Submitted by Jenny Hauf of Allandale Farm. When last I wrote winter was everywhere, piled thickly on medians and hilled at the edges of parking lots. There’s still a lot of snow out there, but this glorious thaw is loosing it and putting my mind in overdrive. It’s time to move into the next step of herb garden planning! A drawing by Laura Grover of my urban herb garden in March. If you’ve not yet read part one of this series, An Introduction to Growing Urban Herbals, I encourage you to do so. After you’ve read it and made yourself acquainted with your space, soil and light conditions, and the plants that you want to grow, you’re ready to get serious and make…a map! It’s easy to go crazy in your first year of gardening. Like a new love, everything about the garden is blissfully overwhelming. It’s great to have that feeling of rapture, but it can quickly grow messy—and expensive—as you indulge in more plants than your containers and borders can handle. Drawing out a simple diagram will help you to understand the vast possibilities and important limitations intrinsic to your space. Use a tape measure so that it’s to scale and make it as detailed as possible. Once you have a nice map to reference, begin adding to it. Draw in the plants that you’d like to grow. It’s helpful to make a few copies of your original map so that you can create several drafts of the garden. Tell the paper everything you want and it will show you all that you can have. This kitchen garden will have herbs bordering beds of vegetables. Planning a garden requires a combination of aesthetics and practicality. The aesthetics come in the arranging of rich marriages, flings, and flirtations between your plants. The practicalities come with a set of useful rules.
The last step in preparing your garden for planting is amending the soil. Check the results of your soil test and mark what your soil needs. This wonderful UMass site breaks down your test results and shows you how to give your soil what it wants. Once you can work the ground these amendments, as well as good quality compost, should be applied. (If you put compost on your garden last year there’s no need to add more now.) Remember that many herbs prefer a soil that is somewhat “poor,” so combine the information from UMass with this link that I shared last month. Please feel free to ask any questions or offer your own tips in the comments section. You can also contact me through my website. And quickly, a joke. What’s a pirate’s favorite medicinal herb? Arrrrnica! (Which you can start from seed right now! Just sow it in some fine seeding mix, stick it in the fridge for 1-3 weeks, and move it to a cool, sunny place to germinate.) See you in April! Jenny Hauf is a medicinal herb grower and writer living in Boston. She began using herbal medicine a decade ago, and has been tending to herbs on farms and gardens since 2006. Jennifer is the herb grower at Allandale Farm, and when not elbow-deep in dirt she writes about urban ecology at her blog, Spokes and Petals, spins wool and bicycle tires, and occasionally hammers out a tune on her banjo. She is also available for gardening consultations, workshops, and freelance work. Submitted by Michael Blackmore of Mad Crow Herbals. Stop! Step away from those herbs…yes, I mean you. I know this is a blog for an herbal festival and so it is all about herbalism, but I just want to make the case for not taking herbs – at least every once and a while. It is pretty easy to get in the habit of always incorporating all the wonderful plant friends into our daily lives – teas, tinctures, capsules, etc. But sometimes I think it is good to take a break from it all every now and then. Too often, we tend to think of ourselves as static instead of dynamic. When in fact, we change from year to year, season to season, and even day to day as our world changes, our lives change and even the weather changes. I find it helpful to take a break from time to time and see what is truly going on in the body. What changes have happened? Is there a new normal? Sometimes you can more profoundly recognize the effects of different herbs and what different combination are having on you when you aren’t taking them. Herbal Kitty knows to take an herbal break once in a while… Taking a break and then trying a new herb or re-visiting one that you never really connected with before can be a powerful experience. And one always worth exploring. You may find a new herbal best friend or re-visit a long lost one! More importantly, you may learn something about yourself in the process. One of the hazards of plant love is that we can begin to see the world through narrowed “herbal” colored glasses. Just like that old piece of wisdom, Maslow’s hammer – if all you do is hammer than everything looks like a nail. You can see yourself, family, friends and customers and clients no longer as full individuals but as nails requiring an herbal hammer. I see it