Found and gathered:
And steeped to make little jars of sunshine for healing all year long:
I like to make a calendula salve to have on hand for cuts, scrapes, and dry or chapped skin. Back at the end of September the calendula blossoms were plucked from the garden and set in a jar to infuse in olive oil for several weeks. Then the good healing oil was strained and squeezed out from the plant matter and placed in a small pan over very low heat. As the oil begins to warm, bits of beeswax are added and stirred in until melted. I never really measure this out, but just add enough wax so the final salve has a good consistency- so it melts into the skin without being overly drippy. If I don't get the consistency right the first time, I just re-melt and add a bit more wax or oil as needed.
We also gathered black walnuts to make an ink and clothing dye. With gloves on, I ripped off the hulls from 20-30+ walnuts, set them in a cloth and tied it off. I put the little sack filled with the hulls into a big canning pot, covered with water and let it sit for three days. Then I boiled up the brown looking soup (hulls still in the pot) and let it sit again over night. The liquid then gets strained out. I use a fine mesh just in case any walnut bits escape from the cloth. Much of the liquid I used to dye some clothes. The verdict is still out on the results of these.
One jar full of the liquid was saved for ink. Here's my boy trying out the walnut ink, using a feather found at his old nursery school:
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Nature gifts
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5 comments:
So that is what all that stuff is in the kitchen! How clever.
Thanks Ed for putting up with all my potion making!
This is great....as a child I always used to try and write with feathers. There are some great natural dyes to be found isn't there? Have you seen India Flint's work ?
Along with your salve recipe, which you have so generously shared, some fabric dyeing is a must do for me too!
And all of this is brilliant home schooling, too, of course! (I'm envying the calendula supply -- my harvest was pretty puny this year. Might have to make my salve with storebought flowers...)
I'm amazed that you know how to do these things! I love it. I aspire to someday be able to identify a calendula blossom and make a salve out of it!
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