Herbal Mini-Course: Wild Herbs for First Aid

Upcoming Workshops:
Herbal Mini-Course: Wild Herbs for First Aid (Plantain / Yarrow / Comfrey) - 3 part series
Dates: Wednesdays July 11, July 18, July 25 (pre-registration required) REGISTER HERE
Time: 6:30-8 pm
Facilitator: Karin Kliewer, traditional herbalist
Location: Little City Farm

Join this short 3 part herbal mini-series to learn about 3 wild foraged first aid plants we can find in abundance all around us. In this first aid series we will cover one healing plant per session: plantain (Plantago major), yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and comfrey (Symphytum officinalis), which are all common wild plants in our city that are not easily over-harvested.

In this hands-on series we will invite you to build a relationship with these plants, by introducing their plant profiles, learning about their historical use and folklore, observing how they grow, harvesting them, and creating healing products together with these plants (with samples to take home). Each participant will also work on a personalized botanical sketch book/journal, where you can keep notes about the history and uses of these plants.

Plantain - we will make an after bug bite bath blend & nourishing plantain smoothie
Yarrow - we will make a wound oil & first aid liniment
Comfrey - we will make a healing salve

Please inform us of any allergies at time of registration. We may be using olive oil, cocoa butter, local beeswax, and certain essential oils in our classes.

More info & registration here.

GRATITUDE2017: 25% off SALE at Homestead Herbals this month

We are offering a special sale at Homestead Herbals this month, in gratitude for the support we have seen from our friends, family and customers this year.  Thank you for supporting the work of Little City Farm and our herbal project Homestead Herbals (where we make natural soaps, herbal remedies, salves, bitters and more using organic and wild-harvested herbs, many from our own property!)

We are offering 25% off everything in the Homestead Herbals shop, until December 23!  This sale applies to Canadian customers only (sorry, right now we are only able to ship in Canada).

Use the coupon code: GRATITUDE2017
to receive 25% off your entire purchase
(AND for local orders we will refund you shipping charges if you wish to pick up in person)!

This is the time to stock up on our popular calendula salve, calendula soap, post-partum bath herbs, baby bath herbs, healing balms, and other natural soaps.  Also, in our shop you'll find new varieties of soaps, new salves, elderberry syrup, elixirs, herbal chai blend, unscented herbal deodorants, herbal first aid kits, digestive bitters, shrubs (sipping vinegars), tea blends, and more!

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. 

Practical Herbalist series - session 2

Last week we had our second gathering here with our current Practical Herbalist students.  The theme this month was summer blossoms, and it was a chance to work with flowers as our healing allies.

In the first session the students were introduced to methods of ethical wild harvesting, basic plant identification, and making herbal infusions, herbal oils and herbal salves.  This month we worked on several new methods for extracting herbal properties - including using witch hazel in a liniment, and making first aid poultices. We shared a delicious Summer Blossom tea (see recipe below), then made sore muscle liniment (using arnica blossoms), and healing oil (with lavender blossoms).  Together the students made plantain salve using the oil that had been steeping since the end of June. 

We also talked about various other methods for preserving herbal flowers, which each have their place depending on intended final product, use and length of storage:
- drying (e.g. lavender), to use in oil or water infusions at a later time
- honeys (e.g. chamomile), can be added later into infusions, foods, cough syrups, etc
- pestos (e.g. basil flowers, oregano or mint flowers) - for eating food as medicine
- candied (e.g. violet petals) - this only has a few weeks shelf life
- carrier oils (e.g. red clover, mullein, st johns wort flowers) to use in massage or salves
- alcohol tincturing (e.g. calendula flowers - where alcohol extracts the resins well)
- liniments (e.g. arnica blossoms) using witch hazel or rubbing alcohol (for external use only!)
- flower essences (e.g. feverfew, rose, comfrey flowers) - very subtle extraction of the vibration and essence of the flowers
- hydrosols (e.g. lavender) using a distillation method

The day also included flower herb mandalas to inspire us and remember the beauty, grace and spiritual element of our herbal allies.

Summer Blossoms Tea
1 handful fresh calendula blossoms (1 part)
1/4 handful fresh lavender (1/4 part)
2 handfuls fresh chamomile (2 parts)

1) Place flowers into a large tea pot or 1 gallon heat proof mason jar.
2) Cover with water that has just boiled, and fill the jar/tea pot with water.
3) Let steep for at least 20 minutes.  Longer steeping time extracts more goodness from the herbs.
4) Add honey or maple syrup to sweeten if you like.

Lavender first aid oil

NOW! NEW on our Homestead Herbals etsy shop - a new certified organic Lavender First Aid Oil made with certified organic pure lavender essential oil!  Lavender oil is such an important, multi-purpose healer, and versatile oil, that every home remedy cabinet should not be without it.  If you are only going to have one essential oil in your first aid kit it would be lavender oil.

