Episode 15- Exploring Nature's Pharmacy Part 2

Can herbs truly transform your life and boost your homesteading journey? Join us on this enlightening episode of Keeping it Real, the Gorham Homestead podcast, as we unravel the mysteries behind our latest beekeeping endeavors and share valuable lessons from our meat chicken processing experience. From the health of our new colony to the challenges faced with an older hive, we provide a comprehensive update on the buzzing world of bees. Plus, gain practical tips on timely ordering and choosing the right feed types to enhance your homestead's productivity.

Ever wondered how lemon balm can soothe hyperactive children or St John's wort can ease anxiety and depression? We delve deep into the powerful healing properties of these herbs, revealing their cultivation secrets, preparation methods, and various forms of use. Discover how lemon balm's antiviral benefits can be amplified with licorice, and learn about St John's wort's potential side effects and the importance of consulting healthcare providers. This episode is packed with actionable insights that can help you harness the natural remedies around you for better health and well-being.

As we venture further into the world of herbs, we explore the benefits and precautions of using Queen Anne's Lace and wild lettuce, highlighting their significant roles in managing blood sugar levels and relieving pain. Plus, the heart-health benefits of motherwort and the immune-boosting powers of echinacea are uncovered, offering you a holistic approach to herbalism. Reflecting on the importance of utilizing natural resources, we provide inspiration for you to embrace the art of herbalism in your own life. Don't miss out on our upcoming episode about essential oils, and be sure to connect with us on social media and our website to stay engaged with our homesteading journey.

***Thank you to our sponsor "A Bee's Closet".  Be sure to go see Joe Ellis for the best service and help on all your beekeeping needs!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Hey y'all, and welcome to Keeping it Real, the Gorham Homestead podcast, where we talk about real food, real natural living, the real art of natural healing and real life out here on Tennesseeennessee homestead. I'm your host, don gorham, and today is tuesday, june the 11th 2024, and you are listening to episode number 15. Our topic today is part two of herbs that we can't live without or use a lot here on our homestead, and so we're just going to go through the rest of those. But first let me do my disclaimer. Nothing that I say today is to be construed as medical advice. I am not a medical professional or a medical provider. Please be sure to speak to your medical provider before taking any herbs to determine if they are safe for you or if there are any contraindications or anything of that nature. So with that out of the way, I first want to say a big shout out to our first sponsor, and our first sponsor is a locally owned business, a bees closet, and so if you are in the market for getting any bee supplies, getting bees, getting a bee suit, just anything that has to do with beekeeping, joe Ellis is owner of a bee's closet right here in Bon Aqua, tennessee, and he is just a wonderful human being and he's so knowledgeable and so helpful. So if you are in the area and want to go somewhere where you can just literally walk and touch the bee stuff and talk to someone to find out what you really need and what you don't really need, I recommend that you go talk to Joe at a bees closet. You will not be sorry that you did Joe at a bees closet, you will not be sorry that you did. And so talking about bees leads me right into what's going on around here. I want to try to incorporate what's going on because I'm not really having time right now to do a separate what's going on around here. You know all the things with me and T, so I'm just going to kind of give you a little brief overview of what is happening currently on our homestead.

Speaker 1: 2:27

So today a friend, a lady from the local bee club, came and we opened up my two hives. I finally got a second bee package that's the word I'm looking for A package of bees which was a full 10 frame colony of bees. And I got those from Joe at a bees closet and they look really, really good. Even she was commenting on just how great that particular hive looked. There was lots of brood, lots of freshly laid little eggs in there and what she called juicy brood, so the bigger ones, and they were really drawing out comb. Really well, everything looked really really good in that hive and we also inspected the one that I previously got from a commercial beekeeper and we were not positive at first that it was queen right, because we weren't able to find the queen number one, number two she was. What she was laying was like spotty. The comb was like looking weird. It was weird, um, drawing out. It wasn't like nice and uniform like it's supposed to be. So still not a hundred percent that that hive had a queen when I got it, even though I was told that it was. We did see a queen today, but we suspect that she was a new queen, that she had emerged. Maybe it was a swarm, because there are less bees by far than what my brand new hive has that I just got. So and there were a lot of queen cells in that hive when we first got it. So possibly queen swarmed with half the hive or whatever, and now we have a new queen, but anyway she. So we tried to set that up so it looked like, um, everything is looking better. She is, she's laying, she's getting started, so hopefully everything will be okay with that hive.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Um, we finished processing chickens. That has been such a relief. I'm so glad to be done with chickens. They have been meat chickens. This year At least we didn't have a big loss like we did last year. We got them ordered on time, got them in on time. So just my personal preference and advice for you is, if you are going to order meat chickens for the upcoming year, order them in December or January, because by the time February, march, rolls around, it's too late and they're sold out and then you can't get them until later in the summer and then they get too hot and all of that stuff. But we did. We got them ordered on time. Process and date had been on the calendar since December. So we knew what three weekends we were going to be processing and we finally finished them up this past weekend. It was, I think, another 50 that we did and our average. I will say, though the average weight did not pick up from last weekend to this past weekend like we thought it was going to.

