Your Friendly, Local Herb Club

Monday, January 09, 2012

I often surprise people when I reveal that I prefer the winter months. It must stand to reason that since I grow food, being confined to the house while the earth freezes and the plants wilt must be torture. But it must be the writer in me that finds a sort of refuge while I’m locked in my office, forgoing the world outside. And just when I feel at complete peace in my cocoon, we get a sixty-degree day like we did this past weekend, and all of the sudden my body cannot resist the urge to be out in the sun with my hands in the soil. It’s a co-dependent relationship that I’m constantly coming to terms with.

So to stay sane, I try and maintain a few projects in the winter that keep me connected to the earth in its deep freeze. Some days it’s dealing with the chickens, other days it’s tinkering in the greenhouse. But at least once a week, my favorite communion with the gods of nature is at our community herb club. The meetings are convened by local botanist and native plant hunter Zya. Armed with a few field guides and an appreciative understanding of the role herbs play in our ecosystem, each week Zya teaches us about a selected group of herbs. One week she’ll make an herbal infusion (I learned right off the bat not to call them teas because tea is it’s own specific leaf) out of thyme, hyssop, and raspberry leaf. Other weeks we’ll make tinctures like the juniper berry tincture we made last week.  I’ll admit that in the past the concept of making tinctures and infusions seemed like some supernatural, unattainable alchemy. But as I’ve come to find out, the ease of doing this is sometimes the most awing part. Just this past week we made a juniper tincture by:

Finely chopping up one cup of juniper needles (ours were harvested from the beach in New Jersey) and put in sterile mason jar
Mix with one cup of gin (sometimes people use vinegar if they don’t want the alcohol. But make sure the vinegar is warmed as it begins the steeping process)
Store in cool, dark place for 3-6 weeks (or for vinegar, much shorter, like 14 days)
Once it has steeped, strain the liquid through a cheese cloth

And there you go. You have a tincture with a shelf life of 1-3 years. You can even put the liquid in a little dropper bottle to give it that medicinal feel. But that’s only half the fun.  The other half is finding all of the cool things juniper berries are good for. At herb club we learned everything from the functional, like drinking Juniper tincture is good as an anti-inflamatory in your system to treat urinary tract infections (although it was said that over dosage can actually lead to more inflammation) or rubbing the tincture on your skin to cure warts or athletes foot, all the way to the fantastic, like the burning of Juniper needles in the cleansing of sacred spaces (actually, Zya told us that burning or smudging Juniper on your skin can get rid of body odor). And yes, on the equinox I plan to burn a bonfire of Juniper branches that I need to trim in front of my house, and stand over it while the gods cleanse my body.

But the most awing thing that we learn every Monday from Zya is of the important role that herbs have played in our bodies since the beginning of time. Now, I’m not advocating that herbs always be used in place of modern medicine for serious medical ailments. But by understanding the power that herbs possess, and by integrating them into your life, both your body and your mind will be the healthier for it. I’m sure this was probably all said on the tab of your Yogi Tea bag, but why don’t you get a few friends together and a book about herbs, and try it for yourself.