My daughter went a little wild this year “trimming” back the grape vines that wandered over the fence that badly needs repair (rather than simply repairing the fence), so diminishing the ripening fruit that we got basically nothing from them this season. Ah, well. Happens every so often. They should be back in bulk next year, and I’m fixing the fence over the winter so she won’t be tempted to prune out of season. What she didn’t manage to trim into oblivion this year are the wild roses (sweet briar) bushes on the up-ridge side of the driveway. They can get out of control pretty easy, and always want to drape down into the driveway to cause scratches (and sometimes blood) to people who park too close.

So I’m the one who did the pruning this year, and I was very careful to hardily discourage growth on the driveway side, while encouraging growth on the ridge side. That allowed for a pretty good haul of rose hips this past weekend by my grandson. In previous years I’ve simply put the little hips – sweet briar hips are about half the size of dogwood berries, not the fat wild persimmon sized hips of garden roses – into a jar in the freezer to add to teas made over the winter. Especially the colds/flu tea we drink a lot of to keep the viruses away. But this year we made rose hip syrup, and I’m definitely a convert as I drink my morning coffee sweetened with it.

Rose hips are sort of a concentrated multi-vitamin, with an average of 20 times the vitamin C as oranges. They don’t turn red (and soften up) until after the first frost, which occurred on the up side of the hill weekend before last. They’re difficult to harvest, as they must be pulled from the branches carefully in order to avoid battle scarring from those pesky thorns. So I must say I was very glad for grandson’s volunteering to do that job, I usually wait until November to harvest and end up looking like I’ve been handling an ill-tempered badger. Rose hips also contain appreciable amounts of vitamins A, D and E, making them a very good wintertime tonic.

You can make a jelly out of them, but it seems to me that the heat of jelly processing is probably not the best way to preserve the vitamin content. Whereas steeping them for tea doesn’t expose them to high heat for extended periods. Always keep them whole prior to processing, as once they’ve been cut or ground they begin oxidation immediately. A good rule of thumb is that it takes ~1/2 pound of hips for 1 quart of syrup, though you’ll want to use half-pint jelly jars for the final product. Be sure to sterilize them as well as the lids. They do not require actual canning, but you’ll want to seal them while still very hot.

Some people who use the big garden-rose hips cut off the tops and tails, but this would be silly with little bitty wild hips. To remove as much of the long-dead petals and hairs at the top end, I simply rub a small handful between my hands to loosen it up good, before spray-washing. Once washed, put the hips into a grinder or blender and process to a kind of sticky pulp. Put this pulp into 2 quarts of rapidly boiling water, remove from the heat, cover, and let steep for 4-5 hours or overnight.

Strain through an unbleached coffee filter or jelly bag, try to get all the liquid you can out of it. Put this into a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat while slowly stirring in 1.5 cups of packed light brown sugar. Make sure your sugar is natural brown rather than dyed, as in natural form it retains quite a bit of the good mineral content. Reduce heat to a bare simmer and keep uncovered to reduce the liquid by about half, so that it’s quite thick. Pour this into the sterilized jars and attach lids. Allow to cool on the countertop, then keep in the refrigerator to preserve the vitamins C and A.

Use this syrup like honey to sweeten coffee or herbal teas, or just take a spoonful a day as supplement. You can mix this syrup with strong elderberry tincture if you have a cold or get the flu. It makes the tincture a little easier to swallow, but sugar does affect the potency of the tincture a bit. I prefer to use the syrup by itself as a tea sweetener, it adds a little bit of tart and a lot of sweet, especially for blackberry and mint teas.

And don’t forget to throw a few dried dogwood berries into the teapot when you’re steeping, these are also excellent sources of vitamins C and A. Here’s hoping the viral season is light this year, and that we all spend as few days under the weather as possible.

Some Helpful Links:

Foraging: Making Rosehip Syrup
Katey’s Rosehip Syrup recipe
Rose Hip Jelly, Jam Recipe

Autumn has come to the mountain just as spring did – one ay it was perfectly clear, close to 80º and comfortably into the mid-60s at night, the next it was barely up to 60º at mid-day and into the high 30s at night. Not only are we seriously behind in the necessary wood supply for heat, I’ve been having to scramble to bring in the remaining peppers and last of the tomatoes. Poplar leaves are already yellow and dogwoods are getting a ret tint on their leave to complement their quickly ripening bright red berries, and the crisp air fills with leaves whenever the breeze blows.

Luckily autumn is my favorite of all seasons. In three weeks from now the lush greens of summer will have turned into impossible corals and day-glo oranges and deep reds and yellows bright enough to light up the night. The smell of leaf-fall is heavenly even though it means endless raking in November, a necessary task to ensure resistance to spring fires. And of course the usual foot-deep winter covering once I’ve cleaned out the garden terraces and tossed the remains of their summer bounty on the compost pile. But it’s raining right now, so I’m shivering inside not daring to use any of the scant locust we have left from last year’s wood supply before nightfall, when it’ll really be needed.

In my last post I talked about a new centralized organizational outfit for connecting CSAs [Community Supported Agriculture farms] and ass orated organic suppliers with customer bases in their area via the internet, for promoting healthy, local food and food products and changing the way we eat. In my wanderings about the web, I discovered another kind of CSA that sounds like something right up my alley.

It’s called Goldthread, and it’s a CSA they say should properly be called a “CSM” because it offers community-supported medicinal herb shares. The Goldthread farm is located in western Massachusetts, and its herbal preparations are made in small batches at the farm in Conway and an apothecary in Florence. A share basket may include a combination of carefully dried bulk herbs, small bottles of tinctures, essential oils, herbal honeys and compounds, often accompanied by fresh culinary herbs and garlic.

