When I, from planting the seed to harvesting it and cooking it down, I'm always speaking to the plant. The plant knows why it's being planted, what it's gonna be harvested for, and you know, plants have this insane intelligence where they can actually, like there's been scientific studies that track the biomarkers of plants and they can tell when you, when your plant knows you're in a two and a half kilometer radius, your home it starts to perk up it starts to go Jillian's coming home you know and so it's really amazing and they've done so many scientific studies on just the intelligence of plants they have memory if you talk to a plant and say hey I'm gonna harvest you for medicine in three days can you please soak up more of that earth energy and to make your leaves more potent, it will respond to that. So everything is conscious, everything is living, and everything responds, you know, and that's Hello, Quanti-folks, and welcome to another episode of Fark the Shoulds. I am Jodi from QuantiMama, and I have a super special guest today. I'm so delighted to introduce this woman. What I will say before I let her take the reins. is that we had a very serendipitous meeting, thank you to QuantiMama Kerri who is amazing at being curious and we met this extraordinary luminescent woman on the beaches of Nelson which is on the South Australian border of Victoria and Jill from RainbowOMG is going to introduce herself, but there's almost like I can't encapsulate how incredible this woman is. She hits so many things on what Fark the Shoulds and QuantiMama is about. So Jill, welcome to Oh, thank you. I resonate so much, like, on such a deep level with that title. Because, you know, it really encapsulates the rebellious spirit and, like, that radical self-responsibility, and I just feel like that's what my whole life has been kind of focused around, Yeah, I feel like if we could have a mascot, it would be you encapsulated because you just rock it on so many levels. But tell, give us a quick sort of overview. So you've got Rainbow OMG, and we were so blessed to go and visit your space. But Yeah, so me and my husband started Rainbow OMG when we were living up in the Mallee in a town called Rainbow. I'll never forget that moment of like walking down the street eating an ice cream and it's like 40 degrees outside and we were going you know we want to name our business something that's catchy and that will stick in people's minds and I just had that like oh my god moment of just being like rainbow oh And I kind of, I'm one of these people that I love double entendres. So it's like the OMG stands for like, oh my god, like look at this place. But then again, you know, it also just stands for organic market garden. Because me and my husband run a small scale organic market garden here in Nelson. And we only just moved to this location about a year and a half ago. So we picked up the shovel in January last year. And we're just finishing off our last bed, our last 10 meter bed. So it's been an epic work year, but I'm just like having to come down and the relaxation and, you know, the morning coffee, looking at Yeah, it's amazing how fast they can go. But I mean, obviously we got to see an old Show people a little bit about that because we did take some video when we were there, but it is extraordinary. And I think I said to you in a message, I just want to be able to do a matrix thing where I plug into your head and just download what you know, because your breadth and depth of knowledge is incredible. And you're doing this whilst you homeschool your kids. you are supporting women in the community to birth as well. And you are making the most beautiful balms and other things from the plant medicine that you grow as well. Like, where do you wanna go with this conversation? There's I know. Okay, well, let's start at the beginning. So I grew up and I had some, I was always kind of in that category of like, She's different, you know, is it ADHD? Is it this? Is it that? And I remember just like sitting in school always thinking about the things I would rather be doing. You know, and I just remember like that grind of getting up every day and going to school and just being like, oh, child prison, why am I here? You know, but then I kind of like, you know, I went on my hero's journey where I felt called to go explore the world. So I actually left school when I was 17 and I got a job as an au pair over in Switzerland. So I dropped out of school in year 11, and I went over to Switzerland, and, you know, taking care of kids was what I was good at because I come from a large family, so I was just going on the knowledge that I already had. And so, I went over to Switzerland and I au paired for a while, and then I came back to Canada and just finished up my year 12, and I was going, okay, well, I know this isn't the end of travel for me, but let's try and stick to a country that speaks English. So I came to Australia with another au pair job and then just life, you know. I met my husband and he had been studying permaculture with Bill Mollison and worked up at Jeff Lawton's and he was currently, when I met him, working on a regenerative cattle farm, like pork poultry. So he had the whole background of experience, not a degree in horticulture, big difference, he had lived experience in building permaculture and building swales and moving cattle and doing cell grazing and all that stuff. And so when I met him, it was funny, we had this conversation one night and I said, oh god, I don't want to open another book. And he said, why? And