Sadly, this simple remedy composed of four herbs made into a tea, which should have been available to all, was virtually shut down by the Canadian government. Popular belief says it was because cancer is a disease that makes millions of dollars for health institutes whose desire is to control cancer, not to cure it.

Always interested in herbal medicine, Rene Caisse began collecting herbs and making herbal remedies in her own kitchen while working as a nurse in a Canadian hospital. But the remedy she became best known for was Essiac, which is her last name spelled backwards. Born in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada, Rene’s use of Essiac over the years earned her the title of Canada’s cancer nurse.

She stumbled upon the formula for the tea quite by accident through a patient at the hospital in which she was working. This patient told her the story of how she had been cured of cancer using a mixture of herbs from an Ojibway Indian herbalist. Rene learned about the herbs in the formula and began growing them herself.

Rene continued working as a nurse, but eventually gave up her career and devoted her time completely to administering the Essiac cure to people suffering from cancer. She freely administered the special Essiac tea to anyone who requested it for over 40 years. Beginning in 1922, she ran a clinic and gave Essiac to people into the late 1970’s.

The news of Essiac cancer-cures spread far and wide as grateful patients and their families got the word out. It was at this point that the Canadian Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Parliament got involved and tried to stop her activities. Petitions were circulated in an effort to legalize Essiac so that Rene could administer it without interference from authorities. Rene ultimately lost the battle, and when she died in 1978, the Canadian Ministry of Health and Welfare burned all the information and documents pertaining to Essiac that recorded and certified cure rates. Thus this valuable information was lost to us forever.

Her record of lives saved was astounding for the time she lived in, the 1920’s, when cures for cancer were almost unheard of. Many of the people she treated had been told by their doctors that their cancer was incurable; and they came to Rene with letters from their doctors stating as much. The herbs that went into the tea were given both orally and by injection, and for many of her patients, the tea was their last hope.

Not all of her patients lived, especially those whose cancer had progressed so far that their internal organs were damaged. But even these people lived longer than expected, and they lived without pain. Of the patients whose cancer was not so far advanced, they were cured and lived long, full lives.

Essiac was said to be a natural cure for cancer, but the Canadian government didn’t want that information to get out. Though there are no extensive clinical studies that would give us conclusive evidence that Rene Caisse’s herbal formula alleviates, cures or prevents any disease, there are many people who either drank the tea or took it by injection who swore to its effectiveness. It also has been said to cure the common cold because it elevates the immune system.

The four herbs used to make the original Essiac are burdock root, sheep sorrel, slippery elm bark, and Indian rhubarb root, sometimes substituted by Turkey rhubarb. The tea is sold in the United States, Europe, Australia, Asia, and Africa. Though widely available, beware of substitutions in the formula; using anything but the original herbs will greatly reduce the formula’s effectiveness.

Burdock Root: This herb is a blood purifier and the key ingredient in the tea. Burdock root neutralizes toxins in the blood and stimulates liver secretions thus helping the liver eliminate toxic build-up. It’s high in chromium, iron, magnesium, silicon, and thiamine. Niacin, riboflavin, vitamin A and vitamin C are also found in this herb. It was also used traditionally to help maintain a healthy gastrointestinal tract and stimulate a healthy immune response. The herb yellow dock has been used as a substitute but is not as effective.

Sheep Sorrel: Sheep sorrel is the herb that destroys cancer cells. It looks like a common weed, but has been in use as an herbal medicine for centuries; every part of this superstar herb can be used medicinally. High in vitamins C, E, beta-carotene, and other carotenoids, it’s known as one of the most potent antioxidant herbs on the planet. Traditionally, it was used to cool the body through sweating and detoxification through the skin. It’s a powerful diuretic herb and supports healthy kidney and urinary functions.

Slippery Elm Bark: The inner bark is rich in calcium, magnesium, and vitamins A, B, C, and K. It has large amounts of tannins and mucilages that are thought to help dissolve mucus deposits in tissue glands and nerve channels. It nourishes and soothes organs, tissues, and mucous membranes, and supports lung health. It also helps normalize digestion and is a blood purifier.

Indian Rhubarb Root: (sometimes substituted by Turkey Rhubarb) Used traditionally in small amounts, this herb helps purge the liver of toxic build-up and waste; it’s also a blood purifier. This herb purges the wide array of toxins that we take in from our air, water, and food.

Even people without cancer can use it for its overall health benefits. The tea is safe for long-term use; it can also be used for those on chemotherapy and is safe for children and pets. Pregnant or nursing women should not use Essiac in any of its forms; liquid, capsule, or powder.

Essiac tea is good for more than just cancer; it can be used for a number of ailments as well as for overall health. In known use since 1922, this non-toxic formula has blood purifying, liver cleansing properties and can also soothe irritations and inflammations. Mainstream medications for the treatment of cancer many times fail to provide the body the nutrients it needs to help its own immune system fight back. Essiac tea does provide these nutrients to the body, and this is a big part of the reason for its success.

If you want to brew a batch of Essiac tea, you’ll need a scale to weigh out the proper amounts of each herb as follows:

• 1.7 oz Burdock Root
• 1.3 oz Sheep Sorrell
• 0.2 oz Turkey Rhubarb
• 0.4 oz Slippery Elm

Get the above-listed herbs in powder form. Follow the procedure for brewing the tea as outlined below. The recipe will make 2 gallons, and it can last for up to 2 weeks. You need to drink 2-4 cups of the tea a day for general health maintenance, 3-4 times a day for more serious conditions. Simply mix 2 ounces of the tea with 2 ounces of fresh water; you can drink it either hot or cold. If you have any of the tea left after 2 weeks you can reheat your mixture one more time and continue drinking it for another 2 weeks. If there is any left after that, throw it out and make a fresh batch.

Here’s all you’ll need to make a batch of your own:

• A large stainless steel or enamel canning pot with a lid; never use aluminum because of the various health risks associated with it, such as it having been linked to Alzheimer’s disease. This link has not been officially established, but there are other health concerns with aluminum. Some believe it may produce hydroxide poison which neutralizes digestive juices, thus causing stomach and gastrointestinal trouble like stomach ulcers and colitis. Aluminum is a toxic metal that can build up over time, so it makes sense to avoid it.
• A second large pot with a lid to pour hot liquid into while you strain the tea. Use Pyrex or stainless steel for both of the pots.
• Mesh strainer made of stainless steel
• Long handled spoon
• Spatula
• Funnel or glass measuring cup
• Tongs
• 32-ounce amber-glass bottles. You’ll need six bottles for a full batch, 3 bottles for a half batch. Amber bottles will help keep light out, but if you only have clear bottles to use, wrap them in foil or brown paper to keep as much light out as possible.
• Lids and rings for the jars
• Jar labels

Procedure to Make Your Tea:

Your first step should be to sterilize your glass jars by either boiling them in water or putting them in a 200-degree oven for ten minutes. Carefully remove the jars and lids with the tongs and put them out on the counter upside down and on a clean towel.

For a two-gallon recipe, mix all four of the herbs together. If you want to cut the recipe in half to make just one gallon, halve each of the herbs first and then mix them together.

To make the full two-gallon recipe, first, bring two gallons of distilled or spring water to a boil; or one gallon if making only half the recipe. As soon as the water begins to boil, stir in your herbs, cover the pot and continue boiling for ten minutes.

After ten minutes, turn off the stove, scrape down the sides with your spatula, mix well and let the pot sit with the lid on for twelve hours. This time is necessary for the steeping and extraction process.

When twelve hours are up, reheat your mixture to almost boiling; this should take about ten minutes. Then let it cool for a few minutes and start your straining process to separate the sludge from the tea. You can strain the tea as many times as you like, but a little herb left in the liquid won’t hurt you in any way. The straining process is where you’ll need your second pot to catch the hot tea as you strain it.

Once you’ve got it strained into the second pot, reheat your tea once again, this time for 2-3 minutes only. This reheating will kill any bacteria that may have gotten into the mixture and help keep the tea from spoiling too soon.

Next, using your funnel or glass measuring cup, pour the hot tea into your sterilized glass jars. Put the lids on, let the tea cool for a while and place the jars in the refrigerator.

The tea is good for two weeks, so be sure to label the jars the day you make the tea and the day it expires. If you have any left after two weeks, it can be reheated and used for another two weeks, but after that you have to discard it.

If you boil the tea too long or leave it sitting for more than twelve hours, it’s still good. Just be sure to boil it for an extra 10-15 minutes to make sure there are no bacteria in it. Use this formula for your own personal use and experimentation; most people have found it to be safe and non-toxic, even with long-term use.

Directions for Use:

Mix 2 oz. of the tea with 2 oz. of hot water. Don’t heat the water in a microwave as this will destroy the tea’s health-giving properties. The tea should be drunk on an empty stomach 10-20 minutes before a meal, if possible. This will allow for better absorption of all its goodness, but you’ll still get the benefits even if you don’t drink it on an empty stomach. The herbs in the tea will stimulate your body to throw off toxins, so be sure to drink plenty of water and have regular bowel movements.

For cancer and other serious ailments, drink the tea 3-4 times a day. For chronic ailments drink it twice a day, and for general maintenance and gentle detoxification drink it once a day. Chronic conditions include such things as asthma, hypertension, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, etc.

Don’t substitute tinctured formula for the original recipe; it’s not as effective. Some people add alcohol to the formula to preserve it, but this will interfere with the potency of the formula.

When you make up the tea, it may seem like it’s very thick; this thickness comes from the slippery elm bark. This herb is a demulcent, and creates a slimy consistency, but is very effective in healing inflamed tissue and stomach ulcers.

After filtering your tea, there will be a significant amount of sludge left over; don’t throw it away. It can be used as a poultice on cancer-type wounds. There are also some folks who drink the tea while taking chemotherapy and have not suffered the side effects that go along with the chemo, but there are no studies to back up these claims.

There have been very few negative side effects from using the tea. Just be sure you drink plenty of water to flush the toxins that the tea will pull out of your organs. Some people have given the tea to pets and children as well; if you do this scale the dose down by weight.

Use this formula for your own personal use and experimentation; most people have found it to be safe and non-toxic, even with long-term use. The tea has a mild, pleasant taste; you can sweeten it with honey to further enjoy its health benefits.

The post Essiac Tea: Hope in a Cup appeared first on Homestead.org.

After gardening, soap making was the first homesteading skill I learned. At the time, I was living in a Sacramento suburb, still dreaming of a place in the country. But I decided that learning how to make milk soap was a homesteading skill I could pursue even in the middle of the city.

My very first batch of DIY milk soap was, objectively, ugly. I semi-burnt the milk, blended until the mixture was too thick, and had to glop the soap batter into the mold, leaving the finished bars lumpy and uneven.

Even with these shortcomings, I was proud of that soap and became enamored with milk soap making.

If you have a dairy animal on your homestead, DIY milk soap is a good way to use up extra milk, and the resulting soap is wonderful for your skin.

But you don’t need to have your own dairy animal. You can make milk soap from scratch with simple ingredients from the grocery store. Soap making is a wonderful self-sufficiency skill that anyone can learn to do, even if your homestead is a small lot in town.

Over the years, my soap making vastly improved, leading to a small business selling goat milk soap and teaching soap making workshops.

Today I’m sharing with you my tried-and-true tips for making milk soap so that you can avoid all my newbie mistakes and make milk soap from scratch successfully from your first batch on.

Let’s get soaping!

Benefits of Milk Soap

So, what makes milk soap so special? Three words: fats, sugars, and acids.

It’s the milk fats that give milk soap its extra moisturizing oomph. These fats are left as “free oil” in the finished soap bar, making milk soap supremely gentle and nourishing to the skin.

The characteristic rich, creamy lather of milk soap can be attributed, mainly, to the sugars found in milk. Lactose, the chief sugar in milk, increases soap lather because it reduces the surface tension of water allowing bigger and longer-lasting bubbles to form.

Remember being a kid and blowing bubbles with a straw into a glass of milk versus a glass of water? Milk produced big bubbles that overflowed the glass and lasted a long time; water bubbles burst quickly. The same effect happens with milk soap versus non-milk soap—bigger bubbles that last longer.

Milk also contains naturally occurring hydroxy acids, specifically lactic acid. Lactic acid is a gentle exfoliant, and leaves the skin feeling softer and looking brighter. Milk soap isn’t at the same level as an exfoliation treatment like a scrub or peel, but it does give a little extra benefit for your skin.

What Kind of Milk Can I Use for DIY Milk Soap?

While goat milk makes the quintessential milk soap, any type of milk can be used including cow, donkey, coconut, and more. The soap making instructions below can be used with any type of milk you desire.

Fresh Milk

If you have a dairy cow or dairy goat, obviously you have plenty of fresh milk to create soap. Either pasteurized or raw milk can be used for soap making.

Store-bought fresh milk can be used if you don’t have a dairy animal. The milk you have in your fridge right now will do, although whole milk will give a creamier soap lather compared to low-fat varieties. Larger grocery stores will also have fresh goat milk in the refrigerated section.

If there is a local creamery or dairy nearby, consider purchasing your milk from them. Your support of small farmstead businesses is vital and incredibly appreciated.

Canned Milk

You can also use canned milk to make soap. If you use this option, dilute the milk first with equal parts water since canned milk is concentrated.

Vegan Milks

Are you vegan? There are milk soap options for you too!

