Making Medicine with Grandmother Elder

Before I had children, herbal medicine was something that was very dear to my heart. I loved making teas and tinctures and salves and potions and concoctions and all sorts of goodness. When having children became an upcoming reality, I dreamt (dreamily, as one does when one is pregnant) about my little helpers and I gathering our plants and making beautiful medicine together.

My children are now very much a part of my life (or rather, they are my life), and herbal medicine is still a dear love of mine, but somehow that whole gathering plants and making medicine thing is not a frequented activity. It's not that my kids aren't interested, or not that we don't want to, but somehow time slips away and opportunities pass by untaken. I tell myself that once they are older (Yasmina in particular), it will all be easier, and we'll make medicine like the good green witches we are.

Right now, in this very moment, I am making it a solid intention to bring more herbal playtime into our lives.

It's not that we've never had any herbal adventures together - we've harvested nettles, made calendula salve, unsuccessfully attempted to make St. John's wort oil, and we went through a period last winter of tea blend craze. And I think it is true; as they get older, it will get easier.

In fact, it already is.

Last fall I enjoyed a medicine-making adventure all on my own, and I made elderberry syrup. It was a huge hit! Easy to make and delicious, it was our go-to for any cold or flu-like sickness. The kids ate it up like...well, like unbelievably delicious berry syrup. They even liked getting sick so they could take some of it. So this year, I knew elderberry syrup was a definite necessity in our medicine cabinet.

Yesterday [sunshine shining, naked booties and a black cat - well, my booty was not naked] we tromped down the road for a visit with Grandmother Elder. Perhaps it's because of the name, but when I connect with an elder tree, I always feel I am connecting to a grandmother. After asking for permission [and receiving it], we filled up several yogurt containers with clusters of the tiny deep blue berries. [In the picture below, they look kind of whitish. That's just a film that rubs off to show the true blue color underneath.]

We have two types of elder trees in the US: blue elder and red elder [if you buy elderberry syrup in the store, it is of the black variety, indigenous to Europe]. Here in the coast range, the red elder is quite prolific, but also quite poisonous, due to high levels of arsenic. Do not consume it for medicine or for any other reason. Incidentally, blue elder also has traces of arsenic, but as long as you don't rely on it as your primary food source, you should be fine. Perhaps it is because of this that you aren't supposed to eat any uncooked berries. Yasmina couldn't understand why I would give her a yogurt container full of delicious little berries and tell her not to eat them, so she ate quite a few [and I'm pleased to say that she is still alive and healthy today].

The recipe I use for our syrup comes from Rosemary Gladstar's Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health (an excellent book for anyone interested in making herbal remedies). After pulling all the little berries off their stems,

take 1 cup of fresh berries (or 1/2 cup dried - we dry some berries to make syrup late in the season) and simmer them with 3 cups of water over low heat for 30 to 45 minutes.

When the tea is finished, strain it through a fine-mesh strainer, mashing the berries to extract as much goodness as possible. Once the tea cools a bit, add a cup of honey (we like to use raw honey for its own health benefits). Then bottle it up and store it in the fridge. Our syrup from last year started to get a little fermenty after several months, but we used it anyway (another good reason to have some dried berries on hand, to make a fresh batch of syrup). If you cannot locate any blue elder trees in your area, you can buy the dried berries. I recommend Mountain Rose Herbs, an excellent company based out of Eugene, OR.

There is no better medicine than that made by your own hands and your own love. Many blessings to you in your medicine making!

And gratitude, Grandmother Elder.

2012 Sustainable Herb Conference

Today I am feeling inspired. Today I am feeling nourished. Today I am feeling grateful.

These wonderful feelings are the happy afterglow from yesterday, when I participated in the 2012 Sustainable Herb Conference in Corvallis, OR. I had found out about the conference just the night before, thanks to my friend Jesse, so the spontaneity of going made it even more exciting.

Yasmina and I went and took two classes [the length of our attention span]. One class, taught by Heiko Koester, was about growing your own native medicinals. I am inspired to fill my yard with medicinal plants, even though the woods around me are already filled (you can never have too many!) The other class was taught by Lawrence Birch and focused on the spiritual properties of plants. This is a subject I have been very interested in since reading Plant Spirit Medicine by Eliot Cowan several years ago. All plants have spirits who are allies in healing, and you can access those spirits through shamanic journeying. I have been exploring this on my own for awhile now, and I feel that meeting Lawrence Birch may be the next step in my journey....but more on that later, I'm sure.

I feel very blessed to live in an area with so many knowledgable herbalists. I heard great stories and learned new information, but the best part was just talking about plants and being around other people who love plants.

I do love plants. The wild herbs. I believe they have great healing powers, and I'm not necessarily talking about the powdered capsule you get from the health food store (not to say there aren't companies putting out wonderful and effective herbal products). But I do think the greatest medicine comes from a personal relationship with a plant, being with that plant and harvesting it and making medicine from it. Listen to the plants, and they will be your teachers. 

Obviously, this is not feasible with every plant in every situation. I buy herbal products from the store too. But if you are indeed interested in herbal healing, I urge you to make some plant allies, if you haven't already. We are surrounded by them. Walk down the street - I'm sure you'll meet dandelion at the least. St. John's Wort, plantain, chickweed, and yellow dock are other very common "weeds" that are easy to spot. Go to your garden or the park. Meet rosemary, lavender, calendula, or other easily found garden herbs. Sit down, slow down, open your heart, and listen. You'll make a friend, I promise.

Urtica dioica, or stinging nettles, is one of my favorite wild plants

I came home from the conference full of inspiration. I do go through periods of being a more active herbalist and being a less active one, and I am kind of coming out of a period of hibernation. Last night I got into my pantry and pulled out all my jars of various dried plants. I like to use up my herbs within a year, and most of my current stash was harvested last spring or summer. This means the time to use them is now! 

Red clover is rich in minerals and a great blood purifier

Using a mortar and pestel, I ground up whole leaves to make a tea blend. I combined nettles, dandelion leaf, lemon balm, red clover flowers, alfalfa leaf, cleavers, and raspberry leaf to make a nourishing liver-lymph-womb tonic. I used roughly equal parts of each herb. To make my tea, I use about a tablespoon of herb per cup of water. I steep the tea for 30-60 minutes, covered. Tonight I lit a candle on my altar and sat in front of it drinking my tea. With my awareness so focused on my delicious tea, I could really feel the nourishment spreading throughout my body. 

Thank you to those who worked so hard to put on the 2012 Sustainable Herb Conference. Thank you to our healing plant allies. Thank you to my delicious tea and the nourishment and energy I feel.

*Gratitude*

Do you have a favorite plant, or one you'd like to know better? Feel free to post in the comments below.