Speaker 1: 5:42

We continued to feed them. Excuse me, thought it was going to, we continued to feed them. Excuse me, but I was not able to go to my regular place where I get feed for my meat chickens and so I had to use um and I'm not knocking it. I love my tractor supply feed, I love stuff from tractor supply, but I don't really feel like it did as well on the meat chickens as my MPS feed does, and I know because they specifically make it for me and make it for people who raise meat chickens, and it's fresh and it comes right off the meal and I do think that that makes a difference specifically with meat birds. So they didn't pick up, they didn't gain any weight over the week. So an extra week cost us an extra $60 because we went through another two bags of feed for 50 birds and with no weight gain. So that was a lesson learned. Probably we'll try to process next time Now that I'm at home, I can do them over days rather than over three weeks and try to get all of them done at the same time so they don't cost so much to continue to feed them out and the freeze dryer.

Speaker 1: 7:01

So when we were done with those chickens, we had tons of liver and heart left over. Obviously, that's one of the things that we save out of the entrails, and instead of putting those in the freezer this time I decided to freeze dry them. God, I love that freeze dryer, and so I freeze dried them separately. I put all the hearts on one tray, because they all fit on that, and then all of the livers I put on all the other trays, and what I did with it was make dog treats. Normally I would freeze them, but I had left them in the refrigerator a little too long and they kind of started looking a little dry. You know how they can turn dark and a little bit dry. So I figured dog treats was the next best thing, so that I didn't waste them. And so, yeah, so I got a pretty good amount of liver and hearts and we will only give them a little bit of it as a treat. They don't need a whole, whole lot of extra liver and hearts just by itself, but it does make for a good little treat every now and then.

Speaker 1: 8:04

We've taken our son to camp wrestling camp in another state for a whole month, and he's going to turn 17 while he's gone Like I'm not even going to see him on his birthday. I've never been away from him on his birthday and I know that's probably not a big deal to most, but he is the youngest and he is my baby and it's really, really like. I'm really really having a hard time with this. And, um, I didn't get super like I kept going back in and I I knew in the back of my head that I was making up excuses to go back in, like I needed to write his name on in, like I needed to write his name on his extension cord, I needed to write his name on his little multi-plug that was going into the wall. And then we saw t-shirts and shorts. So we bought him those and we had to take those back in. And then I had to remember that I had to write his name on those. I just was making up reasons not to leave. So finally we got out of there and I was okay. I was actually okay until we hit the Tennessee line coming back and I never said anything to T, I never brought it up. But once I realized I was in Tennessee, that's when I kind of got a little emotional.

Speaker 1: 9:21

And then, of course, he hates it. We've gotten text messages already saying that you know this is not for him. Everybody's wild. He doesn't like the vibe the boys are. They're being boys and he's just not used to that. He's more of a reserved, quiet type. He's not like rambunctious, getting into trouble, being loud, being obnoxious is just not him. So but anyway, I suspect that by the end of the camp he will be fine and he will have made buddies and memories and all that stuff. So I know I hated camp the first week, anytime that I ever went, and I was homesick and I wanted to come home, but by the end of it I was normally you know, normally doing fine. So hopefully he will too.

