One person’s weed is another person’s medicine!

Food as medicine column

We attended a brilliant Wildflower Country Wines demo and tasting session above our shop this week. It was hosted by Siobhan Lavelle, a horticulturist from Dublin who moved to the Midlands to live in Coole Eco-Community in Ferbane.

Our favourite wine was made from dandelions using wild yeasts from an elderflower and meadowsweet wine she made last summer. It was absolutely delicious and I'd go so far as to say it was the nicest wine I've ever tasted. It was completely free from sulphites and chemicals, which meant we experienced no after-effects the next day whatsover!

Siobhan has been making these natural wines for 12 years and her passion for them was infectious, so much so that we've got all the gear ready to try making them this weekend. The flowers of the dandelions are used for wine but the roots can be dried and roasted as a coffee alternative and the leaves can be used in salads or even whizzed up in to a salad dressing, all incredibly nutritious.

The same day we attended the wine making session, I visited a friend who is a bee-keeper, we put on suits and checked out a couple of her hives, she was delighted to see they were dripping with honey and she too mentioned the humble dandelion and how it is the first food for the bees in the spring-time and how necessary they are to bee-keeping and bee health, and in turn the pollination of our food and our very survival! The next day I was driving in to Athlone and I spotted a man spraying weeds including dandelions with what was probably Roundup outside his house. It was such a contrast to the high praise I'd heard about them the previous day and I wondered if he had any idea how valuable these 'weeds' are to human and bee health.

I remember another bee-keeper telling me he lost five hives one year when his neighbour sprayed all the dandelions with Roundup. Imagine how devastating that must have been. The thing about herbicides like Roundup which contain the chemical glyphosate is that they destroy the bee's gut flora, therefore weakening their immunity and leaving them prone to infection and disease. The pharmaceutical approach is to treat the bees with insecticides which seems crazy to me, to treat an insect with a medication designed to kill another insect.

Old school bee-keepers shun this advice and prefer to build the bees immunity with herbs such as thyme as they've seen the medication weakens the queen, and she doesn't live as long as she should. In the same way, when our food is sprayed with chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides, our gut flora is damaged and our immunity is weakened leaving us prone to infection.

Is it crazy to think that something designed to kill other, smaller, living organisms might over time kill larger ones too? It emerged on to the market in the 1970s and since then cancer, autism and Alzheimers, which have all been linked to it, have sky-rocketed.

Glyphosate is currently banned in Sri Lanka and Bhutan with talk of other countries following suit. Wouldn’t it be great if this little green country of ours led the way in Europe! The best natural, non-toxic alternative to chemical weedkillers I have found is vinegar, available in 5 litre drums for €3.90 from Seery’s Cash & Carry. I have heard salt and even washing up and laundry liquids work too but I find vinegar the easiest to apply in between the cracks of my mum’s patio. They turn brown pretty much overnight and then are really easy to pull up or brush away.

Lynda McFarland is a local nutritional therapist, cheft and co-owner of Lowe. & Co Organic Grocery on O'Connell Street, Athlone along with her partner Eddie Lowe. Lowe & Co. opened in 2016 to provide nourishing chemical free food that Lynda's nutrition clients were finding it difficult to source locally, such as sourdough breads and other fermented foods, organic vegetables, meat and dairy. Lynda manages the shop and Eddie manages their small-holding where they grow vegetables and keep chickens and pigs, and hopefully this year, bees for honey. Lowe & Co. is open Thursday to Saturday from 9.30am to 5.30pm.