Life has been so busy I’ve been behind catching up with all my herbalism and making goodies to restock the shop. I made divine spray smudges of local Western Red Cedar using fresh wild harvested tips as well as its rich earthy essential oil and another of fragrant White Sage leaves wildcrafted in California along with its pungent essential oil. My whole house smelled divinely of cedar and sage for days just from bottling them! Both the Red Cedar Spray Smudge and the White Sage Spray Smudge are available in the shop.

Spray smudges are a great alternative for people who are allergic to incense and smoke, or who aren’t allowed to burn incense where they live (cranky landlords and allergies are pretty common). They can be used as a substitute for ceremonial smudging or as aromatherapy to scent a room. Red Cedar is great for blessing and White Sage is excellent for cleansing.

My good friends who own Herbal Craft brought me some sagebrush they wild harvested from the Okanagan last summer and it is incredibly potent! I plan on making a spray smudge from it as well as the scent is quite different from white sage. I also plan on making a sweetgrass spray smudge for its delicious vanilla scent… I should probably get them started right now.

How could I resist making incense and smudge blends with such amazing, fresh, local sagebrush?! I crafted two new smudging blends and one loose incense blend all with herbs native to the Pacific Northwest:

Cedar, Sage & Pine Resin Loose Incense – a delectable and savoury handcrafted incense made from wild harvested Western Red Cedar, Okanagan sagebrush, and Lodgepole Pine resin. These three native botanicals bring together the best the Pacific Northwest has to offer in traditional incense herbs.

Okanagan Desert Loose Smudge – bring home the scent of the Okanagan brush-steppe with this smudging blend of pungent wild harvested sages with organic mugwort and yarrow

Prairie Rose Loose Smudge – bring home the scent of the shrub steppes of British Columbia and Alberta with this pungent and sweet wild harvested smudging blend of rose petals, Okanagan sagebrush, and sweetgrass.

I also finally made more of my poplar Northwest Coast Loose Smudge after wild harvesting and drying all of the native evergreens myself this winter. Burn it for the rich scent of the coastal mountain forests with my blend of Western Red Cedar, Western Hemlock, Douglas Fir, and Rocky Mountain Juniper tips and berries. Lemon-pepper evergreen goodness!

I’ve also been crafting more Pacific Northwest kyphis. I sold out of both my Hawthorn-Rose and Rocky Mountain blends and made more. I also made one new blend, Elderberry-Sweetgrass, with black elderberries as the wet base soaked in honey and my homemade mead and later added a dry blend of sweetgrass and elderflowers. It smells divine. Making kyphi is a labour-intensive process and takes a long time, but is well worth it for the complex rich-scented results! I’m always trying to prove to other locals that native plants can make  just as amazing and even better than all the exotic resins and herbs most people are familiar with.

The newly-formed bricks of Elderberry-Sweetgrass Kyphi are now curing soon to be followed by the two other batches and should be available in the shop by Friday or this weekend. My home smells amazing from all the berries, mead, honey, resins, and essential oils.

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My friends and I all jumped in the car and headed to Huntress and Thicket‘s homestead in the mountains for a good ole fashioned mead party. There had been quite the blizzard the night before, but the roads had cleared by the afternoon and the drive was full of sweeping vistas of gorgeous mountains capped with snow in the light of the setting sun. The womenfolk cooked up a storm for our potluck dinner: piles of chicken wings and fruit, traditional Czech dumplings with sauce and a pork roast, the best perogies ever, bacon-wrapped scallops,  and blueberry kolache for dessert. The table was covered in bottles of our homebrewed meads which we drank of heartily and deeply. Thicket’s aged show meads and the M and P’s clementine-maple-cinnamon mead were the favourites and my bottle of monsterberry mead disappeared pretty quickly too.

We sat by the fire and talked of mead making, magic, herbs, gardening, and homesteading –telling stories and reading tarot cards for each other while tipsy on our homebrews. We ladies decided that an all women drunken oracle group was an excellent idea and want to get together with a few others of like mind to drink mead and read the cards for each other with our favourite decks. I read tea leaves and palms too… so many drunken oracle options.

In the morning we woke to snow falling softly through the trees of the forest and ravens croaking and circling the house. We had the best of intentions to actually make mead at this mead party, but the sun came out and we decided drinking mead still counted as a mead party and played with swords and bows and fire instead. The men became pyromaniacs and lit fires using magnifying glasses and sunlight and then crafted a bow and drill to light more fires – stone age style. We circled around their fire in the sun and roasted marshmallows over the coals of their effort.

Thicket talked the shaman into making rune brands out of a coat hanger and the experiment ensued with very good results. All three men dabble in metalwork and I think their eyes glazed over thinking of all the applications.

Huntress and I went for a walk in the sunny wintry woods in our long flowing skirts and practical boots talking of the wildcrafting and foraging to come in spring and all we want to harvest and make with native plants while her wolf-like dog played in the snow around us. The forest never really dies here, there is always green firs, ferns, succulents, mosses, and more always growing. There may be snow, but everything is budding.

It was such a beautiful day even the chickens ventured out of their coop and into the sunlight to frolic among the trees and bathe in the odd patch of bare earth in the forest. Huntress is a very Mother Earth type of woman and kept us all well-fed in between our mischiefs and sent us all home with fresh eggs from her chickens.

I was sent home with branches of gary oak and weeping willow from trees that fell in storms last winter for my wood carving. My friend Grant, being the only novice mead maker, was sent home with a selection of Thicket’s 4-10 year old show meads with 9 or more kg of honey (some from his own bee hives) per 5 gallons and also a lovely rose mead that wasn’t too cloying or sweet, but just right. With all the rose meads I’ve tasted in the past year I am getting very excited for my wild rose mead I made with petals harvested one early morning from my mountain.

You know you have good friends when you don’t want to leave and they don’t want to kick you out, but alas, we all had to go back to our jobs and lives and drove back down to the city from the wild mountains into the sunset scheming of the mischief we’ll get into again for wildcrafting, plant journeys in the mountains, and meeting at The Gathering.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!