You are what you eat. That phrase has guided Dr. Casey Carr’s work for the last decade. She’s a licensed naturopathic medical doctor who’s been practicing as a primary care physician in Coeur d'Alene for the past few years.
But her passion for grounded, holistic health extends beyond the clinic. She likes to be close to where she thinks health starts – the soil. And she wants to invite others to learn about how that soil affects their everyday lives.
CARR: “I would say, from me as a primary care physician that's like running labs on people, one of the main complaints I see is fatigue—'I'm so tired. I can't make it through the day, My energy isn't what it used to be.' And so I'll run certain labs on them, like very basic ones first. But then, if you run B12 and folate, which are sort of the best like vitamin labs that we can run, a lot of people are low. … So that's when I've come around to the sense of it's like, 'Oh, wow, like soil health, really, if we are what we eat and what we eat is coming from the soil, really our micronutrient health and the amount of trace minerals, just general minerals, vitamins, polyphenols and antioxidants are really only as strong as what's in the soil—because that's all that the plants can pick up.”
Throughout the growing season, Carr hosts events throughout the Inland Northwest she calls “Food as Farmacy”– that’s heavy emphasis on “farm” with an “f.”
She partners with local farmers and ranchers who are doing their best to provide good food – what Carr calls the body’s first medicine.
CARR: “We've got sage biscuits on the menu, so if you wanna just take a leaf and smell it and interact with it. It's a wonderful culinary herb, but we think about you know herbs that we cook with all the time—sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano—they're probably so entrenched in recipes because they actually have a really important use other than just flavor.”
On a Saturday in September, we’re at Quillisascut Farm in Rice, Washington. Rick and Lora Lea Misterly have been homesteading on this land since the 1980s. With 40-ish acres on the edge of Stevens County, the Misterlys and their goats have made a name for themselves among culinary students, cheesemongers, farmers, writers and others trying to relearn the art of living with the land.
RICK: “Well, right away we gravitated towards this rocky ridge that we live on and we knew we would have to start building the soil up. And so from the very beginning we brought goats here and they’ve provided us with all the fertility we’ve needed.”
That’s Rick, touring a Food as Farmacy group around the acreage. Most of his work revolves around creating good dirt out of goat manure and kitchen scraps.
RICK: “All these raised beds are pretty much soil that we've created ourselves through the through the composting process. The predominant soil on this ridge is just clay with rocks cemented into it. And so we've been building up the soil in our garden, which is a half acre, fenced in for the last 40—our first our first garden here was 1982.”
At Quillisascut, you’re able to see the complete cycle – compost to dirt, dirt to plants, plants to food, and food back to compost again. It’s easier to visualize how richer dirt means richer food.
At an abundant table of roasted veggies, fresh cheese, stewed meat and fresh biscuits, it’s easier to taste it, too.
CARR: “Our body, when you look at all of the different enzymatic processes, I mean, it requires, you know, copper, iron, B12, molybdenum—all these different minerals. If our soil doesn't have it, if we're not eating it, how are we getting it? So there's all these small connections that I feel like we don't really—we have an understanding of, but we may not have a full appreciation of. And for me, when I think about when I felt the best it's been while working on farms and being like, 'Oh, this is what vital food tastes like.'”
There’s another aspect of "food as farmacy" at Quillisascut.
CARR: “It's very fun on Rick and Lora Lea's property because everywhere you turn I see something medicinal.”
Carr isn’t out to eradicate pharmaceuticals. But she does want to help people learn about compounds in plants and herbs that can have powerful effects.
CARR: “This is yarrow. Its Latin name is achilia millefolium. So as you can imagine with Achilles the warrior, Achilles' heel, this has some amazing lore behind it, this plant. And this is this is a healer's plant. It's one of the most powerful vulnerary, which means healing herbs and also styptic which means it stops bleeding. As an example, I had a friend this past summer. He went down on his bicycle without a helmet. And to take him to the emergency room late at night and his wife has texted me next day. He got staples in his head and she's like, 'Casey, the bleeding isn't stopping.' and I said 'Well, go get some yarrow and put it in a tincture or get your tincture or make a poultice and put that on top and see if it'll stop the bleeding.' She texted me it stopped the bleeding within 10 minutes.”
Common herbs have uncommon properties. Carr says thyme can help open up the lungs, and rosemary can help memory.
CARR: “The Greek scholars that you see with, you know, those like golden laurels. That's actually rosemary. Because they wanted the rosemary to be right next to their olfactory glands to open everything up to open up their brain pathways essentially and have an increased blood flow.”
Carr knows that health is complicated and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. But she thinks learning from the ground up is a good way to start.
CARR: “To me it’s really exciting. You know, it's like things that we may be passed by every day actually have a use and they're here for a reason and maybe it's just the remembering of, What can we use it for? What can we do with it?”
If you’re interested in learning more, visit foodasfarmacy.com where you can register for another Food as Farmacy event this October.