I was like, oh, you know, I just was, I have trouble reading and school just beat the love of learning out of me kind of thing. And he goes, yeah, but you can learn anything you want, like anytime. And I'm like, it just like, my mind just went, you know, like, what, I can learn anything I want? And so I, you know, that kind of opened up the pathway of like, well, I'm interested in this and in astrology and, you know, and all these kind of different things that I wish I had learnt, you know, the first 18 years of my life. And so my husband and I, you know, he always wanted to be a cattle farmer, but we just had to start with where we were at. and we were newly married and pregnant with our first son, and I just got to the point where my stretch marks were stretching, and I just was like, I don't feel safe putting all these oils on me, there's parabens in them, and anything that goes onto the skin goes directly into the blood. So I just didn't feel safe putting any of these chemicals on my skin, because I was like, what is that going to do to my unborn baby? I already have enough health issues going on. And so my husband went outside in the garden and harvested me some flowers that I had been growing and he soaked them in oil and cooked it down into a salve and like from there it just kind of like opened up. I just jumped down the rabbit hole with both feet on like herbal medicine and like I just started researching what is the herbal benefit of this plant? What is the herbal action of that? And so I just went on this, you know, full-on autodidactic journey of learning all about plants and medicine and how to use them and what is a tea and a tonic and a tincture and the different actions they have on the body. And then we moved up to the Mallee after our son was born. He was about six weeks old when we moved. And we were living on our cousin's sheep farm. We, you know, again wanted to be cattle farmers, but we didn't really have the money or anything. So we were like, well, we can grow veggies. Like we're good at growing veggies. So we'll thought we'll be veggie farmers. Uh, and so we ended up buying a house in town and we set up a farm at our house and we bought a block across the street from us and we set that up as a farm. So it was kind of like two properties conjoined as one big farm. And I think we, in the end we had something like six, 57 or 63 10 meter beds between the two blocks. Not really a small deal. No, I mean, I've spent a lot of the last seven years on the end of a shovel covered in dirt. I can imagine. But so and we kind of learnt this thing of like my husband's really good at the crop planning and planting and rotation and and in that was just a lot of learning like you know learning when to seed with the lunar cycles and when to harvest with the lunar cycles and so he was really good at taking care of the mainframe of the farm but I saw the boundary of the farm as kind of open vacant real estate and so I started planting out the boundaries of our farms with medicinal flowers and plants that I could turn into salves and teas and tonics and tinctures. And that's kind of carried on over into this new location and I think ongoing. He does the crop planning and planting and rotation and he understands where each bed is at and then I just take care of the boundary. And your boundary is amazing. I know that my daughter benefited because she'd hurt herself or something. You're like, oh, I've got to sell for that. And I'm like, just growing out in the backyard. I just found it so... It was so much intention and I think that's where we were sort of getting our title for this podcast was that conscious living. There's so much consciousness in what you do, which I really appreciate. There's none of this kind of fairy floss living where you're just doing because you're doing. You're doing it because it feeds into the being of your life and there's a purpose and a reverence and intention for all of that. That's what I felt when I was... on your property and in your company was just that real enmeshment Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, absolutely. Like, everything I do, you know, from planting the seed to harvesting it and cooking it down, I'm always speaking to the plant. The plant knows why it's being planted, what it's going to be harvested for, and, you know, plants have this insane intelligence where they can actually Like, there's been scientific studies that track the biomarkers of plants, and they can tell when your plant knows you're in a two and a half kilometer radius of your home, it starts to perk up. It starts to go, Jillian's coming home, you know? And so it's really amazing, and they've done so many scientific studies on just the intelligence of plants. They have memory. If you talk to a plant and say, hey, I'm gonna harvest you for medicine, in three days, can you please soak up more of that earth energy to make your leaves more potent? It will respond to that. So everything is conscious, everything is living, and everything responds, you know, and that's that law of vibration. And that's why we do biodynamics on our farm, is to kind of harmonize the microbes in the soil, to the environment, to the celestial activity in the sky, is just to kind of keep everything in time and in tune with the natural cycles of life. And I remember when I met my husband and just going down this journey of, you know, I can learn anything I want, astrology really stood out to me as like the jumping off point for my own learning journey. And I remember just hearing