Melissa Laurita Kohl

For 24 years, I followed my passion for plants by studying organic farming, permaculture, and herbalism.

As an artist, writer, and a half Italian mutt from NYC, my many passions have pushed and pulled me from the concrete streets of my home city to the hills of Vermont.

In 2015, I founded a small herb school in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Fungi Flora Folkschool was a flurry of warmth, community, and the passion and excitement that is born of learning how to use herbs as food and medicine.

In 2017, at the age of 35, I became a mother and my life was radically altered in ways I could not have predicted.

Long had I rebelled against the Italian woman’s role in her family as domestic servant. Domesticity is not really part of my nature. I was always outdoors and active. And I learned how to be hard and masculine to navigate the world safely and independently.

Motherhood threw all that I was out the window. I became my mother and her mother and her mother before her. Slowly, I started seeing the incredible burden of keeping a house as something I could no longer rebel against. I started understanding all of those Italian women who I had so terribly misjudged. I understood, for the first time, why they ruled their kitchens with a wooden spoon, how important the magic of their food was to keeping a family together, and how much power and dignity they possessed.

I could not embrace my new life as a mother, without remembering the matrilineal line of Italian mothers before me.

For the first time, I learned how to make pasta by hand. Being an herbalist, I immediately found ways to blend herbs and flour into deeply nourishing, medicinal food. The act of making bright and colorful herbal pasta infused joy and peace into my life and a boost of nutrition into my son.

Motherhood radically altered the way I related to herbalism, to cooking, and to myself. Making pasta is the way I knead, shape, and weave my passions and selves into a vibrant whole.

Pasta is a perfect vehicle for learning how to deeply nourish the self with herbs and vitally grown foods. It is damn yummy, too.

The magic of pasta was only the first stop of my journey to rediscover my Italian roots and the mystery and wisdom inherent in these tiny but powerful mothers before me. La Via, as taught to me by my ancestor, my Great Great Aunt Millie Laurita, my stregoneria teacher Gianmichael Salvato, and my Benedicaria teacher, Gail Faith Edwards, have added a depth to my practice and helped me realize that health should not be measured by productivity but by my ability to stay present in my life and enjoy the riches and power inherent in the present moment.