Speaker 1: 10:10

And Self Reliance Festival that's the last thing that's going on with me has amped up. We are in the planning and preparing phase and of course, tickets are on sale. If you are interested in going to Self Reliance Festival and finding people who are on sale, if you are interested in going to self-reliance festival and finding people who are like you, finding people who can be your tribe, self-reliance festival is a really great way to go and connect with those folks. And it's october, the fourth and fifth this year, and it is in camden t Tennessee, and you can buy tickets on the website at selfreliancefestivalcom. I'm not sure what the prices are right now, because we did have some discussion about we had some new sponsors coming in and whether or not we could do a family price, and so we'll just have to. I'm not real sure if all of that has worked its way out yet, but if you want to come to Self Reliance Festival and also if you would like to volunteer and get your ticket reimbursed, I will be more than happy to put you on my volunteer list. We have so many jobs that people can do and it takes a village to make this festival happen, so our volunteers is really what keeps that ticking really well. So if you would love like to volunteer, I would love to have you. All you have to do is reach out. You can sign up on the website. There's a little volunteer form that you can fill out and that automatically gets sent to me.

Speaker 1: 11:40

All right, first up on our list of herbs for today is lemon balm. Now, lemon balm is also known as Melissa officinalis and it is part of the mint family, which means plant it where you can contain it, because if you don't, it will spread like wildfire, like it will take over everything, as mint does. But it is such a cool plant and I love the taste of it and the smell of it. The smell is almost intoxicating and the bees love it, so that makes me really happy that we have lots of lemon balm here to keep the bees happy. But some of the cool uses for lemon balm, we use it in a tea because for us it's more of a sedative. We use it as a way to just kind of relax and wind down at the end of the day. But it's also a featured remedy for heart disease and heartache from insomnia or just overwhelming sadness that keeps you awake at night.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Lemon balm is a really good herb to help with that. It helps depression, anxiety, nervous disorders and then plus, it's really really good for your body to help ward off and fight off and defeat a host of viral illnesses, but specifically anything herpetic or in the herpes family shingles, chicken pox, cold sores, anything like that. Lemon balm is a really good treatment for that and that is what we use for our son if he gets any sort of cold sore. Is that we? That's when we resort to adding lemon balm tincture. You can rub it on oil, you can rub it on, but tincture tinctures burn a little bit but they are super effective. So you can add some oil to that if you want to and rub it on the affected area. But it really does help with that and there is actual scientific evidence that proves that lemon balm is an effective treatment for that. So that that's kind of cool when herbalism and science actually agree on something, because it just doesn't happen very often.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Lemon balm has been called the elixir of life, which kind of tells you, you know, that it can like, sweeten the spirit, it can bring you up when you're down, and the part that you want to use is the aerial part of the plant, because the leaf is what is rich in those oils, those essential oils. Of course it's not technically an essential oil because it's not distilled down, but it's still really really good to use in teas and tinctures and things like that. It has a rich concentration of those volatile oils, but specifically it has citral and citronellol, which calms the nervous and digestive systems, and it has antispasmodic actions and again, that is kind of what we use it for. We like, we use it for, like I said, anything that has to do with cold sores or calming down in a tea, and of course. I think it's really good to use just on a daily basis. I love the way it tastes. It freeze dries really really well. The smell is just amazing when it comes out of the freeze dryer, so it's really really well. The smell is just amazing when it comes out of the freeze dryer, so it's really really good.

Speaker 1: 15:29

It's also good for kids. Any kid with ADHD or, you know, just hyperactivity, it's a good one to soothe those kids If they have recurring nightmares, anything like that. A dose of tea before bedtime will help to alleviate kids having like over and over and over nightmares. It's also rich in polyphenols which have a strong antiviral action, which is what I was just discussing. So you can also combine that with licorice, which makes it even more effective against anything in the herpes family. That's the first one lemon balm.

Speaker 1: 16:12

The second one we're going to talk about is St John's wort, and it is also a Good for depression, anxiety, pain, anything of that nature, and we found it growing wild here and cultivated it, you know, babied it and replanted it from that in other places. So now we have it growing in more than just one place. But I love St John's wort tinctures, and a tincture is just where you let the herbs sit in alcohol that is at least 95% for six weeks and shake in the bottle every so, and you can do it less than that. I do it six weeks. That's my rule of thumb. I believe you can actually do it three weeks, but the longer it sits, the more potent it's going to be. So I kind of like to let it go a little bit longer, just because I want every little bit that I can get out of it. But it's really really good for things of that nature. I use it in my shark week I mentioned that the other day because I feel like it helps take that edge off. Because I feel like it helps take that edge off, like if you're really stressed out or things are really not going right and there's nothing you can do about it.