You can use the instructions below to make soap with coconut milk, almond milk, or soy milk. The steps are the same. The finished soap bars will have a slightly different color and consistency than soap made from cow or goat milk but will be a lovely soap, nonetheless.

The Key to Beautiful Milk Soap Making

Here’s the secret to making lovely milk soap: freeze your milk prior to soap making.

This is the step I skipped in my first few batches, and why my milk soaps turned a funky shade of brown and had an off smell (old tires came to mind).

It doesn’t matter if you’re using farm-fresh, store-bought, or canned. Or cow milk, goat milk, or plant-based. Use only frozen milk when making soap.

Soap is made using a blend of oils, liquid (milk, in this instance), and lye.

Yes, my friend, lye is needed to make milk soap from scratch. Nothing can be substituted for lye in handmade milk soap recipes. We’ll talk more about lye and its use in just a bit.

When oil, liquid, and lye are blended together it triggers a chemical reaction called saponification. When saponification is finished, you no longer have oils, milk, and lye; you have soap.

First, the lye is dissolved in the liquid. As lye dissolves it generates heat, and fast. It can heat a liquid to above 200 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few seconds.

In water, that isn’t a problem (except, of course, you must be careful to not burn yourself). Bringing milk up to a high temperature so quickly will scorch and curdle, making it smelly, off-colored, and unusable.

Freezing the milk counteracts this, preventing it from becoming too hot too fast.

The most convenient way to freeze (and use) milk for soap making is to freeze it in ice cube trays. When you’re ready to make soap, simply pop the cubes out and place them into your container.

Don’t freeze the milk in its entirety as one solid mass. It’s nearly impossible to properly dissolve your lye granules in a big block of frozen milk.

Soap Making Safety Rules

If you’ve never made soap before, there are some lye handling safety rules you must know before you whip up your first batch.

But truly, there is no need to fear lye. If you have ever used a drain opener in your home, you’ve already used a form of lye.

Following these simple tips will help you craft your milk soap safely.

• Use only 100% lye. Although you can find 100% lye at the local hardware store, it’s often safest for beginning soap makers to buy lye online from soap making suppliers. This way you’ll be certain to get the right lye for soap making.
• Wear rubber or exam-type gloves and eye protection goggles. Lye granules, lye/milk solution, and soap batter are all caustic. To protect yourself, put gloves and safety glasses on at the beginning of your soap making and don’t remove them until after clean-up.
• Weigh out all ingredients. Soap ingredients must be measured by weight, not by volume. Weighing ingredients gives a more precise measurement to ensure your finished soap is not lye heavy.
• Clean up lye spills with copious amounts of water and mild soap. If you get lye granules, lye/milk solution, or soap batter on your skin, immediately rinse with cold water, wash with a mild soap, and rinse some more. For spills on countertops and floors, wipe up as much as possible with paper towels and discard (or sweep up lye granules with a broom). Wash the entire spill area with a damp rag and mild soap, such as dish soap.
• Do not substitute oils in any soap recipe. Soap recipes are formulated with very specific lye-to-oil ratios. There needs to be just enough lye in the recipe to turn oil into soap, but not so much to leave lye in the finished batch. If you swap out one oil for another, you run the risk of creating a lye-heavy soap. Only experienced soap makers who know how to recalculate lye amounts should substitute oils.

Soap Making Supplies

You will need to gather a few supplies to get started making homemade milk soap.

Important note: Due to the caustic nature of lye, all the supplies must be used exclusively for soap making (so don’t use them again for food). You can, however, use these tools for creating other types of DIY bath and body products.

• 8-quart stainless steel pot (must be stainless steel, NOT aluminum, cast iron, or non-stick coated as these will react with the lye)
• Heat-safe plastic pitcher
• 2 (4-cup size) plastic measuring cups with spouts
• 2 silicone spatulas or plastic spoons, one for the oils and one for the lye/milk mixture
• Digital cooking thermometer
• Kitchen scale
• Immersion blender (AKA stick blender)
• Safety glasses
• Nitrile exam gloves or rubber cleaning gloves
• 42 oz. soap mold or shoebox, lined with freezer paper, shiny side up
• Soap cutter (optional) or large non-serrated knife

Easy Milk Soap Recipe

This recipe makes approximately 2 pounds of finished soap with 7% superfat. (Superfat is a measure of the amount of free oil, or oil that is not
turned into soap, left in the finished bars. Superfatted soap is
especially moisturizing thanks to this extra oil.)

• 14 oz. frozen milk of your choice (goat milk, cow milk, etc.)
• 13 oz. olive oil
• 9.5 oz. coconut oil
• 9.5 oz. palm oil
• 4.5 oz. 100% lye

Prep step: Gather all supplies and ingredients needed and have them easily accessible. Put on your gloves and goggles (remember, keep these on the entire time you’re soaping until after you’ve finished cleaning up.)

Step 1: In a measuring cup, weigh out each oil individually and add to the stainless steel pot. Place the pot on the stovetop and warm oils over low heat until melted. Remove from heat.

Step 2: Weigh out frozen milk cubes into the plastic pitcher. No need to cut or sh­­ave cubes to get a precise measurement for the milk. If adding an extra cube brings the measurement slightly over 14 oz., that’s okay.

Step 3: In the second measuring cup, weigh out lye granules. Do be precise with this measurement.

Step 4: Slowly pour the lye into the frozen milk cubes, stopping frequently to stir. The milk will immediately begin to melt. It will also change in color.

After you’ve added about half the lye granules, check the temperature of the lye/milk mixture. You want the lye/milk mixture to come up to above 85 degrees Fahrenheit but stay below 100 degrees. Higher than 100 degrees and your milk will scald and curdle; lower than 85 degrees and the lye granules may not dissolve fully.

Continue to slowly add lye to the milk, testing the temperature periodically. If the mixture is nearing 100 degrees, let it cool for several minutes before adding more lye.

Step 5: Once you have added all the lye to the milk, let the mixture sit for 20 minutes. This step is important as it gives the lye granules ample time to fully dissolve.

Step 6: Carefully pour the lye/milk mixture into the pot of oils. The lye/milk will have thickened considerably, so don’t fret if you come back to a pudding-like mixture. Use a silicone spatula to scrape as much of the lye/milk mixture from the pitcher as possible.

Step 7: Place the stick blender into the pot, making sure the bell is fully submerged. Blend in 30-second spurts until the mixture is fully incorporated and has thickened to a cake batter-like consistency (what soap makers call trace).

Step 8: Ladle or pour the soap batter into your prepared mold. The batter will continue to thicken, so be prepared. No need to rush, but don’t let it set in the pot any longer than needed. Use your silicone spatula to spread the soap batter evenly throughout, making sure it reaches the corners of the mold.

As a finishing touch, use your spatula or wooden dowel to make a pretty decorative texture on the surface of your soap.

Step 9: Set the soap mold in an out-of-the-way spot for 72 hours. This allows the soap to finish saponifying and firm up. I prefer to cover my mold, to prevent pets or accidental fingers from getting into the soap batter. If your soap mold doesn’t have a lid, you can improvise with a piece of cardboard. Don’t allow the lid to touch the surface of the soap. If your soap mold is so full that a lid will contact the soap’s surface, just leave the lid off.

Step 10: Clean up! Keep those gloves and goggles on, the soap batter on your tools is still caustic. Wipe any excess soap batter off your tools with paper towels or crumpled newspaper and discard. Wash everything well with dish soap and rinse. Wipe down your work area with a damp cloth. Once everything is completely cleaned up, it’s safe to remove your gloves and goggles.

Step 11: After 72 hours, your homemade milk soap is ready to unmold. Turn the soap out onto freezer paper or brown paper and cut it into bars. The soap will be soft and sticky, like soft cheese. It will harden during cure. Cut the soap into bars using a soap cutter or large non-serrated knife.

Step 12: Cure your soap for 30 days. Simply set your soap bars out on brown paper or freezer paper in a dry, out-of-the-way spot like a cabinet or closet. Make sure the bars are not touching each other to allow air to circulate around all sides. Turn soap bars once every week or so to expose all sides to air.

Curing is important, so don’t skip this step. During curing, any excess liquid evaporates out, creating a hard, long-lasting bar of soap.

After 30 days of patiently waiting, your soap is ready to use.

To store your milk soap: Wrap bars in paper or keep them in a paper bag or small box. Air circulation is important for long-term storage. When properly stored, your milk soap has a shelf life of 5 years.

Enjoy your homemade milk soap!

The post How to Make Milk Soap from Scratch appeared first on Homestead.org.

Why was a meatless homestead inevitable for us? Mainly because of our age and our disposition. I’ll be 49 years old this spring, and my wife is in her 50s. One of the reasons we started homesteading was for our health. “Get out, do some good honest farm work, lose weight, get healthy!” After seven years, we both weigh 20-30 lbs more than when we got here. That’s not terrible, I guess. But it’s also not good!

For us, it turned out that spring planting of the small garden, driving a tractor around mowing, and feeding animals didn’t offset the effects of a standard American diet. Just because we live on a homestead doesn’t mean we can’t find our way to restaurants, fast food, or Walmart for steaks, ice cream, and mashed potatoes on a regular basis.

Neither one of us is willing to enter the last “half” of our life burdened with obesity if we can do anything about it. Therefore, it was inevitable that we were going to have to do something about our food intake. We are also both very logical, pragmatic people who believe in science, so whatever we did was going to be researched.

Every medical study we read linked meat, fat, oil, grease, sugar, and “processed” foods to heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, cholesterol, dementia, cancer, and obesity. The pattern started showing more and more that the closer a person gets to a whole-food plant-based diet, the healthier they become based on blood metrics like cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc. The closer a person gets to a whole-food plant-based diet, the less they weigh, the less fat they carry, the easier it is on their joints, and the more mobile they stay throughout life. We also notice the people at Walmart on the motorized carts. Without judging why they are on the carts, it’s easy to observe that obesity is often either a cause or an effect of poor mobility. Not us!

Since we will not accept the limitations, pain, discomfort, medications, and medical problems associated with poor health, in particular, obesity; and since we believe in science, it became inevitable that we were going to move into a meatless lifestyle. This is true both for our homestead and for our bodies. The final factor for me wasn’t the idea of dying at 56 as my father did. The tipping point was the realization that I’m probably NOT going to die at 56. I’m probably going to LIVE to be 78. That’s what every longevity survey I take tells me. And it’s what my doctor tells me. I’m already on the verge of obesity at 49. In 15 more years, I’ll be 100 pounds overweight. Not on my watch!!

It’s Just a Choice

I’m not political either way. I see both sides’ arguments, and I see the holes in both sides’ arguments. I’m not radical. Upon learning about my choice, my friend asked me, “What, are you an animal lover now?” I said, “I know I love one animal… ME!” That’s all that matters. The rest is for everyone with strong feelings to debate. I’m not into the social aspects of my choice, just the personal.

Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian, Vegan…. I honestly don’t care. White rice is a grain, but I don’t eat it. I eat whole-grain rice. If there’s some fish stock in the vegetable gumbo, I don’t really mind. I’m not trying to push a lifestyle. I just want to describe it in case others find it of use.

We came to the point of making this particular transition for our homestead based on a number of factors. The first was that our weight keeps climbing in spite of all efforts to the contrary. The second is that I trained a dog (that’s my job) for a fellow who lost 70 pounds in a short period of time, even though he was a morbidly obese, sugar-addicted alcoholic, by just moving to a whole-food plant-based diet. He was thrilled with the choice and never would consider going back. He was too fat to exercise, and I’m generally too lazy to exercise. Finally, I did the research.

I, personally, have never liked the news stories I see all the time that say things like, “According to a New Study eating bologna increases your risk of colon cancer by 18%.” I see these things all the time, and I know that graduate students need theses and research grants need results. Most of these studies are studies of studies… don’t get me started… However, looking at the big picture, the long-term deep studies of health, the trend is as clear as the iceberg in front of the Titanic.

Fat, meat, cholesterol, heart attack, death. Sugar, flour, butter, milk, eggs, bacon, obesity. Anyone left arguing against it is probably still smoking cigarettes and saying, “My father lived to be 8,0 and he smoked.” No point in arguing with that. On the other side of the ledger are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, health. Mediterranean diet, Japanese diet, non-processed diet… these all point toward health and longer life.

I asked what they had in common, and it kept coming down to a whole-food vegetable base, with very little meat (mostly fish). I’m not a big fish eater, and I don’t live by the sea. A little more research and it turns out that the fish isn’t required either. Decision made!

Changing the Homestead Lifestyle

If we aren’t going to eat them, then why raise them? We don’t see farm animals as pets and don’t want to keep and feed animals for no reason. If we don’t think we should eat them, then why should we raise more of them for others to eat? So the animals all went to the auction. The rabbits, chickens, ducks, quail, and Nigerian dwarf milk goats.

Now the homestead is a lot quieter, and the nine acres of fields around our house are empty. The big pain of raising field livestock (goats in particular) is that they eat everything and can trample what they don’t eat. That meant that our garden-growing space was limited to the area near the house (which is mostly shaded). I couldn’t plant an orchard without fencing the goats away from it. Now I can!!

Now we have to re-evaluate how we can use our homestead space. The first item for me is an orchard. Particularly figs. I love figs. Also jujubes (red dates). These are small, easy-to-grow fruit trees that are extremely tolerant of different soils and climates. Our area is a great place to grow peaches, pears, blackberries, and blueberries. The soil is very conducive to those types of fruits. My wife loves persimmons, which are also easy to grow in this area.

