The Wildbiome Project - Follow-up

Have you ever wondered what a drastic change in your diet could do to your system? In the summer of 2025 Ilse Donker ate only wild foraged food for three months. She did this in the context of the Wildbiome Project. This project, set up by Monica Wilde in the UK, investigates the effects on the gut microbiome of eating exclusively foraged food for an extended period. 

The official results of the project are still being processed, but in this conversation with host Jess Shaw Ilse gives us a fascinating insight into the effects the experiment had on her sense of wellbeing. 

Transcript

You're listening to the EXARC Show run by EXARC, the International Society for Experimental Archaeology, Open-Air Museums, Ancient and Traditional Technology and Heritage Interpretation.

Jess: Hello and welcome to the EXARC Show. My name is Jess Shaw, and today I'm joined by Ilse Donker to discuss her experience taking part in the Wildbiome Project. Ilse Donker is a skill sharing instructor, artist, foraging guide, forest school leader, and works as Stone Age living history interpreter. We heard from Ilse before when she took part in a previous episode called ‘NFDI4Objects and the Wildbiome Project’. Thank you so much for joining us today. As a reminder to our listeners: what is the Wildbiome Project?

Ilse: The Wildbiome Project is a project that Monica Wilde started. She did one year of eating only wild foraged food and she wrote a book about it. This book is awesome. I really recommend everybody who is interested in foraging and Stone Age diets and everything to read this book because it reads like a diary. She did this for one year and then she checked her gut biomes and she figured out that there were some interesting processes going on. She did it with her neighbor. And they had these awesome results coming from it, like diabetes type 2 ended, stuff like that happened. But two people are not real research, so they tried to do the Wildbiome Project in, I think, the UK for three months or one month with a lot of different people. Then they checked those people's biomes as well. I did it in the second year and I did it for three months. So I only ate wild foraged food for three months. I started at the first of April and I ended at the first of July.

Jess: That is amazing. Well done, because that is not an easy thing to do at all. How did you find it? What were the main things you noticed that changed, if anything changed?

Ilse: The whole process was really interesting. It did a lot with me, also a lot with my self-worth, for example, because foraging is awesome, but if you only do the nettles, the blackberry leaf tea.... I always thought, am I good enough for this? Then I did it for three months and it was really fun.

Jess: Oh, brilliant.

Ilse: It was also very healthy for me. I did some tests, like blood tests. I have results of that. But the stool samples results are not in my reach at the moment.

Jess: Oh, yes, they're still being processed.

Ilse: Yes, exactly, they're still being processed. But I can not tell a lot about the results because then Monica Wilde cannot use it for her research, so I want to bypass that point. But I can tell about my feelings and about my body and, short said, it was so interesting and I felt so healthy and I had a little time to adjust. Three months is not a lot of time. But I adjusted and when I adjusted, I felt so incredibly healthy. My body was in better shape than ever before. Not that I was sort of a sporty person or something. I did not do a lot of sports because I have a pretty busy life. Biking to my work and to the school of my daughter is my exercise. But I gained a lot of muscle from it and that is interesting. And my menstrual cycle, I had  a lot of pain with my premenstrual phase in my cycle, and it all disappeared. My skin got better, my hair got better, everything. 

Jess: Do you think the foraging… did it help with your fitness because you were out and about and moving more to find your food? Or was it also just the food and how you metabolized it, do you think?

Ilse: It is difficult to say, but I ate a lot more shellfish for example, and they're full of healthy stuff. I also ate a lot more nettles and way less processed food of course. So I think that was such a big difference. But also finding the food, moving, climbing trees and picking on the ground. It made me more fit, of course.

Jess: That is really cool. You said once you'd adjusted, lots of positive effects. How long did it take for you to adjust? Did you go through a phase where you didn't feel so good before you felt the positive effects? 

Ilse: Yes. My metabolism was always pretty fast and that was really nice. But now I really needed to work hard to get a lot of calories. In the beginning I felt a lot of hunger - not like very severe hunger but more like, oh, I need to eat something. At a certain point there was a reed field on fire and I wanted to bring water there. So I ran there and then I fell because I was so tired. I did not have enough food in my body. My metabolism was so fast that everything that I ate just got through it and got out again. The longer I was eating this way my metabolism - I think it's metabolism, I'm not a researcher or dietist - but I think that it went way slower after that. That is my feeling. If somebody knows better, please tell me because I'm always interested in this kind of stuff. Also, the first couple of days I had a lot of headaches and what I saw online was that a lot of people had this. So maybe it was like getting rid of all the sugars and the toxins. 

