Willow Bark throat balm

For those wondering where to get willow bark, it's really pretty simple. Cut yourself a couple of willow switches (watch the neighbor kids run for the hills (/joke)). If you don't know what a willow tree looks like, google is your friend. Scrape off the outer bark carefully, leaving the spongy inner bark. Strip the inner bark and save it. You can either use it right away or dry it out and put it in sealable jars.

What is willow bark good for? Anything aspirin can do, willow can do better, and usually without the side effects. I like using it with spearmint, lemon and honey for a nice winter throat balm that helps with colds or flu symptoms. About a tablespoon willow bark, teaspoon lemon juice, tablespoon spearmint and tablespoon honey in hot water makes about a quart of throat balm.

I've also used willow bark to help with inflammation on wounds in a poultice.  If you mix it up/grind it with plantain leaves and place it directly on the wound, you can then wrap a bandage (if you don't have any, use an undamaged plantain leaf to cover the poultice) over it and it will help cool the wound, take a lot of the pain away and prevent infection.  Some people say to chew the leaves, but I would remind them that there is more bacteria in your mouth than on the leaves normally and spitting in a wound is not a very good idea.  A little clean water is better, iodine is best.  Iodine does amazing things, from cleansing bacteria to curing cancer, prevents infections, and your body needs it, badly. (today's diets do not contain enough iodine, even with iodized salt...)

Some useful plants in June

Wild Yarrow.  This is all over my property.  A very useful plant for medicinal purposes.  It is rumored to help with all manner of upper respiratory issues, digestive issues, and menstruation issues.  It is also a good coagulant and if made in a poultice.  I'd advise using this mixed with St Johns Wort and Plantain for fast healing and to help stop bleeding quickly.  Esoterically, it is revered as a protective herb as well as amorous dealings.

Red Clover.  Equally abundant and has culinary and medicinal qualities.  Culinary the flowers are a light airy flavor when picked at the right time (bottom flower is at the peak of flavor).  I've eaten this in salads with vinegrette (makes a good blend with young plantain leaves, daylily greens, young violet leaves, wild lettuce, purslane, lambsquarters and wild garlic/chives), made teas, and munched them raw by themselves.  Each early summer I gather a lot of clusters to dry and use as medicinal herbal teas and use some to make tinctures.  It's medicinal properties are many like any good wild herb, but especially noted for diuretic properties.  It is also good for respiratory ills and an expectorant.  One reason I use a lot of this herb is that it relieves the symptoms of menopause, and helps the system re-balance itself.  Esoterically, clover is supposed to bring luck and prosperity.

Daylilies.  These are also in great patches on my property.  These are one of my favorite forages.  They have great flavor, and you can eat almost every part of the plant. I especially like to nibble the flowers when they are just getting ready to open.  The nectar at the base is a nice sweet delight in the morning.  The young greens are great in salads and when the leaves are older, I pull them like a grass stem and eat the white bits.  I haven't eaten the roots, but my friends say they can be boiled and eaten like potatoes (really small ones), but are best harvested (like most roots) in the fall and early spring.

Wild Chicory.  The leaves are edible before the flowers, but are pretty bitter.  What makes this plant valuable though, is that the roots are a good coffee substitute.  This plant also makes good food for my rabbits and chickens.  Esoterically, chicory is used to remove obstacles, invisibility, favors and frugality.

Burdock.  Young leaves are edible, but also bitter. I have used the root for its antibiotic and rumored anti-cancer properties.  A good medicinal herb to have around.  Esoterically Burdock is aligned with water and has protective and healing properties.