“Grassroots medicine” sounds like a good idea at this current point in history, as my ‘customer’ base has only been increasing over the past few years as western medicine’s allopathic treatments have become far too expensive for most people to use, joblessness has stripped what little insurance coverage people once did have, and the state slashes Medicaid to the bone so that no one new gets on the roll until someone dies. Last year my elderberry tincture (for colds and flu) saved nearly a dozen people – one of them an ER nurse – from work and time loss due to viral respiratory infections. My ginseng tincture hasn’t been made yet, but three new ‘customers’ have requested some, asap. If I had money to invest in some cute little dropper bottles and labels, I could probably make a little income on the side just with those. Then there’s the black cohosh, the Japanese honeysuckle, the goldenseal, the dogwood and spiceberry tonic, and MUST get started on the autumn end of my skin lesion salve that takes a year to produce…

Problem is, I use those little quotes around the word ‘customer’ because I’ve just never charged anybody real money for my simples and remedies. People have long said I could, but all of my herbalist ancestors believed – and taught – that doing it for money was antithetical to the effort at healing. That was so ingrained in me that it’s been difficult to even begin thinking about charging money. But now that my grandson has put so much energy and effort into learning from me, and helping me greatly in managing the medicinal crops, I see that earning a little money on those efforts isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Now that grandson is in ‘business’ with me as apprentice-in-training, making a bit of money for his college tuition is where I’m aiming my thoughts for the next year. Both in producing the concoctions and in planning for more medicinals next growing season. We’ve already transplanted what will be an entire grove of elderberry that was threatened by a road-widening project, and nettle so we’d have our own on-property supply. We’ve transferred the ginseng to new, deeper beds much better protected from deer and tromping disc golfers than where they were before.

We probably won’t be a CSA like this farm in Massachusetts is, as there are plenty of needful folks just here in our area who tend to trouts the old herb-lady more than they trust whatever allopathic doctor’s on duty today at the urgent care center for $400 a pop just to walk in the door.

So wish us luck, and I’ll be sure to report back on whether or not this change of heart on the healing plane works out. Stay tuned!

Link

Goldthread Herbal Apothecary
The Kitchn: Goldthread Article

With the Harvest Moon just a couple of days past, the last of the summer crops will be coming in over the next month to be properly stored and/or preserved. The big pears are finally falling, providing more than enough for as much pear butter as I can possibly make even as the deer and turkeys work hard to eat more than their share before I can gather. The pumpkins are good and orange now, but can stay on the vines until first freeze warnings before I have to harvest and process. Winter squash is looking to be a good harvest at the same time, and the peppers are quickly turning red in rushes. Grape tomatoes are being sun-dried to “tomaisins,” as many as I can fit into the solar dryer at a time and always many more waiting to be picked. They’ll keep right on coming until first freeze.

At the same time, as the beds are cleared from harvest they must be prepped for fall plantings. More kale and collards (which will keep going all winter into spring with plastic tenting on very cold nights), peas, lettuces and spinach, and of course garlic. Today I’m talking garlic, because it’s one of our most favorite garden goodies.

Garlic is a member of the onion [allium] family. It has powerful antibiotic properties, and is well known as a “blood purifier” and digestive stimulant. Legend has it that garlic is an effective vampire and werewolf repellant, but I haven’t heard that it will prove to be all that useful during the coming Zombie apocalypse. For that, you should follow the advice in The Zombie Survival Guide instead.

Garlic should be planted in the fall, but won’t be harvestable until the next summer. If done right, you can end up harvesting about 250 nice heads from just a 4 by 8 foot plot, so it’s a very good crop even in tightly-packed town homes and subdivisions if there’s that much yard that enjoys ample sun. Garlic is readily marketable at tailgate and farmer’s markets, but it also stores well and if your family loves it as much as mine, there won’t be many bulbs to sell.

First, double-dig your bed and break up the clumps, rake to smooth. You can purchase garlic bulbs or pre-separated cloves from your Farm & Garden supply or on line, but I usually just purchase some nice full heads of my favorite varieties in the organic produce section of my local grocery store. Carefully break the cloves off the bulb head, keeping the skin intact. Push these root-end first into the soil about 4 inches apart. I stagger-plant them, but you can do neat rows if you like. Leave the pointy clove tops sticking out, as only the roots need to be seated in the soil. The heads themselves will develop to be much bigger in compost.

Which you want to now apply on top of the planted cloves to a depth of an inch or two. Tamp this down and cover about 4 inches deep with leaves you’ve raked off the lawn. These will compact and compost themselves over the winter and those onion-like garlic leaves will come right up through it all in the spring. If you plant a hardneck variety you’ll want to cut off the stiff round flower stalks when they are a few inches tall, which will encourage bigger bulbs with more cloves. The leaf cover should help discourage weeds, but if stubborn weeds do get started next spring you’ll want to pull them.

That’s basically all there is to it. Other than cutting those flower stalks (which are quite good snipped like chives and added to stir-fry) and pulling any weeds that try to establish themselves in the leaf mulch, you need do nothing but watch it grow. Around mid-June I begin checking the bulb development, always anxious to roast some garlic for dinner or snacks. Just pull back the leaf mulch and feel around in the compost to gage how well the bulbs are coming along. If you’re like me you’ll end up eating several that didn’t get as big as they could have, but others will have plenty of time to fill out. Any garlic left by this time next fall should be harvested before planting anew for the next season.

