Deep resilience: healing through herbal medicine, farming, and ancestral memory
Jovan Sage is a farmer, chef, community organizer, entrepreneur, herbalist, doula, and wellness coach. Drawing on the knowledge of her West African and Indigenous ancestors, she is deeply engaged in healing on many levels–the soil, the body, communities caught up in the global pandemic, race relations–through deeply reciprocal relationships with the land and one another.
Find out more about her work at Alchemist Jovan and Sage’s Larder.
Show Notes:
2’50 Jovan’s path to agriculture and regeneration
4’25 connection between people and soil, reciprocal relationships
6’03 facing history, healing our land and ourselves
7’05 finding shared narratives is key to healing
7’40 defensiveness about racial history
8’44 enslaved Africans provided not just free labor but vast agricultural knowledge
9’07 West Africans were great rice cultivators
9’51 Africans were healers, midwives, cooks and many other contributors to US society
11’40 connecting with slave ancestors and their roles in their communities
13’24 deepening her relationship to food in New York City
18’17 how she found herself in Georgia
18’50 getting the farm through hurricanes in Georgia
23’00 loss of animals, loss of business
27’32 parallels between dealing with hurricanes and pandemics
28’35 positive changes coming from catastrophe
30’24 food system crumbled so quickly, so much food was wasted, distribution system failed
32’09 disrupting the schedules of ranchers and cattle growth cycles
33’50 regeneration and listening
36’24 using ag to heal race relations
More Episodes
Episode 164 – From Suburban Chicago to Rural Montana: the Journey of a Bison Rancher
From Suburban Chicago to Rural Montana: the Journey of a Bison Rancher Matt Skoglund was an attorney with a conservation non-profit, but over time was drawn to work on the land. With no prior agrarian experience he started a successful bison ranch using regenerative...
Episode 163 – A Matter of Conscience: Will Harris on Regenerating an Industrial Ranch
A Matter of Conscience: Will Harris on Regenerating an Industrial Ranch In his new book, Will Harris describes the moment when he saw that his industrial ranch was cruel to animals and bad for the land. Before he'd ever heard the phrase "regenerative grazing" he...
Episode 162 – The Robber Barons of Today’s Food Industries
The Robber Barons of Today's Food Industries Iowan Austin Frerick saw his home state transform from a world of farms to one of toxic factory food and hollowed out rural communities. Yet he offers optimism and real solutions. Austin Frerick grew up in Iowa, which in...