Speaker 1: 17:29

A lot of times St John's Wort will just kind of help bring you back to your center, kind of help refocus your energy, because if you get all of your energy going in a negative direction, it's just going to keep spinning that way. And if you let people pull you in a negative direction, it's just going to keep spinning that way, and if you let people pull you in a negative direction. You're going to continue to pull that way and you're going to continue to attract more negative. So the best thing that you can do is just cut off any negative, focus on positive and then, if you need a little help, st John's Wort is always a good little thing to go to Now. St John's Wort is always a good little thing to go to Now.

Speaker 1: 18:08

St John's Wort has been pretty popular over the years and it's pretty well known for its ability to help with chronic depression and anxiety and things of that nature. But I think where the misconception or the I guess the bad information or lack of information was that people thought that St John's Wort was going to work like a pharmaceutical and that if they tried it that they would get that instant relief or instant being able to tell, like you can sometimes with pharmaceuticals, and that's just not how herbs work. For St John's Wort to be effective in treating any kind of depression, anxiety, anything, you have to take it for several, several weeks consistently, but you know at least a two to three week period and most of the time it's actually cycled over several months to treat chronic depression and stress, and I think that hasn't been made clear in years past and I think a lot of people who have tried St John's wort ended up disappointed just because the results were not what they thought, because they gave up too early. But I'm going to read really quick St John's wort is a very effective and this is from my Rosemary Gladstar book. St John's wort is a very effective and this is from my Rosemary Gladstar book. St John's wort is a very effective antidepressant and over the past 30 years its efficacy has been proved by extensive clinical and scientific studies.

Speaker 1: 19:34

Hypersin, one of the herb's active constituents, increases the metabolism of serotonin and melatonin. You know a lot of people like to take melatonin, which aids the body's ability to receive and store light. Hyperforin, another important constituent, contributes to emotional stability by slowing the uptake of those feel-good neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline, which allows them to circulate longer in the body. So that kind of explains how St John's works within the body to sort of lift the spirits, to help ward off some of the bad stuff that's going on, just because it helps all of those things to act within your body kind of a little more like they're supposed to. But again, things like that take time.

Speaker 1: 20:30

Some of the preparations that you can use them in are teas. You can make it in a tea to help lighten your mood. You can use it in a tincture to help with seasonal affective disorder, with, you know, sad when people get depressed in the winter. You can use it as a salve. It's a really good all-purpose salve for rashes, including diaper rash. It makes a really natural and effective way to cure a diaper rash. It works really really well for that. You can make a liniment, and the liniment is really good for sore muscles, spastic muscles, cramps, painful joints, um, especially those that are like arthritis and bursitis. St John's wort is a pretty effective pain reliever in that way, and then you can also make it in an oil and then rub it on whatever effective affected area that you have. One of the things to note, though, about St John's wort is that it can cause photosensitivity. So if you're going to use it, you don't want to rub it on your body and then immediately go out into the sun, because it can kind of cause you to get sunburned. It can kind of cause you to get sunburned. Also, if you're already on any sort of antidepressant medications, probably want to check with your health care provider just to make sure that St John's Wort is okay for you to take with whatever medication that you're already on that, because my understanding is that it can be it can, you know work synergistically with whatever medication that you're already on.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Next up on my list is a Queen Anne's Lace, a woman's help. It is also known as wild carrot because it kind of looks like the leaves sort of look like carrots, but it's a really pretty plant and it grows about three feet high. We have it everywhere here. I make tinctures out of it, I make teas out of it, and the problem the only really problem is there's lots and lots of bugs in the little Queen Anne's lace. So you kind of either have to wait for the bugs to leave, shake them out, or just be happy to tincture the flowers with the little black bugs that like to crawl all over it. But it's really really good for things that like if you're having like lots of holding a lot of water. It's a diuretic and it will help flush a lot of that extra water out of your body, especially if that's, you know, if you're holding weight, because you're holding a lot of water weight. Queen Anne's laces are really really good herb for that. You could do that as a tea. You could use the root, you can use the leaves and flowers, and it's good for things that have to do with the bladder, again, because it's a diuretic, so it will help flush out If you have cystitis, anything to do with bladder urinary tract infections.

