About Us
“it is not about becoming, it is about becoming-with.”
Donna Haraway
Savage Craic is a living partnership between llewyn máire (they/siad), Dr. Lisa Newman (she/they), local and international herbalists, artists, makers, Irish soil/ seed workers, and an eclectic family of plantcestors, microbial mates, and fungikin— fermenting lifeways in the Irish Free State since 2015.
We are an anarcho queer venture that engages in collective care and skill share rooted in land stewardship — through workshops, events, radical bioregional remedies and seasonal ferments.
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llewyn máire, known in community as lle (yE), is the primary facilitator and maker for Savage Craic.
Their lineage with cooking and liberatory community herbalism starts at home with lessons from their mother, Laura Matthiessen, who taught them the importance of building relationships with plants, the necessity of political activism, the need to centre community care, and how to cook food for survival and nourishment.
This led to decades in community and professional kitchens; from Food Not Bombs to fine dining — where they developed a passion for cultivation, fermentation, and food as medicine.
Learning herbalism continues with a life filled with a deep love of books, as well as, sharing with people, plants, and engaging in more formal education through Herbalista Free School, Solidarity Apothecary, The Peoples Medicine School, Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine, and others.
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Savage Craic is in the process of becoming a not-for-profit social enterprise and is seeking land to steward towards the development of a queer sanctuary that will include a generative residency, creative studio, radical food forest, and community apothecary kitchen.
Fermentation transforms and inspires, making for delicious ways to engage with our food, the land, and each other. These relationships speak to an ancient mutualism that started when we first shared breath with our plantcestors.
This venture is motivated by our love for gathering together and breaking bread, making art, sharing stories, cultivating resilience, and building care networks.
We are each microbial stewards, eco-celebrants, agents of community care, spiraling ever forward in this dance of life, our goal is to do so with ever growing purpose, to create positive relationships, rewild our lifeways and aid in the cultivation of decolonial futures for us all.
When we first arrived in Éire, we were breaking bread with new friends when a comrade from Ennis referred to everything we were sharing as some “savage craic”, which felt like an induction to something very old, a birthing of something new — and a welcome home.
llewyn máire