REVIEW Opening Our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs (Part 2)

Opening Our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs (Part 2)
A Florilegia for the Wild Heart Tribe
Gail Faith Edwards

This is the Materia Medica section of Gail Faith Edward's long awaited revised edition of her brilliant and ground-breaking 1995 book, Opening Our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs which is now out of print.

First though, Gail shares valuable information about how we need to approach and respect our plant allies.  The beginning of the book is filled with an incredible amount of information that can only come from a woman who has seen the world as an adventurous maiden, a nurturing mother, and finally a wise and generous crone.

She explains the way of the wild heart, discusses the Wheel of the Year, and shares thoughts on cultural appropriation and caring for the vulnerable allies that we are threatening with our carelessness.
She talks about several systems and approaches to herbalism.  There is seriously an entire education before we even get to the herbs.

But then we DO get to the healing herbs.  Gail's writing has the tone of a story-teller, so that each herb is a different tale.  She shares history, lore, personal experiences, facts, and so much more.  Agrimony, Cannabis, Devil's Club, Kava Kava, Schisandra. Tobacco, Uva Ursi AND the "regulars" like Burdock, Chickweed, Dandelion, Garlic, etc., are covered, as well as there being a section on medicinal mushrooms.

If you haven't yet become familiar with Gail's writings, do yourself a favor and get to know her.
Pre-order the new book!
The first volume is equally brilliant.

Order Volume 1

I'm so glad to see her work back available to aspiring herbalists!

REVIEW: Herbalism at Home

I was very lucky to receive an advance copy of Kristine Brown's new book, Herbalism at Home. Kristine's writing style has always been so enchanting that I was curious how that would come through in a book with a zillion bits of information confined in a specific number of pages.  The answer:  spectacularly!

To begin with, the book is beautifully designed.  A lot of people don't know this, but writers don't get a lot of input into things like the title, layout style, fonts, or even the illustrations.  Being a great illustrator for her own zine, it might have been difficult to let that control go, but they managed to capture Kristine's style. 

So what will you find on the 235 pages?  LOTS.  She starts out by explaining what herbal medicine is about and its benefits.  She proceeds to help the reader plan an herbal pantry and choose the tools and accoutrements required to make the preparations that will follow.
THEN come the herbs.  This is one of the most glorious and unique selections of herbs in any book of this sort that I've seen.

This is one of the beautiful "blank" pages.

Kristine chose herbs that many people who are just starting out might currently consider weeds.  She helps the reader realize that medicine is all around them if they just look around.  This has been one of my dearest goals for years, and it has been hers as well. 
I was thrilled to see black haw, black walnut, catnip, goldenrod, mugwort, prunella, wild lettuce, cleavers, poke, and yellow dock - all weeds full of good medicine.

125 remedies and recipes follow, for everything from allergies to warts - the kind of things we use herbs for at home.  Things we can made a difference with at home, like self-limiting illnesses, or even chronic illnesses that can benefit from herbal support.  It's truly a splendid volume full of recipes and herbal information that I know will come into use here even though I've been working with herbs for decades.  For the beginner, this is a gold mine.

The reader will feel like they know Kristine when they read this book, and isn't that how the best books are? 
Details:
HERBALISM at home, 125 Recipes for everyday health
Kristine Brown, RH(AHG)
ISBN: 978-1-64611-156-5  $19.95 US, $26.99 CAN
Release 1/7/2020. 
Pre-order HERE (Amazon)

January February 2020 Essential Herbal

The latest issue is in the mail!
Lots of articles full of dreaming, learning, trying new things, and recipes and remedies. 
Perfect for curling up with by the fire while enjoying a warm beverage.

Table of Contents:

Field Notes from the Editor, Tina Sams
What will we be doing in 2020?  Let’s grow like the plants.                           

The Awakening of the Seeds, Jen Frey
How can we relate our lives with the Celtic Goddess Brigid and Imbolc?

Garden Adventures - Garlic, Rebekah Bailey
Garlic turns up in a ditch on the new property.  Lots to learn here!              

Book Excerpt, Opening Our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs, Gail Faith Edwards
Gail’s newest book, will be out in early January. The excerpt discusses herbal tastes, and
the properties that go with them.                                                                                                                        

Femininitea, Tina Sams
A tea that goes from puberty to menopause, and beyond.                             

Summer Jellies to Warm Your Winter, Alicia Allen
Learn to make luscious herb jellies that bring summer right into winter.     

Weaving Memories, Mary Peterson
This basket was woven as the writer traveled around Ireland.                      

Gromwell, Sandy Michelsen
Lithospermum, lemonweed, or gromwell, with roots full of purpose.           