Jess: Yeah, withdrawal symptoms...  

Ilse: It was pretty interesting. 

Jess: A few years ago I did a few months of no sugars, like unnatural sugars, and then also fruit that was too sugary, because I had kind of eczema problems and it was to see if that would help clear it up. I had a similar… didn’t feel very good for a while, felt very weak and lethargic. And then when your body gets rid of that sugar, I definitely had a more consistent level of energy. I wasn't eating foraged foods, I was still eating food I could get from the supermarket, but it was much more plants and some meats and things. Has that study affected how you currently eat? Are you still eating mostly foraged foods or are you back to a more modern diet, so to speak?

Ilse: I have such busy times and when I prioritized the Wildbiome Project, I really made more time to forage. Of course, it's also later in the year, so in the beginning of the year it was pretty easy to forage leaves and make like a salad and everything. That's still possible, but I don't have so much time at the moment, so I'm completely full-on supermarket diet again. And the whole thing is that I feel pretty sh*t. It is so not nice! I feel not healthy in my body. I'm pretty sick a lot of the times, viruses, I had COVID and the flu a couple of times. It can be coincidence and of course the time of the year, but whoa! Also my PMS, the headaches came back. At the same time, I exactly know what I need to do: live healthy, but oh, it is very difficult when you're not in this project.

Jess: Yes, it's so hard when you don't have a specific purpose and as you say, trying to balance a busy life, even just time to cook a good meal, let alone going out and foraging for it.    

Ilse: What's pretty interesting is my partner and my child never ate with me, but now I'm eating with them again. Also the days get shorter, it's getting darker, I put my wood stove on… I live in this old circus wagon, so we have a sort of tiny house construction and it is so cozy around the fire and then you get these sweets and chocolate milk and blah, blah, blah. So it is difficult to withstand those sugary foods.

Jess: Yes, I was re-listening to the first podcast we had, where we interviewed you before you did the project, and you were saying how you had quit sugars and how it had already improved your sense of taste. Did you find that your sense of taste changed even more when you were on your three month Wildbiome Project? Did you find some plants that you particularly liked the flavour of?

Ilse: Yeah, chicory, for example, or cow parsley. That was really nice. But also the taste of the roots of dandelion. Sort of  bitter taste I like better. The sweet tastes I didn't like so much and I still have that, though, and that could be a doorway into eating healthier again. I really want to work on that, but I also want to feel the difference at the moment, what it's doing with me. Because these three months they felt so healthy. I felt really empowered. I felt really well in my body and I felt connected, my mind, my body, and my surroundings, like nature. I felt part of the environment, of the landscape and I really felt so fluid in it and now I feel like, okay, I need to go to work. I need to pick my child up from school. I need to go to the supermarket. I need to cook. And it gives me more stress. And at the same time, I also needed to work and take my child to school and all this stuff, but I could implement foraging because I'm a forest school teacher. In my work I teach people how to forage so I could take everything with me. But it was such a more conscious way of living it and being part of it, really embodying it and that's rooted me so much in my body and now I feel I'm way more in my head, not in the present, only thinking, okay, I need to go to the supermarket. I need to go do this, I need to do that. And making a healthy choice about starting rewilding my food again, yeah, that's the next step. Also, it's important that I don't eat like this at the moment, so I can really feel the negative effects of the food in modern society. But of course I'm still privileged that I have access to all these foods, I think that's very important to acknowledge. But still, that doesn't mean that I need to do it because I have this privilege. I need to find my own ways in this again. Also, how can I eat with my family and maybe not share the same diet, because I don't want to force it upon them, then it's not fun anymore. 

Jess: You were saying how you had to kind of go from one place to the other, taking your daughter to school and then going to work and then going to the supermarket. I think even the act of going to the supermarket - for me at least - can be overwhelming. I'm terrible with too much choice. Whereas I suppose with foraging you kind of go and see what you can find. It's not necessarily, oh, do I pick this plant or that plant? You take, depending on what exists there, you're not overwhelmed with choice, perhaps?

