by Jenny Hauf I am sitting in my kitchen on a Sunday morning, having luxuriously slept in to the seventh hour. There are herbs neatly (well, relatively neatly) placed on shelves and in the brand new stillroom that we created from the worn out walk-in closet that used to house unused tennis rackets and jumbled canning materials. On the kitchen table are the remnants of wreath-making: sprigs of rosemary and thyme, dried gomphrena, statice, and strawflower stems, bits of wire and pliers. My last market of the year is in a few hours and I won’t be selling anything freshly harvested, only the fat of summer and fall’s harvests. There will be the green salve created with lush comfrey leaves of September mornings and the beautiful calendula of hot afternoons. Spilanthes tincture from when that magic eyeball plant was bounding over the edges of the bed, finding more soil to root in and land to spread eagle in. The wreaths are made of grapevines trimmed during my friend Coco’s prunings of fall, the flowers from her daughter Mal’s dewy harvests at the flower field at First Root Farm. This is the unthinkable: a morning spent at home before leaving at 10:15 to get to Harvard Square. Listening to the radio in my bathrobe. Barely thinking about the field, as the field’s asleep, covered in the comforts of straw and cardboard. The energy is all underground as winter slowly (too slowly) comes in. I’m going to a concert tonight, a pleasure rarely afforded during the months of tendriling, weeding, and harvesting. I’ll be seeing Joanna Newsom, who may sing a song of “the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating. Joy of life,” and to which I raise a glass of nettle beer and holler, yes! To life, but also to farming! To all of it trapped in jars and bottles and bags for winter. To the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating JOY of it. All the pain, all the hours spent doing one movement over and over. All the sun and all the sweat, the rain and the water, the gas station food, the butterflies. To the summer sounds of cars driving by, the leaves everywhere, the trees surrounding me in their shimmers of transition, their eventual undressing, their standing as sentries with such blessed bones and bark. To the moon lighting up a scene that made me guffaw when it was finally too late to work and I realized again that this place, ever so briefly, was mine to harvest and sow. To the crabgrass everywhere and the hands that helped me pull it, to the hands that helped me plant the white cloves of garlic, the huge bulbs of daffodils, the hands that shared picnics and sumac lemonade on long afternoons. To the stripping of chamomile flowers from stems on CSA mornings, to running around with an apron and a clipboard, to drinking coffee for the first time in months. To Paula Poundstone for making me laugh as I put the bags together, to Car Talk for cracking me up on the drive to Somerville, to Ira Glass for making me misty eyed in Jamaica Plain. To the bees singing around tulsi inflorescences while I weeded and harvested in heaven. To the way that the swamp milkweed burst from its buds and silently waved its beauty of pinks and whites on the 4th of July. To sleeping too little and driving too much. To singing really loud in the car and alone in the field. To never having clean knees and crabgrass seeds getting in my hair. To wrapping California poppies in butcher paper and taking one thousand pictures of honeybees. To podcasts. To wildcrafting plantain and goldenrod, to climbing ladders to get to elderflowers. To wearing big boots and short shorts. To not showering. To dressing up and scrubbing almost all the dirt off. To meeting beautiful people. To slinging fertilizer in a good straw hat. To growing and dying and growing back. To resting all winter. To all of the defeating, the repeating, the outrageous Joy of it. To all of it, I give thanks. To all of it, you’re forever in my heart and the dirt of my knees. I’ll drink you in winter; I’ll see you in spring. After creating the medicinal herb program at Allandale Farm, Jenny is excited to be embarking on the second season of her own herb farm, Muddy River Herbals. She thrilled to be offering high quality, sustainably grown herbs to the people of eastern Massachusetts. For more information please visit her website or contact Jenny directly at muddyriverherbals(at)gmail(dot)com for ordering inquiries and herb availability. Muddy River's herbal CSA is currently accepting new members so please visit the website for details. by Juliette Abigail Carr
It seems like folks have a hard time making a really good milky oats tincture. When I teach advanced tincture making, we always discuss past “failures” or at least tinctures that didn’t turn out how students expected, since there is more space to learn from our mistakes than from easy successes. Milky Oats is one that comes up often, so I’m going to explain the little tricks to growing it and making medicine. Oat (Avena sativa) is beloved as a restoring, nutritive nervine tonic (medicine whose effects build slowly over time). In women’s health we cherish oat for its properties as a mineral rejuvenator and protector against adrenal exhaustion -- goodbye postpartum depression! Hello restful sleep, coping skills, and an end to feeling stretched too thin, exhausted, and sapped of vitality. As an antidepressant nervine it has a grounding, moistening effect for folks who feel burnt out, dried up, and frazzled. It is a nurturing rejuvenator to the nervous system and adrenal glands, kidney and liver function, and it restores the minerals your body needs for your heart, muscles, bones, and nerve transmission to work well. It bestows a feeling of general well-being to those of us lucky enough to bask in its welcoming green glow. As is common, the tea is a gentler, more long-term builder known for its mineral-related actions, while the tincture is stronger and more known for antidepressant and nervine actions. by Jenny Hauf of Muddy River Herbals
A few days ago I met my land. I’ll call it mine even though it’ll only be in my fingernails and on my nose and knees for three growing seasons. Just three—three unfurling springs, three emerald summers, three golden falls, three wild winters. The assignment of the land, in my business partner’s words, was a gift; the walk of it, where I gamboled like a lamb, a blessing. We collected fragments of soil to mix and bag for a soil test, and every step, each probe into the earth, held an exaltation, a desire, a promise, and a prayer. A prayer to the mud: let us love you and be loved back. Let us give to you and gather what you offer. Let us build you up with minerals and straw and compost. Let us take from you leaves for tea and flowers for love. |
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