Medicine chest 4(b) - the 2nd bark (alder) as infused oil and tincture

I'm still just getting to know the tree medicines. Up until the last couple of years I've spent most of my time looking down at annuals and perennials, those green jewels that grow in my yard and in the many wild meadows in our rural area (including hay fields, there's a lot grows on the edge of a hayfield besides hay and hay fields aren't sprayed).

I wander into forests plenty often (with permission from the landowners) (mostly ..), but I do very little harvesting there. Many of the plants that grow on the forest floor of a mature hardwood forest tend to be rare so I leave them be. Mature trees are not easy to harvest from, they're just too damn tall for me to reach their branches!

But on the edges of forests, along streams, along bike paths and trails, there are trees young and small enough that I can (respectfully, carefully) harvest a young branch or some twigs. Young trees are often plentiful in cities, too, and if the area isn't a manicured park, there's no reason why urban folk can't branch out (lol, sorry) into working with bark. Wildcrafting in cities is perfectly acceptable practice.

Medicine chest 4(a) - infused oils, two barks and a root

Since the first two items up today are made into "infused oils", I'll start by describing the method for making them in your kitchen. This will be review for some of you but review never hurts!

It's a pretty straightforward process, especially when working with materials that are fairly dry to begin with, like the barks, and they're unlikely to cause you much trouble. But whoa nelly, it can go really wrong, really quickly with other parts of a plant, in which case it's still simple but not necessarily easy. With moisture laden materials like juicy leaves or gooey roots (I'm looking at you, comfrey!) you have to be on the ball or can go all south pretty badly.

But I was thinking about that not long ago and it strikes me that it's kinda cool that an oil can become so riddled, so quickly, with slimy, scary looking mold; I take it as an indication that the stuff we're working with is teeming with life on the microscopic level.

I'm always comforted to know that life on a microscopic level is teeming somewhere nearby. We'd be in a mess of trouble if it wasn't.