Ilse: Yeah, that's true. That's really interesting because in a way the supermarkets are the whole year round not so biodiverse because you can eat bananas in summer, in spring, in winter, in autumn, always. But at the moment you have a big choice, but through the year you don't have a big choice. Also, if the bananas aren't there in winter and in autumn, and you have them in spring and summer, you would celebrate the moment, oh yes, they're there, so I'm really going to enjoy it. That is also more with foraging. In one way, I got this complete FOMO, constantly like, oh no, I forgot elderberry season, or, I was not there when  the witches boletes came out, you know, I also have that. But the other way, making time for nature, living cyclical with the foods that are present at the moment is so healing because you don't take it for granted. If you look at society nowadays maybe we need more of these kind of natural restrictions to honour what is present.

Jess: That's a really good point, I love that. And I think you're so right. This year the house I lived in had a veg plot with strawberries. And when the strawberries came out, it was just the best few weeks of my life. I was coming home from work and just gorging myself on fresh strawberries. It was glorious. I froze some and gifting some. It made me really excited for that season of strawberries. But then after that, the strawberries that you could buy in the supermarket were kind of forced. They weren't in their natural time to be growing and you could taste it. It wasn't as delicious. Because there is a great strawberry season in the UK. Similar to people get so excited for food you can only have at Easter, like cream eggs in the UK or you mentioned Christmas... there's so many kind of things you only eat at Christmas for no real reason. You could make a fruit cake all year round, but it's a Christmas thing and people love that. 

Ilse: Exactly. I also think that if you look at this from a history perspective, if you look at feasts like Midsummer, Midwinter, for example and autumn and for all these moments in the year that had their own subjects, like one was for harvest or one was for this or…  Culture was always connected to the land people lived on. And now we don't have that anymore and you see what it's doing with the world. We try to have constant access to everything and I think it's bleeding it all out. I'm not sure if that's how to say it, but I say it in my Dutch English…

Jess: It makes sense.  

Ilse: It keeps everything tired. The cow parsley time, I saw them and was, oh, they smell so nice and oh wow, I felt so in love with the plant. Later on I took also seeds and I tried to sow them everywhere close to where I am at. So I also create more biodiversity by appreciating the plant because it has such a short timeframe in life. Of course you can preserve stuff by freezing it in, like your strawberries, for example. But they're also never endless. So every time you defrost some of the strawberries, then it's like, oh, wow, remember when I picked them in summer and I'm gonna honour them for it. It really, really, really tastes nice. When people were so dependent on foraging there was way more nature connection, what I really miss nowadays.

Jess: Oh, absolutely. Even with farming, people aren't as connected to farming. So unless you've worked on a farm, you don't realize how much labour goes into creating that food.  We're so often in our modern lives disconnected from the food. When I taught kids and we talked about food in the Stone Age so many children realize they ate animals. Because they think cool things like fish fingers or chicken nuggets, but fish don't have fingers. You can just think it's a silly name and don't connect it to a natural animal, there aren't any eyes or faces.  A chicken breast in a supermarket doesn't look anything like the animal. Some kids haven't even really seen farm animals if you are living in a city. So how can you appreciate and protect something when you don't see it, or have that joy of eating it? Are you looking forward to finding your cow parsley again next year? Is that something you are hoping for?

Ilse: Yeah and what's also so nice is that I can read the landscape through the plants that are growing at certain times of the year. So this side of the park is my cow parsley spot, for example, and I know that there is the sloeberries... What is really fun that the kids where I do the forest school with, they also know all these types of plants and oh, Ilse, can we go there to pick some berries or can we go there to do this? So I can really bring them with me in this process. I also make sweets from them. I call it candy to make it more appealing to them because that's the language they speak. But of course I'm just making fruit leather, for example. They really like it and they're very interested in it. People normally are sort of afraid of mushrooms. They think that every mushroom is deadly and the kids who are with me are always asking like, oh, can I pat the mushroom? That is so awesome because there are not so many incredibly poisonous mushrooms. So I always say, you need to be aware of that there are poisonous mushrooms, but this mushroom with no, well, lookalike is not poisonous and you can definitely pat that mushroom. And they start to connect with it and they start to like it and they're enthusiastic about it. So I really try to bring my foraging nature connection to the kids and also to my daughter. What you said about animals, like a chicken breast in the supermarket doesn't look like a chicken at all, that is really sad. So when I got a lot of shellfish, like oysters and mussels, of course I needed to kill the animals themselves - and they don't scream of course. But it is still sad. This feeling of empathy is a sort of a sacrifice that is very important to keep. You never take too much. It's really important to see the animals that you can eat… that you understand that they give their life for your life and that you need to honour them for it. Supermarket culture doesn't do that at all. It's just like this money transaction: you bought your empathy away because you deserve it, because you own it, because you work for it. Most of the people who buy meat don't feel the pain that the animals had, of course. That is a construct that capitalism really uses, so they can keep on selling these types of products. Because if people got really too involved with this, people start to get vegan or whatever. If you're dependent on only wild food, you really need to find a way. How can you get your proteins, for example? How can you do it? So I did this with a lot of shellfish and mussels and also I went to a hunter's store and I got deer and geese and I really loved that. I cleaned them myself and worked with the meat and I made a lot of beef jerky and I really respected the animal for it. I learned a lot. 