To use, dilute a few drops of the lavender essential oil in a carrier oil (e.g. a light oil that absorbs well into the skin such as apricot oil, sesame oil, almond oil, olive oil, sweet almond oil) and apply as needed.

Lavender is an excellent essential oil for children and babies, as well as adults.  It can make a beautiful aromatic massage oil that soothes a tired, fussing baby.  It can be sprinkled on a pillow at night to help ease congestion and coughs, as well as insomnia and restlessness.  In Ayurvedic tradition lavender oil is thought to be a balancing oil for all constitutions, and helps with congestion of all types (both physical and mental).

Here are just some of the many wonderful benefits of lavender oil (Lavandula angustifolia):

• soothes minor burns (both kitchen stove, or sun burns, or heat rashes)
• aids infections and inflammation
• disinfects and helps heal cuts and scrapes
• eases headaches and migraines
• soothes stress and anxiety
• aids sore tired feet
• helps insomnia, restlessness, sleeplessness
• takes itch out of mosquito bites
• massage for tired sore muscles
• gentle and soothing for infants and children
• eases congestion, coughs and bronchitis 
• eases cold and flu symptoms

(Lavender oil should only be used for external use only.  Information here is based on historical use and for your interest only.)

Calendula Harvest & Salve Recipe

It's calendula harvest time in the garden.  One of my favourite herbs, a general go-to (along with lavender) for all purpose gentle healing benefits - such as skin rashes, baby diaper changes, sun burn, as lipbalm, for  scrapes and minor irritations on the skin.  Calendula is a very easy to grow annual, that readily self-seeds (the seeds are large and obvious, so scatter well in the fall in preparation for next spring's garden).  Calendula officinalis comes in many shades of yellow to orange - but one of my favourite medicinal varieties is the Resina, which has a high resin content making it perfect for oils, salves and tinctures.  Calendula is also an edible flower, the petals are lovely in salads or for garnishing cakes.
 
Here is a very simple calendula salve recipe to try for your own first aid cupboard:

Simple Calendula Salve

You will need:
3 cups olive oil, in which 6 oz wilted (or 4 oz dried) calendula petals have been infused
3 oz shaved pure beeswax (or more)
3 oz cocoa butter (or more)
4 tsp vit E oil
1/2 tsp each pure essential oils lavender (at time of bottling)

Method:
1) Make herbal oil infusion by adding 6 oz calendula petals to the 3 cups olive oil in a clean dry glass mason jar with tight fitting lid.  It's absolutely important that jar and lid are dry so herbal oil does not risk becoming moldy.  Steep in a sunny window for 4-6 weeks shaking jar every few days (this is called a solar infusion).  Or, for a quicker method, steep in a crock pot on lowest setting for about 12 hours.

2) Strain oil, compost herbs and reserve the infused herbal oil.  It should be a darker richer colour than when you started.

3) Add oil to stainless steel saucepan, warm slowly on low heat.  Add beeswax and cocoa butter and vitamin E oil.  Stir gently until all is melted and fully combined.

4) Take off heat, and test with a spoon for proper consistency (i.e. drip a few drops of the hot salve onto metal spoon and when it cools you know what the thickness will be like).  Add more oil to soften salve, or more beeswax to firm it up as needed.

5) Add pure essential oil (we suggest lavender for added healing benefit).  Stir well, then pour into your containers and let firm up.  It will be nice and firm when salve is cooled.  Finished salve can be stored in the fridge (for a really firm salve) or at room temperature.  It's best to use dark glass containers or keep containers out of direct sunlight to preserve salve.  Salve should keep at least 1-2 years if stored properly.

First calendula

The calendula is ready to blossom.  In fact, the first flower opened a few days ago, and the others are coming soon.  We harvest the flower tops continuously so they keep blooming all summer long.  They can be dried in baskets or on screens, to make into calendula oil and salves.  Calendula is another one of those herbs I would not do without, right next to lavender as being a favourite in our family herbal first aid remedy stash.  Calendula salve is great for dry skin, minor cuts, eczema, rashes, and other skin conditions.  Check out our popular calendula healing salve here.  We've been making this salve for many years now, and have had great success and wonderful reviews from happy customers.  We also offer regular workshops on making herbal salves so if you are interested and want to take a course with us, please look at our workshop schedule here.

Practical Herbalist Series * Starts in June!

4-PART PRACTICAL HERBALIST SERIES
 
Cost: $200 ($140/workshops plus $60/materials)  - Pre-registration required

TO REGISTER go to our website here.

