Healing Wise

Yarrow

Yarrow

(Achellia millefolium)

This lovely perennial weed is grown in many herb gardens for it has a multitude of uses. Cut the flowering tops (use only white-flowering yarrow) and use your alcohol to make a strongly-scented tincture that you can take internally to prevent colds and the flu. (A dose is 10-20 drops, or up to 1 ml).
I carry a little spray bottle of yarrow tincture with me when I'm outside and wet my skin every hour or so. A study showed Yarrow tincture to be more effective than DEET at repelling ticks, mosquitoes, and sand flies.
You can also make a healing ointment with yarrow flower tops and your oil or fat. Yarrow oil is antibacterial, pain-relieving, and incredibly helpful in healing all types of wounds.

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Susun talks about Red Clover

Susun talks about Red Clover.
A clip from:
🌱 The Red Clover Conference - May 1 - 7, 2024 🌱

Join fifteen deeply green herbalists as we share our decades of personal and clinical experiences, thoughts, visions, and uses of red clover — and her sisters, white clover, crimson clover, and sweet clover (Melilotus).
🌱

 

~ Live and lifetime video access before May 1 for only $50.
(After May 1st - $89)
🌱
www.wisewomanschool.com/p/red-clover-con

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Red clover Infusion

Red clover Infusion

Susun makes red clover nourishing herbal infusion. Red clover blossom infusion is one of the world's best remedies for infertility. It is highly regarded as an anti-cancer remedy. It is considered safe for consumption by pregnant and lactating women. The high vitamin content of red clover blossoms, combined with the folic acid in the leaves is especially helpful to sperm and egg production and helps prevent birth defects. Red clover's high mineral and trace mineral content helps restore and maintain good production of hormones. Its profuse and exceedingly absorbable calcium and magnesium help rejuvenate and repair the delicate tissues of reproduction.

 

 

🌺
Join us to learn about Red Clover at:
The Red Clover Conference: May 1 - 7, 2024
🌱
Registration is open!
~ Live and lifetime video access to The Red Clover Conference is $89.
~ Register before May 1 for only $50.
www.wisewomanschool.com/p/red-clover-con

🌱

Wise Woman Center

🌱 Learn in person with Susun at the Wise Woman Center. 🌱
It's almost spring! That means classes, workshops, work exchanges and more!

Here's the upcoming schedule:
APRIL
April 13-14: Work-exchange Weekend
April 19: Moonlodge
April 20: Woodland Wonders Hands-on: Meet ramps, coptis, dwarf ginseng, bloodroot, hepatica, and more
April 21: Spring Tonics Hands-on: Make nettle soup and a wild salad; find brassicas, alliums, sweet birch

MAY
May 7: Shamanic Herbal Apprentices, Late Spring Group begins
May 11-12: Work-exchange Weekend
May 17: Moonlodge
May 18: Herbal Pain Relief: Ally with cannabis, skullcap, poppies, St. Joan’s wort, arnica, sweet clover
May 19: Your Herbal Garden Hands-on: Best herbs to grow, best weeds to “cultivate,” free herbs for you to plant
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See Full schedule and get registered now:
www.susunweed.com/EventsCalendar.htm
🌱

Are You Ready for Winter?

Are You Ready for Winter?
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Here come the colder, darker, often sicker, days of the year. Are you ready?
Colds, coughs, flu, stuffy and runny noses, and fevers are the most common winter miseries. To counter and deal with them, I need anti-infective, anti-viral, soothing, and immune enhancing herbs.

A mainstay of preparedness is having plenty of anti-infective herbal remedies on hand to prevent and treat colds, flu, and fevers. Two of my favorites are echinacea and yarrow. I also use Phytolacca (poke).

Yarrow is best tinctured in the summers, while in full flower. I never make this remedy with dried herb; it is too bitter and too harsh for me. But yarrow doesn't mind frost, and an excellent anti-infective tincture can be made with the large leaves available now. Herbalist Gretchen Gould prefers the autumn leaves when making yarrow oil. Fill a jar with well-chopped leaves. Add 100 proof vodka right to the top. Lid and label.

Echinacea roots can be dug after the first frosts and promptly tinctured. And dried Echinacea augustifolia roots can be tinctured anytime. I buy a pound of dried root and make four quarts of tincture, spaced about three months apart. I find tinctures from dried roots are best after sitting for at least twelve months.

Read this article here:
https://www.wisewomanmentor.com/healing-archive/are-you-ready-for-winter%3F-part-1
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Instead of Antibiotics

Instead of Antibiotics

There are good reasons to use antibiotic drugs. That said, itis agreed that they are often overused. If the infection is not life threatening, you may wish to try herbs instead of, or in addition to, regular antibiotics.
Of the most-often used herbal anti-infectives - calendula, chaparral, echinacea, goldenseal, myrrh, poke, usnea, and yarrow - it is the lovely purple coneflower that I most often turn to.

I find echinacea as effective as antibiotics (dare I say sometimes better than!) if E. angustifolia/augustifolia), not E. purperea, is used; tincture, not capsules or teas is used; the root, and only the root, is used; and very large doses are taken very frequently.

To figure your dose of echinacea, divide your body weight (in pounds) by 2; take that many drops per dose. There are about 25 drops in a dropperful; round up to full droppers. If you weigh 180 pounds, take 90 drops/4 dropperfuls. There is no known overdose of echinacea tincture.
With acute infection I take a full dose every 2-3 hours. When chronic, a full dose every 4-6 hours.

excerpt from 'Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way'
www.wisewomanbookshop.com
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Plantain Ointment

Plantain Ointment

Pick Plantago leaves when they are vibrant and green. Chop them coarsely and pack loosely into a clean, very dry jar. Add olive oil, dislodge air bubbles with a knife or chopstick until the jar is filled to the very top. label and cap securely. Let sit out of direct sunlight, on a surface that won't be marred by oozing oil.