Most cooks have their favorite ways to serve garlic. It can also be roughly chunked and dried, then ground as garlic powder, garlic salt, or as an ingredient in your favorite herb mixture for the dining table. Garlic cloves are great grilled with other veggies and/or meat chunks on a kabob skewer. But my family’s absolute favorite way to enjoy garlic is as roasted whole cloves.

Roasting is easy. I just separate the cloves from the bulb, discarding as much of the papery skin as possible while leaving the hard skins on. Put these into a roasting pan – I use a mini-bread pan – and add a tablespoon of olive oil. rub the oil and garlic together to make sure all the cloves are well coated, and roast in the oven at 350º for 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of the cloves). Allow them to cool enough to be handled, and dump them out onto a plate. The roasted garlic inside the skins is easy to squeeze or suck out from the pointy end. A nice plate of these roasted cloves (sometimes 3 or 4 bulbs’ worth) around my homestead always draws a quick crowd and never lasts more than a few minutes.

If you do end up with a few left over after the frenzy, you can squeeze out the innards into a little bowl and mix well with butter and a pinch of salt and store in the fridge for making garlic bread. You can also mix some fine parmesan/romano cheese into this garlic butter, which is great on home made bruscetta bread. Which I’ll talk about later, after the harvest, preserving and fall planting are done. Bon appetite!

Today I managed to get out into the garden before noon for a little clean-up and prep. Took out the last of the early peas and radish pods from their nifty PVC tent with twine, the peas being well past done and the pods perfect for harvest. I’ll need to clean out the bed thoroughly to replant with pole beans, and I will replant radishes down below in a bare well-composted spot next to the potatoes (which are blooming great guns!).

I also donned leather gloves and de-headed the milk thistle [Silybum marianum]. They were as tall as me by this time, falling over from heavy heads to make it difficult to get past them to the rest of the garden. Those dry pods are spiny like you wouldn’t believe, as if the leaves weren’t bad enough, but all spring the leaves make great additions to salads and pot greens, very pretty variegated thick foliage you have to trim the spines off of before adding to anything. The flower heads – the usual pretty purple thistle flowers about the size of a golf ball – produce seeds that are readily marketable to herb dealers in our region, but we end up using most of them ourselves for skin treatments, general systemwide cleansing, etc.

This stately and strikingly pretty plant has been in use for more than 2,000 years as a remedy for all sorts of ailments, most notably liver and gall bladder problems. There have even been medical studies of milk thistle as a remedy for liver damage caused by pain medications such as acetaminophen. Its flavonoid Silymarin is antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, and its action on the liver appears to be stimulation of new cell growth in that organ.

Because of this quality, milk thistle has been used as a treatment for the liver conditions of alcohol abuse, including hepatitis and cirrhosis. It is also used in the treatment of viral hepatitis (particularly hep-C), and support in cases of mushroom poisoning which affects the liver directly. Some studies have suggested milk thistle may have anti-cancer properties, but this is as yet unproven and anyone with hormone-related cancers (breast, uterine, prostate) should avoid it. Double blind studies have demonstrated reduced mortality in cirrhosis patients, and biopsies demonstrated clear improvements in liver condition.

Milk thistle seeds can be made into extract, or munched dried, or steeped into decoctions to sip. The tinctures are stronger, so consider these a potent ingredient to be taken somewhat lightly or added to salves.

So, in case you have grown milk thistle too (or did in previous years and let the volunteers go ahead and grow just because they’re so pretty), here’s a basic how-to for making the extract that is so good for your liver and skin, and thus can be added to mixed tonics and such for your purposes…

Milk Thistle Seed Extract

Separate the seeds from their spiny flower calyx and dry, mix it around a bit to loosen it from the whispy aerial flight fluff. That fluff can then be threshed by tossing from a basket and letting the breeze carry it away. Good seed that you wish to market or store should be threshed so there’s not much waste matter. Drying should be open air (not in full sun), not done by heating. Stored seeds should be kept whole in jars kept in cool, dark and dry places until preparation.

Grind the seeds to break them open, either by blender or a bit at a time with mortar and pestle. Put about 3/4 of a cup of broken thistle seeds into a pint size canning jar. Mix in 1 cup of 100 proof vodka (get the organic stuff), or blackberry brandy for a bit of flavor. Cap the jar and swirl it around to mix well every day or two for 3-5 weeks.

The longer the seeds steep, the more potent the resulting tincture will be. Always make sure the alcohol covers the seeds completely, add more if necessary. DO NOT let them mold, as they will if they aren’t fully covered. After steeping for the period of weeks, strain the tincture into a sterile bottle (or several), preferably bottles of green or brown glass with tight lids or cork stoppers.

Dosage

Always check with the doctor if someone already under treatment wants tincture from you. Milk Thistle can affect the potency of pharmaceutical drugs, including anti-psychotics, drugs for various ‘nervous’ disorders, etc. Be on top of any reported side effects like nausea, abdominal cramps or diarrhea. Adjust dosages accordingly.

For general purposes a dose of 20-40 drops of tincture (straight or in water) 3 times a day is good for most purposes. That works out what I always start with, which is a solid 1/2 teaspoon 3 times a day, 1/2 teaspoon being equivalent to 30 drops. You want to spread this dosage out to 3 times a day to get a the best benefits of timing, but for those who just aren’t capable of keeping up with such a regimen (as for some alcoholics I know), half a tablespoon once a day will work but may cause more stomach upset.