Mature Curly Dock.  Young leaves and shoots edible, my favorites are the peeled shoots.  Due to oxalate content, however, they .  The seeds are also edible and can be dried and ground as flour after the husks have turned dark red.  It is a lot of work, but the flavor is reasonable and nutrition is very high.  Yellow (Curly) dock root is reportedly good for the liver, and can be combined with burdock and dandelion to treat liver heat.  It is also a detoxifying herb and can be used to treat eczema, acne, fungal infections and reportedly good for psoriasis.  Being a bitter, though, it can cause headaches as a side effect if you are sensitive to it.  It also contains oxalates, so if you have kidney stones or gout, avoid internal usage.  Dock leaves can also be used externally in a poultice and is especially helpful to treat stinging nettle, bug bites, rashes, etc. In esoteric use, it is used to sever ties to the past and clear boundaries.

Wild Black Raspberries  They will turn black as they ripen.  There are many uses for this plant not just the berries which are the icing on the cake.  The leaves are used in many ancient as well as modern remedies.  The leaves can be used fresh or dried and used as a gargle for sore throat, canker sores, or used as a wash for wounds.  It's also good for cramps, and uterine issues.  The fruits are useful in jams, jellies, pies, and muffins.  Our favorite uses though are eating the berries, and making blackberry cordials.  We take the fruit and fill a quart tub or jar, cover it with vodka and let it sit for about a week.  Strain out the fruit pulp and either drink or you can mix in some honey to sweeten.  Esoterically can be linked to feminine mother or hearth energies.

Wild Grapes, the young leaves are edible and the grapes in late fall.  Wild grapes are much more bitter than the domestic kind and there isn't a lot of fruit on them.  They taste better, though, if you let them sit on the vine through one frost.  This makes them much sweeter.  The leaves are good in salads and make good wraps of rice and spiced beef (cook hamburger in freshly cooked brown rice or wild rice with curry and paprika seasoning, then wrap the mix in grape leaves and lightly fry).

Wood Sorrel is always good.  Love the tart flavor!  I eat this in salads for a tangy zing, and I munch on these raw all the time.  I especially like the seed pods.  Medicinally it is reputed to be good against worms, upper respiratory congestion, and a good source of vitamin C.  This plant also contains oxalates, so go light on consumption.  Not surprisingly, this herb is aligned with healing energies.

This little Mulberry tree will hopefully grow up to be a wonderful fruit producing tree if I can keep the deer off it.  This is one of Bandit's trees, planted in his memory and with some of his ashes. I love mulberries and these trees were the result of harvesting many berries, eating most, drying some and planting them.  I love fresh mulberries off the tree!  There are many things you can do with them, same as most berries, wines, syrups, jams, jellies, or as I like them best, plain.  Mulberries are a very strong affiliation with lightning and protection.

Here is another Mulberry next to some Creeping Charlie and in the upper left hand side there is a violet plant.

August Plants Part 2

Ground Ivy, Creeping Charlie, and other names this plant has enjoyed used to preserve and flavor beer!  Yep, beer weed!  It used to be used instead of hops.  It has many medicinal uses such as for inflammation, congestion and related ailments.  In some lores it is considered a cure all and has many listed properties.  It is aligned with spring, new life and growth, and traditionally has been used as a "Spring Tonic" to cure the ails of winter and prepare the body for spring.  This may be due to the antihistamine properties which might help with the excess of spring pollen.

Yellow Wood Sorrel is one of my favorite plants to munch on!  I love the sweet-sour taste of this plant.  I may be a bit strange, but I love the leaves, the flowers and the seed buds.

This plant has been used for liver, digestion and even cancer cures.  It is rumored, however, to adverse effects on the kidneys, but that has not dampened my enjoyment of this plant, and I'm rumored to have healthy organs (long story).  First Nations have used and eaten this plant for thousands of years.  In Druidic lore, this plant represents the common triune nature of the divine (maiden, mother, crone; youth, father, elder, etc.) and thus its equivalent european counterparts were considered sacred plants aligned with the triune.