All of these fruits are either hard to find at the store, expensive, or, when you do find them, they aren’t really ripe. I can find some types of apples that are good at the grocery store, and sometimes the pears are ripe. Other than that, I have a really hard time finding premium fruit inexpensively. It will be great to have our own source.

This area is also great for pecans. Pecans aren’t as interesting to me as cashews or almonds, but they do grow here without any issue. There is a full-commercial pecan grove just half a mile away. We are also going to go out on a limb to try to grow Mission almonds. We are a little north of where they work best, but if I get one crop every three years, I’ll be happy with the effort. We would love to grow olives and avocados, and we might try, but it probably won’t work out.

The thing I love about mature trees is that they are drought-tolerant. My research into how climate change will affect my particular micro-climate over the coming decades points toward more of a dry-season/wet-season model. Our homestead is in East Texas, where the weather is affected by winds from the west (California), from the south (Mexico), the jet stream, and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. So our microclimate will not become drier or wetter. It will become slightly hotter, and the rain will come more torrentially and sporadically. The same amount of rain but in bigger bursts spread farther apart. That means sporadic drought and occasional floods. Mature trees are capable of handling such changes; the harvests might vary, but the trees will survive.

The other change will be moving toward more leafy, green vegetables, particularly in the fall. Broccoli, in particular, will be important. Cauliflower, cabbages, and Brussels sprouts are also possible, although I’m not particularly fond of them. I know squash grows here well, as do sweet potatoes. I think eggplant will be a good idea as well. When we were eating mainly meat, we only grew green beans and salad vegetables. Now we will be moving into more staple vegetables that can be the basis of a meal. We can also grow vast quantities of beans.

How to Eat Meatlessly

I made the transition to a meatless homestead lifestyle by simply removing the meat. I also removed the cheese and milk. How? Easy! I go online and order a Domino’s pizza with extra sauce, lots of vegetables, and no meat or cheese. It’s still great. It’s not “the same.” But I have no interest in trying to pretend that I still eat meat and cheese. I don’t. So why fake it? I don’t need soy hot dogs that taste like warm mush. I can simply eat something else.

I quit smoking 10 years ago. I don’t try to pretend I still smoke. I don’t walk around with a fake cigarette in my mouth. I gave it up and moved on. It was bad for me; why mourn it? I feel the same way about meat and cheese. There’s no need to mourn it. If someone says, “Do you want a burger?” I consider it the same as someone saying, “Do you want a cigarette?” “No thanks.” If I believe it is going to kill me or make me fat, in pain, on pills, etc., then it’s not even a close decision. This makes life easy for me.

Gumbo! I got a can of gumbo base at Walmart and added lots of vegetables (onion, celery, carrots, and eggplant). I sweetened it up with chopped dates, and then put it over a wild- and brown-rice mixture. It was great. Yes, the canned gumbo base had some flour in it and some fish stock. So what? As I said, this is not a religion for me. It’s a choice.

Here’s how not to hate oatmeal. Make half a bowl of oatmeal; the instant kind is fine, then fill the rest of the bowl up with nuts and fresh and/or dried fruit. Finally, add some Blue Agave Amber Raw (it’s a low-glycemic sweetener, again from Walmart). The oatmeal is the minor part of the meal. It’s really a bowl of fruit and nuts with some oatmeal in it. It changes the entire dynamic of eating oatmeal.

When people think of “vegetarian” or “vegan diets,” they think of having to make everything from scratch and never eating “normal” food. Much of Mexican food is vegetarian. Rice, beans, flour tortillas, chips, salsa, guacamole, black beans. If you eat cheese, then pizza with vegetables, mushrooms, etc. is the same as a “regular” pizza. What else? Italian? Eggplant Parm! Spaghetti with sauce minus the meatballs. It’s actually pretty easy. When I remember that almost the entire sub-continent of India is vegetarian as well as most Buddhists, then I realize there’s plenty to eat.

Our research showed that it is imperative to take in ground flaxseed and vitamin B-12 if my wife and I don’t eat meat. This will keep our Omega 6 to Omega 12 ratio below 10 (which is very important for both heart health and dementia risks). A standard American diet puts people at 12-15; a straight vegan diet can put people above 20. That’s not good. So ground flax (a powder that can go on or in anything) and B-12 are important supplements that we will need. Plus everyone needs more vitamin D and calcium.

Conclusion

When my wife and I decided to move out to our homestead, we did so in order to make exactly our own choices. Even though they all have land, none of our neighbors have solar. We do. Most of our neighbors don’t garden, even though they live in the country. We do. We came out here in order to have the land and space we need to create a life that fits our lifestyle and our future. We don’t mind being a little bit different. Luckily, the land is very flexible. It can go from feeding goats to growing eggplants or peaches without missing a beat.

The transition will take a while. Trees don’t mature in a year, particularly nut trees or olives. But we aren’t planning on going anywhere. We came out here to have a fun, interesting, productive life TOGETHER for the rest of our lives. At this age, we looked at the next 20 years and said, “In order for our lives to continue to be productive and healthy, we need to make a change.” So we did. No more roosters crowing in the morning. No more goats calling us from the field. Life is so much quieter. Time to start putting in irrigation and root drainage for the orchard instead.

The post The Meatless Homestead: Making the Move to Vegetarianism appeared first on Homestead.org.

1. Self-Heal (Prunella vulgaris)

My all-time favorite herb that grows on the land I farm is Self-Heal. Unassuming and low to the ground, I’ve never had a visitor who recognized the name. Yet I can think of nothing easier to grow or which yields such a harvest in exchange for so little effort. For beginner homesteaders looking for a reliable plant or food crop that they won’t kill, my #1 answer is self-heal. After other herbs and flowers have departed for the dormant season, I can always trust the self-heal to keep producing. Self-heal often keeps right on thriving in the summer if I forget to water it, and I can attest it won’t hesitate to grow under autumn leaves that block the sun if they haven’t been moved at the start of the growing season.

Self-heal has faced some opprobrium for being invasive, and many online correspondents caution against self-heal for its reported tendency to spread and become encroaching, as members of the mint family are wont to do. This has never been my experience. My self-heal grows alongside its neighbors without ever choking them, and while enhancing the soil for surrounding plant life. It’s true that my self-heal has over time, become a larger bunch than the small starter I originally planted, and it has spread out somewhat, but isn’t that what you want a healthy plant to do after years when it’s providing such consistent turnover for you? It is now about half a square foot, but it doesn’t seem to be spreading at such a rapid rate that I would be concerned that the rest of my garden doesn’t have a chance.

Self-heal (sometimes called heal-all) will grow easily from a cutting and is a great way to experiment with the art of getting new cuttings to root to eventually sell or share. Self-heal is an ideal plant to learn through for would-be homesteaders because it yields a dependable number of greens and can be used to grasp the basics of propagation.

When people do know about self-heal, it’s typically due to its role in immune support. People grow self-heal for tea and healing poultices to improve challenges like psoriasis and to make use of the way self-heal soothes mucous membranes, supports lymph health, and is antiviral. Self-heal ameliorates a variety of conditions and has been used for hundreds of years by different cultures for vastly different treatments. It is full of antioxidants and is anti-inflammatory, and the rosmarinic acid and rutin protect against cell damage and are neuroprotective.

All of this is fascinating, but I have learned in my time with self-heal that it can be used to great effect as a trusty salad green. The young, tender leaves in raw salad or blended into smoothies, as you would spinach, can offer more plentiful advantages per leaf than traditional greens.

This information can be useful for families trying to get the most vitamins and minerals into their children per bite. Self-heal leaves offer a broader array of vitamins and compounds than your typical lettuce or spinach leaf. Self-heal provides far more nutrient-dense vitality than, for example, lettuce, because lettuce is—for better or for worse—predominantly water.

Self-heal is rich in trace elements, which protect your bones and teeth and keep more children and adults free from cellular damage, as well as cognitive and mood decline and metabolic dysfunction. Self-heal is a proficient provider of vitamin C, which enables you to directly absorb the iron it offers you. Self-heal provides vitamins A, C, and K along with multiple types of vitamin B, as well as phytochemicals, which promote endothelial function, and carotenoids, which boost vision and skin health in humans.

Self-heal isn’t just outstanding in salads but fantastic for adding into soups and roasts as a traditional “pot herb” you can toss in with other cooking vegetables. The flavor is described by some as bitter, but I have always found it somewhat sweet and agreeable to the palate, especially when combined with salad or stew ingredients.

If I intended to start just one food crop to inaugurate a growing journey, I would undoubtedly choose self-heal. Nothing offers as much nutritional support and harvestable abundance for so little time and effort. Self-Heal is the number one ingredient for self-sufficiency and personal production success as a food farmer that I can recommend, and I wish for you all the self-betterment it can provide.

2. Hummingbird Mint (Agastache cana)

Another botanical friend I could never imagine my gardens without is the beautiful and steadfast Hummingbird Mint. Also called Giant Hyssop, this little plant brings many of the assets beginner homesteaders are thirsty for: lovely color, pollinator attraction, a sturdy perennial that comes back every year without being asked or prodded, a gorgeous cut flower that makes a vibrant and textural addition to any bouquet, and an edible crop that you can experiment with while you’re getting your feet wet farming something useful.

Hummingbird mint in any salad gives it an instant culinary upgrade, while hummingbird mint dried as tea leaves gives your nightly hot drink a distinctive liveliness without caffeine. One reason this plant is a piece of cake to grow and keep around is that the aromatic oils in Hummingbird mint are an automatic deer and rabbit deterrent. Unlike a lot of fruits and flowers appealing to new homesteaders in search of a first plant to try, hummingbird mint has its own built-in system to ward off common pests and browsers. Despite its name, this is a vertical specimen of mint that grows straight up and does not spread aggressively like other mints. It’s extraordinarily drought-tolerant and will thrive in the hot southern sun without regular watering, which is one of the things that makes it uncomplicated for beginners. This is a plant that can be forgiving with newcomers.

Young hummingbird mint leaves are tremendous as garnish, and I love to throw them fresh into my mouth. It’s one of the closest leaves to candy. While not expressly sweet, it’s sweet adjacent with citrus, mint and licorice notes. It’s also a novel addition to a summer salad, especially when paired with strawberries or mandarin oranges and poppy seed dressing on a bed of other greens. This is another leaf, like self-heal, which you don’t hear about much as a salad crop but is charming when put to use that way.

Hummingbird mint requires precious little upkeep after its initial planting, and it’s a species that makes an excellent marketable product. Growing hummingbird mint is remarkably simple and yields many leaves per stalk to be dried and made into a unique tea with a memorable flavor profile. It especially makes the perfect iced tea and would be the ideal ingredient for a secret recipe iced tea blend to pass on to your grandchildren or impress your neighbors.

Hummingbird mint has something that nothing else has, as far as smell and taste. A zing that is not sour, and a spice that does not burn, but brings the right amount of pizzazz. The taste of hummingbird mint is not only welcoming as iced tea should be, but also imparts vivacity. I can always count on a bountiful yield of hummingbird mint leaves to dry well and make the perfect gift packaged up for Christmas and Mother’s Days or slipped into a thank you card.

It also piques the interest as a crowd pleaser if you’re looking to sell a tea crop. It’s not your run-of-the-mill green or mint tea, but something all its own. It’s a great starter project if you’re looking to begin with just a couple of plants to yield a crop from, to drink a tea every night that you grew yourself or to start a gardening project with kids who will get excited about caring for a plant with such aromatic properties that they can collect, dry and give as gifts themselves.

Hummingbird mint isn’t only an efficient and low-maintenance pollinator attractor but also one of the most delectable herbs for making iced tea. Hummingbird mint has a rustic, porch-swing aroma that lends itself well to making herbal tea gifts to give or sell year-round. It can quickly become your signature flavor or signature scent and set your gardens apart from the start. The complex aroma is compared to anise by some and fennel or blood orange by others. It may be that hummingbird mint smells a little different to and invokes different memory stimuli for everyone. It could also be a divine and novel addition to homemade potpourri blends or sachets to freshen drawers. The gift ideas are endless when it comes to utilizing these abundant leaves!

3. Mock Strawberry (Potentilla indica, formerly Duchesnea indica and referred to as such in much medical research.)

Mock strawberry is something I’ve never plante. Unlike the others on the list, which I purchased from Celtic Frost Herb Farm (I would highly recommend ordering from them on Etsy if you don’t live near enough to buy from them in person. They have the best quality plants!)

Mock strawberry grows wild around the southeastern United States, and most people I know consider it a useless weed. It’s often cited as bearing inedible berries because the flavor of the fruit isn’t as sweet as the strawberries we are all used to. I’ve never been one to throw out a profuse producer of greenery, and after doing some research, I found out the berries aren’t inedible at all, just not everyone’s taste. Big difference!

Some sources cite them as dry, but I’ve eaten them for years and have found they are only dry after sitting too long, as any other berry would be. There is no inherent dryness to them, and, when in season, I find them perfectly juicy.

If you’re like me and mock strawberries have taken over as ground cover in parts of your yard, I would suggest putting them to good use, as they often thrive on their own with no maintenance, in rain or shine, sun or shade.

The leaves can be harvested for tea throughout most of the year, while the fruit is amply pleasurable in jam-making and for pies, as well as cheerful, colorful, often free and safe/edible cake-topper decor. The berries offer a variety of health perks, such as insoluble fiber, and if they are growing free of cost on your property, you might as well throw them in your daily smoothie. Many a seasonal crop of mock strawberries I’ve actually found more flavorful than frozen strawberries from the supermarket as a smoothie or milkshake ingredient.