Speaker 1: 23:36

Queen Anne's Lace is a really good herb to work um to add to whatever else that you're using. Um, it's also next to um huckleberry bark, which contains berberine. My husband takes berberine and berberine has helped bring down his sugar to normal. Um, but Queen Anne's Lace is the next best thing if you do not have something containing berberine. It will actually help heal the body and help you get back to a normal sugar level.

Speaker 1: 24:15

Despite the fact that doctors swear that type 2 diabetes can't be cured, yes, it can. It's a lifestyle disease that has been caused by what you're eating and how you're living, and if you clean up your diet and then you take herbs that help to help your liver to detox and then help stimulate your kidneys and help flush all that out, it will absolutely help to maintain a healthy sugar level. So just know that that's one thing that you can try for that. Of course, herbs don't work for everybody, so just keep that in mind. What herb might work for me might not work for you, but I do keep Queen Anne's Lace here. It is one of the staples in my apothecary and I love it for that. I take it again. It's in my shark week tincture because of bloating and things that happen with PMS and with premenopause sort of things.

Speaker 1: 25:11

I feel like Queen Anne's lace as a mild abortifacient and in some instances I do believe it can cause miscarriages. And it can, if taken like what they did in the old days is they would like I'm talking medieval times they would, after having sex, drink the tea for days or whatever, and it supposedly would cause the egg to not implant. So just be real careful. If you're pregnant, queen Anne's lace is definitely not something that needs to be in your repertoire, but it will help. You know. It'll help flush out stuff if you're trying to. I think it will help your weight loss goals as well, especially again, if the reason part of the problem is that you're holding water weight.

Speaker 1: 26:17

The other thing about Queen Anne's Lace is if you're foraging for it, you have to be really, really careful to make sure that what you are getting is queen anne's lace and not poison hemlock, because poison hemlock will kill you like quick and um. Queen anne's lace is, you know, very safe. But you can tell a difference, like the, once you've seen queen anne's lace and you know what you're looking for. You can definitely tell a difference because it's in one little cluster with a little dot like right in the middle of it and hemlock is white. But it's a bunch of different little clusters and also the leaves look a lot different between the two. And Queen Anne's Lace is like hairy on the stem, Excuse me and hemlock is smooth. So just kind of keep in mind. You got to make sure you know what you're picking when you're picking.

Speaker 1: 27:10

For years wild lettuce had eluded me. I looked everywhere for it, could not find it Finally found it. Last year I was just driving around in New Johnsonville. I had gone to my aunt's for some reason or another and drove to the end of the road. Last year I was just driving around in New Johnsonville. I had gone to my aunt's for some reason or another and drove to the end of the road and there was this huge wild lettuce plant and I was. I saw it and I was just like mesmerized, so I hopped out and I got it, of course, put it in the back of my car and brought it home and it was. It was massive. So I dried it and it was enough to really give me a lot of wild lettuce for a while. But wild lettuce is fascinating plant and now it's growing here. I don't know where it came from. I don't know how it's growing here. What I had was not, you know, hanging around anywhere out there on the property. It went straight into the hanging up and drying. So I have no idea. But now we have it growing, so I'm thankful for that.

Speaker 1: 28:10

But it's also known as opium lettuce. That's kind of a nickname for it. And what's interesting about wild lettuce is people kind of in the old days treated it a little bit like marijuana. They called it like the devil's lettuce. I know there's the new name for the devil's lettuce, which is the actual marijuana, but this is kind of what started that, because it had such strong pain relieving effects that when lettuce was actually cultivated and when it finally you know it appeared on the market as a salad green, the people, the society, people like the highfalutin people lost their minds. They thought that introducing lettuce into the world was just going to cause all kinds of problems. The same way, if someone came up with a lettuce or a salad green variety of marijuana, people would freak out and lose their minds over it. But that's the reason why Lettuce had been previously known in its wild form as sort of an opiate kind of lettuce. Even though it's not that kind of pain reliever it's not addictive, it doesn't make you loopy or high or anything like that but it's a really effective pain reliever. And so, for some reason or another, the people back in the old days I guess they thought everybody was doing witchcraft, I don't know. Anyway, they didn't want even regular lettuce out on the market.

