Long term readers and supporters may have noticed a shift on focus on this website.
Ligaya Garden Online is as much a diary and record of our own learning as much as it is a repository of practical knowledge and experience. That’s why we haven’t written about some of the things that the grand gardening gurus write about, we haven’t done them ourselves because they aren’t applicable to our garden and lives.
The folks who support and regularly read this website are relatively few in number when you compare them to the superstars of gardening but you’re a loyal bunch. We haven’t had too many followers leave and slowly, the comments and questions are building in number. That’s awesome too of course, interaction is what it’s all really about.
We have posted so much about gardening and growing food especially in a limited space, we’ve encouraged people to forage and look for bush tucker and have had a good degree of success in encouraging folks to do those things. But by now, we’ve covered most of what we do and I’m not into relentlessly repeating information in the guise of new posts in the way I see some sites doing.
Outside of website activities, I’ve held a number of successful workshops for several organisations and through them, have encouraged several hundred good folks to grow some of their own food and take up things like vertical gardening and even fermentation! That’s awesome! A blow against capitalism and a blow for self reliance in these times of accelerating collapse.
This year, we’ll be running practical, hands-on workshops on different topics from our place as we’ll. They’ll be mostly kitchen herbalism themed and Jelina is hoping be mentoring artists again as well. There’ll also be foraging trips and the always popular mushroom field trips too.
So, what’s the change I’m writing about? The world is changing though and health is becoming a huge issue. So many illnesses are popping out of the woodwork that it’s hard to keep up with them. So we want to work with that. Jelina and I actually met while studying in a natural therapies clinic in Manila, we ran a clinic jointly with some fellow students and even thought about running one here. Then I got very sick, pharmaceutically sick and I lost interest in it all. We started Ligaya Garden to supply ourselves with food to help the disability pension sized budget that we had. This website sprang from that, as we found that people wanted to learn about what we did and how we did it. Now health care is getting hard to get. I’m not even talking about quality health care, just general GP stuff. Specialists are rare, it’s almost impossible to get to see a psychologist or psychiatrist of late and there are none that I can find that bulk bill. I’m lucky to have been seeing one for many years but if you’re newly in need, it is so hard.
With the crazy rents and ever increasing food prices, folks are having to face the tough choices – medicine, rent or food? WOW, you expect this sort of thing in the US but in Oz?
So, I’m focusing on my herbalism and continuing to share what I know and learn about making remedies at home. There have always been herbal pages on Ligaya Garden Online but they’ve been more of background interest thing. So now, they’re all being overhauled with far more in-depth information and techniques for making and using your own remedies, all aimed at the kitchen herbalist, of course. I have to put in the compulsory disclaimer about seeing qualified practitioners or doctors if you are very sick. Good luck with that.
We’re hoping that we can share much of it with you. We even have a Facebook group now, where we examine the role of herbal medicine during this time of collapse. It’s called the Apocathary (I know it looks like Apothecary spelled wrong but it’s a portmanteau of that and Apocalypse). There’s a tab on our menu bar that will lead straight to that. It’s a very practical group that I hope will grow to a high standard and avoid all of the random Instagram video type advice and work heavily on the knowledge and experience of members.
We recently held a brief appeal to help us pay for the WordPress Premium theme that I like to use and folks came to the rescue. We raised almost enough in just a few weeks, so are so grateful it almost hurts. Athena and I will be emailing donors personally very shortly with our deepest thanks.
You may also notice reader support, donation and fundraising things posted throughout. That’s because, it’s getting expensive to run this place and site now and rather than pin folks down with memberships, subscriptions and all that, we’ve given the opportunity for you to share a little for what you find useful , a piece at a time. We thing it’s a much fairer way to go. That way, you’re not up for a slab of money in these, increasingly difficult times and can just slip a little our way if you feel that the info is useful.
There also is the option for regular, long term support – we’d be crazy not to keep a door open for that. Some folks have already taken up that opportunity to make a small, monthly donation to help keep things running.
So there we are, all of the old information on gardening, plants, energy efficiency, chooks etc will remain and grow but the focus is now on herbalism and natural remedies.
I hope you get lot out of it.