all the time on line in places like Facebook, when a simple observation about a momentary mood, event in day, physical ache, pain etc. – invokes a torrent of “herbal” fixes from my many online herbal friends. I generally just smile, roll my eyes and think “bless their well-meaning hearts” but sometimes things just are and they pass. It is part of living life, impermanence and being. Trying to “fix” things through herbs can be just as bad as the over-medicating that seems to be an epidemic in mainstream Western medicine. Herbs: feel free to use and love them. Share that love with others. But take a break from time to time to be not so attached. Then you can learn more about yourself and others while remembering to truly see people and be with them and not just see objects to be “herbaled.” Just my own insane .02 Michael “Mad Crow” Blackmore is an herbal educator who loves spending time with his plant friends in joyful play. He shares that joy with others through his writing and teaching, including the occasional blogging at his site Mad Crow Herbalism. Submitted by Nathaniel Putnam of Psymposia. The divine drink which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food. Hernan Cortes, 1528 The winter season is a time for hot cocoa and with Valentine’s Day around the corner, there is more to chocolate than just a sweet treat. Chocolate has many medicinal uses for the body and the mind, as a cardiac stimulant, an appetite suppressant, neurotransmitter enhancer, antioxidant and an aphrodisiac. However, the experience that one gets from eating a Hershey’s mlik chocolate bar versus drinking a brew of raw cacao is truly different. Raw cacao is the dried seeds of the tree Theobroma cacao. The seeds or “beans” are found in the cacao pod that falls from the tree when ripe. The beans are surrounded by a clear/white sweet pulp. This pulp can be eaten as a delicacy but that is a story for another time. The beans are scooped from the pod, and left to ferment and dry in the sun for a several weeks. This process changes the beans from a purple to brown color and the dried beans store better for trade and transport. Each pod contains about 20-50 beans, enough for 3-4 dark chocolate bars. A Sweet History The Swedish scientist, Carl von Linnaeus named the tree Theobroma cacao from the Greek words, “theo”, for god and “broma”, for food. The use of cacao dates back at least to 2,000 BCE and scholars have found drinking vessels from the pre-Mayan civilization, the Olmec, inscribed with “ka-ka-wa”. The word “chocolate” was most likely a word coined by the Spanish during the early conquests so it became known as “xocolatl”, a combination of the Mayan word, xococ (sour, bitter) and the Aztec word, atl (water). To the indigenous communities of Central and Latin America, the chocolate tree provided a cash crop that was used as currency, a tradition documented by Columbus and his crew. One cacao bean could be used to purchase a large tomato or a freshly picked avocado, 100 beans could get you a turkey and 30 would by you a small rabbit. Powdered cacao beans are still used as a drink in modern Central America but the taste is different from the Dutch cocoa that you are used to buying at most grocery stores. The Dutch cocoa is processed using a method patented in 1828 by the chemist Coenaraad Johannes Van Houten in his search to make a new low fat powder. The powder is the pulverized form of a pressed cake that Van Houten made by squeezing the oils (fat) from the dried cacao beans. In order for his powder to mix well with water, Van Houten treated the powder with alkaline salts like potassium or sodium carbonates, a process known as “Dutching”. Most hot cocoa mix is often a combination of the bitter cacao bean powder mixed with refined sugar. The first chocolate bar was produced in 1879 by a Swiss chemist, Henri Nestle and Swiss candle-maker turned chocolatier, Daniel Peters. Nestle figured out the process for removing the water from milk to create a powdered form and Peters then added it to his chocolate. The bar was first marketed under the Peter’s/Cailler brand and later merged with Nestle in 1929. Chocolate in your Body Cacao bean powder contains over 50 chemical compounds, including epicatechins, histamine, magnesium, polyphenols, theobromine, and vitamin C. Of the all the phytochemicals in cacao, the antioxidants, theobromine and caffeine are the most abundant, about 1-3% by dried weight. A diet high in antioxidants is important for cleaning up free radical oxygen molecules that have been shown to damage DNA, promote premature aging, and contribute to an increase risk for heart disease and cancer. Dark chocolate contains more antioxidants, per gram, than fresh blueberries, blackberries and raspberries combined. The additions of sugar and dairy products lower the absorption of the antioxidants in the cacao bean so mix your cacao powder with water or a plant-based milk, like