A seed in imperfect soil is worth a hundred seeds still sitting in the packet. 🌿

This is The Feral Life.

The fig tree didn’t ask permission. She just gave and gave and gave until I had more figs than I knew what to do with and a slight panic settling in that I was going to waste them.

So I decided to make caramelised fig ice cream. From scratch. For the first time. With absolutely no guarantee it would work.

Here’s what I learned immediately: do not crowd your roasting tray. I piled my figs on in that optimistic way you do when you’re trying to use as many as possible, and what I got was less caramelised-edges situation and more jammy, sticky, glossy, deeply figgy situation.

Honestly? Still incredible. Just not what I planned.

I think that’s the thing about cooking from your own garden — you’re not working from a perfectly controlled starting point. You’re working with abundance, with whatever the season gave you, with a tree that had her own ideas about how generous she wanted to be this autumn. You improvise. You adjust. You end up with something that maybe looks different to what you imagined but tastes like your own land and that is its own kind of magic.

Usually when the figs come I make upside down cake or jam. But this year I wanted to try something new — and I had an abundance of eggs from a local farm sitting on my bench alongside the figs. Rich in healthy fats, real ingredients, the kind of food your great grandmother would recognise. It felt like the right moment to make something a little more indulgent.

The ice cream came together beautifully in the end. Rich and cold and sweet with that deep jammy fig flavour all the way through. It’s sitting in the freezer right now and I am unreasonably excited about the moment I share it with my family.

This is the full loop that I’m always chasing. A tree in my garden becomes a fig in my hand becomes something golden in a pan becomes a bowl of ice cream on an autumn afternoon. No supply chain. No supermarket. Just us and the land we’re tending and the food it gives back.

Here’s how I made it.

Caramelised Fig Ice Cream

Makes approximately 10 servings

For the caramelised figs

∙ 800g ripe fresh figs, quartered

∙ ¼ cup brown sugar

∙ 2 tablespoons honey (I used a medicinal thyme-infused honey I’d made — use whatever you have, but a good quality raw honey adds something special)

For the custard base

∙ 120g raw sugar (caster also works — light coloured sugar gives the best colour)

∙ 600g pure or pouring cream (no gelatine)

∙ 230g milk

∙ 6 egg yolks from XL eggs

∙ 2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Step 1 — Caramelise the figs

Preheat your oven to 200°C. Quarter your figs and toss in a bowl with the brown sugar and honey until well coated. Spread on a lined baking tray — give them more room than you think they need. A crowded tray will give you jammy and sticky rather than caramelised edges. Both are delicious, but more space means more colour. Roast for about 20 minutes until soft, glossy and fragrant. Set aside to cool slightly.

Step 2 — Make the custard base

Thermomix method: Add all custard ingredients to the bowl and cook for 9 min/90°C/speed 3/MC on.

Conventional method: Whisk egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl until pale and slightly thickened. Heat cream and milk in a saucepan over medium heat until just below simmering — do not boil. Slowly pour the warm cream mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Return to the saucepan over low heat, stirring continuously until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon — about 8-10 minutes. Do not let it boil. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Step 3 — Combine

Add the roasted figs and all their syrup to the warm custard. Blend briefly — I used my Thermomix on speed 6 for about 6 seconds — mostly smooth but with a few jammy chunks remaining. A stick blender works perfectly for the conventional version. Taste and adjust sweetness if needed.

Step 4 — Chill and churn

Pour into a container and press cling wrap directly onto the surface to prevent a skin forming. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight until completely cold.

With an ice cream machine: Churn according to your machine’s instructions, then transfer to a freezer-safe container and freeze until firm.

Without an ice cream machine: Pour the cold mixture into a shallow freezer-safe container. Freeze for 45 minutes, then remove and beat vigorously with a fork or hand mixer to break up ice crystals. Repeat every 30-45 minutes for 3-4 hours until smooth and creamy. Slightly icier in texture than churned but still absolutely delicious.

A note on ingredients: the thyme-infused honey in the fig caramel adds a subtle herbal depth that works beautifully here — but any good honey will do. And if you have a glut of eggs from a local farm or your own chooks, this is exactly the recipe for them.

This is The Feral Life.

We drove out to the Brisbane Ranges with friends and family — kids piled in, baskets in the boot, no real agenda except to get into the trees.

The earth gave us pine mushrooms. Also known as saffron milk caps, and she was generous.

There is something that happens to my kids when we get into the forest. They arrive a little clingy, a little reserved — the way kids do when they’ve been inside too long, when screens and schedules have made them small. And then within minutes something shifts. They are running and hunting and getting muddy and completely, wholly alive. Feral and free in the best possible way. I never get tired of watching that transformation happen. It feels like watching them remember something.

