Category: Wild Harvesting

this week on the farm …. first week of july

7/4/2014

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In the garden …

Ripe Cherry Plums ready to pick from our wild plum trees!

Horsetail growing all over all yard. Great for bone health, teeth etc.

The greenhouse spot is coming along and we are hoping to make more progress on it here soon.

Spearmint has gone nuts! A little rain, some sun and this spearmint is taking over the herb garden. It got a 'hair cut' just after this picture.

The calendula's also liked the rain they are coming along nicely, can't wait for the flowers!

While the chamomile that we planted has not come up yet this wild chamomile is ready to be harvested!

Fruit's and flowers every where, the yard and garden is coming to life. First few tomatoes in our tomato bed.

in the kitchen …

Spearmint awaiting space in the dehydrator.

So much spearmint what to do? Make TEA! Passion Tea blend, was wonderful and will probably be joining our line of teas in our shop.

Preparing the tea/salve/soap storage for our kitchen inspection.

Cherry Plums out of the Dehydrator!

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Wild HArvesting and drying comfrey

5/13/2014

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With spring here and some lovely weather from our Creator we are getting a little more exploring done on our newly purchased two acres. On one of these walks it was discovered that we have some comfrey growing wild n our yard (along with lots of other things). So today we harvested comfrey and hung it out to dry.

Comfrey is one of the main herbs used in two of our salves (soon to be in our store) the Diaper Salve and the Gardening Salve. According to our medicinal plant encyclopedia Comfrey is commonly used for promoting the healing of broken bones and most commonly called the 'wound herb'. It is a demulcent, astringent, anti-inflammatory and promotes the healing of wounds and bones. It is used in our Diaper Salve and Gardening Salve mostly for its anti-inflammatory properties and ability to relieve skin problems.

It can be used in its raw form for a poultice, the leaves are used to infuse oil such as in our salves and can also be made into an ointment. Under the self help section in our book it lists its uses as being for acne, boils, fractures, fungal skiing infections, healing wounds, inflamed skin rashes and stiff and aching joints.

To harvest we took our kitchen scissors out and cut down at the base of the stalk and placed the stalks (including flowers and leaves) in a 5 gallon bucket. Some gloves also come in handy as they have little stickers on the stalk that can get stuck in the skin. Once harvested I gathered some of the stocks and tied a twine around the base of the stalk tight and then tied the twine on the posts located on our front south facing porch.

This amount of herb was too much for the dehydrator and with a nice sunny day as today, we have some free energy to dry them out with. It should only take a couple days I imagine and they will be ready to chop and store away until its time to make another round of salves.

Comfrey comes back once cut down and can be reharvested several times. This can be the cause for it being named amongst the 'weeds' in the yard because it can be troublesome to part with. Tilling up the roots only spreads the plant more and can easily create a whole field of comfrey. Which if one is making a lot of comfrey oil could actually be a good thing ;) But perhaps not in a green lawn.