At any rate, milk thistle is one of those beautiful and very useful plants that are both marketable and useful for herbal remedies that grow great in and around a garden and assorted sun-drenched homestead plantings. They will hurt if you don’t wear gloves when dealing with them, though, as the spines are cactus-sharp. They grow with no tending, they’re good to eat in salads and with pot likker at dinner time, and the seeds are precious. Those seeds when ground to rough powder also make very nice defoliating material for homemade soaps and cleansers, and are particularly useful for clearing up acne and rosacea.

So if you happen across a nice natural herb shop selling milk thistle seeds by the gram or ounce, pick some up and sow them in a sunny spot where the kids and dogs don’t hang out much. You won’t be sorry!

Insects share our homesteads, our homes, outbuildings, land and gardens, and some of them are known to bite or sting. This can cause itchy welts, painful injuries and allergic reactions that make living and working on the land less fun than it should be. So in this second installment in the Homestead First Aid Kit series, I want to address the problem of unfriendly insects and what you can do to both protect yourself from their attentions and treat yourself for the harm they cause.

Disclaimer: Use your head first and foremost. Should a bite or sting show signs of painful swelling, local bruising, expanding allergic reaction, pus, red striations around the wound or symptoms of infection, seek medical attention.

First line of defense is always to wash the area of an insect bite or sting with warm, soapy water before applying any topical agent. Once clean, swab with rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide to disinfect. Applying ice wrapped in a clean, wet washcloth can immediately help relieve itching and reduce swelling.

Use scotch tape to remove the tiny stingers of bees if they are not prominent enough to remove easily with fingers or tweezers. Tape also works well to remove the spines of stinging caterpillars.

For bee, wasp and hornet stings, while ice is being applied mix a tablespoon of baking soda with a few drops of water to make a paste. Always make sure the stinger is removed, then apply the soda paste to the site of the sting. Allow the paste to dry thoroughly before brushing off and applying again. The action of drying helps to draw the painful toxins out of the skin. In a pinch, a minty dab of toothpaste can accomplish much the same thing.

Lemon or lime juice rubbed onto mosquito or gnat bites can ease the itching, and vinegar works on both mosquito and spider bites by helping to modify the pH of the injected toxins. rubbing mosquito bites with table salt after the skin is moistened also works, as does moistened tobacco on bee and wasp stings and spider bites.

Around my homestead we have some aloe vera plants in various strategic locations. Aloe is not only soothing and healing for burns, it is also quite good on insect bites once you’ve done the initial first aid. I like to keep some aloe in a sealed bag in the freezer for first aid use, using that instead of plain ice for the initial after-wash treatment and by the time the paste has worked, to apply to the bites afterwards.

Bites and stings that involve some damage to the skin cells – producing a raw spot that looks as if it could easily become infected should receive an application of topical antibiotic. Among the best topical antibiotics to keep in your homestead first aid kit are raw local honey, lavender or rosemary essential oil, or even garlic.

To make yourself (and your family) less appetizing to mosquitoes, gnats and other pesky insects, try garlic first because it’s the tastiest and best for you. If you can’t stand eating fresh garlic, take a few garlic oil gelcaps a day. Or puncture the gelcap and rub the oil directly on your skin if you don’t mind smelling like a peasant while out tending your garden. Avoid floral or fruity smelling cosmetics, sunscreens, perfumes, etc., as these draw mosquitoes.

If you make an infused oil of cinnamon, rosemary, peppermint, cloves, lavender, thyme, lemon balm or garlic to use as a repellant, re-apply every couple of hours that you are spending outdoors working. An infused oil is easy to make with some light vegetable oil (canola or safflower works well) in a mason jar, into which you pack chunked raw garlic or plant materials. Put it in a sunny window for a week or so, then strain into a handy size bottle.

Be aware that nothing you can apply to yourself will deter angry bees, wasps, hornets or yellow jackets, and these can swarm to cause many stings. Some common spiders – black widows and brown recluse – can be quite dangerous if there is allergy, and can cause tissue damage around the bite. Look for ‘rings’ of inflammation or bruising around bites, as these can indicate a need for medical follow-up. Some ticks carry Lyme Disease, and this usually shows up as a ring of inflammation around the area of the bite as well.

Previous Posts to this Series:

Homestead First Aid Kit: Mullein

Useful Links:

WLJ Natural Medicines
Natural Antibiotics
Home Remedies for Insect Bites & Stings

Many readers are probably most familiar with the “Elder Wand” from the Harry Potter series of books and movies, but not all that versant on the lore surrounding the humble elder tree. According to the Harry Potter Wiki, the Elder Wand – made of the ‘given’ wood of the elder tree – is the most powerful magic wand that ever existed.

Author Rawlings drew from the large body of Celtic lore to frame her magical fantasy series, and among that body of lore the elder looms large. The elder tree [Sambucus nigra] is small and usually grows at the edge of woodlands and forest. Legend has it that the elder-mother resided in the trunk of the tree, a being who protected not just the tree itself but any home where an elder was planted. Fairies were said to visit troubles on anyone daring enough to cut or steal living branches from the tree, so any object crafted of elder wood had to be from a branch or tree ‘gifted’ by the fairies to the craftsman by wind or other natural deadfall. New trees can be planted by means of a live twig which will root in the ground like willow, and I am happy to say that there appear to be survivors among the several ‘gifted’ twigs my grandson and I planted in the ground last summer after a storm. Hoping, of course, to have our own elder grove at the bottom fenceline of the garden.