Speaker 1: 29:53

You can use the actual. Once it gets big enough to flower, you can use those flowers. You can use the latex from the leaves. They're really really good. It's a sedative. It's a mild sedative and nervine. It also treats coughs, like if you have one of those coughs that keeps you up at night and you're just hacking, hacking, hacking. Wild lettuce is a really good treatment for that. Kids can use it. It does not have to be just adults. It's used for insomnia, anxiety, restlessness, hyperactivity, tight muscles. It can ease coughs. It's good for muscle spasms, colic, painful periods. So now that I have it, I think I'm going to add it to my Shark Week tincture and see how that. See that helps so, cause I have several women now that that get the tincture from me. So kind of going to see how that helps. And it's also really good for nervousness.

Speaker 1: 30:52

Um, one of the thoughts about it is also that it could be um helpful for people with Lyme disease, cause you know how your muscles get really stiff and all your muscles ache and hurt and all that kind of stuff. Wild lettuce could potentially be a really good remedy for that, and of course that made my thought. Next go to people with SPS, the stiff person syndrome. My mind wonders if wild lettuce would be a helpful you know, not cure, but helpful with the symptoms for things like that, to help people who suffer from that to sleep at night and to be more comfortable. It will help with anything that's like if you slam your hand in the car door or you burn yourself or you know something like that that you would normally take an analgesic for. Wild lettuce can be a really good replacement for that. It's not my go-to for headaches, but anything that's like a body ache, lower back pain, anything like that. Wild lettuce is really really good for that.

Speaker 1: 32:02

And just while we're on the wild lettuce topic, it's something that if I were making a skin salve any sort of skin healing salve wild lettuce should always be in that salve as well, just because it has such healing properties that it's a good one to always add to that when you're cooking that down, because it can also help to get rid of moles. That takes a really long time because the way the moles are just super thick, knock those down. I know that it has been used in bass's salve, which is used for a lot of things, including skin C-word. I can't claim I'm not making any claims that it cures the skin C-word, but I know it has been used in a salve for that purpose. So I don't know. So just kind of kind of know that, but it's, it's a sedative, but it can also work for skin conditions as well.

Speaker 1: 33:13

The next one on my list is jewelweed and it grows all up and down my road because it likes more the stream, sort of mountainy, and because I'm in a holler and there's a creek at the bottom of my road and it kind of gets cool down in there and it almost has a mountainy feel. So jewelweed grows really well along the banks of my road and it's just a really good. It's best known for its skin healing properties. It's good if you get poison ivy, poison oak anything that you know makes you itchy. It's good for treating hives and anything of that nature. You know it's the fresh, fresh plant is 75% more effective than any oil or tincture that you can make from it. So just know that. And that's fortunate because it normally grows close to poison ivy and poison oak. So if you get it, at least you know most of the time you also have the fresh plant growing somewhere close to it. So it's funny how that works. But it's a good one to try If you you know, if anything happens like that and you get blisters, any sort of rashes, bites, anything that makes you itch on your skin, jewelweed is an amazing little plant to try for that and I do keep some oils and some tinctures, but again, it's just not as effective. It's great to put in soaps and stuff like that too for that reason, because even just a little bit you know it does really well for skin stuff. It's good for your skin. But if you have an acute issue like a big breakout of poison ivy, then using the fresh plant is going to work much better for you than trying to use a tincture or an oil.

Speaker 1: 35:15

The next one is one that unfortunately has popped up on my list just because of my age. No woman in my family that I know of has actually gone through menopause. No woman in my family that I know of has actually gone through menopause. Every woman in my family has either had a hysterectomy in their 30s or 40s. So I am the oldest intact woman. Between my grandmothers, my aunts, my mother, my sister or not my sister my cousins I'm like the only one. So I have no idea when menopause is coming for me.

Speaker 1: 35:49

But motherwort is something that I have added into my repertoire. I keep it. I've got a lot of it Just because I feel like I'm 49. I really don't have any perimenopausal symptoms yet. I have had one or two hot flashes over the last five years, I guess, but nothing really to speak of. But I feel like it's coming. So I do add motherwort to my shark weight tincture as well, because I do have friends and women in my circle who are dealing with perimenopause or menopausal symptoms and motherwort is especially, especially, especially good for women.

