Hands on, how to - alder infused oil; the good, the bad and the ugly

Dammit!!
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We'll start with the bad and the ugly, since that's where the story begins.

I went to refill my trusty little bottle of alder oil and discovered this ----------------------------------->>>>>

My backup jar of alder oil was moldy, throughout!

See now, this is the kind of lesson one learns over and over and over when one is lazy or forgetful. You can leave herbs (almost) indefinitely in vodka, but not in oil. No sir. Normally I would have strained this - heaven knows why I didn't - and I would have put some coarse salt in the bottom of the jar of strained oil, too. Salt pulls any excess water to itself and keeps the oil from going off. Like that. Yuck.

Bad girl, wildcucumber, bad, bad!!

Thrifty apothecary experimentations

I guess you could say we're snowed in ..

At least it's clean snow. For now.

That snowbank on the front lawn is taller than I am. It's several blizzards' worth, mind you. I'm starting to suspect the village has run out of money for snow clearing, because up til recently they were taking those monsters away every few days. Or maybe there's just no place to put it any more?

Yep.

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.

St John'swort, topically.

Poor St John'swort. Pigeon-holed by the popular press as an 'herbal anti-depressant' (which it's not, really, except when it it is, sorta, although not how you'd think), it has so much more to offer!

Among other things, it's antiviral, it's a liver herb, it's a nerve healer and it's cheering. For so many issues we humans come up against, some small and irritating, some large and life-altering, St J is often the answer.

Here is a case study from the 'large and life altering' category, from someone near and dear to me. Well, not all that near, as she is now living thousands of miles away .. but certainly dear, as she's my sister!

Here's Catherine's story, in her own words ..




"More than three years ago, I was injured in a rather spectacular traffic accident.

I suffered a compound fracture to my right wrist, which in layman’s terms means the bones were sticking through the skin. I had emergency surgery that night and a second one a couple of weeks later.

Part of my radius bone was replaced by what I think looks like a fork.

Violets: breast health, first aid and they taste good, so cherish them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -

Anyone who considers violets an undesirable weed should be the first with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes.

Weed? Pfffft. 

Violets are both food and medicine; they're a gift, a blessing, and sometimes a prophecy.

Moldy oils, invasive sunchokes and other stories

Just so you don't think it's all fairy dust, all the time ..

As much as I love sunchokes (aka jerusalem artichokes) - for example they were very tasty indeed in last night's spicy coconut milk chicken dish, simmered for over an hour, alongside carrots and new potatoes - last week I became positively irate about how much of the garden they had taken over.