Harvesting Hemlock and Douglas Fir

Off to the mountain I went on a cold frosty morning to accomplish some wild harvesting before the rains returned. I met a beautiful ring of Douglas Fir trees with new green tips which I harvested for teas and a cooking herb. They were all oozing with resin as the temperature was perfect for it. I hadn’t planned to harvest resin, but I found a good stick to use instead of my hands and bundled all the resin in carefully wrapped blackberry leaves I’d picked the thorns off of.

To harvest resin you leave the wound alone and harvest what has oozed out of it and dripped down. The resin was a beautiful range of colours from palest honey to darkest blood-red and smells deliciously of lemon and pepper with an amber sweetness behind it.  It was once used to make salves to treat wounds and skin problems – probably made with deer fat or bear grease. Western Hemlock resin smells even more amazing than Douglas Fir, but I didn’t find any weeping trees on this adventure.

After, I visited the old Hemlock trees with their thick trunks and gorgeous sweeping boughs of tiny evergreen needles. I don’t like to pick favourites as I love so many trees and plants, but I truly am in love with Western Hemlock – its beauty, its smell, its gentleness, and its greatness. Beds of its soft branches were used to process fish upon and to act as wild bedding when sleeping in the woods. The tips were drunk as a tea or used in cooking, the cones were worn by Native women around their necks to conceive a child, and the branches tied around ritualists’ heads and waists during ceremonies.

The trunks of Hemlock grow so fat with large curving roots contrasting against the tiny needles fragrant with spice and citrus.  I will make the dried needles into smudge wands, incense, tea, and try cooking with them myself. The bark is a deep purple and was used to make a red or black dye. When you leave the bark on drying wood, the colour leeches and the wood turns a gorgeous light purple-red that is simply beautiful to carve.

My cheeks and eyes bright from the cold, I went to visit my former neighbour on the mountain. She had made me a delicious Czech soup with a roux and sour cream in which we dipped slices of buttered rye while we sipped our hot tea talking of gardening, wildcrafting, mead brewing, and magic. It was simply wonderful.

I went home with boughs of Red Cedar and Hemlock, Douglas Fir tips and resin, as well as Mountain Ash and Indian Plum wood. Thank you Forest for your gifts. Until next time beautiful mountain.

 

Herbal Tea Experiments

I managed to avoid all the plagues of my friends all winter so far, but I am apparently not so immune to the plagues of small children and finally succumbed to a cold. There’s nothing I hate more than a runny nose and a sore throat and I wasn’t about to put up with it for too long. My solution to almost every trouble is tea. Worried and stressed about something? Drink tea. Crappy day at work? Drink tea. Someone was mean to you? Drink tea. Get sick? You guessed it – drink tea! After three days of drinking copious quantities of homemade herbal teas, my cold was gone. They weren’t even fancy or exotic and they all tasted pretty good – especially with some delicious throat-soothing local honey stirred in. I love to make my own teas; to play with ingredients and flavours and see if they have any medicinal or emotional applications. They always make me feel better than drinking store-bought teas. To give them a try yourself I’ve included the recipes below. If you’re a vegan try substituting maple syrup for the honey.

Elderberry-Cinnamon

Makes 1 pot of tea, steep for 10-15 minutes

1 Tbsp elderberries, dried
1-2 cinnamon sticks, crushed
1-3 Tbsp of honey, to taste

Good for sore throats, coughs, cold and flu, bronchitis, asthma, etc – see the throat and lung connection? Also good for pleasure as it tastes like rich, fruity, spicey awesomeness. Wonderful in the evening after dinner as it’s like liquid dessert.

Ginger-Mint

Makes 1 pot of tea, steep 10-15 minutes

1 2-inch nub of fresh ginger root, sliced
1 bunch of fresh peppermint or spearmint (6-8 sprigs)
1-3 Tbsp of honey, optional

Good for coughs, nausea, headache, and generally cleansing the system. Tastes like a warm hug – no really. A tea I’d drink every day. If you don’t have mint in your garden or kitchen window, it’s one of the easiest herbs to find fresh in markets and grocery stores. Dried is okay, but just not the same – especially when you’re sick.

