Join us in this chat with Nick Pratt , discussing Agroforestry, Fruit Tree Medicine & Building Resilience.
What if the most medicinal part of your fruit tree isn't the fruit at all, but the leaf you've been pruning and composting? In this episode, Tatiana Dawn sit down with permaculture and agroecology educator Nick Pratt to explore the deep, often-overlooked connection between food and medicine.
Nick Pratt (@nicholasisbarefoot) is a former chef turned permaculture and agroforestry educator. After years working in high-end commercial kitchens, Nick went searching for a deeper understanding of where food actually comes from — a journey that took him through monoculture farms in Australia and eventually to a small indigenous village in Peru, where he witnessed a culture that never separated food from medicine. That experience reshaped the way he sees every plant he grows today.
In this conversation, we explore the blurry, often-ignored line between food and medicine — and why food has been reduced further and further until most people no longer recognise a beetroot plant when they see one. We dig into the difference between permaculture and agroforestry, Nick's seed-bank garden and his use of comfrey and yarrow for healing balms, and the surprising medicinal power hiding in everyday fruit trees — mulberry, blueberry, strawberry, pomegranate, soursop — much of it concentrated in the leaves rather than the fruit. We also talk about Nick's upcoming e-book Orchard Apothecary, and dive deep into resilience: not the lone-wolf, fully-self-sufficient kind, but the community-rooted kind that gets tested in floods, lockdowns, and supply chain shocks.
Nick shares tangible, doable first steps for anyone wanting to start — even from a balcony — and reflects on what it means to build a culture of connection over consumption, especially as a father raising a daughter in it.
SHOW NOTES
You can connect with Nick on Instagram @nicholasisbarefoot here, and find his current balms and plant offerings via his social media while his online shop is being built. You can email Nick here: Nicholasisbarefoot@gmail.com
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The intro and outro song is "Sing for the Earth" and was kindly donated by Chad Wilkins. You can find Chad's music here and here.