I think it happens to me too, if I’m honest.

We filled the basket slowly. Crouching, searching, the kids calling out when they spotted one. There’s a particular kind of satisfaction in finding your food in the ground rather than under fluorescent lights. It doesn’t feel like a hobby or a quirky lifestyle choice. It feels like the most normal thing in the world. Like something we were always supposed to be doing.

This is what food sovereignty actually looks like to me. Not a political slogan. Not a supermarket alternative. Just us, our friends, the forest floor, and a basket filling slowly with the most delicious free food on earth.

Foraging is rebellion. And it’s also just a really beautiful Tuesday.

This is The Feral Life.

Zero waste. Zero cost. Completely feral. 🌿

There were baby apples sitting in a bowl on our kitchen table for two weeks after our youngest was born.

I kept looking at them. Every day. That particular postpartum haze where everything takes twice as long and decisions feel enormous — including what to do with a bowl of small apples from our backyard tree.

Eventually I surfaced enough to do something about it. I got out the spiral apple peeler — one of those old fashioned hand cranked contraptions that cores and peels and slices in one satisfying motion. The kids love using it, which is wonderful in theory and means everything takes at least twice as long in practice. We worked through the whole bowl together. The apple slices went into the fridge to wait for pie or crumble. And I was left with a huge, beautiful mound of cores and peels.

I was about to take them to the guinea pigs when I remembered.

I can make vinegar with these.

And that is exactly what I did. Free, zero waste, homegrown apple cider vinegar from scraps that would otherwise have been guinea pig food. This is The Feral Life in practice. 🌿

Why make your own?

Raw apple cider vinegar — the real stuff, with the mother, unpasteurised — is expensive. A good bottle costs $15-20 and disappears fast if you're using it regularly for cooking, dressings, cleaning and health tonics.

This costs you nothing but time and a tablespoon of sugar. And if your apples came from your own tree, it is genuinely completely free.

It also means you know exactly what is in it — no additives, no pasteurisation, nothing removed. Just apples, water, sugar and wild fermentation doing what it has always done.

What you need

— Apple scraps — cores and peels from as many apples as you have. Homegrown, organic or unwaxed is ideal as the wild yeasts live on the skin

— Filtered water — chlorinated tap water can inhibit fermentation

— Raw sugar — 1 tablespoon per 1 cup of water

— Glass jar or jars

— Muslin cloth, cheesecloth or a clean tea towel

— Rubber band or string

— A wooden spoon

How to make it

Step 1 — Fill your jars

Pack your apple scraps into clean glass jars until they are about three quarters full. Don't pack them too tightly — the liquid needs to flow through.

Step 2 — Make your sugar water

Dissolve 1 tablespoon of raw sugar into 1 cup of hot filtered water. Make as many cups as you need to cover your scraps completely — the amount will depend on your jar size. Let it cool slightly before pouring.

Step 3 — Cover the scraps

Pour your sugar water over the scraps until everything is completely submerged. This is important — any apple exposed to air above the liquid can develop mould. Use a small clean glass or weight to press the scraps down if needed.

Step 4 — Cover and wait

Cover the top of each jar with muslin cloth or a clean tea towel and secure with a rubber band. This allows air in — which fermentation needs — while keeping dust and insects out.

Step 5 — Stir daily for the first week

Every day for the first week, give the jars a good stir and push any scraps back under the liquid. You will start to see bubbling within a few days — this is wild yeast beginning to ferment the sugars into alcohol. It is a good sign. It means it is working.

Step 6 — Strain the scraps — around day 7-10

Once the bubbling is active and then begins to slow, strain out all the apple scraps through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth. Compost the scraps. Pour the liquid back into clean jars, cover again with your cloth and secure.

Step 7 — Wait and watch — 3 to 4 more weeks

Now the slow magic happens. Continue stirring every few days. Over the next few weeks the liquid will deepen in colour, the sharp alcoholic smell will gradually become a vinegary one, and you will likely see a pale gelatinous film forming on the surface. This is the mother — a living colony of beneficial bacteria. It is completely normal, completely healthy and a sign your vinegar is doing exactly what it should. Don't remove it.

How do you know it's ready? Taste it every week from about week four onwards. It should smell and taste distinctly like vinegar — sharp, tangy, slightly fruity. The longer you leave it the stronger it becomes. When it tastes right to you, it's ready. The whole process takes approximately 4-6 weeks from start to finish.