coconut, almond or hemp. Theobromine is a chemical found in about 19 species worldwide including plants like coffee, tea, yerba mate and kola nut. Theobromine stimulates the central nervous system, relaxes smooth muscles, dilates blood vessels and is a mild diuretic. The amount of caffeine in chocolate is small compared to coffee or tea. A 50 gram chocolate bar contains about 10-60 milligrams of caffeine whereas a cup of coffee has about 175 milligrams and a cup of tea varies from 25-100 milligrams. Themobromine and caffeine are more active when the cacao beans have been cooked or roasted and not in the raw nibs form. Chocolate on the Brain Cacao contains three psychoactive chemicals; anandamide, phenylethylamine, and tryptophan. Anandamide is known as the “bliss chemical”. It reacts on the same receptor as the THC molecule found in the cannabis plant but the effect is less powerful. High levels of anadamide can also be experienced as the great feelings of happiness that one gets after vigorous exercise, known as the “runner’s high”. Cacao also contains two anadamine inhibitors. These molecules slow the metabolism of anadamide and allow the feeling of well-being to stick around with us a little longer. Phenylethylamine (PEA) has been marketed as the “love chemical”. Chocolate can contain up to 2.2%. While scientific research has yet to confirm a direct “love” connection, PEA levels are higher in the brain when we fall in love, become sexually aroused and peak during an orgasm. PEA levels are lower in those suffering from depression. PEA increases the levels of dopamine and norepinepherine and affects mental concentration, positive attitude and joy. Tryptophan is an amino acid that aids in the production of seretonin. Cacao powder contains about 0.2%-0.5%. Tryptophan reacts in combination with vitamin B3, vitamin B6 and magnesium (also found in cacao) to form seretonin. Trytophan helps produce other neurotransmitters, like melatonin that promote sleep. Trytophan is heat sensitive, however, so eating raw cacao beans is best way to increase these animo acid levels. Cacao drinks are a major component of Central American shamanism and often in combination with ayahuasa, psilocybe mushrooms, cannabis and some species from the Leguminosae family. Recipes (adapted from Naked Chocolate by David Wolfe): In searching for cacao at the supermarket, there are few things to keep in mind:
Hot Chocolate (makes about 4 cups) 2 cups of almonds, soaked overnight 1/2 liter of water 4 tablespoons of raw cacao powder (nibs or beans) 2 tablespoon of raw agave nectar Blend half the water with the almonds. Pulverize and strain out liquids into another container. Put pulverized almonds back into blender and add remaining water. Blend and strain again. Combine about 1 pint strained almond milk with raw cacao powder and agave syrup. Add hot water for desired temperature, whisk and serve. Dark Chocolate Sauce 4 tablespoons of raw cacao powder (nibs or beans) 3 tablespoon of raw agave nectar ½ tablespoon coconut oil Mix all ingredients until blended. Add more agave for a syrup or coconut oil for a creamier texture. Chocolate Fudge (about 30-40 pieces) 1 cup of pitted dates, soaked in 1.5 cups of water for 1-2 hours 1 vanilla bean 2.5 cups of almonds 2 tablespoons of raw cacao powder (nibs or beans) ½ cup of dried shredded coconut Process all ingredients, including soak water in a food processor until smooth. Press into square pan lined with waxed paper. Freeze for two hours. Remove from freezer and slice into 1-2 inch pieces and place in freezer for at least another hour before serving. Nathaniel serves as the Educational Coordinator of the Medicinal Plant Program at UMass Amherst. He has traveled to over 15 countries and leads a field study course to Peru on the medicinal plants of the Amazon rainforest. He also writes about ethnobotany, with a focus on plants for mental health and use in psychotherapy. Nathaniel is co-founder of Psymposia, which will be held this year on April 12th & 13th at UMass Amherst. Submitted by Henry Kesner of Herbstalk. In my previous post I reviewed the golden rule of living with an herbalist, “Don’t touch my herbs before asking.” In this lesson on herbal life I had mentioned that what I mistakenly removed from the stove top was ultimately deposited in our kitchen compost container. As most of us are aware, composting has increasingly become part of our urban culture here in the US (and of course has been a natural part of farms, villages and rural life for generations). It is an excellent way to return nutrient rich organic scraps and material back to the soil and jump start our gardens and landscapes for the growing season. Ever since moving to the city I have composted. The process is simple enough. I keep a small container near the kitchen sink and empty all of my organic food scraps, egg shells and other compostables into it. When the container filled up every few