Medicinal Herb Workshop

 I know that many of you blog-readers are from far-flung places. So for you, this post might be interesting but it's telling about something you're too far away to participate in. I do know, though, that there are a few local folks who get this blog. It's for them that I'm posting this announcement about the workshop I'm giving in 10 days. 

You're invited to make medicine with me on November 4th here at Prairie Hill.

If you'd like to make some healing tonics for the winter, this is your chance to harvest home-grown medicinal herbs from the Street Corner Garden. This time, not only will we harvest. We'll also take our harvest to the common house kitchen and make things with them: tinctures, salves, and oils. That way we can do it together, make sure we get it done and have more fun. We'll start around 10:00 out in the street corner garden. We'll be harvesting not only the upper parts of herbs, but often the roots too. This is a good time of year to harvest roots, when the energy of the plant is going down to the roots before winter. For some plants like echinacea, both leaves and roots are used. For some like horehound, just the leaves. For others like black cohosh, only the roots. I've reserved the CH kitchen for late morning and the afternoon. 

I'll stock up on 100 proof Everclear and olive oil. You can reimburse me for whatever you use. To make tinctures, we will cut up the plant material in small pieces, stuff it into a glass jar, and then fill it to the top with Everclear. Then you take it home and let it sit for a couple months before you strain it. For oils and salves, we'll cut the plant material up in small pieces too, and cover it with olive oil in a jar. Then you take it home and keep it warm (in the sun or in a electrical device turned very low) for a couple weeks. So Saturday in the kitchen we'll be mostly washing, cutting and mixing.

I've planted most of the medicinal herbs in the garden intentionally. But there are some medicinals that grow wild around here: Dandelions (the roots are very health-promoting), Burdock, and Goldenrod. I took an inventory this morning of medicinals in my gardens that can be harvested now, and there are 29 different ones. I'll send out a description of them all soon, especially what they're good for. If you're a little timid about the safety of these herbs, the truth is that most medicinal herbs are like foods, not dangerous like drugs. I don't grow any of the dangerous ones. Think of it as taking a vitamin to help with different body needs. I've taken a lot of medicinal herb courses. In one, the teacher quoted the incidences of causes of death in a year in the US. There were none caused by medicinal herbs.

It looks like Saturday the 4th doesn't have many conflicts on our PH calendar. If you're interested in participating in this, but will be gone or are scheduled for something else that day, let me know and I can take you out to the garden to harvest some other time. Once I get the list of plants sent out, you can choose which ones seem to fit your needs. I always get excited about the fall harvest of medicinals. I think of the thousands of years when this is how humans healed themselves, before concentrated drugs were manufactured. And most of those drugs were developed using the example or the actual material from medicinal herbs. It's a long, deep history of healing and it's fun to be following in that tradition. Let me know if you have questions. And it might be good to know if you're planning to participate. Then I can send you the list of herbs and their uses. I hope we have a good, enthusiastic group!