environment

Karine Polwart “Wild Food and Medicine”

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

WILD FOOD AND MEDICINE

The Equinox has just passed and the turn is palpable here in Pathhead, thank goodness. Don’t get me wrong, I love the hunker down creep into winter dark but by this point in the year, I’m craving birdsong and blossom and light.

I’m marking this Spring with some fresh learning via Grassroots Remedies, an Edinburgh and Glasgow based workers’ cooperative which is rekindling the tradition of herbal community healthcare. Or, as they put it: Folk Medicine for All Folk! That’s folky enough for me.

One of my favourite late summer and autumn season pursuits is gathering fruit. I make elderberry syrup (I’m down to my last bottle in the fridge now) and sloe gin and I boil up jellies and other concoctions using brambles, crabapples, haws, hips, rowans and sea buckthorn. I love it, but it requires a degree of seasonal awareness and timekeeping organisation that sometimes escapes me. I miss the raspberries every year. And beyond the summer and autumn harvest, I always mean to do something with the wild leek and garlic, the wood sorrel and the dandelions.

I’m enrolled on Wild Things: A Year of Wild Food and Medicine. And I’ve signed up for a series of local Edinburgh based herb walks that begin this Friday. I’ve put all the dates in my diary, and carved out some learning time, which feels great.

Plant Medicine has a long history and much if it is bound up with the knowledge and of care and women whose contributions have largely been erased from history. But there’s a striking link to one of Edinburgh’s most beloved institutions too.


The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh was founded in the grounds of Holyrood House in 1670, by Robert Sibbald and Andrew Balfour, two of the leading physicians – and botanists – of the era. It was designed as a ‘Physic Garden’, a collection of fresh plants for medical prescription and for the teaching of botany to medical students. Sibbald was inaugural Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, but he was also keen to ensure that plant knowledge was not confined to the privileged.

In 1699, in response to ‘The Ill Years’, a series of successive crop failures and widespread hunger across Scotland, he published ‘Provision For The Poor in Time of Dearth or Scarcity’, a 24-page plant field guide to foraging. It is subtitled ‘Where There is an Account of Such Food as May be Easily Gotten when Corns are Scarce, Or Unfit for Use: and of Such Meats as May be Used when the Ordinary Provisions Fail Or are Very Dear’.

The connection between plants and health has been somewhat breached by the industrialisation and compartmentalisation of modern medicine. I’m deeply grateful for the modern NHS that we have. But I’m fearful too. We’re in a period of history when we, as ordinary people, will need more knowledge and agency around how to look after ourselves and each other. And whilst we’ll still need specialist expertise and care, for those that can access it, we’ll need much more than that too. And we’ll need to share what we know, and what we have.
SPRING

Next month, I’m hoping to do a day of solo filming with the brilliant Ormiston-based videographer Sandy Butler. Let’s just say my own house is not quite for this purpose right now! So, I’m reaching out to folks locally in Midlothian, East Lothian or north Borders who might be willing to host me for a day in a spacious, quiet, bright living room or studio space in exchange for a bespoke wee household song offering and two free tickets to my next Edinburgh show (which will be in November – more on that next time).

If you’re free during the day on April 21st, all you’d need to do is take some phone snaps of your room to give an indication of size and feel and let me know where you are!

 

TOUR DATES

Thanks so much to everyone who’s bought tickets for my solo tour south of the border in June. Shoreham is sold out already and several dates are shifting towards limited tickets. So please don’t leave it too late!

I’ll also be playing three dates with Dave Milligan – What A Wonderful World Festival in Alnwick in June, and Milton Keynes International Festival and Yn Chruinnaght Celtic Gathering on the Isle Of Man in July.

Karine Polwart “Enough is Enough”

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

This piece of music has been composed with the express purpose of inviting choirs, street bands and community groups to learn and perform it, and join an exciting, collective musical response to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) which will be held in Glasgow in November 2021.

Want to get involved? Express interest & sign up for more info at http://oimusica.co.uk/cop26/ We extend the invite far and wide, to any music collective interested in joining the global call for swift action on climate justice and a shift to an economic model that values collective wellbeing above relentless economic growth.

This piece is a co-creation between Karine Polwart, Oi Musica & The Soundhouse Choir Music –

Song and lyrics by Karine Polwart
Choral arrangement / additional lyrics by Heather MacLeod
Brass and Percussion arrangements by Marcus Britton & Olivia Furness Produced by Marty Hailey @ Metro 13 Music, Edinburgh

Out of Doors – A Robert Burns Special

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Mark Stephen and Euan McIlwraith with a tribute to our national bard.

Euan and Mark speak to Des Thompson, one of the specialist advisors to the Grouse Moor Review Group about the group’s report and what the licensing of grouse moors might practically involve.

As we gear up to the opening of the River Dee for salmon fishing Euan hears about plans for the celebrations to mark the event. What we plant in our gardens can impact the wildlife that makes its home.

Euan finds out about the types of wildflowers we should be growing to encourage insects and birdlife. And as Saturday marks Burns Night Mark and Euan investigate what goes in to making the ‘Great chieftain o the puddin’-race’ with Dumfries butcher Stuart Houston.

And after 7 o’clock we focus entirely on Robert Burns and in particularly his time in the Dumfries area. In 1788 Burns moved to Ellisland Farm and built a house that he stayed in until 1791.

Mark and Euan take a look around and hear about what Ellisland would have been like in Burns’ day and which of his poems and songs were composed there. Burns was keen on nature and wrote a lot about the wildlife he encountered while farming at Ellisland.

Chris Rollie is an ornithologist, conservationist and Burns enthusiast who tells us all about Burns and his connection with nature.

The Globe Inn in Dumfries was a favourite haunt of Burns during his time at Ellisland and afterwards when he moved to the town. Mark and Euan get a tour from former landlady Maureen McKerrow whose family have a long connection with the pub.

And we end our programme at the Burns mausoleum in Dumfries, the resting place of the poet and his wife Jean Armour

Listen to this program at BBC Scotland: Out of Doors – A Robert Burns Special – BBC Sounds