Jess: It's such a good point. When you're not seeing it yourself, you can kind of turn your attention the other way. When you are actively having to kill the shellfish, you’re a lot less lot less inclined to throw it away. When people buy loads of food and it's in the back of the fridge, they go, oh, it's off, well, throw it away. You are far more conscious of the food you have because you've gathered it yourself and because you're aware it ended a life to create that food. That's such a cool point that it's impacted your perception of animals. I love that the kids are so involved and inspired. Children learn so much from the adults around them and they can learn fear of animals or fear of the natural environment. I remember eating an apple off a tree and people going, what are you doing, how do you know that's a good apple that you can eat? And that was because their parents weren't confident, so they didn't teach them and rather than try and engage with it, they went, oh, avoid it, you can't eat that. So brilliant that you are empowering the next generation to have that confidence to engage with the natural world. So often children don't like mushrooms because it's forced upon them, but  given the agency to find them and then they want to eat it because it's something that they gathered themselves, which is pretty special.

Ilse: Mushrooms are magical. This autumn I went to camping Cantharel and a friend of mine organized a whole weekend only about mushrooms, all the aspects like the edible ones, the medicinal ones, even the psychedelic ones were like… dare to research! It was really cool. A lot of people, we did all kind of talks and everybody listened to each other. And then we did more foraging walks and it was so nice to dive into this community of mushroom lovers. That is also what I had with the Wildbiome Project, that the community of women - we were only with women last time - it was so cool to connect with them and tell each other stories what happens and funny stories about people that got the shits of certain foods and other that had like, wow, but have you ever tried this or that, and what is your go-to food at the moment? And it was so empowering to do this together. If you look at hunter gatherers - I'm a romanticist and that keeps my interest going - that community is so important.  If I do this alone, it's way more difficult because you don't have people who help you to get further. So if you say to me, okay, Ilse, let's start doing this. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's do it. Then you say, okay, tonight we're going to have this dinner and that's the start. But if I'm alone, I can just say, yeah, maybe I don't feel like it at all. If you do it together, it's way more strong.

Jess: Absolutely. You were talking about community in the last episode as well and how that had brought you into foraging and you've learned so much from community. Did you find that this time as well, so during the Wildbiome Project, were you connecting with others to forage and did you learn how to forage good seafood from someone else or was that something you knew already?

Ilse: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the same friend, a really shout out to her: Saskia from Outsiders Foraging. She is amazing. She took us for seafood foraging and later on she started the Camping Cantharel thing. She's such an amazing person with really great ideas. She's also a mother, how can you do this and be a mother at the same time? It's so awesome. I learned a lot from her. Also her positive attitude, she's really an inspiration for this. But also with the group itself, if you dive deeper in this somebody says, well, did you try this before? Did you try that before? I really learned a lot about it, but I also learned that I'm way more skilled than I ever thought I was. I think that's also interesting, being a woman trying to learn everything without like an ancestry that does this. I always had the feeling that I was not good enough, who am I to teach other people about this? But later on I learned, okay, I'm pretty skilled. I'm pretty nerdy about this and I can do this. So that was also very interesting and very heartwarming for me.

Jess: Brilliant! I’m really pleased to hear that. I can absolutely relate to that. There is such a sense of imposter syndrome of, oh, well I know other people who know way more so I'm not an expert, but actually for the common person I know quite a lot about the Stone Age. I'm not the expert, but it's all relative, isn't it? Finding that confidence to go, yes, I do have knowledge and I can share it, is such a nice discovery and I'm so pleased you did find that out. That is super empowering.

Ilse: Yes. And also what is interesting that if somebody knows a lot about like coastal foraging and I know a lot about other types of foraging or hunting or whatever, then together we know so much more and if we're constantly saying that I'm not good enough because you know better, then we're in this hierarchal construct that doesn't work because we also should do this as a community and have equal conversations about this so we can learn with each other to go deeper and further. That is the thing, this individualism that is so unhealthy for all the things we are working with because foraging is a community thing. I cannot do this on my own and also I don't want to do this on my own. So when I teach foraging classes everybody always wants to be independent, but I always give dependency exercises because you need to learn how to depend on each other again, so you can live a more tribal life, so we stay connected with each other and learn from each other.

