Intro to Herbalism
Come learn about infusing herbs into various menstuums: vinegar, alcohol (tincture), honey with herbs freshly harvested from our garden while discussing the pros and cons of each menstruum. We’ll have some time in the garden as well to cultivate relationships with these green allies.
Let your relationships with plant blossom
Creating relationships with plants, both in the garden and in our medicine cabinet is a wonderful place to begin to reclaim our health. I encourage amateur herbalists and, indeed, everybody to begin now and slowly make friends with a few to a dozen herbs.
Indeed, relationships with the medicinal herb and time in nature may both be equally beneficial to the medicinal phytonutrients that the herb is supplying. I say this not to minimize the efficacy of herbal medicines but rather to highlight that both time in nature and relationships with the natural world (plants, animals — other humans) is sorely lacking in our highly digitized virtual culture.
Building relationship with the food you eat -- whether it’s meeting the farmers or singing to your plants in your own backyard plot -- and the medicines you take is our first step towards greater vitality.
In time, hopefully, we begin to cultivate our own perennial polycultural food and medicine forest to nourish and heal our physical and spiritual bodies.
During our time together, we will explore a dozen different herbs in the garden and consider ways in which we can apply them to our life and healing: smudging, teas, tinctures, honey, vinegar, salves.
Many herbal medicines are simply infusions (most people are familiar with teas as the simplest infusion)- that we can use internally or externally. Common menstruums for infusions include water, vinegar, fat or alcohol.
Go ahead and start playing with herbs: nibble a little, infuse herbs into different mediums, explore herbal teas and salves and tinctures and vinegar infusions.
Play with your favorite plants and allow these relationships to blossom.