We obtained the ‘gifting’ from a fine elder grove currently neglected on a neighborhood property lost a couple of years ago to foreclosure. Since no one was tending the property, we decided nobody’d miss the berry crop if we did the harvesting. The grove is located on the far side of a fine trout pond installed by the previous owner for fishing, which boasts a nice little sand beach, a dock for a little john boat, and an aerating fountain that still works on back-fall pressure from the creek. It was so blasted hot during June and July last year that we were very grateful for the luxury of that cold water pond, not to mention the ample blackberries and raspberries that had taken over because nobody was tending the land.

The crop was large, so by harvesting a couple of baskets full over a period of time allowed us to process in a leisurely manner over time as well. We simply stripped the berries from the tiny stems, filled quart jars about 2/3 with them (not crushed or packed), and then filled the jars with 100-proof vodka. Many herbalists say 80-proof works as well, but I go for good (and organic!) when I can. The tincture itself will keep for about 5 years once filtered and bottled and kept in a cool, dark place, but it never lasts that long during cold and flu season.

Once we’d made as much tincture as I could afford to make (organic 100-proof ain’t cheap), we dried the rest of the berries in the solar dryer. I let them dry hard, which would likely allow me to store in jars in the cabinet, but to be safe I went ahead and bagged them in ounce-size baggies and stored in the refrigerator drawer. Handy size for dry, as just add vodka (1 pint to 1 ounce), shake every day for a week, and start taking a jigger a day if you’re sick, a tablespoon or two if you aren’t.

For those wondering about the objective effectiveness of elderberry preparations as an anti-viral, side-by-side trials with Sambucol (elderberry) and TamiFlu (the standard pharma anti-viral) conducted during the swine flu epidemic demonstrated the superiority of elderberry extract, tincture and syrup over the alternative for both preventing infection – via immune system boost – and shortening duration of colds and flu. One immunological study from Israel demonstrated elderberry’s effectiveness against 10 strains of influenza virus. That’s impressive, and probably one of the reasons that in traditional herbal circles elderberry is called “Nature’s Medicine Chest.”

At any rate, this year’s flu season hasn’t been nearly as bad as ‘normal’, so I still have a couple of dried ounces of elderberries left. They’ll keep fine until next flu season if there’s no reason to make more tincture this year. Another surprising thing I heard recently about the scary swine flu that managed to infect millions before Big Pharma could make and distribute the vaccine is that apart from not being as deadly as the usual seasonal flu by the time it was all over, the immune system effect of that oddball H1N1 flu apparently inoculated survivors effectively against a variety of known forms of flu due to excitation of immune system response!

At any rate, grandson and I are looking to make some preparations this year from elder flowers as well as the later ripening berries, I will write about that when they’re blooming.

* In my last post I linked to a new project launched by one of my region’s most energetic organic farming families to take advantage of our huge and growing organic/local foods markets. The site is currently down, so an expansion of this great idea for developing local food networks will have to wait until it’s back up. I am planning an interview with the proprietors to get their vision on expansion and the markets they serve, so please stay tuned!

Part of homesteading in the country or in the city is to become familiar with the land and make it work for you. We grow as much of our own food as we can, and many of us will also (attempt to) grow as many useful plants as possible for various medical and/or income purposes. In the two terraces beneath the grape vines at the top of my garden we grow culinary herbs. The perennials have their beds and spots, the annuals are usually scattered in amongst the vegetables farther down the hill.

But there are other useful plants growing elsewhere on the property. There is blue flag growing at the edge of the driveway and bordering the disc golf fairway (orris root). There are large thickets of wild roses above the cabin and trained to a welded rebar ‘tree’ in the back yard (rose hips). There are small flower beds sporting yucca and yarrow, joe pye and wild sunflower. Our forest is thick with dogwood, tulip poplar and maple, growing in the shade in rich forest loam are ginseng and goldenseal and black cohosh and Mayapple. I can gather purslane and chickweed and cleavers galore, all are great in a muslin bath bag for a hot soak, soothes and moisturizes skin.

Becoming familiar with the useful plants that grow on your property – whether they grow wild or are managed, or you plant and tend them in beds, is a long-term project. You should know how to identify them in all stages of their growth through the year, as well as what parts are most useful when, and for what. For instance, the poplar buds in spring are known as “balm of Gilead” and make a fine ingredient in skin salves for cuts, scrapes or just dry, itchy skin. The winds of March blow them down by the basketful from the tops of 100-foot trees, I gather them as soon as the wind stops blowing. In fall the dogwoods sport bright red berries that are excellent tonic ingredients, rich in vitamins and flavinoids but only available in the fall. The wild rose hips have to freeze before they finally turn red and are ready to harvest, usually in November. Mayapple roots are best gathered in May, they’re pretty much invisible and impossible to find after that, once the above-ground plant has died back to nothing.

Here are recipes for some useful herbal teas that can be made with ingredients a homesteader either grows right near the house or can grow somewhere in the yard. As always, any serious condition should be treated by a doctor (if you’ve got one or can afford one). Until the access situation gets worked out one way or the other, millions of people will have to rely on themselves.

Migraine Headaches

Migraines can be life-crippling, and there just aren’t any “cures” or even treatments that aren’t themselves debilitating for sufferers. Herbal teas for the condition stimulate the sense of smell and help to calm nerves, and are gentle enough to be most useful well before the headache appears. Here is a good ‘breakfast tea’ that stimulates vasodilation (opens vessels and promotes peripheral blood flow)…

6 parts rosemary leaves (needles)
4 parts peppermint leaves
4 parts balm (bee balm) leaves
4 parts sweet violet leaves
3 parts feverfew flowers
1/2 part sweet violet flowers

Some of these ingredients are available for only a few weeks a year, so should be gathered and dried when they are available and kept in a tightly closed jar in a dark cupboard until all ingredients are gathered, then the tea should be well mixed and stored in its own container.

