Journal

It was a misty day of October, Clémence had bought croissants and baby Cleo didn’t like to be in the car. We drove south with our plastic bags and cardboard boxes to meet up with William Houmann, a former chemistry technician, and pick wild plants for our herbal teas event at Sjællandsgade Bad. We had this kind of feeling one can have, when a stranger is taking the time to share all his knowledge and passion at once, with a simple and transparent generosity. Just a profound gratitude and a real excitement. We arrived on Nyord: a small green “almost-island” squeezed in between Møn and Sjælland, where about 48 inhabitants live all year round. We met William in the café-boutique Noorbohandelen, where he is also selling the local mustard that he started producing in a little workshop ten years ago. Today, he processes about one and a half tons of mustard seeds a year in Nyord’s small mustard mill. 
We drunk coffee, talked about languages. We were all of us a good shade of the different levels of danish understanding: from the native speaking, to the French trying to be fluent, the French grasping some words and the Franco-Danish baby babbling. Anyway, the visit continued in Danish and so did the introduction to all the plants. Their latin names saved the day.

We went out of the café and discovered in the back an impressive selection of spirits from all around the world also sold in the shop: Grappa Chardonnay, Piña Colada, Tomatin, Monymusk, Limoncello, Aquavit, walnut and elderflower liquor, Gin,... William walked us to his little workshop in an old barn by the boutique. We stepped in a kitchen with flowery wallpapers and wooden shelves, where leaves, flowers, seeds, and mushrooms are dried and stored in glass jars. Gentianae radix. Radix Rhei Sinensis. Sorbus aucuparia. There were still decorative plates hanging on the walls, a stove and a kitchen hood, but the cold air flow and the spider webs didn’t leave a doubt about its use: the happy mess of an endlessly curious chemist, a place where William experiments with kitchen tools and laboratory equipment to make creams and shampoo. 
He gave us empty plastic ice cream containers, and here we go in the rain in search of wild plants to make herbal teas. In fields, street sides or his garden, we picked flowers and berries: verbascum flowers, clover flowers, nettles, rose hip,... Back at his workshop, we sat down in the room next door around the table, William made us tea, started a fire and we shared a soup, listening to his stories surrounded by intriguing glass jars.