Herb Bread, Theresa F. Koch
A nice crusty and flavorful loaf.                                                                          

Lessons from Your Seed Catalogs, Kathy Musser
What information should you look for when shopping for seeds?               

Here’s to Hawthorn, Kristine Brown RH(AHG)
… or why we all need hawthorn trees.                                                              

Beauty of Making Your Own Medicine, Cathy Walker
What we put into our medicine and how much does it mean?                     

Winter Crafts for Families, Marcy Lautanen Raleigh
Some fun things to try including a bird feeder, scented stones, and a snack.        

Lavender & Tea Tree Soap, Marci Tsohonis
How to make this beautiful, fresh, clean bar.                                                   

White Pine Magick and Medicine, Angela Bowman
Mmmm… tea, syrup, massage oil, and salve from this tree that just might be in your living
room right now.    

Amish Chow Chow, Rita Richardson
How to make this pickled Amish delight.                                                           

Hello Herbies, Marci Tsohonis
The long road to gathering some local herb friends.                                       

Dreaming of a New Garden for 2020, Jackie Johnson                                
What sort of theme garden might you like to try this year?

Butterfly Pea Flower Tea, Tina Sams
This beautiful color changing tea has some interesting benefits.                

Meet the Contributors

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Looking for something unusual?

Years ago, we were two sisters running an herb shop, and we really enjoyed making or finding things that were different and interesting for our customers.  It came in a close second to talking herbs with all of the people who came through our doors.
The first year or two of the magazine, that was the only thing on the website.  Then we started putting some books together, and there's Maryanne's soap company, and then all the things we love to mess around with...
Gradually, we've gathered some things that we love.  This is just a smattering.  There are tons of incenses, soaps, potions, and more.  We used to post every time we put something new in the shop, but haven't been doing that lately. 
OH!  And until midnight Tuesday (Dec 3, 2019) on the west coast, 3 am Weds on the east coast, there's an automatic 10% discount.  Sorry, we only ship physical goods within the U.S.   
Let me show you around a little!

   We made these as a special request.  After spending an inordinate amount of time running around gathering everything needed for the production, and realizing how cool they were, we decided to put a few up on the website.  They are Gelatinous Cubes with sets of Polyhedron dice inside.  For that D & D player on your list (or you)
LINK            

We have 8 different sets that contain things like a bar of soap, a spritz, a lotion bar/solid perfume, and they're packaged in these cool jute bags.  On the site, there are pictures of the contents of each set.  There's something for almost everyone, and the price is right.   LINK

Blue Butterfly Pea tea is a very interesting brew.  It tastes a lot like green tea.  It is deep blue, and that color signals anthocyanins and antioxidants.  When lemon or lime is added to the tea, it turns vivid (!!!) purple.  It's beautiful, fun to drink, and just may have some health benefits.     LINK

This tea blend is something I created one day when I was just miserable.  Sad and frustrated, I couldn't get started.  Everything seemed like too much.  The Yerba Mate has a good bit of caffeine, and the other ingredients are thought to help soothe the heart and send anxiety and the black clouds away.             LINK

This process always fascinated me, to be able to use the sun to create negative prints of things like leaves and flowers.  It is just as cool as it seemed it would be.  We have some notecards, and some 8" x 8" pieces of cloth, but the t-shirts are really different.  Be an artist, conspiring with nature!              LINK

We have quite a few varieties of earrings that are made from very lightweight recycled wood.  They are so weightless, it's easy to forget they're even there - if it weren't for everyone commenting on them.            
                                                                    LINK                                                                    

This gorgeous lama bag is roomy!  It can be an everyday purse, or an overnight/weekend bag. 
LINK

We grow white sage in order to distill it here on the farm.  Some of the resulting essential oil was made into these solid anointing balms in beautiful carved soapstone jars.
LINK

These two pretty and unusual statement pieces are really interesting.  The lids are hinged, and they open, revealing a place to put some herbs, a secret note, a small picture, or whatever you'd like. 
LINK

These three books are sold separately or together (big savings) and they represent 10 years of the magazine.  Those magazines were pulled apart, made into chapters that are more like books themselves, and then carefully indexed. For someone looking for a thousand or so ways to enjoy herbs on the daily, this is the perfect threesome.
LINK

Gift Subscriptions are a breeze!  Put your name in the billing section, and the giftee's name and address in the shipping section.  We'll send them a card in the mail - so if you'd like us to include any message, put that in the notes.  They'll get a delicious buffet of herbal articles, crafts, medicine, and recipes every other month.  Heck, get one for yourself!
LINK

Hopefully you've gotten an idea of what kinds of things we gather (I think the current word is "curate") for you.  Have a look around!  Happy Holidays!

