Super Skin Healer

 This is the time of year when my skin gets dry. When I was younger, I didn't notice this happening to me, but the older I get, the fall months are when I notice especially my feet and my hands getting dry and rough. Just this morning, I gave both my hands and feet a treat, rubbing them with the healing salve I make from plants in my garden. And they feel so much better! It was a long time ago that someone taught me how to make salve. And ever since, I've made it every year or two. I used to sell it at the farmers market, but now I just make it for friends and community members, and me!

Right now my large electric turkey roaster is on the kitchen counter, filled with jars of olive oil and ground up herbs and surrounded with warm water. It's like a double boiler, though the water is only warm, not boiling. The herbs will steep like this for a week or two more, and then I'll strain the enriched olive oil out, put the dry herbs in the compost, and add melted beeswax to make a smooth creamy salve. When I had a stand at the farmers market, I bought salve jars by the case with my own label on them, and I'm still working off that supply. Especially if you're careful to not introduce any water to the mix, this salve will stay fresh and potent for years.

Sometimes I've made salve with just a couple herbs. The best skin healers in my experience are plantain and comfrey. Plantain is a miracle healer. It's the low-growing, wide leaf plant that the Native Americans called "white man's footsteps" because it loves growing where people walk, in compacted soil. This year I had a hard time finding big stands of plantain, maybe because we've been in a drought for months. I went to places where people walk, and was able to gather a small bag-full. But I needed more plant material. Comfrey was the next plant I picked. Comfrey is another master healer. It's used often for poltices on wounds, a deep healer. Some people use it internally, but there have been studies showing that's not such a good idea, so I use it externally. Skin is absorbant, so whatever we put on the outside has an effect beneath the surface. That's an important thing that we often forget. I was able to pick lots of comfrey, despite the drought. But I decided that this time I would add other plants that are known as being good for topical applications like salve.

As it turns out, my medicinal herb garden had lots of these additional herbs! So this time my salve is truly cosmopolitan. It has ashwaganda leaves, calendula flowers, goldenrod leaves and flowers, fragrant anise hyssop leaves, the ferny leaves of yarrow, and the soft spicy leaves of lemonbalm. I laid this large plant harvest out on a big counter for a couple days to let it dry a bit, and then used a food processor to mix the plants with olive oil. That worked better than me cutting them up in tiny pieces with a knife, but was gentler than a blender. Now there are six quarts of this mix gently brewing on the counter.  I have plenty of time to locate the big box with empty jars and a big hunk of beeswax (in my garage, I wonder? I need to look there!)