An exciting unique 4-part series, that includes 12 hours of instruction and hands-on learning, plus some "home" assignments between sessions.  Workshops will be held on 4 Saturday mornings, from June to September.  This series is led by Karin Kliewer (Master Herbalist) at Little City Farm in Kitchener.

AT THE END OF THIS SERIES YOU WILL HAVE GAINED:

• confidence and knowledge of growing and using basic medicinal herbs at home
• a well-stocked pantry of simple effective herbal home remedies you have made
• hands-on experience making 10+ herbal products (e.g. oils, salves, poultices, liniments, decoctions, tinctures, cough syrups, etc)
• familiarity with 20+ medicinal herbs (see list of “focus herbs” for each session below)
• guidelines for herbal dosages, basic herbal first aid for home use
• general understanding of plant identification and ethical wild harvesting
• hands-on experience harvesting, storing, drying and using medicinal herbs including leaves, blossoms, roots, berries, seeds and bark
• basic understanding of herbal gardening, herbal propagation, planting and seed saving
• simple outline for starting your own medicinal herb garden at home
• knowledge of where to source quality herbs and herbal product-making supplies
• a collection of herbal recipes, hand-outs and other useful resources
• a network of other community members interested in natural herbal healing

Please see below for more details on topics we will cover in each session

This Practical Herbalist Series is limited to 10 participants.  One goal of this series is to create a continuous small-group shared learning environment, so priority will be given to participants who can commit to taking all 4 sessions. For questions, or registration please contact Karin at: info@littlecityfarm.ca / or 519-575-9174.

PRACTICAL HERBALIST SERIES DATES & DETAILS:

 

Session 1: Spring Leaves - Sat, June 14 from 9-12 noon
In this session you will learn: how to properly identify and harvest herbs; ethical wild harvesting; basic herb gardening (planting and propagating herbs); 10 medicinal herb teas to grow at home; drying & storing herbs; general guidelines for using herbal leaves, flowers, roots, berries, seeds and bark; setting up your herbal home medicinal making space; and making herbal infusions.  Our focus herbs will be red raspberry leaf, lemon balm, peppermint and nettle.

Session 2: Summer Blossoms - Sat, July 12 from 9-12 noon

In this session you will learn: guidelines for using herbal remedies externally; making herbal medicinal oils, salves, poultices and liniments; basic herbal first aid.  Our focus herbs will be calendula, lavender, red clover, marsh mallow, comfrey and plantain.

Session 3: Fall Harvest - Sat, Aug 9 from 9-12 noon

In this session you will learn: herbs for radiant hair and skin care; herbal baths for children; making herbal shampoos, face creams, scrubs, and facial cleansers. Our focus herbs will be rosemary, chamomile, yarrow, witch hazel and rose.

              

Session 4: Winter Roots - Sat, Sept 13 from 9-12 noon

In this session you will learn: herb seed saving; guidelines for using herbal remedies internally; general herbal dosage information for children and adults; herbal winter remedies for colds and flu; making herbal decoctions, tinctures, cough syrups and lozenges.  Our focus herbs will be sage, elderberry, rosehip, slippery elm, fennel and echinacea.

Local homegrown herbals! New! Our soaps & salves now available through Bailey's Local Foods!

We are happy to announce that some of our homegrown herbal products are now available for purchase through Bailey's Local Foods.  This will make the purchasing and pick-up more convenient for local folks who already place regular food orders through the Bailey's online system, and pick orders up at a convenient uptown Waterloo location!

Through the Bailey's site you'll now find our handmade natural soaps, including baby soaps, shampoo bars, assorted body bars, and shaving bars, and even laundry stain stick bars.  You'll find our salves including mama belly balm, calendula healing salve, back ache balm, and all purpose healing salve.  You'll also find our lipbalms - peppermint with red clover, or lavender & local honey.  One of the things that makes our soaps & salves unique is that each uses locally grown herbs such as calendula, lavender, sage, red clover, arnica, and comfrey (grown naturally or sourced from a local organic farm), as well as only pure oils and essential oils for gentle, natural healing.  We work with our herbs from start to finish, including harvesting at their peak, by us, in small batches so we know exactly how they were grown, dried and prepared.

We are very excited about our Herbal First Aid Kits and can't say enough good things about them!  They come in a convenient travel tin that fits into backpacks or bags so it can easily be taken on hikes and kept on hand for when it's needed.   The first aid remedies included are useful for headaches, sunburn, bug bites, minor cuts & scrapes, splinters, heat rash, digestive upset and motion sickness, and much more.  A complete description of the remedies included in the Herbal First Aid Kits is listed here, and also comes with each kit.

A complete line-up of our herbals is also now available through our online Homestead Herbals Etsy store, and we can arrange local pick-up here at our location to save shipping costs.