days or so I would carry it outside and deposit the material into a large garden composting bin outside. As you can imagine, the space of an urban garden in the Boston area is limited and there is only so much one can do with their compost during a given season. Despite space restrictions, I had the process down to an art…no, a science. Over the course of my city-hood experience I had established the perfect ratio of organic food consumption to rate of backyard compost decomposition. Each time I filled my sink-side container, the outdoor bin had been churned and ready to welcome additional material. By the time spring and summer passed I had the compost churned into a perfect mix that was ready to be spread into my garden beds before winter, thus prepping the space for the following season. It was a thing of beauty. This was until the herbalist moved in. That once to twice a week trip to the outdoor compost bin quickly turned into a daily (sometime hourly!) ritual as I was carting out bucket by bucket-load of wet, dry, pressed, and chopped plant parts. One compost bin became two and the outdoor container filled beyond any semblance of peace and balance. It had exploded into a cornucopia of exhausted herbs. My perfect compost routine was thwarted and no longer was I able to keep pace with the herbalists’ herb scraps. But there is a happy ending to my tragic tale. The pounds and pounds of herbal teas and coffees and plant parts not only added a lovely, masking aroma to the compost heap but quickly turned the matter into rich soil that a true farmer could only dream of. By spring the compost developed its best consistency to date (minus a few rogue avocado pits…stop that please!) and the resulting mix helped produce my/our most vibrant backyard urban garden to date. Guess those herbs had some life left in them after-all. As a takeaway, by living with an herbalist not only will your compost pile grow, so will the beauty and complexity of your garden. Just buy/make a few more bins to handle the volume. You are going to need it… Henry Kesner is a founding member of Herbstalk, where he brings his event & operations management skills to the planning committee. For Henry, Herbstalk is a perfect way to educate a wide audience about the power, use, and wonder of the plants that surround us on a daily basis. Submitted by Felix Lufkin. Yucca is a perennial herb of the agave family. It is native to the American Southwest and Central America. It can tolerate low temperatures and prefers well drained, sunny, sandy sites. Because it was a staple edible and of its utility, yucca was a very important plant to the human societies who shared its range. For those of us who live in the northeast, it could play a more important role in our lives, if we only got to know it a little better. Yucca has a number of lily-like bladed, fibrous leaves, and a central flower stalk which can grow to 6′ or more. Its flowers are white, sweet smelling, and fruit to green, 3-sectioned pods full of small disk shaped, crinkly and flat black seeds. The fruits dry to a papery brown husk. All of its body parts are exceptionally useful to humans. Yucca root Its taproot, which looks like burdock, but fatter — is brown and smooth. In its native range it grows to a large size and is a prized starchy root veggie. Here in the north, where it grows more slowly, we probably shouldn’t eat its root unless we have a lot of it. The root is rich like a potato, good boiled, fried, or both. The root’s saponins (broken down by slow cooking) can be made into soap or anti-dandruff shampoo. Its leaves can be made into very strong rope. Some varieties, like ‘Adam’s needle’, have a sharp tip which can be peeled down the leaf, yielding a needle with a string already attached. Cut the leaves close to their base with a knife (just try to rip them!). Pound them between non-abrasive smooth rocks or rolling pins, until the green leafy part breaks away showing the paler fibers inside. Rinse this out periodically until you just have the fibers. Now twist as you would milkweed or anything else. You can also weave the split leaves into mats. Here’s a video on how to make cordage out of agave. fire-starting hand drill kit The stalks are one of the best materials for friction fires. Ever wanted to start a fire by rubbing sticks together? It is totally do-able, empowering, and straightforward! Yucca will be the easiest plant to try with. The stalks are green and flexible. When they dry to a brownish grey, cut or crack them off at the bottom. Cut as long of a straight piece as you can, and cut the lower, thicker end straight across. Cut off any side twigs that are sticking off and try to smoothen it up a bit as you’ll be rubbing this between your hands. This stalk can be used for a hand drill – try to get one as least as long as you arm. Shorter, hotdog sized stalks are good for bow-drill spindles, and once those get short, you can use the