You can easily tell mock strawberry from wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), or domestic strawberry, because it’s set apart by 5-petaled, bright yellow flowers that greatly resemble buttercups, versus the white flowers of Fragaria virginiana. When the fruit comes in, the berries are a round shape rather than the heart-shaped strawberries most of us are familiar with.

While I regularly consume, freeze, and use the fruit, my favorite thing about mock strawberry is the leaves. Studies have shown that strawberry leaves across all varieties have higher bioactive phytochemical content than the fruit. The vegetative part of the plant, typically discarded, represents a large source of underutilized bioactive biomass, according to a 2023 study published with the National Library of Medicine.

Mock strawberry leaves provide antioxidant polyphenols like quercetin, kaempferol, and tannins, which many people today spend money to supplement with when they could be using the leaves of the mock strawberry growing behind their homes. They have more significant benefits than the fruit, as well as being more prolific than the fruit and easier to come by. Mock strawberry leaves provide antioxidants which fight oxidative stress, limit inflammation, and reduce the risk of chronic diseases in humans.

In addition, several studies show promising anti-cancer activity in mock strawberry leaves. They have been studied for their use in stopping cancer multiplication and inducing programmed cell death. A study from May 2019 from the Journal of Food Biochemistry Volume 43, Issue 7, by Bolin Xiang and Qiyi He, took neutral polysaccharide from D. indica and found the mock strawberry neutral polysaccharide to exhibit “significant antioxidant and antitumor activity.”

With so much possible internal use to humanity when used as a tea, not to mention a hearty, delicious taste when boiled, and a crop that costs nothing for many people, there seems to be no reason not to make use of this darling specimen as a budding homesteader.

You could also try making a healthy and tasty tea blend to drink, sell, and gift by growing all three and combining the leaves of these unusual and easy-to-grow plants. Enjoy making these ingredients your own, and happy gathering!

The post Three Lesser-known Starter Crops for the Homestead appeared first on Homestead.org.

The worst place I ever got poison ivy was in my belly button. At that time, I had one of the worst cases of poison ivy that I had ever experienced. Angry, red rashes that resembled chemical burns were plastered all over my body, but the little rash inside my belly button was the worst. When I got hot or moved the wrong way, the folds of my belly button rubbed together exacerbating the awful burning itch exponentially.

The amazing thing was that I hadn’t come into contact with any poison ivy, poison oak, or poison sumac plants for the previous few days. My husband and I had been on a camping/canoeing trip, and I had been very careful not to expose myself to the plants.

Unlike me, my husband does not get poison ivy, oak, or sumac. He can roll in it and not get so much as a bump. So when we came to our riverside campsite and found that the tree under which we wanted to pitch our tent was covered with an old, dead, fuzzy-looking poison ivy vine, I told my husband we’d have to find another site. My husband liked the seclusion of the spot and so went to work ripping the old vine down with his bare hands and tossing it far into the woods beyond. I watched from a safe distance. Now that the threat of the plant was gone, neither of us thought anymore about it. As far as we were concerned, the matter was taken care of, I was safe, and we worked together setting up our campsite. The trip was wonderful, but two days later, I was in utter agony. So how did I end up with such a bad case of contact dermatitis from a plant I didn’t even touch?

My husband gave it to me.

In order to understand how, you need to understand the nature of the poisonous triplets: poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. These three plants all contain a resin known as urushiol [oo-roo-shee-awl]. This oil is the culprit that causes the angry, red rashes. Anytime this oil comes in contact with the skin, it will attach itself to the outer layer of skin cells and to the layer of live cells below. In approximately 85% of people, this will cause an allergic reaction. The degree of your rash will depend on your sensitivity.

Urushiol is just as potent outside of the plant as it is inside the poisonous triplets. So you do not have to come in direct contact with any plants. If you touch an object that has urushiol on it, it will still cause contact dermatitis. That is how my husband gave it to me. Once he touched the vine he had urushiol on his hands. Everything he touched from there became contaminated, until he washed his hands. The camp ax, our towels, our life vests, the camping gear, the cooking utensils were all compromised. If he touched something, handed it to me, and I grabbed the area that he touched, my hands were contaminated. Once my hands were contaminated, every time I touched a part of my body, I got urushiol on it.

The tricky thing about urushiol is that the same patch of oil can reinfect you time and time again. So if you were weed eating and urushiol got sprayed on your shoelaces from hitting a poison ivy plant, it can get on your hands every time you tie your shoes. Last year’s garden gloves, with which you pulled weeds, could still be contaminated. Pets that run through plants can get the oil on their coats. Contaminated clothing can transfer the oil to furniture. It is possible for urushiol to remain active on surfaces for years. Until contaminated items, or pets, are washed, they can infect a sensitive person.

Once the oil touches you it can take between 12 to 48 hours for a rash to develop. The length of time it takes for the rash to appear varies depending on the sensitivity of your skin. Rashes resulting from the same incident of contact may take different lengths of time to develop. For example, if your hand comes in contact with urushiol, and then you touch your face, the rash on your face may develop two days before the one on your hand will. This is because the skin on your hands tends to be thicker, and therefore less sensitive, than the skin on your face.

Poison Ivy Myths

The characteristics of urushiol have given rise to a few myths about poison ivy, oak, and sumac.

Myth # 1: Poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac rashes are contagious from person to person or from one spot of your body to another. If you touch the rash in one part of your body it will transfer to another part of your body.

Myth #2: Poison ivy, oak, and sumac can travel through your bloodstream to produce new rashes.

Myth #3: Popping the blisters on a rash will release more urushiol that will spread the rash.

Poison ivy is spread through the dissemination of the urushiol resin. Wherever the resin has touched a sensitive person’s body, the rash will spring up. Because there can be a delay of 12 to 48 hours, it can seem as if a person is doing something to cause it to spread even after it has been washed off the skin. Blisters are the body’s reaction to the oil and do not contain urushiol.

Myth #4: Drinking poison ivy tea or eating it will make me immune.

Consuming any of the poisonous triplets will only give you some very nasty gastrointestinal problems and could cause death in some cases. These plants are not safe for human consumption.

Myth #5: I can’t touch the leaves of poison ivy, but I can touch the stem.

Myth #6: Poison ivy is safe to touch in the winter.

All parts of the poisonous triplets contain urushiol, so, if you are allergic, neither the leaves, the stems, or the roots are safe for you to touch with bare skin. The poisonous triplets contain their highest amounts of urushiol in the spring and summer. Wintertime may lessen the amount of urushiol in their surviving plant parts, but it is still there, capable of giving contact dermatitis even in the coldest temperatures. Not even dead plants are safe to touch.

Once you come in contact with the oil, most people usually have a window of opportunity to wash it off before they become affected. Opinions vary on the length of this window, but the shortest one is about ten minutes. If you know you have come in contact with one of the poisonous triplets, wash the area as soon as you can.

There are many suggested methods of washing urushiol off your skin. Using soap, dishwashing detergent, rubbing alcohol, vinegar, commercial cleansers, and mineral spirits are all possibilities that can aid in removing the offending resin. Washing with hot water will open skin pores and possibly allow the urushiol to penetrate deeper so use cool water instead. The most important thing is that you get the oil off your skin without spreading it to other parts of your body.

But what about those times when you are out in the woods, ten miles away from the nearest sink, and you don’t have any rubbing alcohol, mineral spirits, or even soap with you? If all you have is a water bottle, you can get some of the urushiol off with that. It may not be 100 % effective, but it will help. Recalling folk remedies of using mud to draw poisons from a body, I personally have used it and puddle or creek water to get the oil off when I had nothing else. It was effective. I just gently smoothed soft watery mud over the affected area and then rinsed it off. I would avoid hard rubbing or using sand as this might create scratches in your skin, therefore making it more welcoming for the urushiol to soak in.

Relief for Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, and Poison Sumac: The Poisonous Triplets

If you have a rash, despite your efforts to avoid the plants and the urushiol, many methods exist for you to choose from to alleviate your pain. There are many over-the-counter washes that can aid in treating and soothing your rash. In most pharmacies, they even have their own section. Just ask your pharmacist where they are. If you have any drug allergies, double check with your pharmacist to make sure it is ok for you to use the product.

When you live far away from a pharmacy, or when a rash springs up during an inconvenient time, a home remedy may help. If you prefer a home remedy you can see which of these suits you: salt, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, vodka, oil of oregano, osha-root tincture, a baking soda paste, aloe vera, soaking in oats, witch hazel, or tea tree oil. Methods of application for all of these are easily found on the Internet. As with most home remedies, trial and error will help you determine what is most effective for you.

All of those may be fairly well-known, but there are two Appalachian folk-remedies that may be of interest: coffee and jewelweed.

Washing the poison ivy rash with cold, plain, black coffee is one old remedy. The interesting thing to note is that an anti-inflammatory, chlorogenic acid, is contained in the coffee bean. Although not proven by scientific studies, some people have found relief from it.

Jewelweed is another remedy that is a personal favorite of mine. Jewelweed grows in abundance in our area. We find it around the moist, shady banks of creeks and streams. Also known as the “Touch Me Not”, this plant produces yellow to orange flowers with red spots that look like pendants, or slippers. If you do not know this plant, it is well worth getting acquainted with. According to Peterson’s Field Guide for Medicinal Plants and Herbs, a 1957 study found that out of 115 people treated, 108 found it effective. This plant contains a compound called lawsone in its leaves. Lawsone is an anti-inflammatory and an antihistamine.

Some people drink the leaf-tea as a preventative for poison ivy. Although I cannot attest to jewelweed tea’s efficacy in rash prevention, I can say my family and I have found jewelweed very effective in soothing that horrid, burning itch. Because the plant is not available year round, but poison-ivy rashes are, I have made herbal salve from jewelweed that has proven very useful. I made this particular batch at least two years ago, and according to my son, it was still effective this very morning.

Jewelweed Salve Recipe

• 1 to 2 stalks of jewelweed, chopped
• 1/4 cup of vegetable oil (any kind except olive, which burns when heated)
• beeswax
• 2 vitamin E caplets

Gently simmer the chopped stalks of jewelweed in the oil for approximately five to ten minutes.

Strain the mixture through a coffee filter or clean cloth.

Put mixture in clean, empty baby food jar or 1/2 cup mason jar.

Place mason jar in a pot or pan of water, making double-boiler or water bath.

Add contents of two capsules of vitamin E (poke the capsule with a sharp knife or needle and squeeze into the jar.) Stir to mix.

Grate beeswax and place in jar.

Heat and stir gently until beeswax is melted

Test consistency by taking a small amount out on a spoon and letting it cool. If the consistency is too runny for your tastes simply add more beeswax.

Store in the refrigerator.

I left my concoction a bit runny. When in the refrigerator, it is rather hard and I often use a fork to help me separate a chunk for use. Once in my hands, it begins to melt and I rub it straight onto the rash. Although the vitamin E helps to preserve the salve, like anything in your refrigerator, it can turn moldy over time, so inspect it before each use.

If you do not have the ingredients to make the entire salve, I have found sources that said some people found relief by making a tea and freezing it into ice cubes. Rub an ice cube over the rash to help soothe the rash.

Prevention offers the best protection to those of us who are sensitive urushiol. Getting rid of plants in areas of your yard where you or your pets can come in contact with it is important.

There are several commercial herbicides that will take care of offending plants. However, for those of us that do not want to use them, there are a few other options. One method is to find someone like my husband and have them rip out the whole plant, roots and all. If you have to try to do it yourself, wear thick disposable gloves. Put the ripped up plants in a trash bag; be very careful handling the trash bag after you put the plants in them. Remember that once you touch the plant, you’ve got urushiol on you. If you then touch the trash bag, it will have urushiol on it.

Even though it may be very tempting, do not burn the plants. Doing so can cause the urushiol to become airborne. Inhaling it can cause serious respiratory tract problems and even death.

Another method of getting rid of the poisonous triplets is to employ a goat. There are many animals that are not affected by eating poison ivy, poison oak, or poison sumac. That could be the one saving grace of these plants: they feed wildlife, such as deer that graze on the leaves and birds that eat the berries.

My misadventures with poison ivy have guided me to learn more about urushiol and how it works. The knowledge leaves me forearmed. Although I would like to live a life free from worry of the poisonous triplets, I know I can’t. I won’t always be able to control who touches what and when they touch it. However, now I feel confident that I can deal well with the wicked three (and their hell-spawned urushiol), and teach my family to do the same.

The post Relief for Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, and Poison Sumac: The Poisonous Triplets appeared first on Homestead.org.

Yes, friend, you can!

The herbs you grow on your homestead can be crafted into phenomenal DIY herbal beauty products that are all-natural, inexpensive, and work just as well as store-bought skincare.

You may be growing many of these already, so incorporating herbs in handmade skincare is just one more way to make the most of your herbal harvest (and another step toward self-sufficiency). New to DIY herbal skincare? There are recipes below to help you turn your herb harvest into handmade green beauty products.

If these herbs don’t have a place in your garden yet, you’ll also find tips below on how to grow them. Don’t worry, they’re all easy-care plants and perfect even for beginner herb gardeners.

And these herbs pull triple duty: they can be used in DIY herbal skincare products, can be used in the kitchen for cooking, baking, and teas, and make lovely additions to your landscape. 