all these, you know, oh, full moon, new moon in Aries and Taurus. And I was just kind of like, I want to know what that means. I want to understand how to use this energy in this cycle so that I can like get the bang for my buck with my intentions kind of thing and you know so much magic has unfolded from teaching myself astrology and Numerology and just going okay. We're in a really potent portal right now let's write our intentions down and bury them in the soil or burn them or you know and it's just kind of like I So much magic has unfolded from my life, from me just going on my own learning journey, but also just casting my intention out into the universe. And then letting go. Here's the magic, is that you have to have the intention of like, I'll tell you my secret intention when I plant my seeds and when I'm making myself, we heal all active participants from the microbes in the soil to the end user and beyond. And that's what I say when I'm doing my biodynamics, when I'm planting my seeds, and I just, I tell my plants, like, you are potent medicine and people need you now more than ever, like, please be the most potent being that you can. And seeds have the ability to pick up the energy of the person planting them, and so it comes from that as well too. But there's so many natural fertility cycles that kind of get put down on our farm that integrate their wisdom into the soil too, like the fact that all of our pathways on our farm are local mulch. So that's taking all of the wisdom and the energy from the local trees and sinking it into the soil and the mycelium breaks that down. And so we've got all of these local native trees putting their information also into the soil food network bacteria system as well too. So yeah, it's just kind of like, look at the resources you have and how can you use those and benefit not only yourself, but others. Because at the end of the day, like, you know, there's plenty of people who are wealthy, but they're not happy. And it's that sense of fulfillment that really that really gives us, you know, being of service to others is why we're here. And you can't be of service to others if you don't take care of your own, the skin on your own back first. But you know, it's really like, I love sharing my medicine and I love sharing my wisdom and my knowledge with people who come to our farm and just, You know, there are funny moments where I'm talking to a plant, transplanting it, like, it's okay, mugwort, I'm just gonna move you into the fire break and you're gonna be fine. And somebody comes to the farm gate and sees me talking to my plants and they're like, are you Yeah, but that's the old thinking, isn't it? I mean, what you're talking about is, I think what we talk a lot about on this, but I feel like, I'm just so inspired even listening to you because I'm like, oh, I heard about that tree thing obviously from you and I came home from our holiday and I hugged a tree and it was the first time I've ever hugged a tree and we have a lot of trees on our block. And I was like, oh wow, I've really been disrespectful. But the idea that you can actually start that relationship quite quickly and I think that what can happen is people are listening to this going, oh my God, it's all amazing, but where do I start? You started with essentially a blank canvas when you moved to Nelson, didn't you? None of that was there. And so I know that there's been a lot of toil. You've been on the shovel and it's probably something that you're well-practiced at. But for people that want to even start this relationship with their surroundings, How did you start? Because obviously you're talking intuitively, you've learnt a lot over the past 10 years while you've been on this massive vertical trajectory of learning. And I deeply resonate with the fact that you can learn anything that you're engaged in. That's what we apply to our kids from a homeschooling perspective. But how did you start with Nelson? When you arrived, or Well, it's funny because we actually, after shutting down our farms up in Rainbow, we were just so broken from not getting the support of our community. And it was really like, I don't get it, Universe. All I've done is put my heart into everything I've done, and I'm just being kicked out of my community and shut down. didn't really comprehend, you know, I didn't have hindsight in my back pocket is what was happening. But you know, it was just, it was a harsh upgrade is what it was. And so what we did is we didn't, we were actually just going to open a landscaping company, but It was actually out of, you know, the magic of the universe. I left the business stickers on our car and the pub, I went to get some beer for my husband at the pub and the local pub owners just said, hey, are you guys growing veggies? And me being me, I'm a bit of a wild card, I serendipitously played into it and I said, oh yeah, you know, we're gonna set up the garden, but we're just getting our roots down and the house set up. And they said, great, we'll buy all of our veg from you. So I came home just kind of like with this invigorated hope of like, maybe it'll work this time. And I told my husband, and as soon as I did, I just seen the light go off in his eyes. And immediately what he did is he started measuring out the block. So the block was actually just a grassy paddock full of stumps. And so he just took the measurements of the block and from there he started going, okay, how many 10 meter beds can we fit on this block? Okay, we can fit 7 down this side and 25 up the other side and