Half Moon Herbals

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Waterloo, ON
Half Moon Herbals

Nikola Barsoum is a certified Community Herbalist, Permaculture Designer and Ecological Farmer

The practice of herbal medicine is one of relationship building with the plants and the lands where one lives, and is a practice that is woven within all peoples histories. In gratitude and in joy, we plant, tend, harvest, prepare, drink-in and teach about healing herbs - as well as the process of reciprocity and giving back. Half Moon Herbals builds herb gardens using permaculture principals. Thr

ough observation, creative design and polyculture plantings we grow in a way that encourages respectful engagement and restoration of the surrounding ecosystem.

08/14/2026

Hello friends! This is your reminder to come out and join us tomorrow morning for a fun sensory-based circle all about the vast world of water extracts. ✨

Our Community Learning Circles are free to attend, because herbal medicine is 'the medicine of the people'! We also welcome thanks through a monetary offering ($30 suggested) to help keep this work alive - thank you!

Registration link in the comments. Let us know you're coming or simply drop-in and join us.
DATE: Sat Aug 15th
TIME: 9:30am-Noon
LOCATION: The Yurt KW 508 Duke Street West, Kitchener

07/02/2026

We each experience stress differently, so when we choose herbs for stress support it’s helpful to start by assessing the our own experience with stress:
- Do I feel overwhelmed and can’t think?
- Do I get flushed and become quick to anger?
- Am I constantly feeling ‘tired but wired’
- Is my stress connected to grief and heart ache
- Is my body humming with anxiety?
- Etc.

Exploring these questions helps us select the herbs that can best support us. In the herbal world, there are a huge amount of herbs we could choose from! Nervous system relaxants, trophorestoratives, adaptogens, cardiac tonics, etc.

I love helping people find the right herbs to support their own unique experiences! And while simples are so important (working with one herb at a time) to deepening our relationship and felt understanding of how an herb works, formula and blends that are custom-made can be deeply supportive for more complex situations.

This past Saturday we met in The Yurt KW with Wild Earth Remedies to dive into this topic, and everyone left with a song on their lips and a custom tea that was unique to their own experience with stress.

If you’d like support like this, message me to arrange a private herbal consult (trades are welcome) or come out to one of our future Herbal Learning Circles in the Grand River Watershed.

Im grateful to each of you for joining us on Saturday, and for everyone offering some loving attention to your friend, neighbour, relative. Our healing is collective. ❤️

06/25/2026

We welcome you to join us for the next Herbal Learning Circle this Saturday morning, in the Grand River Watershed, hosted The Yurt KW

We have a few seats left! Register through the link in the comments. In this circle we will be communing with a selection of herbs that are specific and trusted allies for supporting our nervous systems.

Often when we are stressed it can be tempting to 'throw everything at it' with herbs. Instead, this is an opportunity to slow down and consider the herbs that are most specific for you and what you truly need in these moments of stress.

This circle is about helping you clarify and refine your selection, so you are working with herbs medicinally in a more safe and effective way.

We will discuss a few specific herbal actions, consider our personal selections based on herbal energetics, and review classic blending principles. You will leave this circle with your own custom-blended herbal tea, to take home and enjoy.

Herbs offer fantastic support for moving out of flight/fight and into rest/digest. This is the first step we all need to take in the deep healing process of coming back into a regenerative relationship with ourselves, each other, and the land. ❤️

See you there!

06/15/2026

Herbal First Aid offers some really valuable additions to the more ‘orthodox’ supplies in a standard first-aid kit.

Yarrow, calendula, plantain, st.john’s wort, chamomile, comfrey., arnica… and handful of others were discussed on Saturday! 🌼

Aside from the herbs themselves, it also felt critical to remember how our presence is part of the medicine in moments of urgency. Take a breath, slow down your speaking, get down at eye level… and like always, treat the PERSON not just the injury/illness.

It was a joy to review and learn more alongside these valued members of our community and co-facilitate woth Wild Earth Remedies . Thank you for a wonderful morning together The Yurt KW ! ✨ And thank you Michal Recka for the photos! 🙏

It’s empowering for me to remember there is medicine growing on almost every footpath of almost every season here. The honourable relationships we can grow with our more-than-human community feels so deeply essential and liberating in these times we are living in.

06/09/2026

I always feel a calm kind of confidence from knowing (a little) about how to tend small moments of physical hurt and upset.

A bleeding cut.
A swelling sting.
A shock that needs a grounded moment of care.

The more I learn, the more these moments feel less urgent and more relational. I can trust and ‘get behind’ the response our bodies mount - while also offering comfort and stability to the emotional/spiritual/mental aspects of a moment of trauma. I still have a lot to learn, and I also notice my feeling of calm grow with the more practice I get in using these skills - knowledge + experience is everything here.