Lavender Distillation Video

Last spring, we made this video as part of a teaching module on lavender for The Science and Art of Herbalism, Rosemary Gladstar's online course.  Hope you enjoy!

Dried Persimmon Slices

Native persimmons are easy.  The pulp gets frozen in 1 cup portions and added into various recipes like this persimmon cake or added into any recipe instead of banana or applesauce.  But I have a good sized fuyu persimmon tree out back, and had no clue what to do with them, other than eat them like apples.

The tree is planted beside the deck so that I can pick the fruit right out the back door.  It is a fast grower, and within just a few years that's exactly what happened. 
They're a whole different fruit from the native persimmons, and now that I have close to 50 of them it was a stroke of luck when Bartosh, over on the TEH facebook page, mentioned that he loved dried persimmon slices.  We're deep in apple schnitz country and I grew up eating dried apple slices, so it sounded like a good idea.

Off to the google I went, finding several (very) slightly different instructions.  They all included washing, thin-slicing, wire racks on a cookie sheet, and 200 - 250 degrees in the oven for 2 hours.

I tried a few things.  One was a dehydrator.  It might have worked, but the heating element wasn't working, so... ALL of the instructions talk about oven-drying, so maybe there's a reason for that. The first batch was sliced at about 1/4" as instructed.  They were good, but by the time my oven dried them, they were a little too brown and still too pliable.  The taste though!  These are really a very mild flavored fruit, so it's a surprise how the fruit sugar concentrates and deepens.  They are delicious.  Do use the rack though.  I tried one without, and they burned and stuck to the pan, surrounded by tiny pools of exquisite syrup.

I like them much better sliced very thin and dried to more of a chip-like texture.  So good!

Here's what I've found to work for me.

• Oven at 200 degrees F
• 1/8" thickness
• Arranged closely on wire rack on top of cookie sheets
• Bake for 3 hours
• When they are curly and almost completely dry, they're done.
• Those that you don't cram into your mouth while taking them off the rack should go into an airtight container, and be refrigerated.

I was going to send some to the kids, but there probably won't be any here long enough to get them packed up to ship. If you've got these and wondered what to do with all of those fruits (currently $2.99 each at the store), give this a try.  If you don't love them, someone you know will.

These prolific fruits also bring health benefits along with them.  They're loaded with fiber and all kinds of vitamins and nutrients.  That orange color tells us that it's got carotene and lots of vitamin A and C.  There's a good bit of lutein and lycopene bringing antioxident action and supporting eye health.  That's just scratching the surface, so you can feel good about eating them.

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Proper Credit for Cannabis Article

I was informed last night that the Cannabis article in the current issue was copied and pasted from a PubMed posted research paper.  It just didn't cross our minds that we needed to research submissions to be sure they were original, and I am deeply sorry for that oversight.

Proper credit and the complete article can be found HERE

The Nov/Dec '19 issue is out and hitting mailboxes!Look over the table of contents below, and you'll see that there are some amazing and fascinating articles inside.  We're pretty excited about it, and hope you'll love it too. Send us a picture of your copy in your home, at work, on the beach... and we'll put it on our Facebook/IG pages.

Also, stay tuned for a subscriber-only benefit coming up next month.

Field Notes from the Editor, Tina Sams
  I’ll miss the plants outside, but then again…

About the Cover
  Photo by Signe Sundberg-Hall
                                                                              
Cannabis Root MedicineRyz NR, Remillard DJ, Russo EB (2017) Cannabis roots: a traditional therapy with future potential for treating inflammation and pain, Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research 2:1, 210–216, DOI: 10.1089/can.2017.0028.
  There’s so much talk about the cannabis leaves and flowers,
  but there’s a lot to say about a deeper medicine. 
                                                
DIY Natural Spa Days, Jackie Johnson
  Easy to follow general instructions for lots of treatments.   
                                  
The Art of Entertaining with Tea, JB Schaffer
  Do you put on a pot of tea when guests are expected?  Get
  some tips for making people at home with various herbal teas.
                           
Elderberry Toxicity, Rebekah Bailey
  A peek into to some soon-to-be published new research! 
                                   
Holiday DIY - Gifts, Marci Lautanen-Raleigh
  Wow!  Recipes and instructions for gifts, décor, and special
  culinary touches to use in entertaining or gift giving.
                                             
Move over Turkey - It’s Stuffed Pumpkin, Theresa Koch                                   
  Mmmm… a delicious vegetarian main course.

Nutmeg Gets Noticed, Kristine Brown
  Do you ever think, “I wonder who was the first person to
  try this thing?”  How about nutmeg?  How did that happen? 
                    