Calendula

This cheery orange flower, also called pot marigold, is pure gold when it comes to DIY skincare. In traditional medicine, calendula is used topically for skin irritations, rashes, wounds, and bug bites. Its beneficial properties bear out with modern research as well.

Calendula blooms prolifically from summer until the first frost and looks beautiful in the landscape.

The flower heads, specifically the petals, are the part of the plant that is used therapeutically. Harvest when the blossoms are half-open to fully bloomed, but before they start to wilt or dry on the stalk.

Remove the flower head and lay it on a mesh screen in a well-ventilated area to dry. You could also place the flower heads in a dehydrator.

Once the flower heads are completely dry, pull the petals from the heads and store them in a jar with a lid.

These dried petals can be used whole in bath soaks and bath teas. Finely ground, calendula petals can be added to soap bath bombs, and facial masks, where they give a gorgeous yellow-orange color to your DIY skincare products.

Calendula really shines when infused in oils and incorporated into soothing salves, lip balms, and body butter. Another fun benefit: the petals are edible and look pretty sprinkled in baked goods or on salads.

How to Grow Calendula

As its folk name “pot marigold” suggests, calendula grows well in pots. It also does well in beds or simply scattered in a sunny spot on your property.

Calendula prefers full sun, but it will tolerate some light shade especially in warmer climates.

This herb grows easily from seed. Sow them directly in the soil just after your last frost date. Calendula likes rich soil and regular water.

Although it is grown as an annual, it readily self-seeds so you can have an easy crop pop up every spring if you leave some blooms on the plant to go to seed.

Calendula Facial Oil Recipe

This facial oil is incredibly nourishing and soothing, with the added benefit of being quite simple to make.

Fill a half-pint mason jar approximately 2/3 of the way with fully dried calendula petals. Pour in equal parts rosehip seed oil and evening primrose oil until the jar is completely full and the petals are submerged. Loosely screw on a lid and let infuse in a sunny windowsill for six weeks.

Strain out all pieces of calendula petals and add these to the compost pile. The resulting oil is skincare gold.

To use, massage a small amount over cleansed face, neck, and chest. The oil rapidly absorbs into the skin. Use twice daily. This calendula facial oil has a shelf life of four months.

Chamomile

Chamomile is a lovely little herb that blooms with delicate, daisy-like flowers. Of course, chamomile makes a soothing cup of tea, but it also has incredible benefits when used topically.

Chamomile has skin healing, soothing, and anti-inflammatory properties (2). It can reduce skin irritation and redness, and may help repair the skin’s barrier function (3).

Like calendula, it’s the dainty flowers that are used therapeutically. Harvest chamomile as you would calendula, by pinching off flower heads and drying them.

No need to remove the dry petals from the head, though, as the petals are tiny and the whole process too fiddly. Besides, the entire flower head provides skincare benefits.

Use the flower heads whole in bath teas and bath soaks, or infuse into oil. Ground into a fine powder, chamomile makes a soothing addition to facial masks, body scrubs, and bath bombs.

One important note: If you are allergic to ragweed, chamomile is best avoided in topical products because it belongs to the same family.

How to Grow Chamomile

German chamomile is the species that is most often grown for tea and medicinal purposes, although both German chamomile and Roman chamomile have skincare benefits.

German chamomile is an annual, has an upright growth pattern, and can reach about 24 inches in height when it’s happy. It does well in pots and in the landscape alike. German chamomile grows easily from seed and self-seeds freely, so you’ll probably be treated to volunteers each spring.

Roman chamomile has a lower, creeping growth pattern and is best grown as a groundcover. It is a perennial in USDA hardiness zones 3 to 9, but in the colder areas it will die back to the roots during the winter and reemerge come spring. Roman chamomile isn’t quite as prolific a bloomer as its German cousin.

Both types of chamomile prefer full sun to light shade and are drought tolerant. Let the soil dry out between watering.

If you’re torn between the two, here’s a possible tiebreaker: German chamomile does better in poor soil and requires less water than does Roman chamomile.

Chamomile Oatmeal Facial Mask Recipe

Chamomile makes a lovely facial mask for all skin types. This mask is gently cleansing and soothing, and will leave your skin looking bright and feeling refreshed.

• 1/2 cup oats, finely ground
• 1 tablespoon powdered milk
• 2 teaspoons dried chamomile, finely ground

Stir together all ingredients until well blended. Store dry mask base in a half pint mason jar.

To use, mix 1 tablespoon chamomile oatmeal mask base with enough water to make a smooth, spreadable paste. For dry skin types, you can mix the mask base with grapeseed or olive oil instead of water.

Massage over face and neck and let set for five to 10 minutes. Rinse well with warm water.

The dry mask base has a shelf life of one year. Prepared mask should be used immediately; discard any leftovers.

Lavender

What would a skincare garden list be without lavender? Not much of a list, considering the abundant benefits lavender has on the skin.

Lavender is high in antioxidants and helps stimulate skin renewal. It is a remarkable herb, with pain-reducing and anti-inflammatory qualities. Lavender is also antimicrobial and antifungal.

Historically, lavender was used to cleanse and heal the skin. Today, this fragrant herb is used to improve skin issues such as acne, eczema, and psoriasis.

And you can’t overlook lavender’s long history of relieving stress and soothing an anxious mind.

Harvesting lavender is as simple as cutting of the flowering stalks and hanging them to dry. Once dry the buds, which contain the volatile oils, are easily shook loose for use and storage.

Lavender buds look beautiful in bath teas and soaks, as well as sprinkled into soap. Infused lavender oil lends gentle fragrance and soothing properties to DIY lotions, lip balms, and body butters.

How to Grow Lavender

Lavender is a perennial bush that thrives in dry, sunny conditions. It’s a hardy herb; it prefers lean soil, is drought-tolerant, and doesn’t require much maintenance.

It can be grown down to hardiness zone 5, but in those cold weather areas you should give your lavender some winter protection. Another option is to keep your lavender in a pot and bring it inside to spend the wintertime a sunny window.

The key to growing happy lavender is to provide it with well-drained soil and let it dry between watering. Lavender does not like wet feet.

With chamomile and calendula, you’re rewarded with blooms the first year. Lavender requires a bit more patience. Expect your plant to start flowering at two to three years old. Because it takes some time to get started, and seeds germinate slowly, you’ll get the best result from planting lavender starts rather than sowing seeds.

Lavender Milk Bath Soak Recipe

One of my personal favorite ways to enjoy lavender is in a relaxing bath soak. Bonus: it’s easy to make!

• 1 cup Epsom salts
• 1/2 cup powdered milk
• 2 tablespoons dried lavender buds
• Optional: 30 drops lavender essential oil

Mix together all ingredients until well blended. Store in a pint-sized mason jar or similar. To use, pour approximately 1/2 cup bath soak into running bathwater. Soak for at least 20 minutes.

This bath soak has a long 12-month shelf life. 

Lemon Balm

Lemon balm, also called Melissa mint, has a bright citrus-y fragrance that is worlds away from other mints.

Lemon balm is a popular ingredient in green beauty products not only for its herbaceous lemony scent, but for the powerful antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-aging qualities it has.

This herb can be safely used by all skin types, but oily skin especially loves it. Lemon balm is astringent and has antimicrobial properties that make it helpful for skin prone to blackheads and breakouts.

In folk medicine, lemon balm is used to relax the muscles and relieve tension so it makes a special relaxing treat when incorporated into DIY bath and body products.

Frequent pinching back keeps your lemon balm healthy. Snip off stems as needed and use fresh steeped in water for an easy facial splash. Dry the leaves to incorporate into facial masks, bath teas, and body scrubs. Lemon-balm-infused oils can be used for DIY body butters and amazingly tasty lip balms.

How to Grow Lemon Balm

Lemon balm is a lovely, easy-to-grow perennial for the herb garden. But unless you have a large space where you don’t mind it taking over, keep lemon balm in a pot. It self-seeds freely, often to the point where it becomes a nuisance.

Like most mints, this herb likes regular water but it doesn’t care to be overly saturated. Plant in well-drained soil to keep it happy.

Lemon balm likes full sun and can thrive in hardiness zones 4 through 9.

Lemon Balm Whipped Body Butter Recipe

This creamy body butter has a frosting-like consistency and is nourishing for dry skin.

• 1/2 cup fresh lemon balm, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup sweet almond oil
• 1/4 cup shea butter

Place lemon balm into a small heat-safe bowl or a pint-sized mason jar. Add sweet almond oil and shea butter. Put the container into a small pan filled half-way with water, to make a bain-marie of sorts.

Warm and hold over low heat for one hour to infuse the oil and shea butter with lemon balm-y goodness. The shea butter should be just melted, but never allow the oils to simmer. Keep an eye on the water level in your pan and add more water as needed.

Carefully strain out the lemon balm leaves (toss this into the compost pile) and allow the oil mixture to cool and partially solidify. With a hand mixer, whip until the mixture is fluffy and stiff peaks form. You’re looking for a whippy, frosting consistency. This will take about five minutes or so. Spoon into a jar with a lid.

To use, massage your lemon balm whipped body butter over all dry areas of the skin. It’s especially effective when used immediately after bathing or showering. It’s also nice to use just before bed to help soothe you to sleep.

This whipped body butter has a shelf life of six to eight months. 

Peppermint

Sprightly peppermint is a popular perennial in the herb garden. It’s incredibly easy to grow and will provide a prolific harvest nearly year-round in warmer climates.

While the topical benefits of peppermint aren’t as widely studied as some of the aforementioned herbs, the research that has been done shows it can relieve itching and is mildly antimicrobial. In herbal medicine, peppermint is used topically to cleanse the skin, relieve irritation, and reduce inflammation.

Peppermint also gives a cooling and refreshing feel to all your DIY skincare products.

The frequent cutting back of peppermint stimulates the plant to regrow, so harvest as desired. Dry the leaves and use them in soap, body scrubs, and bath products. Peppermint is especially nice in foot soaks and foot scrubs.

Infused in oil, peppermint is lovely in lip balms and salves. Fresh peppermint leaves can be steeped in water for a refreshing summertime body spray.

How to Grow Peppermint

Peppermint sends out lots of underground runners and can quickly become an invasive nuisance in the garden; it’s best to keep this one corralled in a large pot.

Peppermint likes partial shade. A place where it can get morning sun but protection from hot afternoon sun is ideal. Keep the soil uniformly moist but not soggy.

This is a hardy herb and is tolerant of temperatures down to hardiness zone 3. It will die back to the roots in the winter in cold climates and remerge come springtime.

In very hot climates, you may need to grow this mint as an annual, or look for varieties that can tolerate a bit of heat.

Peppermint Body Polish Recipe

This refreshing peppermint body polish helps remove dead skin cells, leaving your skin silky smooth and soft.

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil (you can use peppermint-infused olive oil for extra peppermint punch)
• 2 tablespoons dried peppermint

Stir together all ingredients until well blended. If the body polish seems too dry for your liking, add more oil, one tablespoonful at a time, until you get a consistency you’re happy with. Place in a container with a lid for storage.

To use, measure out about 1/4 cup into a shatterproof container (because broken glass in the shower is never good, my friend). In the tub or shower, massage the polish over the entire body. Rinse well. Do take care because the oil can make the floor of your tub slippery.

This scrub will leave your skin feeling incredibly soft and moisturized. It will last four months unrefrigerated.

Sage

This little herb is often overlooked in beauty products in favor of its showier compadres, but sage has exquisite skincare benefits for all skin types.

Sage is filled with antioxidants which can help protect the skin from free radicals and, ultimately, keep your skin looking young. In fact, a 2016 study published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology found that sclareol, a chemical constituent of sage, was effective at protecting the skin against photoaging and may help prevent wrinkles. Not bad for a humble herb!

Sage is also healing when used topically and has anti-inflammatory effects.

You can harvest by snipping branches as needed, just never harvest more than one third of the plant at one time.

Dried leaves are wonderful in bath products and facial masks. Dried sage makes an especially nice add-in to handmade soap. Handmade milk soap with sage and sweet orange essential oil is awesome!

Fresh sage can be made into face and body splashes, like the recipe below.

How to Grow Sage

Sage likes full sun to partial shade. It will be equally happy in pots or in the ground, provided it has well-drained soil. Sage likes regular watering but does allow the soil to dry out between.

This hardy perennial grows best in hardiness zones 4 to 11. It doesn’t care for intense summer heat, though, so protect your sage from late afternoon sun if needed.

Sage is a slow grower, so if you want a quick harvest buy older plants. If you’re the patient sort, sage grown from seed will be ready to start harvesting from when it’s two years old.

Sage Facial Splash Recipe

This facial splash is refreshing and toning, with a lovely herbaceous scent.

• 1/8 cup fresh sage leaves, roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tablespoon witch hazel

Place the chopped sage leaves in a heat-safe mug or mason jar. Pour 1/2 cup steaming, but not boiling, water over the herbs. Steep for 30 minutes. Strain out leaves and add them to the compost pile. Let cool completely, then add witch hazel and stir to incorporate.

To use, pour a splash into a small spritz bottle and lightly mist the face, neck, and chest after every cleansing. (You could also apply it to a soft cotton cloth and gently smooth it over the skin.) Follow up with your favorite moisturizer or facial serum.

Your sage facial splash has a short four-day shelf life when left unrefrigerated, but it is so easy to make you can easily whip up a fresh batch as needed. Refrigerating the splash extends the shelf life to 14 days.