Colds and Flu

I get a good old cold twice a year, spring and fall. My husband seems to avoid colds and can go for years without getting one. But when you’re head is stuffed full of snot and you are coughing and you have a fever and ache all over, a good, soothing herbal tea can make you feel much better than just a couple of aspirin can. The best action of an herb for this purpose is to strengthen your immune system, allowing your healing powers to heal your cold.

For adults:
3 parts elder flowers
3 parts rose hips
2 parts willow bark
2 parts linden flowers
2 parts chamomile flowers
2 parts hawthorn leaves with flowers

For children:
4 parts linden flowers
4 parts mullein
4 parts elder flowers
4 parts rose hips
4 parts thyme

You don’t want to give the willow bark or chamomile flowers to young children, otherwise the ingredients are fairly interchangeable. Sweeten with a little honey and the tea is soothing, will promote sweating, and the hot liquid helps break up head and bronchial congestion. For coughs you’ll want anti-inflammatory herbs and those that will coat and protect inflamed mucous membranes.

For coughs:
8 parts plantain leaves
8 parts coltsfoot flowers
2 parts marshmallow root
2 parts mallow

To make a decongestant you can purchase a half-ounce of camphor crystals from a pharmacist or natural herb shop and mix it in a Pyrex pot with a cup of cottonseed oil (sweet oil, from a pharmacy or hardware store). Heat slowly and stir until the crystals dissolve completely. Remove from heat and put into a glass container with a tight fitting lid and allow to cool. Rub this oil on throat and chest when congestion is present.

Congestion can also be treated with vapor. Put a big handful of fresh-cut peppermint in the stoppered bathroom sink, fill basin with hot water. If your water heater isn’t set to scalding (and it shouldn’t be), fill the sink half way with hot tap water and add a quart or two of water brought just to a simmer on the stove so there is plenty of steam. Drape a towel over the head and lean over the sink catching as much of the rising steam as possible. Breathe deeply through nose and mouth to break up the congestion.

Calming Nerves

Life is stressful in the modern world, so a nice soothing and nerve calming tea at the end of a long day is a delightful luxury. It can help you get a better night’s sleep and that is certainly a useful quality!

6 parts hops
4 parts chamomile flowers
3 parts peppermint leaves
3 parts hibiscus flowers

If there is some general depression present along with the stress, replace the chamomile flowers with St. Johns Wort herb (aerial parts of the flowering plant). Sweeten with raw honey and add lemon if you like.

In the next installment of this series I’ll talk about further uses of common herbs for treating relatively minor health conditions and injuries.

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Who Needs the Knowledge?
Part 2: More Herbs and Their Uses

I’ve been drying some herbs my youngest daughter requested from me to make some good-for-breast feeding tea when she was here with hubby and 2-month old daughter Sunshine for the Memorial Day weekend. Seems she’s tried to stay as ‘natural’ as possible while living in the city and being a new mother, and has been steered a bit astray by the not-so know-it-alls at her local herbal/natural food store, who have supplied her with some useless, some highly questionable, and some downright dangerous herbal teas that have of course had their poor effects on the baby’s digestive system. She named a few, I was horrified!

She doesn’t need milk thistle or motherswort or black cohosh or rue. My goodness, don’t these herb dealers have to do ANY homework before prescribing? A couple of these are downright dangerous to hormone levels, and because Sunshine’s a baby girl, will of course affect her as well. I tut-tutted and promised a nice batch of dried herbs that will actually work to help the quality of her milk as well as her (and Sunshine’s) digestion and sense of calm.

So I hiked the half-mile driveway gathering the goodies. A whole lot of nice new black/raspberry leaves from developing canes, some brand new kudzu leaves for bulk and general nutritional value, then raked the garden for peppermint, apple mint and pineapple mints. I’d have added some wild rose hips, but my harvest last winter got thinned seriously when #1 daughter cut the bushes back so we could drive past them. This year I’m merely roping them and staking them back toward the hill, so by October there should be plenty.

Anyway, the berry leaves are excellent sources of vitamin C, and are also great tonic toners for bladder and urinary tract as well as a fair regulator that tends to even out the hormone levels so you don’t get big swings. The kudzu is a highly nutritious legume that is about the highest protein green in existence and would make excellent cattle fodder if it weren’t so prone to eating the cattle first (it grows about a foot a day). Goats are the only critters that can keep it at bay, and right now we have no goats, thus have plenty of kudzu. The mint is for flavor and as a stomach calmative, it’s an excellent tea ingredient in every kind of herbal tea. When the leaves are dried and ready to crush and mix, I’ll add some shaved citrus peel (orange, lemon) as well. Brew it in a ball and add some honey and it should work fine and have no adverse side effects (such as colic in the baby or hormone swings in Mom).

It got me to thinking about how little actual knowledge too many herbal suppliers in cities actually know about herbal things. Worse, some herbs are seriously NOT indicated for certain conditions, or for when people are taking actual pharmaceuticals that will clash. Damage can certainly be done, as not all herbs are “harmless.” Most pharmaceuticals are in fact synthetic versions of compounds that occur in natural herbs and roots, as traditional knowledge of these remedies has faded through the years since Big Pharma patented the alkaloids and compounds.

I’m lucky in that I learned quite a bit about various medicinal herbs from my Father-in-Law, who as a child helped gather and prepare herbs with his grandmother who raised him out in Oklahoma. She had learned at the feet of her grandmother, who was Medicine Woman for the tribe long before Indian Territory became a state. Father-in-Law got to be her apprentice because there were no granddaughters, the knowledge usually passed granddaughter to granddaughter. I learned about other herbs (more serious ones) from my older sister, a Ph.D. plant physiologist who specialized in plant alkaloids and was for a time the world’s foremost expert on American Mandrake as a treatment for cancer.