Therefore, on behalf of growing this feeling of calm confidence within our selves and our community here in the Grand River Watershed, in a few days, Heather .earth.remedies and I will be hosting a small Herbal First Aid Learning Circle

This isn’t a formal ‘class’, as neither of us are experts in first-aid. Instead, it will be a welcome space to:

* sit in circle and learn together as a community
* share what we already know (and what we don’t)
* explore a number of simple, practical approaches to herbal first aid, and openly discuss our experiences in a variety of situations
* touch, smell, and deepen our relationship with a few familiar plants
* role-play and practice some of what we’ve discussed

I’ll be bringing my own first aid kit and unpacking it with you honestly, without pretending to have it all figured out.

If you’ve been curious about:

* how to actually use herbs in everyday situations
* building a small, meaningful herbal first aid kit for yourself
* or simply spending time in a grounded, plant-centered space

…you are welcome to join us!

Register with the link in my bio to let us know you’re coming! Drop-ins are also very welcome! These circles are open and accessible, pay-what-you-can, offered by us as in the spirit of a gift. ❤️

Saturday June 13th, 9:30am-12:00pm
The YurtKW, 508 Duke Street W., Kitchener

06/02/2026

Check your wine caps! We are reaching the end of the last flush, but it was a good one here in the Grand River Watershed! Wine caps (Stropharia rugosoannulata), also known as Garden Giants or King Stropharia, are currently growing in the woodchip filled swales of our large veggies garden as well as in a simple pile of wood-shaving strategically positioned under our rain barrel overflow spout at home. Both have been flushing beautifully this spring and we are re-inoculating as we dig up and refill swales this year. The mycelium filled swales have a fun little bounce to them when the mycelia get dense… it feels similar to walking on the springy forest floor of a healthy old growth forest. Mushrooms are so wise and so so important.
We are grateful to be in relationship with them. ❤️

05/11/2026

Thank you .earth.remedies for leading our recent Herbal Learning Circle: Botany for Herbalists!

Together at , we explored the gardens through a hands-on herbal scavenger hunt (fun!), practicing how to observe plant patterns as a way of building familiarity and relationship over time. We focused on three key medicinal plant families: Asteraceae, Rosaceae, and Lamiaceae, learning how to recognize their shared characteristics in the field.

We also discussed the medicinal actions commonly found within each family, helping us understand how plant identification and herbal use are deeply connected.

I’m grateful to everyone who joined us with curiosity and care! These circles are a reminder that learning about medicinal herbs is not just about memorization and focused study, but about developing attentive, ongoing relationships with the living world around us. ❤️

05/05/2026

This Saturday we gather again at

You’re invited to a Herbal Learning Circle centered on botany through the lens of relational herbalism. Together, we’ll explore how plant families can guide our understanding of medicinal actions, and how careful, simple observation helps us recognize and relate to the plants around us. We’ll also consider the differences between wild medicines and cultivated varieties, and what those distinctions may teach us.

This is a space to slow down, listen, and learn with the plants—and with one another.

Please let us know if you plan to attend via the registration form linked in comments. Drop-ins are welcome! ❤️ See you soon! ✨
earth.remedies

04/24/2026

Not flowers?? No friend, these are the beautiful leaves unfurling right now of our beloved Elder (Sambucus canadensis, I believe). How delicate and stunning! Like little broccoli, hahaha, and one of many signs of spring.

04/19/2026

Thank you for a truly profound first herbal learning circle yesterday morning that included a few songs and some beautiful personal sharing!

As the first circle of the year, we focused on the foundational process of meeting the plants and learning WITH them (not just about them), in order to deepen into our practice of Relational Herbalism.

So, we primed our senses and went out to sit with a tree and listen deeply. What came back from this was a little shocking to be honest, with how clear the message was.

The trees here are asking for us to witness them, and invite them into our spaces. We ended up setting out a seat for them in our circle (which I will keep doing in future circles, for them).

There was a big theme of death and dying in this forest, and lots of feelings of missing of friends (deer and bear)- overall grief at the loss of what was (what the land here used to be, community, health, ecosystem vitality and overall identity of the land), and also there was a deep feeling of peace and a message to stop ‘trying so hard’ and just be. That the small simple lives are vital and important. That death brings rebirth. And that the frustration and anger are shared.

It was truly powerful. Thank you all so much for joining us, on a morning that was down pouring with rain no less (!), to do this good work together. I want to do more of these specific types of circles together. I want to hear more from our mother trees here. ❤️

Address

Mary Allen Park
Waterloo, ON

Website

http://www.halfmoonherbals.com/

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