Swords and Castles kind of day...

Decanting

Decanted tinctures and one oil today!

Fresh dandelion leaf tincture : liver & digestive tonic

Fresh cleaver tincture : my fav remedy for swollen glands

Dried passionflower tincture: the BEST for anxiety, racing mind, headaches, & insomnia

Glowing fresh calendula flower oil : wonderful oil for the skin in salves, lotions, & just by itself

Tincture Making: Fool-Proof

Tincture making is seriously fool-proof medicine making. 

It is so easy to do...I mean, you can make it complicated...but I don't.

It's a great way to start making your own medicine at home if you never have before. Store bought tinctures are SO expensive, so if you do buy them you will be saving yourself a lot of money by making them instead. Making your own tincture is medicine in itself (every time you shake it think good thoughts!) because you are part of the process. 

And I'll add that tinctures are really handy to have...right before bed (instead of a cup of tea that will make you pee) and they are indispensable when traveling.

Now a lot of the time tinctures are used to preserve the fresh plant, but dried plants work well too (sometimes better for some herbs, in my opinion). So don't let that factor stop you--use what you have/can get!

And lastly, if you are avoiding alcohol you can make a glycerin-based tincture instead of an alcohol-based tincture. My personal preference is alcohol-based though.

The process:

   1. Put fresh or dried herb in a clean mason jar

   2. Add 100 proof vodka

3. Label jar with herb name & date

   4. Cap and store it out of the light in a cool dark place

   5. Shake daily, or as often as you can remember, for at least two weeks

   6. Uncap the jar

   7. Pour out the tincture into a bowl or something and squeeze out the wet herbs as best you can

   8. Filter the tincture through clean cheesecloth or something of that nature

9. Put back into clean mason jar and/or put into a small dropper/tincture bottle & label.

Congratulations! 
You just made medicine!

Passionflower in vodka.

Always label herb name, whether it is fresh or dried, date, and you can add alcohol type.

Passionflower tincture already turning colors after two days.

Recently harvested herbs...

Calendula, Pot or Garden Marigold (Calendula officinalis)
Planted in our garden this year. I've been harvesting the flowers and drying them as well as making fresh calendula flower oil.

Chicory (Cichorium intybus)
Growing wild around our garden. Tincturing the flower and possibly harvesting some roots to roast?

St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum)
The little plant in our garden is started to flower.

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa)

The back pasture is covered in alfalfa.

Elder flowers (Sambucus)

Ecstatic to have access to elderberries this year.

Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)
Growing around the yard. I just made a fresh motherwort tincture two days ago.

Red Clover (Trifolium pratense)
Red Clover is everywhere sharing the fields with alfalfa right now.
Picking and drying, picking and drying, picking and drying...

Skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis)
Once our skullcap plant is in full bloom we'll made a fresh tincture of it.

Queen Anne's Lace, Wild Carrot (Daucus carota)
Wild abundance everywhere. My old friend.

Salve.
My own salve, made with fresh herbal oils made early this spring.

Wortcunning

Wortcunning is the knowledge of the magical or hidden properties of plants and herbs. It is an old word meaning literally "herbal wisdom".

Tinctures, herbal oils, and various dried/drying herbs in our kitchen

Beautiful calendula flowers harvested right from our garden

When I sort of tripped and fell into my profession I had not discovered my OTHER passion...plants and herbal medicine. It's funny how in retrospect everything happened for a reason...without this career I would not have been able to discover in myself nor had the physical time to develop a love for plants . My career allows me to spend two whole months planting, foraging, harvesting, drying, making oils, syrups, salves, tinctures, etc. I feel blessed and excited that summer is here.