Hydrosols

Sustainably Wild-Crafted and Tested For Chemical Contaminants

If you can't find organic hydrosols and essential oils, the next-best choice is those that are sustainably  wild-crafted. Sustainable means that species can withstand harvesting and still proliferate. It does not mean we take all we can see of a species without thinking; remember the dodo! The Canadian distillers with whom I work extensively on hydrosols hire only extremely skilled pickers, people who live on and with the land, to harvest their wild plants. Unskilled and cheap labor would not only pick any old plant but pick without regard to the health of the individual plant and the plant community.

As with some animals, there is a critical mass to plant populations, and when the population falls to a certain point, it will become extinct. The Canadian distillers also discovered that although branches from trees felled for timber could be used in distilling,  the branches needed to be cut by hand, not ripped from the trunk by the huge stripping machines. The logging industry always wasted the branches, but the oil is unusable for therapy unless  some individual care has been applied to the harvest. Mechanical stripping strips the therapeutic properties from the plant and also introduces pollutants such as lubricants  from the machinery. There is more to wild crafting that meets the eye.

Nature's balance is already under threat from pollution, destruction of biospheres like the rain forest and wetlands, destruction of natural biodiversity , genetically altered plant material that kills insects, and who knows what else. If we truly wish to sustain the balance while harvesting from the wild, it is indeed a craft that we must practice. Old friends of mine who have made a sustainable business from wild-crafting are owners of the Algonquin Tea Company.

They express what we feel.
Wild-Crafters as Emissaries for Nature
We feel privileged to be wild-crafters. Jokingly, we would say we're priest and priestess, bring forth the healing spirit of the goddess Gaia for the people. Part of our inheritance, as keepers of the earth faith, is the responsibility to reciprocate. These days, with the dramatic increase in development, resource extraction, pollution, and climate change, it is debatable whether picking wild plants for commercial use should be legal.

Here we make the practical and ethical  distinction between wild-crafting and simply harvesting from the wilderness. The tradition of wild-crafting may be defined by two interlaced practices. The first movement involves catching a surplus from the land's perennial rides of abundance.The other act is to aid the earth's spontaneous regenerative cycles. In the harvest/regenerative relationship we must know when to go forward  and when to back off: the ancient and reciprocal relationship of wild-crafting draws from, and gives to, the land.

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of wild-crafting  is that it provides our huge urban family with the healing essence of the natural word. A less obvious part of the relationship is that in harvesting plants from wild areas  we give " value" to these areas, ultimately helping to ensure the preservation of these scared places.
Another, perhaps even more subtle but essential, aspect of traditional wild-crafting is that it perpetuates and preserves our primal relationship with the healing deities of the plants and land. In working with a place and its plants, we reproduce the original healing experience. From this perspective, the aromatherapy tradition owes its healing abilities to our ancestral/primordial relationship with the land and its plant expressions of healing and regenerative energy.

As humanity's gift and purpose may lie in our consciousness and role  as earth stewards, the gift and purpose of the plant people is the healing and regeneration of the earth and all her children. As we reenter this circle of relations by using the harvested plant, we can experience  the openness of desert sage, the comforting rush of a rich pine or eucalyptus forest, or the sweet, mysterious musk of pond lilies in summer bloom.

In the use of plant essences we evoke the earth's healing forces. In the traditional act of harvesting, we consummate our relationship with the plant. Wild-crafting is an art of sensitivity, care, and knowledge older than "agriculture ". These practice, which are still being carried on by native people in remote areas, are based on an environmental ethic of give-and-take.

 When we take from the land, it must be gently and reasonably; then we must give back, so the land can regenerate for future generations of life. To "take reasonably" we must be guided by our common sense  and not greed. Fir example, if we find a plot of ginseng or goldenseal and know it takes three to ten years to grow roots of harvestable size, then reason tells us that at the very most, if the plot seems healthy and productive, we may take as much  as one in three  or as little as one in ten plants per year, depending on the rate of regeneration.

Each plant in each case will dictate what should be taken. With some plants like comfrey or mint, we may be able to harvest up to half the above-ground growth four to twelve times per year, or nine out of ten plants ( always leaving ten per cent for seed).

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Reference: Hydrosols The Next Aromatherapy / Suzanne Catty