maybe squeeze in some 5 meters here. So he started measuring how many 10 meter beds we could get in how many, and then we, because our block kind of tapers at the top, how many five meter beds, and then we would just sort the rest out, like the little awkward corners and things like that. So he started doing the measurements, and that's where my husband's really good, his strengths are my weaknesses, and thank God for that, because I'm always learning from him. So he started doing how many beds and we just started marking them out with string. So we just got some, I mean, we were cutting up old broom handles and old lamp posts and just using those as metal pegs in the ground and string lining them out. So we knew how many beds we could fit up and down the hill. And then I guess if you're starting on this journey, one thing that would be immensely helpful in the ongoing process is just understanding the lunar calendar. So the lunar calendar actually tells us what to plant, what to harvest, and when to do it. and it kind of takes this overwhelming task of farming and breaks it into bite-sized pieces. Like, okay, so the lunar calendar goes leaf week, a fruit and flower week, a root week, and then a stop week. And so what happens is on the new moon, you have a week, seven days, and it's all leaf crops. So you want to be planting things like spinach, rainbow chard, rocket, anything that you eat the leaf of. And then on the fruit and flower weeks, you're planting your fruit trees, your tomatoes, your cucumbers, anything that has that's a fruit that has a seed inside of it. And then likewise, on the root weeks, you're planting and harvesting root crops like beetroots, carrots, Potatoes, onions, garlic. So just having that understanding is going to be the best point of entry for people who want to get into this kind of seasonal and cyclical living and gardening and farming. So just understanding that and then on the stalk weeks is when you don't plant anything and that stalk week is just actually about doing the weeding and the tidy up and doing all the prep chores like okay we're gonna plant that leaf bed next week. So we've got to broad fork it and rake it out and get everything ready so that when the beginning of leaf week hits, then we're just hitting the ground running. You don't want to be, you know, spending your leaf week broad forking a bed kind of thing, you know. So it's just about that stop week is about resting the bed and letting the, you know, because we don't take the roots out, we just leave the roots in the ground. So all the slaters and earthworms, they eat away at the roots and just, you rest that bed for a whole cycle, so for a whole month, and they're just creating fertility in that bed. So when you come back and plant it with a fresh leaf crop, you've got bumper fertility in that bed. So it goes leaf, fruit, root, stop. And you know, that is so indicative to our lives as well, too, and how we, the energy of just kind of our cycles as women and the energy of how our family flow works. And yeah, you know, there's that like the stalk week would be considered the winter period of your life. And that is when you get your actual cycle. Your period is considered the winter cycle of your life. And then leaf week is that, you know, your energy starts to build again. And that's when your fertility starts to build. And then fruit and flower is when you're literally ovulating, setting seed in your womb. And then you have the decline of the autumn season where you're going into that fall, that, um, I think it's the phallic phase where you're just your body starting to wind down and getting ready to to menstruate again and you know just understanding that we we are part of nature and we're not separate from it is really deep and profound and beautiful when you understand that there is a divine intelligence that runs through us humans, but also through every tree, every plant, every flower, you know, every season. It's beautiful. You know, you can kind of let go of the reins and relax a little bit with your life and not feel the need to be so grasping Yeah, absolutely. And not looking for external solutions as well. I mean, that belief system underpins In our household, our belief to self-heal, you know, we'll use things that will help it, but the body is always looking for that homeostasis. And I think that's one of the privileged things we get to do when we have our kids at home rather than have them in the institution, is we get to reaffirm all those, I guess, they're not even ideologies. I find them to be universal truths because there's so much corroborating evidence when you take that on board, right? And so I'm curious, because obviously men cycle as well, they just don't bleed, but when you're talking about moon cycles and so forth, you actually then can like educate your child with that, you know, given he's around 10, right? Yeah, he'll be 8 in May. Yeah, right. So, I mean, does that get integrated essentially into Absolutely, yeah, but you know and it's it's it's um, it's so integral to a healthy relationship to understand what a woman needs and when she needs it and and To understand what a healthy period feels like because I'm somebody who had polycystic ovarian I call it symptom not syndrome because it's actually a symptom if you have painful periods and It's a symptom that your body has talked on its toxicity that's causing the pain and you need to go through a serious detox. And same with infertility. You gotta balance those hormones, and you also gotta just cleanse the