No, this post does not have to do with herbs giving you gas 🙂 …

We had another mini snow on our land. It seems that weather always hits our mountain harder than anywhere else around here. When it is windy, the wind blows harder on us. When it rains, we get an inch more. When it snows, it will have melted everywhere else and we will still have 2 inches on our ground. So, this whole winter, Toby and I have talked about getting a 4-wheel drive to be able to manage the road up to the house. Now, it’s almost spring and we may have made it through the worst of it. Still those subarus are tempting. I really didn’t want to get a gas car, ’cause it feels like going backwards. We run both of our vehicles off of bio-diesel, and straight vegetable oil when we can. Then I thought, well, if we got a subaru, we could run it off of ethanol. Still, if we look at the even bigger picture, even if ethanol is ‘better for the environment’ pollution-wise, it is still made from big business, mono-crop, pesticide infused corn. And even if Biodiesel is less polluting, it is still made from big business GMO, mono-crop, pesticide infused Soy. So, what is the best way to travel distances (if walking and biking aren’t an option)? I may look into a solar car in the future. At least for around town.

I’ve got two classes to teach this week. One is at the herb school. We have a 6 week “intro to herbs” class going right now and I am teaching the section on Women’s health. I’m also teaching a class for the Asheville Garden Club! I’m really excited about this one. They want me to come and talk for 30-45 minutes about my favorite herbs to grow in the garden and make teas with!! I’ve really gotten to enjoy teaching, but this will be a fun and welcome break for teaching A&P, and advanced herbalism. I want to do this again in the summer when we can actually get out in the garden and see, smell, and taste the herbs.

The weather around here, other than the snow today, has been amazingly warm. In the 50’s and 60’s and sunny! So, I took a walk around the land to see what has started peeking out of the ground, and guess what… I found the nettles that I planted last year. I didn’t think it made it through the summer. Not only did it make it, but it repopulated a large area of my stream bank!! I’m so excited! I can’t wait until it gets big enough to make some nettle casserole! I also found my comfrey, valerian, and some mushrooms peeking out. Yay for spring! It’s almost here!!

Hey, have any of you gotten into that new NBC show ‘HEROES’? Toby downloaded the first few episodes and now we are hooked!!

Whew!! Finally done, and I’m beat! Friday, we had a Ribbon Cutting with the Asheville Chamber of Commerce and about a dozen people showed. Then Saturday, we had our official grand opening and lots of people came. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I finally sat down and felt my feet pounding. But, it all went fantastic. Everyone gave great reviews of the place and were amazed at what we have done so far. It feels really good in here!

lots of pictures to follow Continue reading »

Common Names: Ginger

Scientific Name: Zingiber officinale

Family: Zingiberaceae (1 of over 1400 species in this family, which includes Turmeric and Cardamom.)
Continue reading »

We have blue eggs! It’s really hard to tell from the pictures, but there are lots of different shades of brown, and one very light green/blue. yeah!

Oh! We are scheduled to dig the footers and start pouring the foundation next week! We’ve already gotten two loads of wood for the framing, a load of insulation, and cement and sand on the way!! Progress!!! I love it!

Filling Jars for the apothecary. This is my good friend and business partner, Nikki, with the help for the herb fairy who was flying around our clinic.

Toby built us our fantastic apothecary shelves!

Here I am stocking the shelves… What a wonderful moment!!

And, the final shelves! We actually need more room, and may have to build more shelves… I mean, we have to have room for the vanilla beans and the cocoa nibs, right?

Oh, so at least two of the chickens are laying now… Rudy, and we think Faye, but Spike was in there squawking this morning and may be getting ready to pop one out!

Happy New Year to all of you!!!

Look!! We have eggs! Well, 3 so far, over the last 7 days. There was a white feather in the nest, so I think it may be Faye (the speckled sussex) who is laying. Hopefully the others will follow shortly. Here is a picture of the egg. It is the little one on the right. The one on the left is a store bought one. So, they are much smaller right now.

Here’s the egg being cooked. It’s the one in the middle. See how much darker the yolk is…

Here are a couple of pictures from holiday festivities. Kaia in her new fashion hat, and dressed as a butterfly, singing to her new slinky.

Well I talked with an expert chicken lady 🙂 and she said that because we live on the north side of a mountain and the chickens are only getting ~10 hours of light a day, that we may not get eggs for another month…  She said that their ‘sisters’ are probably laying already because they live in town, probably get slightly longer days, and may even get a little laying stimulation from street lights.   Hmmm… I hadn’t thought about the difference in daylight times here vs where they came from.