Decant after six weeks, pouring off the oil and squeezing out what remains in the plant material. Discard the herb. Grate one tablespoon of beeswax for every ounce of oil. Stirring constantly, heat the oil and beeswax until the wax melts, usually within a minute. Pour the liquid into small, wide-mouthed jars (a good excuse for buying marinated artichoke hearts) and cool.
Use this ointment lavishly for diaper rash, insect bites, all itches, and minor wounds. It heals, stops itching, checks bleeding, and eases pain.
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Excerpt from Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year.
www.wisewomanbookshop.com

 

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Linden Infusion

Linden Infusion

Linden is the world’s leading anti-cold and anti-flu herb.
It prevents and heals all respiratory distresses (but is not an anti-infective). It is a cooling and strengthening herb. Linden is considered safe for children and elders.

Linden is primarily used as a tea, though I prefer the curative powers of a strong infusion.

* One-half ounce of linden blossoms
* One quart of water

Steep for four hours. I strain off the first brew and refrigerate it, then rebrew the wet linden flowers by adding two cups of cold water to them in a saucepan. I bring this rebrew to a boil, cover, and let sit for four hours to extract the healing mucilage that is triggered by the cold water.

www.wisewomanmentor.com/recipe-archive

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Winter edible weed: Cronewort

Winter edible weed:  Cronewort (Artemisia vulgaris)

The little leaves of my friend cronewort (AKA mugwort), minced, will add a savory, slightly bitter bite to our salad. Just a few will do the trick. Yes, you can still make a cronewort vinegar, with leaves or roots and leaves, if you can find young growth, which is generally easy.

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Elder Remedies

Elder Remedies

Cold and flu season is approaching. Here's some Elder remedies to help keep you healthy.

* Dried Elder Berry Tincture
Fill any size jar no more than half full of dried elder berries. Fill jar to the top with 100 proof vodka. Cap, label, wait for six weeks, and use.

* Dried Elder Berry Infusion
Put 1-2 ounces of dried berries in a quart jar and fill to the top with boiling water. Steep overnight. Drink it, a half cup at a time, or turn it into a decoction.

* Dried Elder Berry Decoction
Pour a quart of infusion, berries and all, into a saucepan and gently simmer until the liquid is reduced by one-half or more. In other words, you want to wind up with 1-2 cups of decoction. The decoction may be taken by the teaspoonful. It keeps best if refrigerated. Or make a syrup with your decoction.

* Dried Elder Berry Syrup
When you have reduced it as much as you wish, add sweetener. A classic syrup contains as much sweetener as herbal liquid. So you could add a cup of honey or maple syrup or white sugar to one cup of elder berry decoction. Syrups need to be refrigerated.

* Dried Elder Berry Glycerite
Buy glycerin at the drugstore or health food store. Dilute it by at least half with sterile water. Dilutions as low as one part glycerin to four parts water will work. Fill a jar no more than half full of dried elder berries. Fill the jar to the top with the diluted glycerin. The resulting glycerite is ready to use, by the dropperful, in 6 weeks.

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Goldenrod (Solidago species)

Goldenrod (Solidago species)

I like to make a jar or two of goldenrod vinegar as a fall tonic. The taste is earth-y and pollen-y and sunshine-y.

The goldenrod is a late fall favorite of so many insects, I figure it must offer something special to help us all through the winter that’s ahead.

While goldenrod flowers do sometimes find their way into my salads, I find their texture less than friendly.

Malva leaves

Malva leaves, flowers, and seed pods (Malva neglecta)

This mallow is prostrate and so often overlooked. All parts of it are delicious in salads: leaves, flowers, and seeds. The seeds look like a little gouda cheese, thus giving the plant its common name: cheeses. All members of malva family are edible, including hibiscus, rose of Sharon (Northern hibiscus), hollyhocks, and the numerous cultivars that are available.

Weed walk: Garlic mustard

Weed walk:
Garlic mustard - Alliaria officinalis

Eat it up before it flowers. Yummy in salads or cooked

More Weed walks at Personal Mentorship:
www.wisewomanmentor.com/healing-wise

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Comfrey Conference

The Comfrey Conference was amazing!

We hope you enjoyed all of the presentations, Comfrey shorts, and Live Zooms by our 16 amazing Presenters and multiple contributors of shorts.

If you didn't finish all of the content, or didn't sign up in time, Don't worry! The whole conference, including all of the Live zoom recordings, is available for you to watch at your leisure.

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www.wisewomanschool.com/p/the-comfrey-conference
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We're already looking forward to a new conference next year!
(psst check the wrap up section for a hint ..)

Green Blessings are everywhere.
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Motherwort

Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)

* Ease stressed nerves, relieve anxiety
Motherwort calms, supports, and strengthens you the way the smell of your mother did when you were very young. Used regularly, motherwort feeds your nerves and your good common sense, relaxing and unclenching any held tension. Motherwort is not sedating, but calming, leaving you ready for action, not flying off the handle or bouncing off the walls. Ask motherwort to be your ally in tough times, in shaky times, in grief-filled times.

Try 10-20 drops (tincture from fresh flowering plant) as soon you feel your nerves starting to fray or just before a stressful event. Repeat every five minutes if needed.

 

 

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