Wildcrafting Medicinal Plants in Haliburton Ontario

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Wildcrafting is the evil twin brother of agroforestry. What that means is that while the word agroforestry communicates a sense of intelligent design in the efficient cultivation of forest products, the word wildcrafting implies trespassing and thieving away natural occurring commodities from an absentee landowner, and nature.

The types of all natural material commonly sold on eBay include driftwood, flowers, feathers, mosses, mushrooms, ferns, grains, quills, clay, wicker, burls, seaweed, nuts, herbs, dried berries, seeds, cones, bark, saps, roots, rocks, fossils, shells, dye, antlers, leather, teeth, fur, bones especially skulls.

Wildcrafting at its worst is definitely not cool, because if everyone was a ‘nature merchant’ we wouldn’t have much wild country to admire. But then again, if that were the case, the demand for natural products would plummet… right now our civilization has just innovated cheap and easy access to global markets and people are waking up to the reality that a hiking trip in some remote part of the world could be subsidized by collecting some of the more valuable natural occurring indigenous commodities. It’s like going to Hawaii and scuba diving for collectible seashells, or digging Opal in Australia, or pearl diving in the Caribbean Sea. Indeed sometimes the story of how the item was acquired makes it valuable.

A new trend in holistic medicine combined with shopping online has created a huge demand for natural herbal products. While most of the ingredients are cultivated, some of the components are harvested from nature. Companies like Neal’s Yard Remedies are very successful at promoting their all natural ingredients in the labels of the products. This new age drug firm is part of a larger trend that will see the rise of the natural medicine clinic and holistic practices supplementing our hospitals and pharmacies.

My first Ontario wildcrafting adventure was in the company of the ‘mad aromatherapist’ and his girlfriend an expressive arts therapist and they were seeking wild plants from which to extract essential oil. He’d fashioned a workshop in his garage that included a cold press and homemade distillation apparatus.

We drove the Haliburton hills seeking a special type of white cedar tree ‘Thuja occidentalis’ which some folks call Arbor vitae. We collected two garage bags full of green leaves / fronds or whatever you call the cedar tree leaves, and brown dead material as well. The mad aromatherapist was eager to extract oil of white cedar from dried fronds, which he claims is a composite of six other substances including pinene, fenchone, thujone, and carvone. Thuja oil is a very powerful and poisonous substance that once ended the life of a young woman who ingested only sixteen drops.

On that afternoon we also hunted for wild Comfrey, Elder Flowers and Elder Berries, Solomon Seal, St John’s Wort, White Oak Bark and Yarrow flowers All of these plant species have some medicinal properties, and most can be cured or somehow processed and sold online.

The secret to success here is to specialize. Become the category expert. Smojoe sells raw bee propolis he collects from the empty honey supers (after the honey is extracted from the wax comb frames inside) in Ontario Canada, and the information presented on his blog is one reason why he’s so findable in search engines. He's the expert.

Wildcrafting, like berry picking, beach combing and Christmas tree hunting is another way to share time with your family and friends in the great outdoors. Thanks to the internet it’s now possible to leverage your knowledge and love of nature for eBay rewards.

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Photos

Picking Herbs in the Woods
This is myself and Gentleman Jim picking herbs and flowers in the woods deep in the Haliburton hills.