Step 8 — Bottle it

Strain through fine mesh or cheesecloth into clean bottles. You can include the mother or strain it out — either is fine. If you keep it, it will continue working and can be used to start your next batch much faster. Seal tightly and store at room temperature. It will keep indefinitely and continues to develop with age.

How to use it

Exactly as you would use store bought apple cider vinegar:

— In salad dressings with good olive oil, mustard and honey

— A teaspoon in warm water first thing in the morning as a digestive tonic

— Splashed into soups and stews

— As a hair rinse diluted with water — excellent for scalp health and shine

— As a general purpose household cleaner diluted with water

— In marinades for meat and vegetables

Homemade vinegar has a variable acidity level and should not be used for preserving or canning where a specific acidity is required for food safety. For everything else — it's perfect.

A note on mould

If you see any coloured mould — green, black, pink — scoop it off immediately and check underneath. If the mould has penetrated through the liquid rather than just sitting on the surface, discard that batch and start again. The white or cream gelatinous film on the surface is always the mother, not mould. The smell is your best guide — it should always smell pleasantly fermented, never rotten.

This jar on my bench is one of the things that made me feel most like myself in those first weeks postpartum. A small, practical, zero waste act of making something from nothing. From scraps that were almost guinea pig food.

That is the whole philosophy of The Feral Life in one jar. 🌿

Have you made apple scrap vinegar before? Are you making it for the first time? Tell me below — I want to know how yours turns out.

It is not a perfectly curated life of linen aprons and abundant harvests and sourdough that always rises. It is not a homestead with rolling acreage and a lifestyle that photographs well from every angle. It is not the version of natural living that has been packaged and sold back to us as an aesthetic.

This is messier than that. More real than that. And honestly — more fun than that.

I have always been a romantic.

Not in the flowers and candlelight sense — though I love those too. In the deeper sense. The sense of feeling things too much, of searching for meaning in everything, of being drawn to beauty and wildness and the sacred in ordinary things. Of feeling, for most of my life, quietly lost. Like I had arrived in the wrong era, the wrong system, the wrong version of a life that was supposed to make sense.

I tried on different lives. I looked for purpose in the places I was told to look. And underneath everything I did, there was always that feeling — a low hum of wrongness. Of not quite fitting. Of something missing that I couldn't name.

And then one day I got my hands in the dirt.

Not elegantly. Not with intention or knowledge or any idea what I was doing. I have a photograph from my very first garden — me, whipper snipper in hand, attacking an overgrown patch of ground with more enthusiasm than skill. It was a pretty spectacular fail. But something happened in that moment that has never left me.

I realised that every tiny bit of food I could grow or forage was an act against a broken system I didn't believe in. That this — this small, practical, imperfect thing — was the most political and the most personal act I had ever made.

I have been learning ever since.

That is what The Feral Life is built on. Not expertise. Not perfection. The ongoing, joyful, sometimes chaotic practice of reclaiming what it means to be a woman. A mother. A human being with a body and instincts and ancient knowledge in her blood that no system can fully take away.

I am a self taught herbalist, forager and grower. A former herbal apothecary and organic store owner. A mother of three — including a newborn currently asleep on my chest. I live on a suburban block in Geelong that is more wild than tended and I would not have it any other way.

I do not have all the answers. I have a lot of questions, some fermenting experiments, a garden that is always a work in progress, and a deep unshakeable sense of purpose that I have never found anywhere else.

When I live this way — when I grow something, make something, forage something, understand something — I feel true. Love moves through me differently. Mother Earth is not a concept. She is home.

This Substack is for the women who recognise that feeling. Who are done waiting until they have the right property or the right knowledge or the right amount of time. Who understand that freedom is not a destination — it is a practice. Built one small act at a time.

Growing one thing. Making one thing. Questioning one thing. Choosing, in even the smallest way, to need the machine a little less.

It does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be pretty. It just has to be real.

What lives here:

— Herbs — their medicine, their magic, how to use them at home from your own garden or the weeds in your lawn

— Foraging, growing, fermenting, preserving — practical sovereign living for real women in real lives with real time constraints

— Mothering and birth — from love and not fear. Reclaiming the instincts and knowledge that belong to us

— The philosophy underneath all of it — what it means to live differently. Imperfectly. Joyfully. On purpose

Every tiny act makes a difference. Just start with one thing.

It might be a seed. It might be a weed you finally look up instead of pulling out. It might be a question you ask your midwife, or a jar you fill with apple scraps, or an afternoon you spend with your hands in the earth for no practical reason at all.

Start there. Everything else follows.

Welcome to The Feral Life. I am so glad you are here.

— Sarah