Speaker 1: 36:39

It's good for your heart if you're a woman or, I guess, a guy but it's specifically good for women's hearts. It's a heart tonic. It will actually strengthen the heart and of course, you know that's one of the main killers of women is heart attacks. So it's a really good thing to strengthen the heart muscle and your blood vessels. And it's good for neuralgia rapid heartbeat like tachycardia, anything like that. It's valued as a remedy for many women's problems, such as delayed menstruation, uterine cramps associated with scanty menses, water retention, hot flashes and mood swings during menopause.

Speaker 1: 37:24

I had to read that part. Even though I kind of know these things, I still kind of have to read so that I can articulate them the way that I want to. And motherwort is just a really good. It's a good reproductive health herb, it's good for strengthening the heart, good for hot flashes, and you just prepare it as an infusion and drink several cups a day if you're having issues with that. Or, like I said, you can also add it to tinctures. And that's really all of the information that I have, because I think that is the main use for motherwort.

Speaker 1: 38:03

I do not have it growing here. I hope to get it growing here, but I do have a friend that has some and she brought me quite a bit of it last year. So I have a pretty good supply of it. But if you are any woman it's just good to have in your medicine cabinet, it's good to have your tool chest so that you know if you have anything going on like that. Any girls young, you know girls that first start, you know they start having, they're not regular. Everything's painful. Motherwort can just be an herb to kind of help alleviate some of that. Now I have so, so, so, so many herbs in my apothecary.

Speaker 1: 38:44

But the last one I think that I'm going to mention for today and I mentioned it previously in conjunction with elderberry, so if you haven't heard that episode, go back and listen to episode number 14, the previous episode. But it's echinacea, also known as purple coneflower. It is a powerhouse and it is one of the most useful herbs that we have available in herbal medicine. It's a natural antibiotic and there is extensive research on Echinacea showing that it exhibits a cortisone-like activity showing that it exhibits a cortisone-like activity and that's just really great in protecting your immune system and stimulating your T-cells when you need them to If you feel like you're getting sick. Echinacea is a great one to use. It's very easy to grow. It does take a little bit to kind of get your echinacea patch going, but once you get going but once you get it going and once you get it established, it's pretty easy to keep it going.

Speaker 1: 39:52

So traditionally echinacea has been used for so, so, so, so many things like from infections to sore throats to toothaches, wounds, skin problems, mumps, measles, smallpox you know all of those things like. That's what the Native Americans use them for and it's known as the king of the blood purifiers. It really helps with, like lymphatic, to drain all that out, filter it all out and to help, you know, to remove toxins from your system. It's a great natural antibiotic and so it's not going to kill everything. And again, you got to keep in mind herbs do not work like pharmaceuticals. They take time, they are a little bit and they work in a different mode of action than most pharmaceuticals. So just kind of keep that in mind when you're taking and using.

Speaker 1: 40:48

Herbs is that you have to realize it is not the same thing as a pharmaceutical. It works a lot like penicillin in the body, without all of the side effects from penicillin and without killing off all of your good bacteria. It also helps expel poisons and toxins. It activates your body's defense system. It really gets those T cells to activating and doing what they're supposed to do to help boost your immune system. That's why I said that we use it and take it when we are feeling an active illness coming on.

Speaker 1: 41:29

It's not something you want to take every day, though, because you don't always want your immune system response like up in the clouds. You don't always want it to be firing super high. There has to be some regulation and herbs if you take them to, not always, but typically speaking. If you overuse an herb, it's not going to hurt you, but it's going to lose its efficacy. So you would need to come off of it for a little while and then go back on it, unless it's something that needs to build up in your system, like St John's wort, something of that nature. It just depends on the type of herb that it is. So just know that echinacea is really good against viruses, colds, preventing infections.

Speaker 1: 42:16

It's good for women to take during pregnancy. It kind of helps keep their body firing like it's supposed to during pregnancy. It's good for sores. It's good for tonsillitis, you can gargle it, you can do all kinds of things with echinacea. So if there's anything that you're going to plant and it's a gorgeous, gorgeous flower and it just looks great you can put it in your flower bed, you can use it as landscaping. It's just absolutely gorgeous and I would highly recommend that you add echinacea to your repertoire.