plugs for pump drills. Since yucca coals ignite at ~400 degrees lower than other woods they are much more generous for friction fires!Here’s a video about how to do this. The flower is an edible vegetable, though bitter to some. It can be blended into soapy water for cleaning or shampoo. The fruits can be peeled and baked for a vegetable. The seeds, gathered from the fruits, were once soaked, sprouted, and cooked as protein rich gruel by natives. We can do this too. Yucca is a great perennial, multi-function nectary addition to a garden, and is commonly planted in parks, graveyards and lawns. It slowly spreads. Because of its deep root, yucca can be hard to transplant unless you get deep under it with a spade. Keep your eyes peeled for it, and see if you can get to know it better by trying these skills. References: Plants for a Future database Wikipedia.com: Yucca angustifolium Felix Lufkin teaches nature class and wild edibles at K-12 schools, and is working to plant orchards and gardens in public places in the Pioneer Valley. He also offers an on-site butchering service and instruction in central New England. Submitted by Jenny Hauf of Allandale Farm. We’ve arrived at a point in human history where the majority of us live in cities. It can be easy, especially in this monochromatic season of winter, to see our metropolitan setting for only the breathless materials that surround us: asphalt, mortar, aluminum and brick. This environment, seemingly devoid of life, can threaten to overwhelm us. However, if we adjust our perception it gradually becomes apparent that fecund tenacity bursts everywhere within our cities. That exuberance presents itself in wild plants and animals, and also through the caring hands of the world’s millions of urban gardeners. This article is the first in a series aimed at helping the city dweller create and nurture an herb garden; one’s own temple of living urban beauty. Be it in a crate on the fire escape or in beds of geometric symmetry in the backyard, the healing powers of herbs transform ourselves and our environment. The idea of urban gardening can appear restrictive. However, cosmopolitan gardens have proven to be ideal palettes for botanical beauty and creativity. I heartily believe that everyone can have an herb garden. If you are interested in growing your own there are some simple steps you can take now to prepare for the glories of spring planting. First, consider the space available to you in which to grow your herbs. You’ll either be growing your garden in the earth or in containers—old bathtubs, wooden pallets, clay pots, et cetera. If you’re hoping to grow plants in the ground take a survey of your site’s soil. The best way to do this is to take a sample during a thaw and send it to a lab. (My Boston soil is tested at UMass.) Soil testing is especially important in urban areas due to the presence of lead and other contaminants. It is also useful for understanding the chemical, elemental, and organic makeup of your garden, and for determining your soil pH. (Most herbs will grow well in pH levels between 6.5 and 7.) For more information on healthy soil for growing herbs, click here. Next, consider how your garden is lit. Is it sunny? And if it is now, in February, will it remain so in July? Take into account surrounding trees (which will eventually leaf out), buildings, and anything else that may keep the sun from reaching your garden. Remember that the slant of the sun changes throughout the seasons, and also note the direction that your garden faces; if an oak is at its north end but the garden is free from obstructions in the south, the location should do just fine. Most herbs like to grow in “full sun,” which is defined as at least six hours of direct sunlight. However, if you do not have sunny areas to work with don’t fret—there are herbs that will grow well in partial and even full shade. Lastly, you’ll want to start dreaming and scheming about what it is that you’d like to grow. We’ll dive deeper into this subject next time, but for now consider what you’re hoping to get out of your plantings: teas? Salves? Culinary seasonings? Acquaint yourself with your growing zone, which generally dictates what you can grow naturally out-of-doors. Pour over seed catalogues like Horizon and research different types of herbal and urban gardens (many of which I’ve collected on here). And go to the library! Some great books to look up are: Homegrown Herbs: A Complete Guide to Growing, Using, and Enjoying More than 100 Herbs McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting. See you next month—four weeks closer to spring! Jenny Hauf is a medicinal herb grower and writer living in Boston. She began using herbal medicine a decade ago, and has been tending to herbs on farms and gardens since 2006. Jennifer is the herb grower at Allandale Farm, and when not elbow-deep in dirt she writes about urban ecology at her blog, Spokes and