Kindred Spirits & Botanicals

11/15/2025

Hey loves! We're out here at The Providence Market from 9 am to 2 pm today.

Our lavender syrup is selling so fast! Come get some before we sell out! 🪻

We also have your favorite tallow facial moisturizers, whipped tallow butters, deodorant, face masks, make-up remover, lip gloss, lip balm, and blemish-fighting face wash!

Can't wait to see y'all!! 🙌🌿🌹💖

11/10/2025

Thank you to everyone who came to see us during Scottsboro Renaissance Faire this past weekend! It was a wild weekend, and we had a lot of fun! We can't wait to come back and do it all over again next year!

Up next is another series with The Providence Market! See y'all Thursday from 4 pm to 9 pm!

11/09/2025

You can see me and Mama Kat's Herbal for about 2 seconds in the middle! Today was so much fun!!! We can't wait to rejoin everyone tomorrow for Scottsboro Renaissance Faire!!! 😂✨🌿🌹✨🗡️🍗

11/02/2025

💖💚👻🕯️

Whether you are religious or not, I’ve always liked All Souls’ Day as it one of those days in the year where you remember the dead.

Growing up, my mother and grandmother always lit candles on this night for their relations who had passed on. Now I do it and it’s not a big load to carry. In fact I like doing it as it creates a time for you to think and remember.

I also like the private aspect where you do it your own home. I usually light a candle outside and inside. In the past my grandmother would light a little fire, leave the door open and leave a bowl of water and a towel for the souls to wash themselves. Later in life they used a bucket of sand and the candles were stuck into it and let burn out.

I know some people will still leave out food and drink and welcome the dead back into their lives. We keep our dead close in Ireland, especially on this night.

You could be at worse.

Text: Michael Fortune

11/02/2025

💖🇮🇪👻

Here’s a practice/warning I got from my late mother and grandmother regarding tonight. In fact - I heard it from a woman from Mayo yesterday and also heard it in Offaly, Donegal, Dublin, Tipperary and rural Newfoundland over the years.

The story goes that on All Souls’ Night (2nd of Nov) you’d never throw out water as they believed the souls were walking the earth and you’d “drown them” with the water. In fact they’d be warned “that the water would come back in your face”.

They grew up in houses without running water or sinks so the basin of dishwater would be emptied normally out in the yard, however not on this night. My poor old mother had a little verse that went with it where if they did throw out water they’d warn the souls and say “Huggada Huggada Taypot Jack” while the woman from Mayo (Mary Caulfield) told me yesterday her verse was Chugaibh chugaibh uisce salach.

Text: Michael Fortune

11/02/2025

😉😉😉

Here was a Halloween ritual that was recorded by Patrick Kennedy near Ballindaggin here in County Wexford around 1860. 

Here’s the account.

“They broke up a cake into several parts, and every one took a bit in his hand, and when they were before the door in a line, the first flung his piece against the door and cried out, Hunger go away to the Sassenach till this night twelvemonth'; the next person did the same, and so on to the last.”

The reference to twelvemonth month highlights how the 1st of November was seen as the start of the year in some people eyes. Great account and I did it myself last night but left the poor old ‘Sassenach’ out of it in this instance. Mind you you could understand the sentiment back in 1860s Ireland and wishing hunger on them rather than us.

Text: Michael Fortune

11/02/2025

Someone today asked me about learning herbalism. If you have the ability to travel to Southern Michigan, I cannot recommend Jim McDonald enough. He's an amazing herbalist. His advice is sound, science-based, and legitimate. It's not only rooted in evidence, it is also rooted in his lived experiences. This is one of the paths I would recommend to people when they come to me and ask me where they should go to follow real herbalism. 💖

10/31/2025

10/31/2025

Irish craft. 💖

One of the houses I called to this evening had two of these on the go - two fresh bracks. Nothing like the taste and was reminded of the account collected by folklorist Patrick Kennedy here in the 1860s where he witnessed young lads on Halloween night go out into the yard with some of brack in their hands and throw it at the door and say these words “Hunger go away to the Sassenach till this night twelvemonth". And that was it - banishing hunger from the door and away over to the English instead. Powerful little account and gorgeous brack too.

Text: Michael Fortune

10/31/2025

This is all true. There was only one woman ever convicted of being a witch in Ireland.

Witch burnings in witch trials did happen, but they are endemic to Scotland and England thanks to King James.

10/31/2025