My sister is retiring from world-hopping this year and has built a log home near here, so we’ll finally get the chance to write the book we’ve been planning since we were teenagers – the definitive herbal Materia Medica for the 21st century. She’ll offer the chemical knowledge, I’ll offer the practical lore (and illustrations). Should be a big hit…

So in several upcoming posts I’ll offer some of the knowledge I’ve gained per the various medicinal herbs available at your local herb shop, but which the sellers of those herbs may not know enough about to properly prescribe. I’ll note that Great-great-grandma-in-law was famous for curing skin cancers caused by sun exposure, and that I once concocted a cream that my mother used on her basal cell carcinomas that flat cured them in between allopathic treatments she’d been getting from her doctor. He was so amazed that he requested a jar and planned to have it analyzed.

So stay tuned for upcoming recipes for various herbal concoctions useful against a range of semi-minor health issues and concerns. With the increasing price of pharmaceuticals and complete unavailability of regular health care in 21st century America, a little knowledge about traditional remedies can go a long way. Trick is not to have so little knowledge as to be dangerous. If in doubt, avoid all herbs with notable (and/or patented) alkaloids and hormone precursors!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Who Needs the Knowledge?
Part 2: More Herbs and Their Uses

In this post I’ll offer some actual herbal remedies that some have found useful in treating specific ailments. There will be some herbs mentioned that haven’t been listed thus far, but they are all readily identifiable and available at natural food stores or herbal apothecaries if you don’t have them in your garden, on your property or in nearby woods.

High mallow (malva sylvestris), a.k.a. French hollyhocks. Garden hollyhocks may be substituted. Mallow is used to calm indigestion, heartburn, ulcers, gastritis and sore throats. Mallow is high in mucilage, roots can be crushed, boiled, folded into a damp cloth and applied to boils, sores or ulcers of the skin. For a medicinal salve powdered roots can be added to olive oil and warmed before applying.

Mallow tea: 1 tbsp. fresh leaves, stem, root, flower or all parts to 1 cup of tea. If using dried mallow reduce to a rounded teaspoon per cup. Most all herbal teas should be measured this way, 1 tablespoon fresh or 1 teaspoon dry.

Mullein (Verbasum thapsus), a.k.a. Soldier’s herb or Woundwort. An oil made with mullein leaves steeped in vegetable oil for two weeks in a sunny window makes a soothing application for small wounds or hemorrhoids. It got its traditional titles for its efficacy to staunch bleeding and dispell bruising when applied directly to wounds. A friend once badly twisted his foot while here, it immediately swelled and bruised badly. I wrapped fresh bruised mullein leaves to his foot and ankle, held in place by his sock and shoe. Within two hours the bruising was completely gone and there was no swelling. Mullein should not be taken internally, as the leaves contain rotenone and coumarin.

Horehound, (Marrubium vulgare). Tea made with horehound leaves and stems is an expectorant useful to treat coughs. You can also make a cough syrup by boiling the leaves and stems in honey (equal parts). Keep it refrigerated and it will last a year.

Purslane, (Portulaca oleracea). Native Americans and early colonists used purslane to treat burns, headache, insect stings and stomach ache. Purslane is a common garden weed with thick, succulent leaves and is tasty in salads, soups and in stir-fry. High in vitamins A and C plus calcium and iron, the whole above-ground plant can be harvested any time. Often found growing in tandem with chickweed, (Stellaria spp.) which can be boiled and applied as a poultice for boils and skin rashes or drunk to treat urinary tract inflammations.

Bilberry, (Vaccinium myrtillus), or blueberry. The ative constituents in ripe berries are anthocyanosides, bioflavonoids that are potent antioxidants. These support formation of connective tissue and strengthen capillaries, may also improve blood flow. British pilots during WW-II ate bilberry jam prior to missions to improve their night vision.

Did you know that oil of cloves and cinnamon are more antiseptic than carbolic acid? Either of these oils can be applied to cuts and scrapes to kill germs effectively and prevent infection. You should probably keep clove oil around anyway, as it’s very effective for temporary relief of toothache or sore gums and relieving the sting of insect bites.

Garlic, Calamus and Nutmeg are also known for their antiseptic properties.

Sore Throat Gargle

Pour 1 pint boiling water on a handful of sage leaves, let stand for 30 minutes. Add 1/2 cup cider or wine vinegar and 2 tablespoons raw honey. To be used as a gargle followed by a swig.

Migraine Tea

6 parts rosemary leaves
4 parts peppermint leaves
4 parts bee balm leaves
4 parts sweet violet
3 parts feverfew
1/2 part sweet violet flowers

This is a tasty tea that should be made up a gallon at a time and kept in the refrigerator. It’s a good morning drink hot or cold because rosemary promotes vasodilation, peripheral blood flow and is generally tonic.

Links:

Simple Herbal Remedies Information

Natural Herbal Home Remedies

Guide to Herbal Remedies

Sassafras Leaves

We’ve already covered wild medicinals like black cohosh, ginseng and goldenseal in The Homesteader’s Medicine Chest, and got the run-down on elderberries in Homesteader’s Medicine Chest II, so in this post I’ll round out with more useful medicinal herbs from forest and garden.

