Mother-daughter herbal immersion

We've been having a great time each week meeting as a small group of mother-daughters, for an 11week herbal immersion!  Each week we "meet" a new herb, and through story, art, interactive games, and hands-on remedy making we become a little more familiar with these wonderful healing plants.  We are loosely using the wonderful Herb Fairies book series, and adjusting the order of the herbs to correspond with what is blooming and available for us here each week.  This group will be offered again in the fall, here at Little City Farm.

Our weeks have so far included:
Chamomile (making chamomile-infused honey, and chamomile sun tea)
Marshmallow (making marshmallow root pastilles, and tasting "real" marshmallows)
Violets (making flower fairy salad, and candied violets)
Calendula (making calendula lipbalm, and eating calendula muffins)
Dandelion (making dandelion pesto, and tasting dandelion cookies, and root mocha)
Chickweed (making chickweed super soothing salve, and chickweed super smoothie)


Chickweed Super Soothing Salve
1 cup olive oil infused with chickweed*
1/4 cup organic beeswax
5 drops lavender essential oil per 2 oz tin

Method:
Warm olive oil and beeswax in small saucepan until was has melted.
Take off heat, add essential oil and mix well.  Pour into tins, let cool.  Label.
Keeps about 1 year.
For soothing itching, dry skin and skin rashes, minor cuts and scrapes.

Yields: aprox. 10 oz salve

* To make the infused chickweed oil:
a) solar method - fill a 1 litre jar with fresh chickweed, and top up with olive oil to about 1 inch above the herbs.  Let infuse in a bright sunny window for at least 4 weeks, shaking every few days.  Top up with more oil as needed, so herbs always stay submerged.  When it has steeped, strain out herbs and reserve the oil.

b) double boiler method - add a large handful of chickweed to a small saucepan, cover with olive oil so herbs are covered by about 1 inch.  Warm in a double boiler on low (i.e. have another pot of water below this saucepan), for about 2 hours (do not let the herbs heat too much, the oil should not be cooking the herbs).  Oil should be a deeper colour, and smell herby (not smell fried).  Strain, and use in recipe above.

Practical Home Herbalist classes

We are currently running our Practical Home Herbalist series again.  This is a four-part series of herbal classes for those who want to delve deeper into their relationship with healing herbs and remedy-making for home use.  We have a wonderful group of ten women taking part this time around, and also a local photographer who is going to document our classes for us.  Classes offer hands-on remedy making with samples to take home, harvesting and tasting herbs, plants to take home for creating their own herbal garden, learning about four focus plants each week, learning through artwork (each participant creates a traditional "herbarium" or herbal botanical journal as part of this series).  The hope is to provide participants with practical skills and knowledge for making simple safe remedies for their own friends and families, as well as building deeper understandings of the beautiful healing plants that are our allies.  This series is so much fun to create, host and offer to our community!  I look forward to sharing more - for now here are a few photos from our first session in which we featured: plantain, dandelion, nettle and lemon balm.  With these herbs we enjoyed making herbal shampoo (nettle, lemon-balm), herbal pesto (dandelion-plantain), herbal vinegar (nettle), and drinking deep dark green herbal nettle infusions.  Read more about the Practical Home Herbalist series here. 

At the cusp...(of summer)

Everything is bursting into life in our yard, spring moves quickly toward summer with these warmer days that we can almost watch the blooms opening before our very eyes - the strawberries, the chives, the old apple tree, the pin cherry trees, the shrub cherries, hascaps, damson plum (newly planted in our evolving "forest garden", picked up from Whiffletree farm/tree nursery).    Such a vibrant, hopeful time of the year with all the dreams for our new growing season being set into place.

Women's Herbal Retreat June 17 at Little City Farm - Registration OPEN!

Announcing!

WOMEN'S HERBAL RETREAT AT LITTLE CITY FARM - SAT JUNE 17.

Relax in a supportive small group learning environment.   Reconnect to the earth through relationship to healing plant allies.  Find inspiration through beauty, celebration & hands-on herbal remedy making during this retreat.