The bees are still alive… Toby went into the hive the other day when it got in the 70’s here and they were hoppin’  Maybe we will actually get honey next year…

I’m having a hard time being at the house right now and sometimes I feel like just selling everything and moving to a house in the city.  I’m feeling pretty clastrophobic.  We’ve been in there for 6 months and I know we have another year+, but I have to admit to myself that I am not a pioneering, camping kinda girl.  I hoped I would be when we moved in there.  But, you know, for most of my life I’ve never lived in anything smaller than 1800 square feet!  (And the houses I grew up in were 3000 and 6000 square feet!!)  So, no matter how much stuff we had we always had room.  Now, we have dwindled our comfort living stuff down to very little, but we still have piles of stuff everywhere.  I feel like pushing the walls down just to get some breathing air.  I think Toby was hoping that this new office space would help ease some of these feelings, but now, all I really want to do is stay at the office.  There is hot water and a shower… lights that I can flick on with a switch instead of having to go out and refill them with gas and then listen to their constant, loud humm while they are on.  Everything I try to do doesn’t take twenty extra steps to complete it.  Kaia keeps asking to just sleep at the office so that we don’t have to go home.  I completely realize that compared to most of the world, I still lead a pretty cush life.  But, it is also a very foreign lifestyle to me and I am trying to figure out how to get myself through the next year without turning into a complete nut case.

So, I am looking for some hand made products to stock the small retail space we will have at Viriditas.  We hope to have soaps, herbal crafts and body care, slings, handmade journals, pottery, candles, art work, something like “blabla dolls” and handmade fairy wings would be nice too.  If any of you are doing stuff like this, email me!!  I would love to carry things from people I know… blog-wise…

I’ve always seen myself as a fairly laid back person, and I dream of the day when I can relax in my tub, or on my couch and just read a book or knit or something. But, I think I have to admit to myself that I am one of those people who never stops going! I love having projects to do! On that note, here’s a run down of our latest happenings.

Well, there’s Viriditas (www.viriditashealing.com). We have rented a house for our space and spent this past weekend painting the whole thing (white walls just won’t do:-)). We hope to open the doors in 2007 for herbal consultations, formulations, and education. We will also have some people renting space (probably a yoga instructor, energy healer, and massage therapists). Today, I put in an order for almost 100 pounds of herbs!! Yahoo!!

The house plans are going well. We marked the site this weekend and should be pouring the foundation in a few weeks. Toby officially quits his job as of Jan 1st and will work full time on the house. Toby is really excited about getting started!
The chickens aren’t laying yet! They are almost 25 weeks old, and I’ve told them that it will be into the fryer with them if they don’t start earning their keep. 🙂 Not really, but I’m really excited about fresh eggs.

I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of stuff, but I feel like the energizer bunny right now!!

I’ve been learning a little about Hildegard von Bingen! Have you heard of her? What an amazing woman! She was a nun, artist, musician, herbalist, and visionary. She coined the word “Viriditas” (from the latin for green and truth). It basically means that there is presence of divine in everything green. She said that the presence of God was in the plants and that was why they healed. She also felt that we were all a part of a circle/cycle (not something looked highly upon by her church, who believe in the hierarchy of Trinity…Man…animal… earth (or something like that). She thought that the moist, juiciness of the plants showed their health and that if we are all moist and juicy, then we are filled with the presence of God. I’m not very religious, but I love the concept… whether you believe in God, Source, Spirit, whatever… we all hold the knowledge of the cycle of life and death (we just need to get back in touch with it). Cool, eh? I hear Hildegard use to sign all her correspondences with “May we all stay moist and juicy” hehe I bet that drove the church crazy!!

So, we may name our clinic “Viriditas…”

PS no eggs yet…

Getting sick of those multi-level marketing scams claiming instant health and the fountain of youth??

Check this out!  HAHAHA!!

Toby and I finally got a little ‘date’ time yesterday. We decided to go see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.  We were told by numerous people that it was absolutely hysterical!  I have to say I didn’t care for it.  There was one wrestling scene that I thought was pretty funny, but otherwise, I was kind of offended.  I can understand why Kazakhstan is so enraged.  There were a few jokes here and there at the expense of Americans, but the movie really made kazakhstan look like a country of backward thinking, racist, idiots.  I have to say, I am ready for Americans to be nice to the rest of the world!

OK, so I was reading Culpepper’s Complete Herbal… for fun (I know, pretty nerdy 🙂 and I thought I would pass along some of his words of wisdom.  (Or at least those things that got me laughing out loud and confirmed to my husband that I am truly a complete herb geek!)