Thyme

Fragrant with dainty leaves and even daintier flowers, thyme is a staple in Mediterranean cooking. The scent permeates the herb garden, especially after a warm summer rain.

This herb has plenty of benefits for the skin when used topically. Thyme is rich in vitamins A and C, both important vitamins in terms of skin health. It’s also high in antioxidants. Studies have shown it to be anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, and healing.

To harvest, cut stems back and hang to dry. Thyme can be utilized in facial splashes and soap. Thyme-infused oils make a good base for DIY balms, butters, and lotions.

How to Grow Thyme

Thyme loves full sun, thrives in hot conditions, and is very drought tolerant. Stick it in the ground and forget it (until you need a few sprigs, that is!)

Thyme doesn’t like to be fussed with too much once it’s planted, and I’ve personally found thyme doesn’t like transplanting. If you’re not putting it directly in the ground, plant thyme in a large pot so that it has plenty of room to grow without the need for frequent transplants.

In the garden, thyme has a low growth-pattern and looks nice as a ground cover. It grows well in hardiness zones 5 to 9.

Thyme Salve Recipe

Given its therapeutic properties, thyme makes a wonderful skin salve. Smooth a bit on dry cuticles, chapped lips, bug bites, and other minor skin irritations.

• 1/4 cup thyme-infused sunflower oil
• 2 tablespoons shea butter
• 2 tablespoons beeswax (for a vegan balm, use a plant wax such as candelilla)
• Optional: 15 drops thyme essential oil

Begin by making an infused oil. In a pint-sized jar, fill 2/3 of the way with sprigs of dried thyme. Fill the jar with sunflower oil and let set in a sunny windowsill for six weeks.

To make the salve add thyme-infused sunflower oil, shea butter, and beeswax to a small heat-safe bowl or a pint-sized mason jar and place in a small pan half-filled with water. Set pan on the stovetop over low heat until beeswax is fully melted. Remove from heat and stir in essential oil, if you’re using it.

Pour melted salve into small wide-mouth containers and let sit undisturbed to cool and firm up. Once the salve is completely cool, affix lids.

To use, massage a small amount of salve into dry or irritated areas. This salve has a long eight- to 12-month shelf life.

The post Grow an Herbal Skincare Garden: 7 Easy-to-Grow Herbs for Naturally Healthy Skin appeared first on Homestead.org.

Now, there are as many different concerns regarding health as there are people.  But, throughout that vast sea of diversity, there are a lot of similar complaints that we share.  We are, of course, only human.  I have made my list of medicines after observing several very common, and very uncomfortable, complaints shared by many patients and family members alike (including even myself, from time to time, unfortunately).  I have grouped the list around major symptomatic themes, such as aches and pain, fever, stomach upset (either going too much or not enough), and simple infections.

Of course, as with everything medical, it is best to run medication choices by your primary care provider (PCP).  Based on your own medical history, medication allergies, and what medicines you are taking currently, your PCP will decide the safety and efficacy of the suggestions below.  For example, if you are the blood-thinning medicine Plavix (clopidogrel) for heart attack or stroke prevention, or if you have a history of recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding, then you should avoid taking aspirin, as it can thin your blood even further, and increase your risk of bleeding—perhaps uncontrollably.

One other state of health should have you in constant contact with a medical professional also—pregnancy.  I do not presume to know what medications you might be on while you are pregnant, but every one of the medications listed below should be discussed with your healthcare provider before taking it.  Most of these medicines are taken by mouth and enter the bloodstream, affecting the developing baby as well as you.  So, please, if you are pregnant, evaluate this list and consider the risks and benefits.  But please also talk with your PCP about your situation, and whether or not it is safe for you to be on some of these medicines.

A word of caution as well: this list does not include prescription drugs.  These medicines are presumably prescribed for a reason—to treat or manage a particular diagnosis (for example, a blood pressure medicine like metoprolol for treating high blood pressure).  You are supposed to be on these medicines already, and they should occupy an important space in your medication cabinet.  Going back to the pantry analogy, prescription medicines are like that must-have ingredient your grandmother insists you keep on-hand for that special family dinner (i.e., kale in a special soup).  It is essential for your recipe and cooking style, but not necessary for the next person’s pantry down the hall (he has a weird allergy to kale).

A special category of prescription medicines are ones that need to be refrigerated.  These are usually injectable, like insulin and medicines for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis.  Please make sure that you have an adequate supply available, that your prescription is not going to run out soon, and, if it is, that you call your provider’s office at least two to three weeks in advance.  These medicines are very important to your health and well-being, and you should never be without them, or the appropriate supplies to administer them, like syringes, batteries for medical equipment like an insulin pump or glucometer (to test your blood sugar), and test strips.  Stock up on these supplementary supplies, follow your prescription and fill it religiously.  Know when it is time to get your refill, and when you need to have another script.  It is your health, and you need to be responsible for it, too.

Finally, this list does not include emergency medications, like an epi-pen for allergic reactions, or rescue inhalers for asthma.  You need them to live.  Keep them in your medicine cabinet, and check the expiration date regularly.  My father thought that he “outgrew” his allergy to bee stings… until he got stung.  Luckily, he still did have one epi-pen around and was able to prevent disaster.

Now, without further ado, here are eight medicines to have on hand that I feel are worthy of your consideration:

1. Aspirin:  A great, time-tested medicine that should be present in some form in your house (with a few notable exceptions, which I will explain below).  Aspirin, or acetylsalicylic acid, has proven very effective in reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke in millions of patients.  This medicine works by inhibiting the function of platelets—components of the blood that help us clot and form scabs.  Unfortunately, this process can also happen inside blood vessels, and if that clot completely blocks off blood flow, then, depending on where it is (the heart or the brain), the tissue cannot get nutrients and oxygen to live, and dies.

The most important reason to have aspirin in your medicine cabinet is that, if you think that you are having a heart attack and have called 911, then the operator might tell you to take aspirin tablets (325mg, or four baby (81mg) tablets), and chew them.  That’s right—chew them.  Studies have shown that the chemical gets into the bloodstream quicker if you chew the tablets than if you swallow the pills and let them dissolve in the stomach.  But, aspirin is a powerful medicine, and I do not think that anyone should start taking it without the direction and supervision of their primary care provider.  I say this for a couple of reasons.

First of all, aspirin can interact with a lot of other medicines.  As I mentioned before, aspirin and Plavix are both medicines that thin the blood, and taking both medicines can cause someone to bleed excessively.  Aspirin is also filtered out of the body by the kidneys, so any medicines that are also filtered by the kidneys (such as ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, or NSAIDs), can make the kidneys work very hard, and can actually damage them, potentially causing kidney failure.

Besides its interactions with other medicines, aspirin should also be used very cautiously with certain medical conditions.  These are mainly chronic diseases that predispose someone to bleeding a lot.  Some examples are stomach ulcers and other gastrointestinal bleeding problems, like a colon polyp, or clotting disorders like hemophilia (a rare genetic disorder).  It may still be safe to take aspirin, if you also suffer from heart disease or are at risk for a stroke, but you need to be monitored routinely by a medical professional and checked regularly for any signs or symptoms of bleeding.  People with kidney disease should also use aspirin under a doctor’s supervision, as it can worsen kidney function in high doses.

Another VERY important point about aspirin is not to give it to children to treat fevers (except in very rare circumstances, and only approved and followed, and probably even given, by a doctor).  This is because of a rare, but very serious, association between viral infections and aspirin use known as Reye’s syndrome, a condition which causes liver failure and brain damage.  It is VERY serious – potentially fatal – so don’t do it!  There are also people who have a known allergy to aspirin, and they also should absolutely avoid the medicine.  In fact, they should have a medical-alert bracelet stating that information, in the event of an emergency.  So, while aspirin has the power to potentially save your life in the case of an emergency, it can also be very dangerous and must be used and monitored with the care and cooperation of a trained professional.

2. Acetaminophen:  The active ingredient in Tylenol, this is another old, but very effective medicine.  Interestingly, Tylenol works on the same proteins as aspirin, but does so mainly in the central nervous system (which is the brain and spinal cord).  Both of these medicines are known as anti-inflammatories—they work to reduce pain, warmth, and chemical changes that are produced in response to an injury or illness.  Tylenol is very effective at quieting pain signals as well as reducing fevers.  But since it works in the brain, it doesn’t have the anti-clotting properties.  Because of this fact, Tylenol is considered safe in treating pain and fevers in patients who cannot take aspirin (as listed previously).

But like any medicine, there are important and potentially dangerous side effects that you need to know about to avoid.  The main ones with acetaminophen arise from the fact that it is filtered out of the body by the liver.  There is a set amount that the liver can filter daily.  If it gets more than it can handle, toxic by-products of the degradation process can build up and poison the liver, causing it to fail, and making someone very sick, or even be fatal.  Therefore, people who have liver disease (like cirrhosis) or hepatitis C (a chronic viral liver infection), really should try to avoid acetaminophen.  For healthy individuals, research has shown that the upper safe limit for daily acetaminophen use (which you should try to be well below, if possible) is about four grams.  If you are taking a 650mg tablet of Tylenol, that means your daily maximum limit is six (650mg x 6 tablets = 3900mg).  Of course, a lot of other medicines can have acetaminophen also, especially doctor-prescribed pain medicines (like Lortab, Percocet, and Vicodin, for example).  So, if you are taking these medicines, and Tylenol as well, you need to sit down with your healthcare provider and figure out what your daily maximum dose is, in order to be safe.

3. Ibuprofen:  Ibuprofen is very effective at treating a majority of everyday aches and pains.  It is the active ingredient in many arthritis and pain relief medicines, like Advil and Aleve, for example.  As with aspirin and Tylenol, it is an anti-inflammatory medication, a member of the NSAID family.  It works by a mechanism very similar to aspirin, but again has less (but not completely absent) effect on platelets and bleeding.  But it is a very potent anti-inflammatory drug, which makes it ideal for treating many of the muscle strains and sprains that we all suffer around the farm (we all know how I should have lifted that hay bale, but that twinge in my back lets me know that I used the wrong technique again).

The main concerns for ibuprofen are very similar to aspirin, namely bleeding and kidney problems.  However, there is one big contraindication for ibuprofen (and other NSAIDs, like Motrin and Celebrex)—and that is a history of heart disease or stroke.  Research has shown that people who take NSAIDs are at greater risk for having a heart attack or stroke.  So I would talk to a medical professional about your health problems and current medicines before taking ibuprofen.  But once it is approved, and if you use it sparingly (no more than two or three days in a row—if the pain has not improved by then, it’s time to go see a doctor), ibuprofen can be a very powerful ally in treating those occasional muscle aches and joint pains.

4. Muscle rub ointments:  Along the same lines as aspirin, acetaminophen and ibuprofen, external analgesic salves and ointments (translation: pain meds that are absorbed through the skin) can help relieve muscle aches and pains, and are very useful to have on-hand.  Most of these formulations, including common trade names like Bengay, have a compound in the same family as aspirin: methyl salicylate, also known as oil of wintergreen.  Some others, like capsaicin cream, have compounds derived from hot peppers that over-stimulate and inactivate pain receptors.  Both are very good medications for relief of localized pain like that found in arthritis or backaches.

The major benefit of taking medicated compounds in an ointment, compared to by mouth, is that the ointment works right where it is placed.  When you take a medicine like aspirin, however, it goes throughout your body, and interacts with nearly all of your tissues.  Besides keeping the therapeutic action right where you need it, external analgesics also help reduce the chances of medication side effects and drug interactions.  So with methyl salicylate, for example, you don’t need to worry about bleeding disorders or kidney problems, like you do with aspirin.  However, people who are allergic to aspirin, or peppers, should still be very careful when using these ointments, since they could also react to these ointments as well.  It is also important to use common sense, and not to ingest these medicines by mouth.  They are toxic when taken internally!  So please use common sense, and use them as effective local pain relief as directed.

5. Triple antibiotic ointment:  Another great weapon in the medicine arsenal is a topical antibiotic. (I know, I just went from the pantry metaphor to the war metaphor.  But with antibiotics, it’s convention I think.)  These are medicines that help reduce the risk of serious secondary infection, especially for those minor cuts and scrapes we all suffer on the homestead.  Antibiotics help slow bacterial growth, but do not cure the infection alone.  That is left to the body’s natural defenses (antibodies, white blood cells, and the like).

Topical antibiotics, therefore, allow people to safely and judiciously apply a potent and powerful medicine in a relatively safe manner in order to prevent a more dangerous infection or illness, and allow our body to help heal itself a little bit faster.  But as with all medicines, and especially for antibiotics, it is important to know what you are using, and how to use it.  The application is very straightforward—clean wound under running water to get rid of dirt, grime, and other yuckiness that might harbor pathogens, then take tube, squeeze ointment on cut, place bandage over medicine, and proceed with daily chores, repeating daily until cut is scabbed over or healed.  The medicines themselves, however, are a little more complex.

Most triple antibiotic ointments have three medicines: polymyxin B, neomycin, and bacitracin.  Huh?  Okay, so all of these medicines are pretty strong antibiotics that attack bacteria in different ways.  They work in a combined fashion on the bacterial cell wall and internal cellular proteins.  The important things to know is that these are very strong antibiotics, and are very poisonous if ingested.  So don’t eat them!  People who have allergic reactions to medications that contain sulfa compounds should also avoid using this medication.  Finally, after using the medicine, you still need to monitor the wound closely.  You need to call your doctor if the cut continues to look infected after several days (signs include redness, pus, or increased leakage of fluid from wound), or immediately if you have a new onset of fever, chills, weakness or dizziness with a worsening wound.  At that point, you might have a serious body-wide infection that requires intravenous antibiotics and hospital care.