This one day retreat includes four hands-on workshops by local herbalists and holistic health practitioners.  Learn to make flower essences, how to add wild nutrient-dense foods into our meals, herbal-kitchen alchemy, and making healing remedies for summer skincare.

Also, we will be nourished throughout the retreat day with wholesome delicious teas, snacks & lunch foods inspired by herbal and wild foraged fare, time for journal writing and plant herbarium creation, sketching, and photography, and participate in a plant & food swap to end our day together.

Workshop facilitators:

• Heather Cain - Flower Essences & Plant Spirit Healing
  
• Jackie McMillan - How to Dress a Wild Salad
  
• Jassie Bhuee - Herbal Kitchen Alchemy
  
• Karin Kliewer - Healing Summer Skincare Remedies
  

Food catered by Seed of Life Foods and Little City Farm (including vegan and gluten-free, organic nutrient-dense foods).

More details to follow once you have registered.

Limited to 15 wonderful participants!

Cost: $152.55 (includes HST, lunch, snacks, recipes, hand-out notes, take-home samples from workshops, and more surprises!)
 
Payment required to reserve your spot.
Contact Karin at info@littlecityfarm.ca for any questions.

OR Register here online.

Wild Dandelion Greens Pesto

Dandelion season is upon us!

One of our favourite wild plants, dandelion is readily available (growing nearly everywhere) and generally not at risk of being overharvested.  It's a great wild plant to start with if you are new to foraging for wild edibles, as all parts of it are edible (root, leaf and flower), it's highly nutritious, versatile and delicious.  The common dandelion is easy to identify.  Just make sure not to harvest in sprayed areas or near roadways so that the plants you pick are not toxic.

We love the dandelion flower blossoms in salads, baked goods (they make great additions to cookies and muffins), and dandelion drinks such as dandelion-lemonade, or dandelion blossom shrub (a mixed drink made with the blossoms first infused in organic raw apple cider vinegar).  Use only the yellow parts of the blossom, and cut away the green stems as these will impart bitter flavours (also stay away from the milky white sap in the stem - it has been traditionally used for curing warts, but is not desireable for eating).

Dandelion roots make a wonderful hot beverage.  Mix them with raw cacao nibs, cinnamon, vanilla, and your choice of milk, and you have yourself a delicious warming dandelion mocha chai.  Roots are best dug when they are young in the spring, but once the flower buds start to form leave the roots in the ground.  Roots are then also harvested in the fall, after the flowers die back.

Dandelion greens are amazing additions to smoothies, egg dishes, soups, salads (the young leaves are not quite so bitter), steamed greens, infused as medicinal tea, and - our absolute favourite for the greens - wild pesto.  We make pestos of all sorts, eating our "medicine" is always a nice way to go so that medicinal healing herbs and foods become commonplace in our kitchens and everyday table.  Any wild edible green will do for pesto (for example, we love including chickweed, dandelion greens, nettle tops, purslane, wild garlic, wood sorrel).  As well, culinary herbs such as garden sorrel, basils, mints, fennel, oregano, parsley, chives, garlic greens and scapes, and other leafy greens such as spinach or kale.  Feel free to substitute according to your taste and what is seasonally available, using this basic recipe below:

Wild Greens Dandelion Pesto

Ingredients:
2 cups sunflower seeds or hemp seeds (or nuts if you prefer)
1/4 cup olive oil (or more to taste)
2 tsp sea salt
1 large handful dandelion greens, freshly picked (or other wild green edibles)
1 large handful sorrel leaves, freshly picked (or add 1 Tbsp lemon juice in it's place)
fresh oregano, chives and parsley - a few sprigs each
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
water as needed (to get the consistency you like for your pesto)

Method:
1) Place all ingredients into a food processor and blend well.
2) Add more olive oil or water to get a smooth consistency.
3) Add more salt, to taste.
4) Serve with wholegrain or glutenfree crackers, mixed into grain dishes, blended into pasta, as a dip for fresh veggies, or in a grilled cheese sandwich.  Pesto is so versatile!

This Moment

New baby chicks are here!  Currently they are residing in a cozy box in our guest space, until their feathers grow and the weather warms up.