Dandelion-Lemon-Ginger

Makes 1 pot of tea, steep 5-10 minutes

1 Tbsp dandelion root, roasted
1-3 lemon wedges, squeezed and crushed
1 2-inch nub of fresh ginger root, sliced
1-3 Tbsp of honey, to taste

Excellent for cleansing and tastes like a gingery earl grey. Makes a delicious every-day breakfast tea as a substitute for black tea or coffee. Good without the lemon too. Yum, yum, yum.

Lavender-Lemon-Herb

Makes 1 pot of tea, steep 5-8 minutes

1 mandarin orange, including peel, squished
1 small lemon or half a lemon, sliced and squished
1 tsp lavender, dried
1/2 tsp rosemary, dried
1/2 tsp thyme, dried
6-8 cloves
1-3 Tbsp of honey, to taste

For chasing away a cold or flu. Tastes like hot lavender lemonade with a mild bitter herbal aftertaste which is softened by the honey. Adding fresh ginger root definitely doesn’t hurt. Not my favourite, but not unpleasant. Only drink up to one pot a day for five days in a row.

Lemon-Herb

Makes 1 pot of tea, steep 5-8 minutes

1 large lemon, sliced and squished
1 bunch of fresh thyme
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 bunch of fresh mint
1-3 Tbsp of honey, to taste

A go-to for chasing away colds. Tastes odd, but good. A savoury herbal tea which balances nicely with the lemon and honey. Seems to always do the trick after drinking it for a 2-4 days. Never drink it for more than a week in a row though due to the rosemary and thyme and stick to only one pot a day.

Crafting Wild Smudge Wands

After my wild harvesting adventure on the mountain I brought all my evergreens home, chased away all the jumping spiders, and then crafted small smudge wands out of the western redcedar, western hemlock, and rocky mountain juniper bound with red cotton. I made three larger smudge wands with all three fragrant greens bundled together and then one big fat cedar one for my personal use.  My room smelled so good during and my smudge-crafting – like childhood memories of christmas trees and the sandalwood incense I was burning. I didn’t make as many smudge wands as I wanted for the shop, but I needed to save the rest of the evergreens to dry for incense and smudge blend making. I need to make more delicious Rocky Mountain Kyphi and Northwest Coast Loose Smudge.

The next clear sunny day I will go back to the mountain and harvest more evergreens and juniper berries so I can make more smudge wands and to sell the dried botanicals in bulk as well. After I finished my crafting and picking all the remaining berries off the juniper boughs, I placed the hemlock branches in a paper bag to catch all the needles when they dry, and then bundled the sturdier cedar and juniper branches and hung them all from my drying rack in the kitchen. The smudge wands sit in a paper bag drying as well. 1-2 weeks and I think they’ll be ready to put in the shop.

Now it’s time to go through all my herbs and supplies and get crafting to fill up the shop for the new year! I have plans to add lines of teas and natural body care products all made with native herbs and to offer more bulk native herbs for sale too. So much to do, I’d better get to work!

Midwinter Mulled Mead

To me, nothing is more festive for the winter holidays than mulled anything; mulled cider, mulled wine, and, since I am a mead-maker, I had to make mulled mead. I used a bottle of my sugar pumpkin spice mead that has been aging for three years, delicious honey from Honey Grove Farm, citrus, spices, and a sprig of the Rocky Mountain Juniper I harvested this week. If you want to make your own mulled deliciousness I’ve included a recipe below:

Mulled Mead

• 1 bottle of mead
• 1/2 a small lemon
• 1 mandarin orange, halved
• 1 small sprig of fresh juniper
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 8 cloves
• 6 peppercorns
• 3 slices of fresh ginger
• 3-6 tbsp of unpasteurized honey to taste

A bottle of sack or metheglin mead is best (aka plain), but fruit meads can also be delicious – think mulled black currant or cranberry or pomegranate… mmm. If you don’t make mead and can’t find some to purchase substitute with a sweet white wine like a Riesling or a Gewürztraminer. Pour the mead into a pot on the stove or into a crock pot and add all the ingredients. You can get creative and make a local version sans the exotic citrus and spices by adding  tips of fir and pine trees and juniper berries for a spicy forest flavour, frozen berries you picked in the forest in the summer for a touch of fruit, and vanilla leaf or sweet grass for a hint of wild sweetness.