6. Hydrogen peroxide:  I just want to say a brief word about hydrogen peroxide, since most of us know what it is and what it’s used for.  It is a compound that is unstable and readily forms oxygen free radicals—compounds that are poisonous to cells.  And that is ALL cells—yours, mine, bacteria, fungi, everything.  So it is nonselective in how it works.  My family likes to use it on our calves after we cut off their horns, to help prevent infection.  The secret with hydrogen peroxide is to use it immediately after the cut or injury happens.  You want to kill any potential bugs or threats from entering the wound, but then you need to give your own cells time to grow and divide, and heal the wound.  If you keep using it, though, it will kill those cells that are trying to heal the cut.  So, when I use hydrogen peroxide, I like to use it in combination with a triple antibiotic ointment.  I use it first to clean out the cut, then I apply the antibiotic to act as a barrier, with a bandage covering it all.  And, as always, use common sense—please do not drink hydrogen peroxide (it hurts the lining of your digestive tract).  People do brush their teeth with it, but just remember to spit it out.

7. Stool softener:  Now I would like to transition to some medicines, that, at first glance, might not seem as fancy as the pain relievers or antibiotics above.  But what they might lack in style, they more than make up for in substance, helping many people through some difficult situations.  The first, and most useful, are stool softeners. These include medicines like docusate and senna, and come with brand names like Colace and Dulcolax.  Many hospitals include them on their admission check lists, in order to save the patient (and frankly, a lot of the hospital staff) difficulties later on down the line.  All of these substances are types of fiber, and work by drawing water into the small intestine and colon, in order to lubricate and soften the stool and help keep the bowels moving.

There are not a lot of side effects with these medicines, and not many people have reported allergies to them (since they are inert fiber, and are passed out of the body anyways).  One main concern with these medicines is the possibility of worsening small bowel distention, or bloating, if someone has been constipated for a while, and the stool is starting to act like a plug.  The usual recommendation for stool softeners is to use them for two to three days as a trial.  If you are able to move your bowels while taking the medicine and relieve the constipation, then the trial is successful and you can go on enjoying life.  If there is no movement in the two or three days, however, then you might have constipation that requires an enema (using water or soapy water, mineral oil, or another marketed product, under some moderate pressure to the area), to try and relieve the blockage.  But for mild symptoms of constipation, stool softeners can be very effective, and save a lot of time, money, and discomfort.

8. Pepto-Bismol:  Then there is the other side of the equation.  We have all had those nights, when we’ve had one too many slices of pizza (or the entire thing, unfortunately), and your stomach is churning and rumbling.  I like having some bismuth subsalicylate (the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol and similar digestive aids) handy, in order to calm things down.  It works by helping to slow the increased muscle activity of the stomach, as well as reducing irritation in the stomach lining by coating it, and acting as a mild anti-inflammatory.  The subsalicylate in the compound is actually a weaker formulation of acetylsalicylic acid (also known as aspirin, described above).

The main side effect of Pepto-Bismol is constipation, if taken in excess.  It should be avoided in children who are dehydrated, since this increases the chance of causing constipation.  It should also be avoided in children and teenagers who are suffering, or recovering, from a fever or known viral illness, because, as discussed above, there is the potential danger of developing Reye’s disease.  But I know that there are a lot of people out there (myself included), who have used and benefited greatly from using Pepto-Bismol or something similar, in order to enjoy a good night’s rest.

Well, there they are.  My eight must-have medicines.  I realize, however, as I said earlier, that there is going to be a lot of discussion and variation out there, and I think that is a good thing.  I had a lot of trouble paring down the list to these eight, since I did want to add a couple more, like antacids, and antihistamines like Benadryl, especially as an ointment (wonderful stuff!).  In fact, now that I think about it, there might be a couple of additions in potential future writings.  But, for right now, this is a good starting point.  I feel it is an important foundation for any homestead medicine cabinet, and will help treat a wide variety of mild to moderate medical conditions that we run in to on the farm.  By knowing how these medications work, how powerful some of them are, and when to stop taking them and consult a medical professional, we gain an understanding and respect that serves us well and helps us live more healthily and independently.

The post Eight Medicines to Have in Your Cabinet… and Why appeared first on Homestead.org.

Now, we are in an age where people are looking to deconstruct their over-processed lives, and I think it is an excellent time to challenge the ideas around food and convenience.  Are frozen pizzas easier and faster than pizza made from scratch?  What about that old TV-dinner standard, the turkey dinner?  Does it truly take less time to microwave dinner for your family than to make it by hand?  The answer, on both counts, is no.  The burden of home-cooked food is a marketing myth designed by the food companies to turn us away from natural, whole food and towards their over-processed Frankenfoods.  In this article, I will put myself and my fairly average cooking skills against the clock to prove so-called convenience foods fall conveniently short of their promise of good food in less time.

For the sake of this exercise, let’s assume we are cooking for a family of four.  Let us also assume that we are buying all of the ingredients and convenience foods from the same grocery store.  This will allow us to put the travel time and gas needs of all the food on the same level.  I will break the cost of the whole food down by the ounce to give an accurate account of the expense of the whole food versus the processed food.  Lastly, let us assume that herbs, spices, oil, etc. are something generally available in all kitchens and do not need to be included in the price.  So, let us begin.

Frozen Pizza

If you’re like me, you grew up eating pizza in one form or another.  It is a food that is synonymous with American childhood.  Pizza Night was a frequent occurrence in my house growing up, and when it came to frozen pizza, Tombstone brand frozen pizzas were standard.  My mom always pulled the pizza out with a flourish and ask, “What do you want on your Tombstone,” in a horrible Western accent.  The flat, rock hard, cracker-like pizzas were the cornerstone of homemade pizza for me, and it wouldn’t be until I had a family of my own that I learned that homemade pizza can be so much more than the folks at Nestle` led me to believe.

When it comes to comparing homemade pizza in terms of convenience foods, let’s address the biggest issue first: the dough.  Pizza dough takes a long time to make. You have to mix up the ingredients, let it rise, punch it down, and let it rise again before you can even start rolling out your pie.  This takes hours.  One way that frozen pizza companies like DiGiorno and Frechetta try to address this issue is by adding a bit of chemical leavening to their dough, like baking soda or powder, which don’t need the time to rise like yeast.  This works to an extent, but the resulting dough has a cakey texture that does not really feel like pizza.

The key to making this process convenient is a bit of forethought: make the dough in advance.  I know this sounds simple, but it takes about five minutes to mix up a batch of dough.  Once you mix it, you can leave it out on the counter overnight to rise.  In the morning, simply punch it down, wrap it in some plastic wrap, and stick it in the refrigerator.  Your dough can sit there for up to a week, just waiting to be used.  The wonderful part of this method is that as the dough sits in your refrigerator, it gets better.  While the dough is in the icebox, the yeasts slowly ferment the sugars in the flour starch, creating thousands of small gas pockets that will make your dough rise in the oven when the heat expands the gas.  In addition, enzymes in the flour are given a chance to develop that luscious flavor and texture found in popular gourmet pizza chains.  Many of these restaurants use the same technique to improve the quality of their pizza dough.  If you want to save your dough for longer than a week, give it an extra wrapping in plastic and stick it in the freezer for up to a month.  When you think you might want a pizza, pull it out of the freezer in the morning, and it will be ready to use by lunch.

To make the pizza for this experiment, I used:

• 13 oz all purpose flour: $0.06 (This amount of flour is enough to make two pizzas)
• ¼ C. olive oil
• 1 healthy pinch of Kosher salt
• 1 packet of bread yeast: $0.33
• water
• 3 oz shredded mozzarella: $0.47
• 1 can crushed tomatoes: $0.67
• 1 red onion, sliced: $0.43
• Some fresh basil leaves from the garden
• ½ oz kale, torn into bite-sized pieces: $.03
• Pizza stone (optional)

When you put these fresh ingredients next to the Tombstone pizza in all its plastic-wrapped glory, it’s pretty clear which will come out the better pizza.

Since my dough was made the night before, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees and placed the Tombstone pizza inside.  According to the packaging, it takes 20 minutes for the Tombstone to finish cooking in the oven.  This gives me 20 minutes to prepare and cook my pizza.  First, I rolled out my pizza dough and add my crushed tomatoes, sliced onions, kale, cheese, and basil and added salt and pepper to taste.  I then placed my pizza into the oven right above the still-cooking Tombstone.  By the time the 20-minute timer went off, both pizzas were ready to take out of the oven.  The pizza on the left is the Tombstone pizza.  The pizza on the right is the homemade pizza.

With the dough made days in advance, it took exactly the same amount of time to make a pizza from scratch with fresh seasonal ingredients.  This works because the frozen pizza uses the first 10 minutes in the oven thawing out before it even starts cooking.  That’s the 10 minutes it takes to prepare your pizza from scratch.  If you’re wondering about the cleanup, take a look at what was leftover from the homemade pizza:

The knife I used to cut the onions is missing from the picture, but this is not an inconvenient amount of dishes to clean up after such a wonderful meal.

The retail cost of the Tombstone-brand Pizza: $4.99

The total cost of my homemade pizza: $1.99

Turkey Dinner

The turkey dinner is the first truly American meal.  Some people call it THE American meal.  It represents hours of preparation, care, and timing.  The ritual behind the carving of the turkey is something that has been passed down and enjoyed since the turkey became our go-to food for holiday celebrations.  It is no surprise that the makers of the first TV-dinners sought to recreate that spirit when the first began marketing turkey TV-dinners to the public.

Today, microwave turkey dinners are alive and well, and for $3.29, the good people at Hungry Man offer a turkey dinner that will “Satisfy Your Craving” in just nine minutes.  This means that if I want to satisfy my craving for a fresh turkey dinner for four in the same time, I have thirty-six minutes to do it.

To accomplish this, I have to think about my approach.  First, I cannot cook an entire turkey safely in thirty-six minutes, but a convenient turkey dinner does not need a whole turkey, only turkey meat.  So, I purchased a whole turkey from the store and cut the breast meat away from the carcass, leaving the skin on.  I cut up the rest of the turkey and put it in the freezer for future turkey dinners.  A turkey breast has the advantage of being flat, thin, and fast to cook.  It is not necessary to brine a boneless turkey breast, which is convenient since it will need to cook in thirty-six minutes or less.  A liberal dose of salt and pepper will provide more than enough flavor on this cut.  With the turkey breast, my ingredients include:

• 16 oz turkey breast: $19.04
• 3 oz of turkey bones from carcass: $3.57
• 3 oz of peas: $0.10
• 3 oz string beans: $0.12
• 1 Fuji apple: $0.50
• 1 red onion: $0.43
• 1 large russet potato: $1.17
• 3 oz sweetened dried cranberries: $1.87

My first step was to hit the timer.  Then, under the doubtful gaze of my wife and mother-in-law, I set two pots of water to boil and lit the grill.  I chose the grill to cook the turkey because the direct heat would cook the breast quickly, searing the outside to provide extra flavor.  Into the first pot of water, I dropped the turkey bones and halved onion with a large pinch of Kosher salt.  I then chopped the potato into small cubes and dropped them into the second pot with some salt; cutting smaller cubes will help the potato to cook in less time.  Next, I tossed the turkey breast onto the grill and returned to the kitchen chop the apple.  The chopped apple and the dried cranberries went into a small pan to simmer with a cup of water and a tablespoon of sugar.

At this point, I had a few minutes to lean back and listen to the radio before the potatoes were soft.  I scooped the potatoes out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon and placed them into a bowl.  I then dropped the string beans and peas into the pot the potatoes had just vacated and mashed the potatoes with a pat of butter and a splash of cream.  By then, it was time to turn the turkey breast on the grill.  Returning to my turkey pot, I removed the bones and the onion, whisked in a chicken bouillon cube and an ounce of flour (the cost is negligible for this amount of flour), and let simmer to thicken.  Then, it was time to take the turkey breast off the grill to rest.  Next, I added a little salt and pepper to my gravy and strained the peas and beans.

That’s it!  That’s the whole turkey dinner.  When I cut into the turkey breast to serve, it was completely cooked and juicy:

The mashed potatoes were smooth and creamy, the gravy was rich and silky, and the fruit compote was fresh and tangy.  In the end, it took me 35 minutes and 46 seconds to create a turkey dinner for four; fourteen seconds faster than it would have taken to microwave four Hungry Man turkey dinners.

Take a look at the two here.  Which one would you rather serve to your family?

At almost half the price, it is clearly cheaper to buy the microwave dinner, so chefs at home will have to weigh the economic value versus the nutritional value.  The cleanup on this meal was not overwhelming.  A knife and cutting board needed to be washed in addition to the pots and bowls pictured here.

Total cost for four Hungry Man TV-dinners: $13.16

Total cost for the homemade dinner: $26.80

Cooking at home is often about creativity.  We have to eat every day, and some days we have less time than others.  Commercially developed convenience foods are not so much about saving time as they are about liberating us from thinking about what we eat.  The message from the food companies is that their foods are fast and nutritious; you can show your family you love them without slaving in the kitchen the entire afternoon.  The image of the family dinner taking half the day to prepare is a fantasy the food industry created to entice us to buy their high-calorie, nutrient-deficient food.