system, because if you don't, your child ends up absorbing that in utero. So I really, when I'm talking things with birth and fertility, I really encourage women, like, hey, if you wanna get pregnant in the next year, take at least a full year to just work on really cleansing and purifying the system. I'm laughing because, yeah, my son understands that my mom has her bleed once a month and maybe this is a bit too much information but all things quantum mama, I don't believe in using tampons or pads because, you know, cotton is the second most sprayed crop with herbicide and when we're putting that inside of us, it is furthering the toxicity in our bodies and especially in our wombs, like that is our creation portals, you know? So I use the Diva Cup and so once a month there's a bowl of blood in the bathroom that gets tipped, you know, on various parts of my garden. Not on the food crops, trust me! But just on some of my more sacred trees that are special to me, like my elderberries and things. But just understanding, okay, mom's on her bleed, and she needs rest, and that means that I need to pick up the slack, and she needs more nourishment, and she needs just, we have this thing in our house where when we're feeling overstimulated, we just say, I just need some space, and that's just the little flag of saying, hey, give me some space, because I don't want to be snappy or go off at you. And it's so interesting because it's so important to teach our daughters this as well, too. Here's a ritual you can do when you start to cycle. I cleanse my whole body and I just take it as a period of rest for a couple days and just going, I guess I'm having to parent myself in the way that I needed growing up, that I didn't receive. And I think that, you know, that's part of consciousness always upgrading itself, is it's got a course correct at some point. And so that's where like old paradigms and old beliefs kind of taper off and get, you know, it's outdated. Yeah, We basically put them on a big bonfire and burn them because it's not even like this kind of gentle exiting of those paradigms. It's actually just this cancelling out of what is actually very limiting for society and particularly half of society. And it's funny you say that because I think we don't quite have that much language around, say, bleeding time, but the great benefit is, you know, having one daughter and three sons, is I have boys that are very respectful of that space. And not that she gets a free pass, but she gets that nourishment that and that dispensation that she does need that space. They don't language it in that way, but it's definitely happening. That awareness is happening. And I just think how beautiful that these boys will become men that know to honour this as a monthly cycle and not, you know. There's not the shame around it. My daughter is learning that her body is not broken. She actually just needs to rest instead of trying to do a million things, which could be from me. Oh no, I am too. Trust me, I'm a taskmaster. Yeah, but it's an interesting balance, isn't it? And there's so much of that that I think You know, girls these days, there's a bit of balance. I mean, I think that the fact that we've got, say, period underwear that was never available to us when we were, you know, first starting menstruation, I just think that's such a freeing thing for young women these days. But there's still an element of keeping quiet about it. Maybe not a shame, but definitely not an integration back into earth and nature like you're talking about, so there's still a ways to go with, you know, burning up that stuff and making women really own that as a strength of theirs because it is ultimately what creates life. Yeah and it is a strength like you know looking back historically women when they were menstruating were sent away from the tribe because our intuition is at its height, our power is at its height and that was threatening to men and and the patriarchy and that's why there was so much over the last couple hundred years when we went from you know, the feminine goddess worship religions, which were in sync with nature and religion, nature and time, you know, we had the 13-month calendar, the moon and the month, word month comes from moon, And we cycle with the moon. And women were sent away because they were more powerful when they were cycling. And you get a clan of women together who will naturally sync up, by the way, which is absolutely phenomenal. you know like that's a powerful thing and that's a threat to men and so of course like this old structure that's falling away and dying in front of us hallelujah is you know and I think that's part of the the reclamation of the feminine coming back into it is just like no you know the king sits on the throne but who sits on the king? And we as women have to take and honor that power and that knowledge because as the mothers in the family, it's so easy to see. When I'm having a bad day, the whole family's having a bad day. So it's just kind of like we are powerful and we just have to own that and take that back. But I just wanted to touch one more thing on the moon cycles. Is that because I'm a practicing yoga teacher, and I love all things kind of Vedic and ancient knowledge, women have 11 moon centers. And so that means that, so a moon center is basically an emotional center. So we have one at our hairline, our eyebrows, our cheeks, our earlobes, our lips, the back of our neck, our breast line, our clitoris, our vagina, our inner thighs, and our navel. And so what that means is that