Jess: That is absolutely brilliant, I really like that. It is so easy to want to be independent and I think we, as a society, really champion that. But it means that we put a lot of pressure on individuals to be, you know, you are the expert and you put them on a pedestal, and it means that if they ever make a mistake or if they don't know something, if there's a gap in their knowledge, which is a very normal thing to have, they are suddenly seen in a bad light because they've failed, but that's not the case. It's so nice to be able to say, oh, I know these things, but let me know if you know something else, sharing that knowledge and being open to learning new things and admitting when you don't know things. I think it's such a scary thing as an adult, especially, to admit you don't know something. But it's such a freeing thing to actually just collaborate in an open space. I think we're so much stronger for collaborating with other people and other people have their strengths and their different ways of viewing the world or their memory. I have a friend who is absolutely brilliant at remembering the Latin names of things, which I'm terrible at, and it's so nice to share and mix our knowledge together.

Ilse: Really nice that you say that as well. We are doing this ancestral skill sharing in a  non-hierarchical way. It means we offer certain skills that are in connection with nature, like fibre works or dyeing with plants or making leather from fishkins or whatever. But everybody is welcome to learn, but also to give something and to to learn to be a teacher or have this intrinsic leadership, because I think that if everybody has this we can depend more on each other and feel more the safety with each other, because now we don't feel safe and we have these imposter syndromes because it's more like a social structure. If you're not good in this, you will fail and you're nothing, and you will be alone, but you don't wanna be alone. So you want to be better, better than other people so you don't feel alone, but then you're alone. It doesn't make sense.  

Jess: No, that's so true. So it sounds like it was such a transformative experience. You realized there were physical differences with your body and you were outside more and that led to more happiness as well. You found more of a community and learned new skills. There’s all sorts of studies saying how good it is for the brain to keep learning and keep engaged. Were there any challenges you found with this? We've talked about so many of the great positives except for when you were too weak to help with the field. Were there any other challenges you encountered? 

Ilse: Well, I felt weak a lot in the beginning. That was a challenge, but it also gave me a drive to eat better. After eating acorn pancakes for three months every morning, I also felt really, really bored. The boredom was a thing that I needed to overcome. But it also showed that I am so privileged that I can eat anything that I want in this western world. And at a certain point when I could not do it because I committed to this project that I was so fragile. That even boredom was enough for me to get so agitated. It was a great lesson. But at a certain moment the boredom gave me an interesting thing in that I found a lot of brassica seeds, black mustard seeds. I'm not sure if it were even black mustard seeds, but a lot of seeds of this type. I made apple cider vinegar. I cooked salt out of the sea and I mixed those three together and I made mustard. Mustard was really, really nice because my ancestors did it. And it's really cool because in The Netherlands between all the fields there were a lot of these types of plants who gave these seeds. So it felt like really connecting to my ancestors, to their practices. But also I could make mustard soup, honey mustard salad. I could eat wild boar sausage with mustard and it was like, oh, wow. And I made it and everybody was so enthusiastic about it, so I really wanted to share it with everybody and they were like, oh no, I cannot take it, you did a lot of work. And I was like, no, please share it with me, please. It was so fun that they thought it was sort of the holy grail, you know, the mustard. It gives, again, an interesting perspective on nature connection because if you buy mustard again in the supermarket, it's just like mustard and you can leave it forever because it never goes bad. And, oh, you don't have anything in your house, what will you do? Well, maybe mustard soup, but now it was like, oh, you did this from scratch, only from your own neighborhood. Yeah, it was really nice. It was such a magical thing.

Jess: Yeah, it makes it really special. You created value for mustard because you put in the time and people could see that. Did you preserve other foods as well? Did you get into making jams and things or were you kind of eating fresh most of the time?

Ilse: I don't have a fridge, so what I needed to do was when I foraged, sometimes I needed to forage for more days and then I put a vase with flowers. That's how I preserved it for a long time. That also gave me the insight, why did people put stuff in vases? Well, maybe it was also just because they just preserved it a little bit longer. Also I dried a lot and did a lot with fermentation. I fermented with lacto fermentation, but also with honey, for example. I don't drink any alcohol and I'm very sensitive for this, so sometimes when I had a ferment and I was like, oh wow, I feel it already. I feel a little bit drunk, but it was always for a short time. And that was nice because later on I needed to go to work. 

