Episode #61 of the Ground Shots Podcast features a conversation with Jill Trashley out of Asheville, North Carolina.
Earlier in the Spring, Jill and I met up in Asheville to distill some Lemon Balm together. First, we went to her friends’ house, down the road from hers, where we had permission to harvest Lemon Balm from their very abundant gardens right in the city. The Lemon Balm was in it’s prime. Jill comes to their house often to help in the gardens and harvest extra herbs to distill or to make medicine. Stepping into their yard, I thought for a moment that I was suddenly in Berkeley, California, where gardens and quirky folk abound, tucked into an urban weaving of lush flowering plants and treehouses, Redwoods and backyard nooks. But no, this was Asheville, and the treehouse was in a big healthy Eastern Hemlock tree, the carefully placed rock walls abound, the exposed dirt southern red, the hand built greenhouse off the back of the house full of desert plants one wouldn’t expect deep in Appalachia.
We gathered Lemon Balm by cutting bunches and dug up some young plants to transplant elsewhere. Lemon Balm tends to spread easily in some environments and Jill’s friends wanted us to take some away. I later transported some of these plants back to the land where I’m living for the summer and tucked them into an empty bed and wished them well.
We took our harvest back to Jill’s house, where we had some mid-day Mertails drinks. (Mertails are elixirs that can be used as mixers instead of alcohol, or with alcohol if you desire, Jill talks more about this company she co-owns on the podcast) I felt so good after having one of these, as my drink was very hydrating on what was a hot day.
We started then setting up the copper still Jill owns and got it heating up to prepare for distilling the Lemon Balm into hydrosol. In the time while we were waiting for the still to heat up, we sat down to chat about some of Jill’s projects over the years, including working with trash disposal at festivals, starting a mobile elixir bar, living on the road with intention and more.
Over the past decade Jillian's foundations in entrepreneurship, herbalism & permaculture have birthed a path of neo-nomadism across the Americas. She seasonally visits biodiverse regions woven into her festival & event schedule to rewild herself a with a diet primarily of locally cultivated and wildcrafted foods, mountain spring water and fresh air. This lifestyle feeds her passions as she is nourished through deepening connections with dynamic folks and plant allies, inviting all into the kitchen for a demonstration, mindful consumption and play. Her commitment to visiting the same landscapes year after year allows her to witness and appreciate their evolution over time.
Year round you can find her at festivals tending bar with The NOHM Elixir Bar, curating nourishing meal plans for retreats and making herbal medicine for The MerTails elixir line. The plate and the cup are her canvas. She believes food is medicine. That our relationship with food and drink can be creative and collectively free from harsh chemicals, mass production, and factory farm abuse. She accepts The harsh reality that we are living through a global food crisis and so she often asks questions to the community like; If we are what we eat, why are we so comfortable consuming in a toxic manner only for a sense of convenience? Or, where does our waste actually go when it leaves our hands to circulate through a fractured system of waste management? Jillian is passionate about decentralizing and divesting her dependence on modern day supply and demand cycles and trends, rooting them back into local bioregions with her own hands. She sparks conversations about conscious consumption to expose the accessibility we truly have to living in sync with each other and our natural surroundings one sip or bite at a time.
Founder of The NOHM Collective and The MerTails Elixirs, Jillian focuses on collaboration and cooperative action. Based in the Appalachian bioregion in Asheville, NC and as a nomad to biodiverse lands like Costa Rica, Northern California and Southern Arizona, she has studied under Sarah Wu of Ecology Academy & Village Witches, CoreyPine Shane of Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine, Ryan Milt of Asheville Wild Foods, Andrew Snavely of Dobra Tea, Starhawk of Earth Activists Organization, Ryan Rising of Permaculture Action Network, Tucson Watershed Management Group and Herbal Academy Online. She is certified in herbalism with a focus in medicine making, culinary arts and small batch product manufacturing as well as permaculture design with a focus in waste diversion, earth works and rainwater harvesting.
In this episode with Jill, we talk about:
How Jill used art as a medium to communicate about waste stream issues at festivals, and how she first got into that work
How creating spaces that invite open-ness to new ideas can be an important social experiment
How the NOHM elixir bar and collective started, and how dealing with the waste stream and trash is integrated into that experience
The need for artists in every part of our culture
Some of the herbs and plant-based elixirs used in NOHM elixir bar drinks, concoctions and the intention behind connecting to where these plants are sourced
Jill’s Mertails project
The joy of local honey!
The pros and cons of nomadic business
What is wild in an urban environment?
A field recording of distilling Lemon Balm hydrosol with Jill and Justin of Hawthorn Rising Apothecary on Jill’s porch in West Asheville
Some info on distilling herbs
In this episode with Jill, we talk about:
How Jill used art as a medium to communicate about waste stream issues at festivals, and how she first got into that work
How creating spaces that invite open-ness to new ideas can be an important social experiment
How the NOHM elixir bar and collective started, and how dealing with the waste stream and trash is integrated into that experience
The need for artists in every part of our culture
Some of the herbs and plant-based elixirs used in NOHM elixir bar drinks, concoctions and the intention behind connecting to where these plants are sourced
Jill’s Mertails project
The joy of local honey!
The pros and cons of nomadic business
What is wild in an urban environment?
A field recording of distilling Lemon Balm hydrosol with Jill and Justin of Hawthorn Rising Apothecary on Jill’s porch in West Asheville
Some info on distilling herbs
