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Hi, I'm Kearsley Tate Schweller
(she/her)
I'm the Bioregional Chef,
Folk Herbalist, & Writer of
Kearsley's Kitchen

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Food has always been at the center of culture.

 

My work is mused by a profound romance with food, story, land, and nurturance. By weaving together culinary & folk traditions with a core value for small scale bioregional agriculture, including wild foraged ingredients, I craft meals that connect people with place. At the heart of my work is a deep care for nourishing new mothers and families with postpartum specific meals and medicines. This offering is the fruit of many years apprenticing to wildcrafting, herbalism, vitalism branches of medicine, traditional foods, hormonal health, animistic beliefs, & special attention to the digestive and nervous systems. I believe that eating local and organically grown food prepared in traditional and flavorfully innovative ways can provide deep pleasure, meaning, and healing needed at this time. I'm on a first name basis with many of the farmers in the area and source the highest quality ingredients I can find, like landrace varieties of wheat, milk from down the street, pasture raised meat, seasonal produce, and wild ingredients like spruce tips, mushrooms, birch bark, and spicebush.

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You can read more about my lineage, teachers, and foundational ethos below.

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Photography by Connor Burkesmith

As a bioregional chef I curate seasonal dining experiences, postpartum packages, and share local cooking classes as well as stock my online shop with small batch wildcrafted elixirs and seasonal cookbooks. This work was made possible by many years of devotional study and practice, including:

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  • Teaching classes across the world in subjects like seasonal eating, Ayurveda, what defines a holistic approach, and most recently wildcrafted cooking classes with Wild Abundance

  • Self publishing 4 seasonal recipe, remedy, & ritual guidebooks

  • Attending a Women's Hormonal Health training led by the Midwest Women's Herbal Conference in Almond, WI

  • 400 hour Ayurvedic Counselor // Women's Focus taught by Dr. Vinod of Ayuskama Ayurveda​ in Northern India

  • 1 year apprenticeship to wild foods, folk herbalism, European and Native traditions, and many years of assisting classes with Rebecca Beyer of Blood and Spicebush

  • Tending the Red Tent at many gatherings and events around the world

  • 3 years of managing the kitchen and farmers market for Goddess Ghee, a medicinal grass-fed ghee company run by women here in Asheville, NC

  • Hosting multiple sold out farm to table dinners in the Teton Valley in Idaho

  • Over 10 years of self study and practice in the art of traditional food ways including raising and processing chickens, baking sourdough, culturing raw milk, and more

  • Butchery training with Andrew Magazine of Applied Anatomist

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 To tell you a little bit more about me as a person outside of the work I offer my community, I can describe my way of life best as a "slow simmer" - a delicate balance between actively engaging what inspires me and savoring the simple slow joys of life like wandering the woods, baking sourdough, curating beautiful art, building fires in my backyard, & exploring the symbolic realms through dreams, color, & earth-based ritual. 

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 Though I travel often for pleasure & work, I know home and community to be in the soft rolling mountains of Southern Appalachia outside Asheville, NC on the territory of the Tsalaguwetiyi also known as the Eastern band of Cherokee.

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Thank you for joining me here. May your bread be well buttered and stories rich with laughter.

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With Warmth,

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Kearsley

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