Calendula harvest

This seems to be an abundant flower year.  I have never had such a bountiful crop of calendula blossoms, that we keep harvesting over and over, and they just keep on blooming.  And what a good thing to have so much, since I never seem to have enough calendula for all the winter months where we use it in salves, soaps and tea.  If I was to pick a list of top ten valuable medicinal herbs to grow in a home garden, calendula would be at the top of the list (right next to lavender, peppermint, red clover, plantain, comfrey - oh, it's so hard to choose!)  Did I mention, the bees love calendula too? 

To harvest and dry calendula - pick flowers fresh on a sunny day when they are fully opened, after the morning dew has evaporated but before flowers are wilted by the heat of mid-day.  To harvest continuously keep picking fresh flower heads before they start to form seed heads, and your plants will continue to blossom.  I like to let some calendula go to seed early on in the season so that I ensure a good supply of seeds to self-seed in the garden when they fall, and also to harvest and keep for next year's planting.  Dry calendula on open screens or in wicker baskets, with good air circulation but out of direct light.  They should be fully dried before storing, and can be stored in clean dry glass mason jars with tight-fitting lids, kept in a dark dry cupboard. 

Salves & Lipbalms Workshop

On Saturday I facilitated a workshop on making medicinal salves and lipbalms.  This is probably one of my favourite workshops to lead, as I love these particular herbs.  We've grown them in our garden, harvested them, dried them, and they make such effective and wonderful healing oils yet are simple to work with.  We talked about 10 important and fairly easy to grow (or wild harvest) medicinal herbs that are to be used for salves or balms.   If you are going to start a medicinal herb garden using plants that grow well in our region, these are the best ones I would recommend for using in salves.  (I have a few others I'd add for a medicinal tea garden, although there is quite a bit of overlap here): calendula, arnica, comfrey, yarrow, mullein, plantain, lavender, marshmallow, st. johns wort, nettle.  

These particular herbs offer specific skin-related healing properties like healing cuts/scrapes (lavender), healing bruises (comfrey), soothing insect bites (plantain), healing burns and scars (st. johns wort), easing sore muscles (arnica), healing rashes and eczema (calendula), stopping bleeding (yarrow), soothing dry skin (marshmallow), and of course each of these herbs offers so much more!  During the workshop I demonstrated making a medicinal herbal oil (either by solar infusion, or a faster double-boiler method); then straining the medicinal oil and using this to make a salve by adding pure beeswax, cocoa butter and pure essential oils; and finally how to make simple effective lipbalms with coconut oil, sweet almond oil, and pure essential oils.  Thanks to everyone who attended!  It's inspiring to get to share this herbal knowledge with an attentive audience!

New salves from Homestead Herbals!

New packaging (travel tins) for our 1 oz salves, very exciting!  Calendula, gardener's salve (great for dry winter skin too), and a *new* "hard working hands" salve coming soon.

Making Herbal Oils, Salves and Tinctures

We've had several workshops here at the farm over the past weeks. Last Saturday we had an herbal workshop, where participants learned about making herbal infused oils, salves and tinctures. As it's peak herb harvesting season (for flowers and leaves, not roots or bark) it was an ideal time to offer instruction on how to harvest, dry and store herbs, as well as how to preserve their healing qualities by infusing them in oils, adding beeswax to create healing salves, and tincturing them in alcohol/water or other menstruums.

We had fun preparing an "all purpose salve" that is good for cuts, burns and bruises, including common herbs like St. Johns Wort, calendula, marshmallow, lavender, and comfrey, that can either be wildcrafted or are easy to grow in your garden. We talked about ethical and sustainable wildharvesting techniques, such as not to overharvest, to properly identify the plants using a good botanical guide book, and harvesting from areas that are unsprayed! First an herbal oil is prepared, either by solar infusion (4-6 weeks steeping in the sun), or by stove top or crockpot method (low simmering the herbs in oil for several hours). This oil is then strained, and beeswax, cocoa butter, or other additives such as essential oils are added to make a rich solid salve. We also prepared a rosehip tincture, made of crushed wildcrafted rosehips steeped in grain alcohol at a ratio of about 5:1. This will be let to steep for 4-6 weeks, or longer, then strained and stored in dark glass bottles. Rosehip is high in vitamin C, so an excellent tincture for fighting off winter colds and flu. Participants took home a very special tincture made of violet blossoms, known as a grounding herb that calms, soothes, aids anxiety, helps insomnia, and wards of negative emotion. Sounds like a tincture we could all use in our herbal first aid kit.

A final note on what is called the "simplers" or traditional herbalists method - it is more valuable to learn a dozen herbs thoroughly and know many uses for them, rather than knowing many herbs but few uses. Work on building a relationship with these plants. Know them well! Seems especially insightful for city herb gardeners who may be limited in space in their herb garden patches.

spOtlight Festival - Funding Received!

We just received word that we've gotten funding we applied for, toward an all-day event featuring traditional crafting techniques here at Little City Farm! Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for supporting our idea, and allowing us to be a part of the province-wide "spOtlight Festival", a weekend open studio tour showcasing local artists and crafters. We are so pleased to be a part of this here in Kitchener!

Our series is called "Plants, Roots & Fibres: Natural Fibre Arts and Herbal Crafts". We will be focussing on using plants, natural fibres and recycled materials in all the workshops throughout the day. The FREE event is Sat, June 6 from 10 am-5 pm, with hour-long workshops running all day. More details coming but here is the basic schedule for the day. We encourage pre-registration as there will be some limited space for workshops held indoors (some workshops will be outside).

10 am - Natural Dyes
11 am - Spinning, Carding and Natural Fibres
12 noon - Break (we encourage people to bring a picnic lunch to eat here if they wish to stay)
1 pm - Wet Felting
2 pm - Herbal Oils and Salves
3 pm - Natural Cold-Process Soapmaking
4 pm - Papermaking

We'll have a variety of artists/crafters here to lead these workshops, with some hands-on components for participants. It's going to be a full and exciting day - come check it out!

Making herbal salves

The last two days I've been working on salves for our Homestead Herbals business. I prefer to steep the herbs in olive oil for 4-6 weeks in a solar infusion, but they can also be done if need be in a low temperature crockpot. Then the herbal oil is strained, blended with beeswax and other butters (cocoa butter, coconut oil, hemp oil, etc) depending on consistency and quality you want. Finally the melted oils are poured into jars and a few drops of pure essential oils are added to each container. It's satisfying to make our own skin salves and other herbal medicines, knowing that only pure ingredients go into the products, and how carefully the herbs have been grown, tended and harvested.

We make a range of salves to meet a variety of needs for the whole family: for everything from cuts & scratches (All Purpose) , to dry skin (Gardener's Hand), to sore muscles (Back Ache Balm), to diaper rash (Bottoms Up!) , to pregnant belly rub (Mama Belly Rub)! Even my husband, who is not a usual consumer of any cosmetic products, swears by the back ache balm for after hockey muscle pains, and the all-purpose salve and gardener's hand of which keeps his own personal jars handy!

We'll be hosting several herbal workshops this summer, including one on making herbal oils & salves with much more indepth information than this post. It will include a hands-on practical component where participants make their own salve to take home from calendula we harvest in our garden.