Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

“The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start from nature, with an open mind.”
— Paracelsus.

Recently I was introduced to D’Coda of the Ozark Herbal Academy near Eureka Springs, Arkansas. She says her name “dacoda” and many people say it sounds like the state name Dakota.  She is a  herbalist and teacher who maintains an enormous online database of herbal medicine information.  It has more than 29,000 entries covering herbs, their preparation, diseases and conditions, aspects of human anatomy, and information about healing.  The database links to over 500,000 articles giving even more details.  D’Coda keeps the database up to date every day.

Since our first meeting a few weeks back, I’ve begun developing a project plan for dramatically expanding the Academy to include several new buildings on the 35-acre property where it is now located.  The property belongs to and is managed by Michael Waters, who has considerable knowledge of plants and herbal preparation.

Formerly a goat farm, the property has a home, water well, septic, sheds for animals, a large barn, and a few other structures.  It also has springs and runs up the lower part of a mountain from the intersection of two roads, one of which is paved. It is provided at the front of the property with electric power from the cooperative electric utility.  It is about two miles from US Highway 62 and about 7 miles by roads to Eureka Springs, closer if you have an air car, which few persons do. Yet.

Expansion

The plan, in brief, is to raise about $500,000 through a 501c3 non-profit to upgrade computer systems, build a small video production studio, build a library with room for a few thousand books, build a classroom building, and build a storm shelter where herbal preparations can be made.  In the budget is a  good bit of money for solar panels and off-grid systems. 

Currently the Ozark Herbal Academy sells subscriptions to the online database for $15/month or $100 per year (which is an $80 savings over paying month to month).  Online classes will start again soon.  There is also a Youtube channel which we plan to mirror on other systems like LBRY and BitChute soon.

We expect to build the buildings out of aircrete domes.  These domes employ a somewhat new building technique of foamed concrete blocks.  It makes for a very sturdy, wind resistant, well-insulated structure.  The dome structure in particular is very wind resistant. We do get storms here in Arkansas, including storms that come in from the Gulf of Mexico where hurricanes are a seasonal event every year, and including tornadoes that are found in all counties in the USA.

The intention of the Academy is to teach healing.  There is not a certification programme, there is no “master herbalist” document to frame and put on your wall for visitors to ignore.  After all, it may take seven life times to master herbalism.  Instead, we encourage a more humble approach, that of the life-long learner.  Just as medical practitioners refer to their businesses as a “medical practice” we believe that none are expert, all are learning through practice.

 

D’Coda’s Story

Her story in her own words is told on the Academy web site, and is well worth reading. In brief, she was diagnosed at age 5 with rheumatic heart disease.  Doctors had no answers, but her grandmother and great grandmother did.  These family members were “Ozark Grannywomen” which is a term that describes herbalists in our region.  They used plants to heal D’Coda’s heart. The doctors were puzzled.

This situation of having a medical diagnosis that was cured by natural healing came up for D’Coda again and again.  Doctors who asserted a condition was incurable were surprised repeatedly. So when a doctor says a condition is incurable, perhaps what they mean is that they lack the power to heal.  It turns out that healing comes from within ourselves.  Your body has amazing healing powers.  Herbal preparations can help support your body and spirit in the healing process.

D’Coda had a considerable career as an educator including with Montessori technique.  In 1998, she went into the remote wilderness to learn from nature.  She spent ten years living in the Hurricane Creek Wilderness Preserve in the Arkansas Ozark mountains, the only person on15,000 acres.  There were no roads, no phone service, it was totally off grid.

It was in the wilderness that she was connected with Kent Bonar, who is known as the “John Muir of the Ozarks.”  They soon started teaching together for at a primitive skills school.  Topics included herbal medicine, plant identification, and food foraging.  D’Coda left the wilderness in 2009 but continued living in very rural and wild areas.  Students came from various states nearby and they asked her to teach online as well.

Volunteers including many Arkansas plant loving people support D’Coda in her work.  That’s how the Ozark Herbal Academy got started.  With online teaching came the online database, which has been a work in progress for over fifteen years and is destined to continue into the future.  If you’ve attended festivals such as Herbalismo or Moonflower you may have had the opportunity to meet D’Coda or learn of her from others who have.

Present Day

You are probably aware of a widespread epidemic of central governments engaging in tyranny.  They are doing so, this time, under the guise of responding to a crisis in health care.  In considering their actions, you may wish to wonder why preventing people from travel, discouraging group gatherings, severely censoring online communications, and forcing the inoculation of hundreds of millions of people with experimental concoctions are actions likely to improve health.  You don’t need me to tell you how many of your freedoms are being violated by these various actions.

What you may need, though, is a plan for your future. Where can you go to get help with your health care if you aren’t allowed to enter a hospital, or are required to take a dangerous inoculation to get in? We mean to make places available here in the Ozarks, including our Academy near Eureka Springs, where you can get help. We also want to work with groups all over the world who need information and access to the database so they can help peopled where they are. to get help with your health care if you aren’t allowed to enter a hospital, or are required to take a dangerous inoculation to get in?  We mean to make places available here in the Ozarks, including our Academy near Eureka Springs, where you can get help.  We also want to work with groups all over the world who need information and access to the database so they can help peopled where they are.

You can help by contacting me about donating to our work.

 

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, and freedom activist. He has been living in the Ozark Mountains since November 2020.  His family comes, in part, from a farm near St. James, Missouri in the Ozarks.  You can find information about him at FreedomLandDAO.com EldarCapital.com and Twitter.com/planetaryjim as well as elsewhere.  Email him for his phone number if you need to connect. [email protected]