Heat on low, without boiling, for at least an hour before drinking. If any of the ingredients start tasting too strong, take them out. It’s pretty tasty so you might want to use more than one bottle of mead if you’re sharing with others or you’ll be pouting into an empty cup. Drink warm in tea mugs or ceramic goblets and enjoy!

Wildcrafting in a Winter Wonderland

It was a gorgeous sunny day for the eve of the Winter Solstice – the shortest day and the longest night of the year. What else is a herbwife to do when presented with such a day but go wildcrafting on the mountain? I am out of so many things for the shop and evergreens are always in season, so off I went with my shears and my giant blue ikea bag. The mountain was beautiful; everything touched by the low-hanging sun like the longest sunset you’ve ever seen and there were birds everywhere singing. There were fruits everywhere – snowberries, rosehips, holly berries, hawthorn berries, juniper berries…

I found five tall Rocky Mountain Juniper trees, the only native juniper west of the Rockies, and hit the juniper berry motherload. I’m even going to back for more when my harvesting bag isn’t so heavy with evergreen boughs. I snipped some of the juniper’s boughs as well for making smudge blends and smudge wands. Rocky Mountain Juniper is smooth like cedar, not prickly like common juniper and can be easily confused with Western Redcedar if it weren’t for the smoky purple-blue berries.

I walked on the dirt path through the forest of tall trees, bare branches contrasted against green firs and cedars. I harvested boughs of Western Hemlock and Cedar to go with my juniper and filled up my harvesting bag. The forest never truly dies here as so much stays green: the sword ferns, the Oregon grape, the salal, the evergreen vines, and even the blackberry vines never lose their leaves. It is a beautiful combination of life and death in winter on the West coast.

I soaked up all the green, the browns of dead leaves and bare earth, and all the flowing streams coming down the mountain. I visited my favourite lone hawthorn tree, still covered in fat red fleshy berries. Then I walked out of the woods and back into civilization to visit a friend who lives on the mountain for some hot tea to warm my cold cheeks and then home I went with a solstice gift of clementine-maple-cinnamon mead and my harvest of evergreen boughs and berries.

Honey, Silver, and Garnet

I’ve been busy crafting, painting, sketching, packaging, labelling, and shipping. I’m running out of a lot of herbs and resins, so I hope to completely restock the botanica with goodies and new products in January after the craziness of the December holidays. It’s about time to get some tinctures brewing and herbal teas blended!

Today I went to the Women’s Winter Faire in Vancouver at the gorgeous Heritage Hall with the lovely Holly (and of course left my camera at home). It’s in its eighteenth year now with only female crafters allowed to vend their wares of everything ranging from clothing and accessories to soaps, jewelry, pottery, and woodwork. Hopefully I’ll have my shit together next year so I can vend there either with my art or as Forest Grove Botanica. I came home with herbal tea, a handmade makeup bag with fat little owls, cotton handkerchiefs for my grandfather, and a red moon necklace made by my friend Nikiah (which I’ve been eyeballing since she first started her silversmithing).

Nikiah also had a bag for me of two big jars of honey from the lovely beekeeper Nao (of Honey Grove Farm and co-author with Nikiah of Moon Mysteries) and Solstice gifts from her of homemade cookies of ginger and chocolate-sea salt, a jar of gooey honey from her own bees, dark honeycombs, and to my delighted surprise one of her gorgeous new antler pendants with her own silverwork (which I’m currently wearing). After our successful shopping, Holly and I went to a little café nearby for yummy tea and dug into the cookies while chatting about life, magic, and men. Life is good and I’m so looking forward to all the Winter Solstice mischief and mead this coming week! Wassail!

Moon Mysteries Book Launch Party

My good friend Nikiah wrote a much-needed book on women’s menstrual wisdom with her good friend Nao and they found the lovely Eyan Myers to create gorgeous watercolours for the cover and the interior. Moon Mysteries:Reclaiming Women’s Menstrual Wisdom is a gorgeous book – beautiful artwork and photographs, beautiful unbleached recycled paper, beautiful fonts, and, most importantly, beautiful words. So when they hosted a launch party for their book after years of hard labour, I of course had to attend!