Petals, spins wool and bicycle tires, and occasionally hammers out a tune on her banjo. She is also available for gardening consultations, workshops, and freelance work. Fire Cider Awareness Week, we offer you a few recipe variations of this much-loved traditional herbal remedy. It has been a staple of herbalists for generations. Vinegar-based tonics like fire cider and vinegar shrubs have been making a come-back as of late. What was once perceived as an old-fashioned remedy is now becoming a practical pantry staple in contemporary kitchens. And rightly so – there are many wonderful health benefits of herb-infused vinegars. Fire Cider, for instance, with it’s potent combination of warming and immune-stimulating herbs is fantastic for helping you stay healthy and strong during cold and flu season. Garlic and onions, with their sulfur-rich compounds provide an anti-bacterial and anti-viral punch, while cayenne, ginger and horseradish are warming, circulatory herbs that get your blood moving. Fire Cider is useful if you feel a winter bug starting to take hold – take a small glassful of it every few hours to increase your resistance. One of our most beloved herbal elders, Rosemary Gladstar, published her now-famous fire cider recipe decades ago. Rosemary has been teaching about traditional herbal medicine for most of her life and has freely shared many of her recipes with the herbal community with a profound effect. One of her most popular and iconic recipes is Fire Cider, which is a simple recipe that is easy to make at home. It is as follows (shared from the Sage Mountain website): Fire Cider
Chop fresh garlic, onions, and horseradish into small pieces. Grate fresh ginger. The amounts and proportions vary according to your particular taste.. If unsure, start with equal amounts of the first three ingredients and roughly half part ginger the first time you make this; you can always adjust the flavors in future batches. Chop enough of the first four ingredients to fill a quart jar approximately half full. Put in wide mouth quart jar and cover with apple Ccder vinegar (keep vinegar about two to three inches above the herbs). Add cayenne to taste (just a small amount or it will be too hot!). Let sit two to three weeks. Strain and discard spent herbs. Add honey to taste (add the honey after you strain the rest of the herbs). Watch a video of Rosemary making Fire Cider here. There are many ways to be creative with this recipe and make it your own. Some people add in herbs like turmeric, schisandra or hibiscus. Some add in fruits. I enjoy this red-hued recipe of Juliet Blankespoor.Mountain Rose offers a recipe that involves rosemary, and also suggests additions/substitutions such as peppercorn, rosehips and burdock. Kiva Rose developed a variation for sensitive stomachs, sans cayenne peppers and with beautiful additions of herbs like hawthorn and basil. The possibilities really are endless. So, here’s to this lovely and practical remedy, and to our herbal elders who have passed it down to us from generation to generation! We thank the countless guardians of traditional herbal medicine who have made the knowledge of recipes like this available to us all. Submitted by Steph Zabel of Herbstalk Submitted by Felix Lufkin. Milkweed’s names in other European languages – ‘silk weed’ in German, ‘little cotton’ in Spanish, and ‘wadding herb’ in French – reveal the utility this plant once had to settlers. Her fibrous outer bark can be hand-twisted into a very strong string known as cordage. This can be doubled up into virtually unbreakable rope. Gathering and preparing cordage is easy – each stalk can make a foot or two of yarn-thick, 50+ lb.-test string. Two-ply milkweed cord can easily hold hundreds of pounds – a friend of mine once towed his truck with pinkie-thick cordage. Considering the sweat shop origins of the string we use daily, couldn’t we stand to take our relationship with local fiber sources more seriously? Milkweed fiber cordage If you’re a visual learner, check out this or a number of other videos on Youtube: Making cordage video on youtube with Chad Clifford. Gathering stalks: For cordage, harvest the dead, black milkweed stalks in the fall on a dry day after their fruits have ripened and the seeds are drifting away. Don’t wait until the winter as the weather will break down the fibers over time. Shake the seed fluff while harvesting to help spread them. If the stalks are damp, dry them before working. Tie unprocessed stalks together to store indefinitely. Milkweed seeds Processing stalks: To remove the fibers from the stalks, crack each stalk between thumb and fingers all the way along their length so the stalk can be split lengthwise, into two or more parts, using a finger. You’ll see the black, fibrous, papery outer skin, and the hard, pale, brittle inner bark. If we try to peel the fibers in strips from the inner bark, they will break into small lengths. The best