Speaker 1: 42:57

Now, like I said, there's just so, so many herbs that grow here and things that can be used as an herb that I just I can't go over them all. I will probably come back to them, you know later when we come back to some herbs, but I will read all over some of them. So if any of them interest you or you have them growing on your property, you can like. If you go oh, I've got a black walnut tree, we'll go research the medicinal uses for the black walnut because amazingly, there are a bunch. Ringworm is one of them. Like it's antifungal. So there's that Iron weed that's good for women who have just had a baby because it helps to regulate the blood flow afterwards, helps with pain, helps get everything back to normal. Dogwood dandelions See, I'm looking at my list.

Speaker 1: 43:55

Plantain Everybody knows plantain is really good. Yellow dock, sweet gum trees the bark in sweet gum trees is the same ingredient that they use in Tamiflu, so that's kind of cool. Red sumac, that's another one that we use. Wild hydrangea, also known as seven bark, that's good. Poke berries we use those. I have those in the freezer. Red clover, sage, yellow dock, if I haven't mentioned that already, and corn silk that's a really good one. There's just tons of.

Speaker 1: 44:33

I mean, if you have stuff growing on your prickly ash, that's a great one. That's also known as the toothache tree, the tulip poplar, the inner bark of that wild cucumber tree. Those are all really good for arthritis. Prickly ash is one of the best for arthritis. So just go out and see what you've got.

Speaker 1: 44:51

There's an app called picture this and you can get a family subscription so that everybody in your family has it. It's so much per year and it's been worth every penny for me because it has been dead on. Accurate so far, except for baby plants, like if it's a little tiny baby plant and it's just sartan or it's dead. It's not always accurate, but if that plant is in its prime picture this is for me so far has been dead on is exactly what it is. I've verified from other sources and I really have gotten to the point where I trust it.

Speaker 1: 45:31

But I have found so many things just by going out and walking and looking, and something will just catch my attention in nature Something with a pretty flower or something with a neat bark or just anything and I'll go oh, I wonder what that is.

Speaker 1: 45:47

Well then that sends me down the rabbit hole of I have this. So now let me see how I can use this, which has led to a full cabinet in here of about I don't know 90 to 100 different jars, gallon jars and quart jars and half gallon jars of just different things that we have growing here that we can use, because you don't have to use the same herb, like if there's an herb that I have that works for a particular thing, there's probably a hundred other herbs that do that and one of those is probably growing on your property. So just kind of figure out what you have, because it's an amazing journey to go down. There is so much to learn. I will never know it all. I will never be a master herbalist. I just believe that that's something that takes a lifetime and even at the end of it you still don't know everything. But there's a lot of people who know a lot and they love to share that information.

Speaker 1: 46:56

And herbalism is not something that's exclusive, it's not something you can patent. It's not something that you can say, oh, I make this so so and so can't make that, or it's just that's silly, because herbalism is. It's a way that you can say, oh, I make this so so-and-so, can't make that. It's just that's silly, because herbalism is a way that everybody can make money. You can consult with people, you can make things for people you know, because a lot of people don't have time to be doing that kind of stuff and there's enough people to go around for everybody. So I just encourage you learn a little bit around for everybody. So I just encourage you learn a little bit.

Speaker 1: 47:28

This is the last I'm going to talk about just wild crafted herbs for right now. Probably the next time I'm going to talk about some of the essential oils that we use and how we use those, and it's probably not going to be as long of an episode as this one. So with that, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you've enjoyed learning what herbs that we have and how we use them. I hope that it sparks something in you to go out and walk around and see what you have. You never know what you have growing on your property, that you can just cut it and hang it up to dry and then you know, cultivate it, make things out of it, just even if it's just five or 10 herbs. So I hope that I have inspired you to go out and see what you have, because truly everybody is an herbalist, whether you know it or not. But if you like the podcast, I hope that you can subscribe and leave a review. It helps people to find us and you can find me on all the socials, at the Gorham Homestead and on my website at thegorhamhomesteadcom. So whatever you are doing today, whatever you have on the docket, just remember to keep it real. See y'all, see y'all.

Speaker 1: 48:50

My daddy was a guitar picker Playing all the local clubs and my mama was a waitress when they parked M18 wheeler trucks. We didn't have much money. Times were kind of hard, living in a trailer On the edge of grandpa's farm. Yeah, I may not come from much, but I've got just enough. As long as my baby's in my arms and the good Lord knows what's in my heart, I refuse to be ashamed. It's just a southern thing.