Black Walnuts abound here.  I have counted at least 20 such trees on my property alone.  I gather these when they fall in late summer and keep them until the husks crumble, but before they sprout.  By that time the nuts inside are mature and flavorful.  This tree does not play well with many other plants, so if you want to cultivate them, make sure you know which plants can tolerate the chemicals this plant produces and keep your other plants far enough away to not be effected.  Also, these are NOT good to have around horses or other herbivores and do not let your dogs chew on the nuts in their husk!  These are commonly known to cause seizures and poisoning in dogs, mostly because they look like fun toys...  The wood of this tree, however, is an excellent hardwood to use in building supplies, as long as you don't have wood chewing dogs.

An excerpt from an article from the purdue university  http://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/fnr/HTIRC/pdf/woeste/KoleBookChapter-BlackWalnut-Pijut.pdf :

Historically, the bark of black walnut was used by several Native Americans, including the Cherokee, 

Delaware, Iroquois, and Meskwaki, in tea as a cathartic, emetic, or disease remedy agent, and chewed or 

applied for toothaches, snake bites, and headaches (Moerman 1998; Moerman 2003). Caution: the bark 

should be used cautiously in medicine because it is poisonous. The Cherokee, Chippewa, and Meskwaki 

also used the bark to make a dark brown or black dye (Moerman 1998; Moerman 2003). The Comanche 

pulverized the leaves of black walnut for treatment of ringworm, the Cherokee used leaves to make a 

green dye, and the Delaware used the leaves as an insecticide to dispel fleas (Moerman 1998; Moerman 2003)

August Plants Part 1

It is the end of berry season where I live, but the beginning of a new round of plants. Plantain are seeding, and the seeds make a pleasant salad topping as well as good feed for the hens.  Our rabbits enjoy the leaves no matter their age, so it is a great fodder plant for our farm as well as good for us.

This is the all purpose, ubiquitous weed wonder-plant as most foragers know, but for those just getting started, this is the #1 versatile forage.  Medicinally, it is an antibiotic as both internal food/concoction/infusion/pill and external salve/poultice and even bandage to help keep out infection.  I haven't seen a yard yet that doesn't have plantain in it, and maybe that is a good thing?  It is also rumored (Culpeper) to be a decongestant and like mint, soothes the digestion.  Culpeper also stated that the powdered leaves in concoctions could control worms, though I haven't used it for this as yet.  Even earlier it was used as a headache remedy for Alexander the Great.  With thousands of years of history behind this plant, you know you can't go wrong having this amazing herb.  In its history this plant was a sacred plant, aligned with healing (no surprise there).  In ancient Christian lore, it was a symbol for those trodding the path of a follower of Christ.  It was used to ward off fatigue as a poultice on the feet, and to ward off venom of evil creatures.  This humble weed is truly the king of herbs.

Lambsquarters is another one of those weeds you find everywhere, but is another ready food source.  It is the left middle plant in the picture.  The leaves are somewhat silvery on the bottom.

The young leaves of this plant have quite a pleasant taste and I often munch on them raw.  I have read, though, that some people don't tolerate the leaves raw because they contain miniscule amounts of saponins.  This plant also has a very ancient history in use as a crop for its leaves, flowers and seeds.  It is part of the family of goosefoot, though and may cause hay fever or allergic reactions, so be careful when testing this plant.  It has been used for stomach aches and to prevent scurvy.  

I believe the plant to the right of the lamb's quarters is the Kentucky version of stinging nettle, but I'm still not 100% sure as it looks very different from the nettles I grew up with.  When I confirm this 100% (meaning I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do a skin test... yeech!) I'll talk more about it.

This plant confounded me when I first came here.  It was everywhere, yet defied positive identification.  I've heard it called everything from 'purple flower weed' to vetch from locals, and no book on local plants identified this herb to me.  One day, I was looking for a different vine to identify, and lo and behold there it was!  Creeping Charlie!  I've since found out this is a distant member of the mint family (which explains why it is all over the place and considered an invasive species... LOL).

Like much of the mint family this has various uses and properties associated with it, and a very long history indeed.  (Stay tuned for part 2)