Cranberry Nut Bread, Nancy Reppert
  Festive and seasonal bread perfect with tea or as a gift. 
                                     
Book Excerpt: Evolutionary Herbalism, Sajah Popham
  The Vital Force Within Plants
                                                                                
Home Weeds Home, Lalanya Bodenbender
  Sometimes it takes a while to settle into a new plantscape.  
                               
Keeping Herbs, Rita Richardson
  You don’t have to miss herbs during the winter.   
                                                 
Conifer Forest Soap, Marci Tsohonis
  This one is on our list of things to make!
                                                              
CO2 Extracts: What are They & How Do I Use Them? Liz Fulcher
  Sometimes I hear terms but don’t really recognize that I don’t
  know exactly what they mean.  CO2 extracts fall into that category,
  so I figured I wasn’t alone. Liz graciously agreed to tell us. 
                            
Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream & Double Berry Wine Cooler, Nancy Reppert
  Two delicious and elegant - yet fairly simple – recipes. 
                                       
Herbal Oddities, Kathy Musser
  Less common, but interesting plants at the herb farm.
                                         
Moving, Sandy Michelsen
  Checking in after a long absence, a new place to learn and get
  to know.      

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Autumn Projects for the Still Room

Sept/Oct 2015 issue, Essential Herbal

Catherine Love www.stillroomherbs.com

I love autumn.  It is my favorite of all the seasons.  Though it is harvest season for many, it is also planting season for me (Texas).  Autumn is the best time of year for planting perennial herbs here, and many of the cool weather loving herbs thrive in our typically mild winters, so they are planted in the fall as well. 

Once the brunt of the hot weather is over, I begin harvesting and cutting back the heat-loving herbs such as rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram, and mugwort, in order to make room for other less heat hardy varieties like cilantro, parsley, dill, nasturtium, and calendula.  These are less aggressive in growth as well, and they do nicely tucked in between perennial herbs that will grow more slowly in the fall and winter. 

Once the garden is planted, it is time to have fun stirring and stitching up some things with the herbs that have been recently harvested and dried.  This fall I will be making:

·         Sweet Lavender Rose sachets- Just a simple blend of dried lavender, rose petals, and corresponding essential oils tucked into pretty patterned sachets that I sew from fabric scraps.  Sometimes I forgo stitching altogether and simply cut small squares of fabric with pinking shears, gather the herbs into those and finish with a ribbon tie. To make things even simpler, I buy premade muslin bags from my local Natural Grocer. With those all I have to do is fill, pull the drawstring and tie.  If I want to dress them up a little, I stamp them with an herb leaf or design before I fill them.

·         Sweet Dreams pillows- These are great for putting the abundant mugwort harvest to good use by blending it with other relaxing or dream inspiring herbs such as: rose petals, lavender, and lemon verbena; along with a few drops of lavender and rose geranium essential oil.  I make these as flat muslin pillows to tuck into a pillow case.  When I make them for gift giving I use a pretty floral fabric or something that will correspond with the recipient’s décor. 

·         Rosemary needle pillows- These make a simple but useful gift for the seamstress. Sew a small rectangle bag, fill it tightly with dried rosemary and stitch closed.  The rosemary is said to help keep your sewing needles sharp when they are poked into these bags.  At the very least, they make a fragrant spot to store extra pins and needles.

·         Moth repellant bags- Sew small bags with a hanging loop (those premade muslin bags work well here) for draping over a clothes hanger in the closet or to tuck between sweaters and other clothing that moths tend to ruin.  A mixture of cedar chips, lavender, rosemary, southernwood, and wormwood are mixed together with a few drops of lavender essential oil for these. 

·         Mediterranean Medley potpourri- This is a refreshing blend of my most hardy herbs- rosemary, sweet marjoram, thyme, lemon verbena, bay leaves, and lavender; with dried pot marigold and blue bachelor’s button flowers thrown in for color.  A few drops of lemon and marjoram essential oil will enhance the fragrance.  No real recipe here, I tend to just mix as I go adding more of this or that until it pleases my eye and nose.  Use what you have on hand and experiment! 

These are just a few ideas I have for fall herb crafting.  I hope they inspire you to create something new to you with the herbs from your harvest. 

My motto is: Have fun and see what happens … with herb crafts, it’s hard to go wrong.  I have had some funny flops, like the lavender cookies that tasted awful. I posted the recipe on my blog before I taste tested them because I was sure they were going to be delicious.  When I realized the mistake I quickly named those Bathwater Cookies, posted an update on my blog, threw that recipe out and started over, posting a new recipe later.  It is ok to admit when we mess up, we’re all human and laughter (even at our own expense) is good for the soul.

I encourage you to continue exploring new ideas and trying new things with herbs.   Share the successes and laugh off the not so successful projects.  There’s always tomorrow and another herbal adventure to enjoy!

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