Leaves – I pick a sack full of raspberry, blackberry, goldenrod and sassafrass leaves in the fall to dry and put into tea. The berry leaves are good for colds, tonic, stomach aches and menstrual cramps. Goldenrod is also good for digestion and is useful to treat kidney and bladder problems, coughs and colds. It’s also anti-inflammatory and mildly sedative, good for the aches and pains of rheumatism and arthritis.

The dark red and gold fall sassafras leaves are dried and ground to make the Cajun spice (red) filé. Filé is used to thicken soups and gumbo and to tenderize meats by rubbing. Early spring leaves are dried and powdered for green filé.

Black Cohosh

Roots and Bark – While we’re taking leaves from the sassafras, it’s time to take some roots as well. You may have to dig around the base to expose some peripheral roots. Don’t mess with any of the larger ones or you will damage the tree. Once you’ve cut a few finger-size roots from each tree, they should be thoroughly washed with a brush and rinsed, chopped into ~1/2 inch sections and dry thoroughly on newspaper. Grind it up and bag it to add to tonic teas. It adds a tasty flavor and pleasant aroma, is traditional as a tonic and blood purifier.

White Willow bark is the original source of salicylic acid – aspirin – and has all the properties we associate with aspirin. Painkiller, fever-reducer, anti-inflammatory. Here you’ll want to harvest stem bark, so cut the stems cleanly with clippers. Strip the leaves and rinse the branches, strip the bark with a pocket knife. Dry it thoroughly and grind. Its bitter taste might be hidden with a strong black cherry, mint and rose hip tea for coughs and colds, or you might just want to put it in capsules and take like regular aspirin. Salicylic acid from willow does thin the blood like pharmaceutical aspirin, but does not cause the stomach irritation.

Rose Hips

Black cherry bark is a notable expectorant useful in treating coughs, and it’s also digestive (settles stomach aches) and mildly sedative. These qualities make it a favorite for cold/flu teas and it’s a fine flavoring in calming nighttime teas with chamomile. I like to gather a lot, and luckily can do so because the black cherries on my property are big. I usually saw off a branch or two off several trees, an inch or so in diameter. These can be long and contain several side branches, Bring it all home.

Here you’ll want the inner bark, that thin layer underneath the dark outer layer. Cherry branch bark is thin, paper-like as birch is. I strip the bark with a pocket knife, then carefully scrape the inner bark off. This is dried and either ground or (if the shavings are small) just added as-is to tea. For a more potent cough remedy it’s best to make a tincture.

Seeds – Other than the mast crop nuts and acorns I gather, there is also a well-tended wild rose hip crop and the dogwood berries to gather in the fall. After the first freeze the rose hips turn red, which means they’re ready for harvest (if I can get to them before the birds do). They’re growing in a hedgerow on the high side of the driveway, so are convenient to the house. Harvesting is tricky due to thorns, I usually just clip off the hip trigs below the spray of hips and put it into a bag.

I sit at the kitchen bar with a bowl and dump the whole twiggy mess right on the bar, put the bag at my feet. Picking off the hips is a chore, but well worth the trouble. I just drop the stripped twigs back into the bag and add to the compost when I’m done. You can dry the hips, but I just put them into a jar and freeze them. They retain more of their delightfully tart taste and vitamins (rich source of C, B, E and K) that way, but for teas you’ll be bagging they should be dried. Either way, try to rub off the dark bud-hairs. They can be irritant.

Dogwood berries – those brilliantly scarlet, clustered berries that contrast so nicely with the dark crimson of fall dogwood leaves are good ingredients for tonic teas or teas used to treat fevers. I bag and freeze, they could be dried. Add 3 or 4 to the tea ball or bag. They’ve a bitter aspect, but this is easily counteracted by honey. For all my teas I like raw, unfiltered local honey as a sweetener. It mellows bitters and adds some medicinal value of its own (particularly for those who suffer allergies or stomach ulcers).

For cold teas add a few dried or frozen elderberries to the tea bag or ball. They have proven anti-viral properties and show good effectiveness in shortening the duration of a bout of flu.

Chamomile

And don’t forget that your garden-grown chamomile, purple echinacia, St. Johnswort and feverfew flowers, sage leaves, thyme and basil all make good herbal tea ingredients. The sage, basil and tyme are soothing to the nerves and stomach, camomile and St. Johnswort are calming, mild sedatives, and feverfew does just what its name implies. Echinacia (flowers and roots) has anti-biotic properties, as does thyme. Thyme oil is a good topical antiseptic.

For gifts to friends and family every year I bag up some good stimulant and sedative teas (be sure to label which is which) along with some general tonic teas that just taste good and are full of good vitamins and happy properties. There are some good sources on the web to get supplies like individual and pot-size heat-sealable tea bags and tea balls and tea strainers, so look around!

Or do what I do – make my own. I usually do 4-cup pot-size bags because individuals are a lot of trouble. That way a group of 4 can each have a cup of hot tea, or one person can refrigerate the excess and drink it iced or reheated later. For this I use those incredibly cheap unbleached paper coffee filters you can buy by the hundredlot. Simple in-out 1/2-inch chain stitch with 3-strand embroidery thread around the edge, measure your various ingredients into the center, then carefully pull, wrap and knot off the thread to make a tightly closed sack-bag. Use self-stick address labels stuck in half on the long end of the thread (so it can be kept out of the hot water by draping over the side of the pot.

Then enjoy your healthy, warming teas during cold winter nights and days, and thank Mother Nature for her bounty!

Links:

Gardens Ablaze: How to Make Herbal Teas

Make Your Own Simple Herbal Remedies

Grow Your Own Tea

Hand Made Naturals: Tea Brewing Supplies

World of Plenty: Supplies and Tools