As I have demonstrated here, in the same time or less than it takes to prepare frozen convenience foods, the cook of the family can produce exceptional, high-quality food that can be fun and exciting to prepare.  I encourage you to approach all meals with this spirit.  A friend’s mother once told me, “The time you spend on your food reflects the time you spend on your life.”  For this discussion, I would suggest that the quality of your food reflects the quality of your life, so go forth, get creative, and don’t worry about the cleanup.  That’s what the kids are for.

The post What’s So Convenient About Convenience Foods? appeared first on Homestead.org.

Skin is the largest organ of the body and we must take care of it.  Spot treatments will relieve dry patches but for optimal skin health, you should soak in a warm bath with Epsom salts, powdered milk, or oatmeal at least once a week.  Apply some type of moisturizer after your bath or shower, while still wet, and pat dry.  Scrubbing dry can irritate skin, and will effectively remove all the moisture you applied.  Store all of your DIY skincare products in a tightly covered glass jar in a cool, dark area.

Scented milk powder is a blend of one cup powdered milk, 1/2 cup baking soda, 1/2 cup cornstarch, and up to 10 drops of essential oil.  Combine the milk, baking soda, and cornstarch in a mason jar and shake to mix.  Add the essential oil and shake again.  Pour one cup into your bath water.

Make a big batch of scented Epsom salts by combining four cups Epsom salt, two cups baking soda, and up to 30 drops of essential oil.  Add a generous scoop to your bath.

To make DIY skincare products, you will use herbs (in the form of essential oils) and carrier oils.  Essential oils are derived from plants and they have therapeutic properties that reduce the discomfort of dry skin.  Never put essential oil directly on your skin; always mix it with a carrier oil.  If you are trying a new essential oil, do a test on a small area of skin to make sure you do not have an allergy.  If you make a skin treatment for a child, it is a good idea to cut the essential oil amount by half.  Arrowroot is also called for in some recipes.  Arrowroot is not necessary, but it does make the lotion less greasy.  The best herbs and essential oils for dry skin relief and repair are lavender, ylang-ylang, tea tree, cedarwood, licorice root, astragalus, calendula, comfrey leaf and root, and marshmallow root.  If you are going to make your own infusions, you can harvest these herbs yourself or order from a reputable herb supplier.

The carrier oils that are best for skin care are coconut, jojoba, sweet almond, apricot, primrose, olive, and hemp seed oil.  To infuse an oil with an herb, wash and pat dry the plant material and place it in a glass jar with a lid.  Cover the herb with the carrier oil of your choice and place it in a dark cabinet for two to four weeks, shaking every day.  Strain oil into a clean glass jar and discard the plant material.

To make a massage oil using essential oils, simply make your base oil by adding 1/2 teaspoon of vitamin E oil to 8 ounces of the carrier oil of your choice.  Add up to forty drops of your essential oil and transfer to a glass jar.  If you want a slightly thicker oil, replace one ounce of the carrier oil with one ounce of cranberry seed oil.

Homemade lotion is inexpensive to make, can be customized to personal preferences, and does not include all of the chemicals found in mass-produced skincare.  It is also easy to make.

Homemade Lotion

• ¼ cup shea or cocoa butter
• ½ cup coconut oil
• 7 drops of vitamin E oil
• Up to 20 drops of essential oil.

Melt shea/cocoa butter and coconut oil in a double boiler.  Remove from heat once melted and cool until it begins to set up.  Add essential oil, and Vitamin E oil and mix with a hand mixer.  Add arrowroot powder while mixing.  Continue mixing until the lotion is light and fluffy.  Store in a glass container.

Body butter is similar to lotion, except thicker, and much more expensive if you buy it in stores.  Body butter is the skincare item I like to give as gifts, as you can match the fragrance to each person’s preference and it is a very luxurious and pampering gift.

Body Butter

• 1/3 cup coconut oil
• 1/3 cup shea butter
• 1/3 cup cocoa butter
• 1/3 cup sweet almond oil
• 2 teaspoons arrowroot powder
• Up to 30 drops of essential oil (one scent or a combination)

Combine all of the ingredients except the essential oil in a double boiler.  Once melted, let the mixture cool until it begins to set up.  Using a hand mixer, beat until fluffy, about 10 minutes.  Add essential oil and beat for one minute more.n Store in an airtight glass container.

Once you become familiar with the ingredients and basic techniques, making DIY skincare products will become a part of your routine.  It feels great to make a product that soothes and protects your family, and it won’t be long before you venture into more challenging recipes.  Skin health has found its way into the news, and expensive skin products are flooding the market.  This puts you in the perfect position to turn your DIY skincare into a marketable product.

Make, use, and share these products, but also take common care sense of your skin.  Apply a moisturizer after washing your hands and wear gloves when you go outside.  Use warm water—hot water damages skin and cold water irritates dry skin.  If you suffer from dry and cracked hands or feet, apply a thick moisturizer before bed and wear thin gloves and/or socks.  Above all, enjoy pampering yourself and your family this winter.  It will be summer soon and we will be making lotion for gardener’s hands!

Many of the ingredients for your DIY skincare products can be found on Amazon.

The post DIY Winter Skincare appeared first on Homestead.org.

What is an oxymel?  These ancient medicines have their origins in Persia and Greece.   According to Persian history, there were over 1,200 different formulas for making oxymels.  Squill oxymel was being recommended as far back as 7th century A.D. by Paulus Aegineta, and can still be found in pharmaceutical textbooks such as Martindale and British Pharmacopeia today.  Yes, oxymels are very old, very good medicine.

Medicinal Benefits of Oxymels

• As a base for medicated expectorant syrups, like Garlic Oxymel
• Cooling febrifuge (reduces fevers)
• Energizing
• Restorative
• Soothes a sore throat when used as a gargle (very diluted)
• Expectorant (loosens phlegm from the lungs and respiratory tract to open the airways)

The two main ingredients are acid (apple cider vinegar/ACV) and honey.  Basic oxymels are a super-simple, easy-to-make formula with many add-in variations that allow for it to address a variety of health issues.  So, any combination of these two ingredients, no matter what is added in, becomes an oxymel.  For example, Fire Cider is an oxymel, as are some salad vinaigrettes and sipping vinegars.

There are several ways to combine your herbs, spices, fruit, vegetables, ACV, and honey to make an oxymel.

General Notes on Making Oxymels

Use raw, local honey and raw (unpasteurized) ACV with “the mother” if at all possible.

The ratio of plants to ACV or honey should be around 1:3 or 1:4.  This means, one part plants to 3 or 4 parts of the liquid.  No measuring needed, here. For the folk-method, you can guesstimate by filling your jar a little less than 1/4 full with plants and pour the liquid over to cover by about two inches.  Make sure your jar is large enough for shaking later.  In general, steep for 4 weeks or longer.

The ACV to honey ratio you choose will depend upon how sweet or how tart you prefer your medicine.  A ratio of 5 parts honey to 1 part vinegar will be quite sweet; while 3 parts vinegar to 1 part honey will be quite tart.  Anything in between is just fine.  I prefer one part honey to one part vinegar.  That is a pleasant sweet/tart flavor balance for me.

Oxymel Making Procedure 1: Steep Separately

1. Combine your healing plants in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
2. Divide your plant matter between two jars
3. Add slightly warmed honey to one jar and ACV to the other
4. Let steep separately.
5. Strain the ACV jar
6. Warm slightly and strain the honey jar
7. Add the strained ACV
8. Cap, shake, label and store in cool, dark place.  Can be refrigerated.

Oxymel Making Procedure 2: Quick Vinegar Reduction

1. This method works well for hearty herbs, roots, bark, seeds; and not so much for delicate or aromatic herbs.
2. Place plant matter into a saucepan.
3. Add double the amount of ACV you want to have for your formula.
4. Simmer over very low heat until the liquid is reduced by half.
5. Strain, cool, and add to your honey in the ratio you choose.
6. Bottle, label, and store in cool, dark place or refrigerator.

Oxymel Making Procedure 3: Stir, Steep, Strain 

1. Add desired plant matter to a jar
2. Lightly warm the honey and combine with ACV in preferred ratio
3. Pour over herbs, cap, and shake
4. Let steep for chosen length of time.
5. Strain, bottle, label, and store in cool, dark place or refrigerator.

How to Use Oxymels

Oxymels are similar to concentrates.  Some folks take it straight-up from the spoon.  Most prefer to place 1-3 teaspoons in a cup of warm water or herbal tea to enjoy.

Contraindications and Precautions of Oxymel Use

According to Paul Pitchford’s book Healing with Whole Foods, these concerns should be taken into consideration:

• Do not take with weak digestion indicated by watery stools.
• Do not take if especially frail.
• Do not take with generalized muscle weakness.
• Do not take with rheumatism.
• Do not take alone for long periods of time.

Basic Any-Berry Oxymel Recipe

Ingredients (for 1-quart jar):

• 1-2 cups of any single berry or combination of berries such as blueberries, cherries, elderberries (especially great for cold and flu season), mulberries, strawberries, etc.
• Any spice or herb combination (to taste) to add warmth and flavor such as basil, citrus zest, fennel seeds, ginger, hyssop, any of the mints, thyme, rosemary, etc.
• Raw ACV
• Raw, local honey

Choose your procedure preference.  If using The Quick Vinegar Reduction method, add your tender, aromatic herbs near the end of the reduction to preserve their fragrant, medicinal qualities.  Enjoy!

Golden Citrus Fire Cider Oxymel Recipe

I make at least one batch of Fire Cider each year; and every year the formula is different.  This is my own original formula from the 2018 cold and flu season.  Here’s a handy printable label.

Ingredients:

• Raw ACV
• Raw, local honey
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 1 lime, zested and juiced
• 1 blood orange, zested and juiced
• 6-8 turmeric roots or powdered root
• 8-10 garlic cloves
• 1 onion, medium-large
• 3-inch piece horseradish root
• 4-6 chili peppers with seeds
• 2 tablespoons poblano pepper seeds (saved from other kitchen projects)
• 1 tablespoon whole allspice

Procedure:

• Zest, juice and roughly chop all fruits, vegetables, and roots
• I get the fine-chop of my vegetables and herbs by putting the roughly chopped veggies in small batches in the blender with some of the vinegar and pulse until I like the size.
• Pour into a bowl and continue until all vegetables are chopped finely
• Divide between 2-quart jars
• Pour ACV in to cover vegetables by 2-3 inches
• Place plastic wrap or waxed paper over the jar opening and finger tighten the cap
• Place in a cool, dark place
• Check and shake daily for 4-6 weeks or longer
• Strain and measure the fire cider
• Add an equal amount of slightly warmed honey to the fire cider and now you have an oxymel!
• Bottle, label, store in cool, dry place or refrigerator
• Enjoy!

Elderflower Oxymel Recipe

Elderflowers are well known for their usefulness during cold and flu season as a tea.  This might be a nice addition to your homestead apothecary for the winter months.

Ingredients:

• Raw ACV
• Raw, local honey
• Elderflowers (Sambucus spp.), wilted or dried

Procedure:

Because of the fragility of the flowers, I recommend the Stir, Steep, Strain method for this formula

Sikanjabin al-buzuri

For this last recipe, let me say that I was surprised to find such an old recipe with such easily found, common-today ingredients.  The original recipe makes a huge batch of oxymel!  I’m thinking about making up one-tenth of the volume of the formula and giving it a try.  I would be interested to hear what your experience is with this very ancient remedy.

Sikanjabin al-buzuri is an ancient oxymel formula found in The Book of Gharabadin Salehi.  Used to “relieve fever and gastritis”.  Considered “diuretic” and is beneficial “for hepatic obstructions”.

Ingredients:

• 4.5 kg. (approx. 19 3/4 c.) wine vinegar
• 9 kg. (approx. 39 2/3 c.) water
• 90 g. (approx. 3.17 oz.) root peels of fennel
• 90 g. (approx. 3.17 oz.) fennel seeds
• 90 g. (approx. 3.17 oz.) anise
• 90 g. (approx. 3.17 oz.) celery
• *Sugar-candy

*According to Avicenna (980AD – 1037AD), the most famous and influential of all the Islamic philosopher-scientists, honey and sugar-candy are interchangeable.

Procedure:

“Wine vinegar and water were mixed together and then combined with root peels of fennel, celery, fennel seeds, and anise. After a day the mixture is reduced on a mild fire until one-sixth of it remains.  Then sugar-candy with half of the total weight is added to the mixture and boiled on a mild fire until half of the syrup remains.” (The Book of Gharabadin Salehi, lithograph 1776, pp 171-173)

While the benefits of the oxymel may seem incredible, it’s stunning simplicity is what allows this folk medicine to be so easy to make and use.

***Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. There is no licensure for herbalists. The material presented in this article is for informational, reference, and educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as a substitute for diagnosis and treatment by healthcare professionals.

References

“Make Infused Vinegar at Home for Gourmet Flavor on the Cheap”, Kris Bordessa (2019)

Folk Medicine: A New England Almanac of Natural Health Care from a Noted Vermont Country Doctor, D.C. Jarvis, M.D.

Henriette’s Herbal Homepage

“Drink to Your Health!”, D.K. Osborn (2015)

“Making Floral Oxymels”, Elaine Sheff (2019)

“Oxymel in Medieval Persia”, Arman Zargaran, et al (2012)

The post Making Oxymels: The Sweet-Tart Medicine appeared first on Homestead.org.