For those of you who haven’t heard of Culpepper, he was a 17th century physician, herbalist, and astrologer…

In his description about Angelica (Angelica archangelica), he says:
“In time of heathenism, when men had found out any excellent herb, they dedicated it to their god, as the baytree to Apollo, the oak to Jupiter, the vine to Bacchus, the poplar to Hercules.  These the papists following as the patriarchs, they dedicated to their saints; as our lady’s thistle to the Blessed Virgin, At. John’s wort to St. John, and another wort to St. Peter, etc… Our physicians must imitate like apes, though they cannot come off half so cleverly, for they blasphemously call tansies, or heart’s ease, an herb for the Trinity, because it is of three colours; and a certain ointment an ointment of the Apostles, because it consists of twelve ingredients.  Alas!  I am sorry for their folly, and grieved at their blasphemy.  God send them wisdom the rest f their age, for they have their share off ignorance already.  Oh!  Why must ours be blasphemous, because the heathens and papists were idolatrous?  certainly they have read so much in old rusty authors, that they have lost all their divinity, for unless it were amongst the ranters, I never read or heard of such blasphemy.  The heathens and papists were bad, and ours worse; the papists giving names to herbs for their virtue’s sake, not for their fair looks…”

What a funny little man!!I love that he rants about how the herbs are named in his book!

Here’s another one:
“it is called Carduus Benedictus, or Blessed Thistle, or Holy Thistle.  I suppose the name was put upon it by some that had little holiness in themselves”

And of Wild Clary (Salvia horminum) he says:
“Wild clary is most blasphemously called Christ’s eye, because it cures diseases of the eye.  I could wish from my soul that blasphemy, ignorance, and tyranny were ceased among physicians, that they might be happy and I joyful.”

I found this interesting!
Here’s what he says about the Government and Virtues of Burdock:
“Venus challengeth this herb for her own:  and by its leaf or seed you may draw the womb which way you please, either upward by applying it to the crown of the head in case it falls out; or downwards in fits of the mother, by applying it to the soles of the feet:  or if you would stay it in its place, apply it to the navel, and that is one good way to stay the child in it.”

Ok, that’s it for my 17th century herbal education…

Well, the chickens are now 20 weeks old and no eggs yet.  I think that with the cold weather and shorter days, they may not start really laying until the spring.  We’ll see.

Sweetie gets out of the pen on a daily basis.  Yesterday, I found her up in a dogwood tree, trying to entice the other chickens to fly on up!  She is such a rebel!  I am worried that she will get hurt, but Suki seems to ignore her.  In fact, Suki has been breaking into the pen but not for the chickens.  I found her in there the other day… chickens on one side and suki on the other, by the food!  It seems that Suki thinks she is a chicken and needs to eat scratch.  I certainly don’t mind throwing Suki a little scratch if it means she will leave the chickens alone 🙂

Here is the info on the Roots Fest for those of you near the Asheville area:
Saturday, October 14th from 11-6 in the French Broad Food Coop lot. There will be a kids booth, interactive booth, free classes, vendors, and lots of herbal information.

And here are my recipes:
Scrumptious Root Recipes
(Taste tested and approved by Kaia, age 3)

Granny’s Root Beer:
-Place 2 Cinnamon sticks, 1 Tablespoon Anise seeds, 3/4 oz Sarsaparilla root, and 1/4 oz Sassafras root into a pot.
-Cover with 3 cups of water.
-Bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer.
-Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half (i.e. You have 1-1/2 cups left).
-Strain off the herbs and add 1 cup Honey to the liquid, mixing well.
-Store this syrup in an airtight jar and refrigerate.
-To use: Place 3 tablespoons of syrup in 8 oz of sparkling water, mix well and enjoy!

Old-Fashioned Ginger Ale:
-In a pot, add 2 cups fresh, chopped Ginger root to 3 cups of water.
-Bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer.
-Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half (i.e. You have 1-1/2 cups left).
-Strain off the herbs and add 1 cup Honey to the liquid, mixing well.
-Store this syrup in an airtight jar and refrigerate.
-To use: Place 2-3 tablespoons of syrup in 8 oz of sparkling water, mix well and enjoy!

June, I like your recipe! I use to use my juicer too, but now that I have to crank the generator for electricity, I decided it might be easier to make a syrup 🙂

Homemade Marshmallows:
(From Lesley Tierra’s “A Kid’s Herb Book”)
-Preheat the oven to 275 degrees
-Separate 2 eggs, keeping the whites. Beat the whites until very foamy, and not quite stiff.
-Beat in 1/2-teaspoon vanilla.
-Slowly beat in 1/2-cup sugar, 1 teaspoon at a time.
-Beat in 2 tablespoons of Marshmallow root powder (Althea officinalis).
-Drop mixture using a teaspoonful at a time on the cookie sheet.
-Bake one hour.
-Remove from the sheet and let cool. Eat and Enjoy.
-To store, tightly cover and place in the refrigerator for several days.