The book launch party for Moon Mysteries was a success! Beautiful red decorations of luscious fabrics and candles, Eyan’s gorgeous artwork on the walls, delicious food, free alcohol with a charming bartender (the artist’s husband), live music by the talented Surya Devi, storytelling from the book by Nao in her elegant voice, beautiful speeches, and beautiful women!

New Herbal Oils and Salves

My new kitchen and craft room

I’m all moved into the new place, the business is unpacked, and I have a shiny new laptop to write to you from. I’ve been doing non-stop crafting since I finished unpacking the last boxes of books and dishes. The functioning part of the kitchen, while small, has a lot of storage and the room itself is actually quite large with a lot of floor space – I’ve already made frame drums on it, the hides stretched across the lovely slate linoleum of the kitchen floor. But mostly I have been taking up my herbwife skills again to craft medicinal oils and salves.

With herbal oils in the oven and salves in the double boiler on the stove, my home soon became fragrant with the sweet scents of balsam poplar and beeswax.

I made three types of salves using only Pacific Northwest plants and locally sourced oils and beeswax and have many more recipes yet to try. The first type is Allheal & Balsam – a gentle herbal salve for abrasions, blisters, bruises, burns, corns, cuts, inflammation, scratches, sores, sprains, sunburns, swelling, and any other external skin injuries. It is safe to apply to broken skin and open wounds and also safe for use by children and those with sensitive skin.

The second salve I crafted is Sweet Birch Balsam – a naturally anti-inflammatory salve for soothing sore muscles, sore joints, and the pain of arthritis, rheumatism, and sports injuries. It also makes a great salve for massages, but keep it away from broken skin due to all the essential oils it contains.

Lastly, I crafted Cedar Balsam – a gentle naturally antibacterial salve for treating any external wounds, MRSA infections, and fungal skin infections like athlete’s foot. If you have MRSA, trust me, and get the big jar and apply to infected wounds and the inside of your nostrils every day for a month. I’ve had MRSA infections before and there’s not much can do besides hope the antibiotics work, but this salve helps soothe the pain, the swelling of infection, and helps you heal up faster.

Then it was all about straining and even more finely straining the wildcrafted St. John’s Wort and Balsam Poplar herbal oils I made. They are rich dark gold and full of medicine. I now have them available in three sizes – a large four ounce one for crafting your own salves or as a carrier oil, a medium two ounce one for professional use for healing or massage, and a small half ounce size for personal home use in one’s herbal medicine cupboard.

And now it’s all about crafting native incense and resin blends and weighing out smudging herbs. Lots more native herbal goodness to come! I’m finding wonderful and endless possibilities of things to make with the abundance of healing and fragrant herbs living in the Pacific Northwest rainforest.

Introducing Honey Grove Farm

Here’s my latest WordPress creation – a blog for the lovely Nao of Honey Grove Farm (Nikiah’s partner in beekeeping mischief). Nao and her hubby have relocated to the Gulf Islands to start an apiary and homestead on six acres near the sea that will eventually also support a bed and breakfast. They’ll raise bees for honey, grow their own food, make their own cheese, brew their own ales… I so want to trade places with Nao and I know you do too! She’ll be blogging all about their island homesteading adventures over at the blog I designed for her; check it out and get a taste of the good life: Honey Grove Farm.

I help people set up WordPress.com and WordPress.org blogs and websites as a side job – I do custom designs and graphics. If you want to snazz up your blog with a new look or want to start a blog and feel lost in all the options and CSS code, send me an email to talk options.

Strawberry Summer

That’s what I got up to for my last vacation of the summer – belgian waffles with strawberries and bacon by the lake in the mountains with good friends. My love and I canoed over the ghosts of long dead trees sunken at the bottom of the clear lake with drops of water from the paddles splashing over our toes. I walked through the trees finding hidden mushrooms, blackberries, hazelnuts, and other forest treasures. When I got home, what did I find, but more strawberries. My wild alpine strawberries are now covered in ripe red berries.

And now we’re back home and back to work. All of my herbal supply orders have come in so I’m all stocked up and ready to get crafting. I just opened Forest Grove Botanica on Etsy with what I have in stock. I’ll be adding more goodies this week and in the coming weeks – keep your eyes peeled for healing balms, herbal oils, teas, bulk resins, and body care products.