Jess: That's such a brilliant problem. I hadn't thought about the side effects for fermentation… You mentioned preparing animals. Did you find you were eating cuts of meat that you wouldn't normally…, were you eating more organs and things?

Ilse: Yeah, I also ate organs. But also stuff like raw venison, for example. Eating raw meat is interesting. I have this dehydrator and I tried to make pemmican, but I did it with the wrong fat. I did it with boar fat and boar fat is way softer than fat from a deer. I just tried and most of the time the food was brown. I'm not a good cook, but I had so much fun doing it. It doesn't need to be pretty, it doesn't need to be beautiful, it is what it is. Eating raw meat was really interesting.

Jess: What was interesting about it? Was it a particular cut of meat that you would eat raw?

Ilse: It was from deer and also from goose. When you're eating raw meat, it's always about bacteria and can you get sick from it? Then I learned about botulism, I did not know about this. It was a scary thing. But I also learned how can you overcome that kind of stuff? So it made stuff less scary because I figured out the ways how to work with it, and that was really empowering. I also must admit that I ate some fish that was not good anymore. The next day I was really sick. But it's a lesson. 

Jess: I definitely ate some dodgy fish when I was a poor student. I think you mentioned before making leather out of fishkin. Did you find you were more inspired to do crafts and things or spend more time in nature because your Wildbiome Project was making you think about those things anyways?

Ilse: Of course, because you don't want to throw stuff away. So I made more fish leather experiments but I did not have salmon, so I did not have strong fish skins. At a certain point I was like, well, I'm just going to eat the skin, that's at this point way better. I made my own baskets for foraging, like these soft baskets from linden bark, for example, or lime bark. I really love to work with willow and this kind of stuff. It's cool because if you forage in a willow basket and you forage mushrooms, you also help spreading the spores. So the more primitive you do this the better it is for the biodiversity where you live. 

Jess: Oh, brilliant. I think we've covered most things. Was there anything else you wanted to mention?

Ilse: If people get inspired by this story or by this project, really check Monica Wilde out. She is such an inspiring person. She is so cool. She also needs more money for these projects and I think next year there's also a Wildbiome Project and think it is in autumn. So if you're inspired by this, maybe people can donate some money to her or buy her book. She has two books now. Also a book about what plants can you forage, what plants can you not eat? I really recommend this and, yeah, I think that is what I wanted to say, support Monica Wilde. Also join foraging classes because, of course, working with fibres is great, working as a blacksmith is really, really awesome. But also you need food and if you are a forager or process old type of vegetables from the land or whatever, they really have a place in your living history projects because you intertwine it in your day-to-day practices. I think it should be more present in living history. 

Jess: Yeah, I think you are absolutely spot on. We're all still eating food and this whole conversation… we've both been enthusiastic because who doesn't like food? And I’m ravenous now. I'm gonna have to go off and eat something after this talk! But I've learned so much and I've been so inspired by your passion for it. Do you think you'll get involved in Monica's future projects?

Ilse: Yes, I would love that. Of course I want to join next year. I'm also, after this podcast, again, more inspired by eating more wild foods. I have this wild foods foraged cocktail bar, and that's really nice to get other people into foraging and booze at the same time. But for me, I really want to bring back my non-sugar healthy food way of living again. And I'm really inspired again to do this. So tomorrow I'm going to start again eating more foraged food.  

Jess: That sounds absolutely brilliant! Thank you so much. As a final question, what are your plans for the future? Do you have any projects you are developing? And if so, how can the EXARC community help make that happen?

Ilse: Well, I will always keep on tinkering, but my expertise is not only living history, it's also more in how can I bypass unhealthy modernity and bring it back to people so we can create a healthier world. I'm trying to reach the Normies. And I try to bring them back into nature connection. I do that being very much inspired by history, by the hunter gatherers, for example. My interest is very broad and at this moment I'm working a lot with wool again. I'm weaving a lot of wool for a Bronze Age suit for my daughter, and later on, also for myself.  What I would love is create more communities around nature connection inspired by hunter gatherers. If EXARC can help me with that, it would be awesome. 

Jess: To all our listeners, if you are inspired, you can find Ilse on Instagram and you can also listen to the previous episode that we talked about the Wildbiome Project. You can also check out Monica Wilde and all of her brilliant work. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your time and your experience. And best of luck for your future endeavors. 

Ilse: Thank you for having me.

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