We may march in the Big Apple in the biggest Climate Action in the world, ever, but then we come home where our lives are (somewhat) normal and comfortably small. Here we concoct an elder syrup of elderberries, elder flowers, astragalus root, peppermint and homegrown, raw honey. In fact, over a quart of it! One …
Category Archives: herbs
Coltsfoot in My Garden
The other day Amie and I admired a pretty yellow flower with a scaly stalk in what we fondly call “The Pitt”: Â the front part of our garden that is mainly bramble. A friend of mine identified at as being Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), also known as cough wort. This was very exciting. Here I am …
Medicinal Herb Purchase
I found this great seed (and plant) supplier, Horizon Herbs, through Mountain Rose Herbs, where I usually buy my dried herbs. I admit I went a little crazy. But if I can grow all of these, harvest them and make them into medicine, and also take seed from them and propagate them… it’s a dream I’ve had …
Two Ferments: Sauerkraut and Comfrey Liquor
The first one is sauerkraut. It is my first deliberately fermented food. A huge cabbage head came in our CSA box a couple of weeks ago. What to do with it? As I was reading Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation, I couldn’t resist. My mom and I went looking for a good crock, but all the right …
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A Calming Tea
Computer crashed while saving a file. Two days of work gone. My garden design image had 82 layers (some of them very complex). All but 2 are lost. Need a calming tea. Amie is grinding it up in the mortar for me: chamomile flowers, echinacea leaf, rosehip, and a tiny bit of licorice root.
First Wood’s In
We brought in a little more than 1/3 of a cord of well-dried wood today. We still have a good two and a half cords under cover in the back yard, which should get us through the Winter. The trees that came down this year and that we’re still bucking will make for good dry …
Garden Harvests, and Deer
Right there, behind the sunchokes What with the flurry of activity/activism around here, the garden has been neglected somewhat. On top of that, the deer decided to cross from backyard where they usually hang out (an extensive wildlife corridor runs behind our property) to the front. In the front yard they ate the weeds and …
Edible Wild Plants Walk with John Root, and Homegrown Mallow
John Root conducted an Edible Wild Plants Walk at the organic Lindentree Farm in nearby Lincoln yesterday evening and I was there. I learned that that weed, of which I pulled thousands from the old compost heap, is Lamb’s Quarters, that it is absolutely yummy and nutritious and grew itself for free and without my …
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Plantain for Stinging Nettle
Today I got to experiment first-hand with a remedy for Stinging Nettle stings. Some nettle was growing in my  mint patch and though I am aware of it and am careful when harvesting mint, my guests may not. I was tidying up that patch and thought I’d relocate the three nettle plants to the nettle …
Growing Ginger
I have been thinking for a while now to grow Ginger (Zingiber officinalis). Â I finally had two pieces of root that seemed like good candidates. They were quite old and had already sprouted in several places. I cut them up, making sure each part had two or three buds or eyes, and into the dark, …