way separate them is to crack the stalk, core side up, along its whole length in inch long increments with your fingers. Carefully peel each chunk of inner core out, piece by piece, yielding as long strips of fiber as possible. Processing fiber: Do as many stalks as you’d like, then gather all the fibers together and roll them in a ball back and forth (like clay) between your hands to remove the papery skin, which will flake off. This makes the cordage stronger. This fiber ball is great in tinder bundles for igniting coals. Tease the ball apart into a yarn-like length of uniform thickness, half as thick and twice as long you’d like the cordage to be – from thread sized to shoelace size. Don’t make it longer than two feet at a time or it will tangle. Roll this yarn between your hands the way you’d make a clay snake, until it’s contiguous and uniformly thick. Move a bit here and there if need be. Preparing cordage: Find the midpoint of the snake, and go a few inches to one side. Twist this between your fingers until it gets tight enough so it relaxes to a “support our troops” folded ribbon if you move your fingers together slightly. Twist the loop tight and pinch it with your non-dominant hand. Hold the string so its two halves aim outwards towards your other hand, at right angles to each other like the arms of the letter K – with a top one and a bottom one. Twisting the cordage – in three easy steps:
When you want to end, tie a knot. Keep in mind you will end up with cordage half as long as your original fibers. By doing this technique, the cordage comes out 20 times stronger than the original fibers. Doubling the cordage up (2-ply) and flipping the directions so as not to undo the original twists, will make it 400x as strong, then 8000x, and so on. You can use a lighter to quickly burn off the small fuzzy hairs if the cordage comes out ragged. Felix Lufkin teaches nature class and wild edibles at K-12 schools, and is working to plant orchards and gardens in public places in the Pioneer Valley. He also offers an on-site butchering service and instruction in central New England. Submitted by Henry Kesner of Herbstalk. Hello out there. Let me start by stating very clearly that I am not an herbalist, nor do I claim to be one. However, I do love plants and those who study and practice herbalism. It is through my encounters and exchanges with friends and the herbal community that I have developed a deeper appreciation of our natural world and the power of plants that surround us. That being said, there has been no greater teacher and guide to the herbal universe for me than my girlfriend, a practicing herbalist. We live together and through her daily rituals, cooking, tea making, and our conversations I have enjoyed 3-year crash course in herbalism. It is from this perspective that I would like to present to you here on the Herbstalk blog, an ongoing series that I have lovingly entitled “Living with an Herbalist.” I hope that my stories and observations will provide some insight, comfort and laughter to those who know, live with, and/or love an herbalist or herbalist-in-training. As you read some of my anecdotes, lists, realizations, etc., I hope that they may spark a story to share of your own. a typical scene on the kitchen table Part I: “Don’t Touch My Herbs” First rule of Fight Club is “Don’t talk aboutFight Club.” The first rule of living with an herbalist is “Don’t touch my herbs.” I know – it seems a little harsh but it is a golden rule to live by – no, survive by – when living with an herbalist. In any given day, at any given time there may be a new something bubbling, boiling, sitting, seeping, straining, or drying on your kitchen counter, stove top, or next to the sink. As someone who tries to keep the homestead nice and tidy, it is very tempting to clean and compost all the variety of plant materials accumulating around the kitchen. In one, typical instance I once encountered what seemed to be two-day old tea mixture sitting soggy in a pan on the stovetop. In a quick couple of motions I had the pan in my hands and the tea remains into our compost container. It was a swift, noble attempt to get rid of clutter, or so I thought… Wrong! a typical scene on the stovetop No sooner did the saturated herbs enter the compost bin did my girlfriend appear in the kitchen in search of the said herbs in order to reapply water and regenerate her tea concoction. “Where are my herbs?