every 60 hours, we as women are cycling through a new emotional center. so we can feel like very gracious at our hairline and by the time we kind of get to our cheeks we can be kind of like hot and just agitated and so it's just understanding that every 60 hours women are cycling through a new emotional center and you know what men have one emotional center and it's right here at their chin and if they want to stabilize their emotions all they have to do is grow a beard Wow. We don't want to grow beards in all those places. So how do we regulate? I mean, because we want to embrace the way nature has us beautifully Well, first of all, it's just understanding, like, okay, I've shifted gears here, but it's just really being gentle with yourself and not being irrational. Like, so just nurturing and honoring, like, what's coming up for you I really think is the best way to to honor that and you know there's so many things you can do to stimulate those through tap therapy you know tapping your eyebrows or going okay I'm in my I'm in my hairline radiance mode right now what is something that is just so beautiful that I can radiate to the world right now is it a message is it a post is it a making medicine you know and so yeah it's just you know It's honoring what's coming up for you, and nurturing it, and going deeper on it, and not just numbing it out, I really think is the best way. And just, you know, if you need space, just giving yourself space to go and do those things that fill you up, because I think we as women can just pour into everyone's cup, and then we just realize our own jug is empty. Absolutely. Must give from our saucer, not our cup. I just, I love that. And I think that what you're saying is very much in thinking of ourselves as a plant. I mean, you wouldn't expect a plant to be stagnant and have a stasis about it. you would expect the plant is going to go through all those things. I think about those beautiful flowers that close down at night when the sun goes down and then open back up in the sunlight. And it is, it's that thing of really embracing how we are beings of nature. And when we do that, we start shedding this gaslighting that we need to be stable and somehow there's a schizophrenic tendency if you're not like that all the time and you're suddenly not relatable and reliable and bankable and all those things. That's part of our creative flow, isn't it? To have those moments of light and shade within that and Yeah and I mean like if you think about like you were in the um you know if you think about the caduceus it's it's a pillar with a snake going around it or two snakes going around it and like what that symbolizes is that the man is the stability in our lives and we are the ones that ride that pillar up and down. And so we are constantly going through these emotional centers and so it's really like men have to have the wherewithal and the spiritual understanding to be stable as we move through those centers. And that's really what a holy union is about, is just having that balance of stability and flow, and stability and flow, you know? It's that, the constant and then the ebbing and the flowing is Yeah, it's- Yeah, like the sand meets the waves, Yeah, and like, you know, I recently just witnessed, well, I was there for the birth of a local baby. I helped the mom through the pregnancy the whole way. And it was so beautiful to see the man sitting behind mama, holding her up, supporting her and her going through the waves of contraction, right? Like she's the one birthing and hitting her pain threshold And then, you know, he's just there propping up her physical body while she has transcended her body and sent her consciousness elsewhere to go retrieve that baby's soul. And it's like, that is what a good healthy relationship and union is all about. And we have to teach this to our children if we want to change, if we want to see change on this earth. It's just like, look, a man needs to be stable and dependable and reliable and be okay to take fire to the face sometimes and you know to protect the sacredness of life and be a warrior for that. you know, and an advocate for protecting life. And I think that as parents, that's really our job, too, is to defend our children. Like, our children chose us for a reason, and that is to protect them from all of the chaos that's around them and all of the, you know, all of the crazy agendas going on. just to be soft and stable and compassionate, but also to know when you need to put your warrior boots on and pick up your sword of truth, which is ultimately your tongue and what you speak is your truth, your sword of truth. And really just, you know, being able to be a wise, compassionate leader, but also be able to pick up the sword of truth and defend what is pure and sacred and, you know, from God, like children are from God, which is why they're such potent beings. So Hey Quantifolks, I've said it before and I'll say it again, birth is transformational. And it can be transformational in the right way and in the not so right way. So how do we arm ourselves to be really prepared for this incredible experience? Well, you wouldn't go out and run a marathon without any kind of training. You'd at least do occasional stretches and the High Vibe Birth Course, which is self-paced, available at the quantimama.com website, is available for you. You get to luxuriate in all of the ideas and transformational techniques and the beautiful information that can only have a positive effect on your birth. So get fit for your birth marathon and