…” she inquired. And with my hands still in the compost pail, she knew the travesty that had just occurred. “Hey! Please don’t touch my herbs. Never touch my herbs before asking…” It was another good deed gone awry but in my guilt I learned something that fateful day. As all good herbalists will say, there are many ways to tease out the good, nurturing essence of every plant part. Herbal work does not have to be allotted a given time frame; it is at the mercy of the plant itself and what energy it holds. As someone who prides himself on eating everything on his plate, wearing out his clothes into rags, and in general avoiding waste at all cost, I too should keep in mind the enduring power and use of herbs – dried, wet, or otherwise. I also learned that when living with an herbalist and you see something in the kitchen, say something. Simply ask, “Are you still working with these herbs?” Chances are that those herbs have something left in ‘em after all. Henry Kesner is a founding member of Herbstalk, where he brings his event & operations management skills to the planning committee. A huge fan of the natural world, he has always found ways to serve as a voice for plants and animals of all kinds. For Henry, Herbstalk is a perfect way to educate a wide audience about the power, use, and wonder of the plants that surround us on a daily basis. Submitted by Felix Lufkin Milkweed in flower Milkweed (Asclepias spp.) is a great wildflower to make friends with – offering a number of delightful, tasty and nutritious foods at many times of the year. She is a well-kept secret and it’s time more people got to know her better. An early succession plant, milkweed seeds sail with the wind to new areas where landslides, fires, beavers, humans, or insects have recently killed an area of late succession forest. They provide habitat and food for many insects like bees, butterflies and spiders, as well as their predators. Many pollinators enjoy milkweed’s sweet nectar, and her leaves are the sole source of food for Monarch butterfly children (who make their own poison, not by concentrating milkweed’s sap, which is not poisonous on its own). Milkweed stalks Milkweed is a perennial herb growing 4-6 feet high. Each year her stalks poke out of the ground in the spring – smooth skinned with opposite, simple, ovoid leaves with smooth edges and reddish veins. Her sap is bright white, containing sticky latex, recognizable in spring from the wound of a gently torn leaf. Flower buds appear in May as clusters of small pale green buds, maturing to large, plum sized clusters, pink to purple in color, each the size of a wild blueberry and looking like a small origami package. They open into firm and neat, white and pink, 5-petaled flowers resembling gummy starfish slightly smaller than M&Ms with a delightful, sweet jasmine fragrance. Harvested buds Once pollinated the flowers become tiny, pale green, gherkin-like fruits, growing in size to fat okra pods in August. Spiny and soft, they are filled with soft white unripe seeds, like spaghetti squash. The pods ripen later in the fall, getting tougher and when open reveal a multitude of fruits folded together – each a small tuft of silk with a brown and black seed attached looking like a flattened tick. As the pods die, the seeds drift out and can be blown great distances by the wind. After settling, the seeds drops off the silk, spending winter under the dead grass and hatching in the spring. Thus, the plant’s body spreads across the Earth. By November the above ground portion dies, drying to a pale black with grey and white streaks, bare of leaves, and stands as a skeleton stalk for a while before falling down to the earth again. Mature milkweed pods Most field guides warn about milkweed’s bitter taste and poisonous constituents. Sam Thayer, in ‘A Forager’s Harvest’ , clarifies this as a case of mistaken identity where foraging hero Euell Gibbons gathered a ‘mess’ of dogbane, and even after many changes of boiling water, pronounced it unpalatable. Since then, other authors have perpetuated this misconception. Thanks to Thayer, folks are rediscovering milkweed as a delicious vegetable as tender and tasty as spinach – requiring no special processing or boiling to remove bitterness (of which there is none), or toxicity (of which there is none). Comparing milkweed to its toxic cousin dogbane is easy. Dogbane’s central stalk branches into several sub stalks, where milkweed’s is single and straight. Dogbane’s stalks are thinner like pencils and are green to reddish brown – while milkweed’s are thicker, like magic markers with green skin in summer and black in the winter. Dogbane’s compound flowers are more dispersed, empty and whitish yellow, while milkweed’s are pink and purple and fairly compact. Dogbane’s fruit is thin and long like vanilla beans, milkweed’s are thick and fat like okra. Dogbane’s leaves are thin, short and bitter where milkweed’s are wide, long, and pleasant tasting. Milkweed flowers Dogbane flowers Milkweed is food – delicious cooked or raw, and safe to eat without any processing.
Milkweed, Part 2: String & Rope will be posted next week… Felix Lufkin teaches nature class and wild edibles at K-12 schools, and is working to plant orchards and gardens in public places in the Pioneer Valley. He also offers an on-site butchering service and instruction in central New England. |
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