somewhat thorough list of all herbal tinctures made in 2009! December 5, 2009

this is a list of the currently available tinctures and other herbal products. mainly you can special order and pickup at wild hive farm or germantown community farm.  i can ship but don’t generally and i am open to barter, especially other herbs. i can blend a special request-it may take a few days.

we use mostly local ingredients grown with no pesticides or wildcrafted safely and sustainably.

the medium for tinctures is organic grain alcohol. occasionally we will use brandy, whiskey or vodka due to taste, extraction or availablity. glycerites are organic vegetable glycerin and grain alcohol. an acetum is og apple cider vinegar and grain alcohol. liniments use rubbing alcohol, oils are organic olive, sunflower, almond or grapeseed oils.

everything is available in 1 oz. size-inquire for 2, 4, 16.  inquire for current prices and wholesale prices.

nothing is a substitute for emergency medical assistance when needed.

tinctures:

*angelica rt

*anise hyssop flw top

*aspen bark

*astragalus rt

*basil, sweet

*basil, holy (tulsi)

*barberry rt

*birch, sweet bark

*blackberry rt

*black haw bark

*black walnut hull, bark, leaf

*blueberry

*bloodroot

*burdock rt

*cacao nibs

*calamus rt

*calendula flw

*california poppy

*catnip

*cayenne

*cedar greens

*chaga

*chammomile

*chickweed

*cilantro

*cinqefoil

*cleavers

*coltsfoot

*comfrey leaf

*cottonwood bark and bud

*cramp bark

*cranberry

*damiana lf

*dandelion flw, lf and rt

*echinacea flw, lf and rt

*elder(black) flw and berry

*elecampane rt

*fennel seed

*feverfew

*ginger

*goldenrod flw

*goldenseal rt

*heal-all

*hops strobiles

*honeysuckle flw

*horsetail

*hyssop

*japanese knotweed rhizome

*lady’s mantle

*lavender

*lemon balm

*lemon verbena

*licorice rt

*linden lf and flw

*lobelia inflata

*maitake

*meadowsweet

*mint-peppermint, spearmint, wild mint

*monarda-didyma and fistulosa

*motherwort

*mugwort

*mulberry bark and lf

*mullein lf and rt

*nettles, lf/top and seed

*oat, milky sd

*peach-bark lf and pit

*pine resin

*plantain lf

*pleurisy rt

*prickly ash bark

*propolis

*purple loosestrife

*red clover flw

*redstem wormwood

*reshi

*rose-rugosa, wild and apothecary-petals, hips and lf

*rosemary

*sage, garden

*sage, white

*scullcap

*sheperd’s purse

*solomon’s seal rt

*spilanthes

*st. john’s wort

*sulfur shelf

*sweet annie

*teasel rt

*turmeric rt

*usnea lichen

*vervain-blue and white

*violet-lf and flw

*white pine bark

*wild carrot seed

*wild cherry bark

wild lettuce

*willow bark

*wormwood

*yarrow

*yellow dcck

tincture blends:

*allergy tonic

*anti-inflammatory

*antiitch spray

*antimicrobial spray

*cooling spray

*cramp-ex antispasmodic blend (oil)

*digestive bitters

*little sugar dream nectar

*long life tonic

*nerve tonic

*propolis throat spray

*spring tonic

*stress re-leaf

*wound wash spray

tea blends:

*cold care

*cool breeze

*di-gest-o

*drink your greens

*get grounded

*intense defense

*i.p. freely

*local lemons summer cheer

*lover’s tea

*nutri-tea

*relaxing infusion

*sweet dreams

*winter warm-up

*nettles chai

*tulsi rose

salves:

*antifungal

*burn aid

*dreamy balm

*hive power

*lavender soother

*petal power moisture balm’

*pine sap healer

*plant power

*roots warming

*rose petal

*sweet birch foot rub

*super st. john’s wort

*tree power

*white pine expectorator

plus more:

*wild cherry cough syrup

*elder-echinacea syrup

*nettles-molasses iron syrup

*rose hips cit c syrup

*mullein-garlic oil

*super rich eye creme

*vit c plus facial serum

*vit e facial oil

*assorted wonderful lip balms

*infusion-making accessories

*herbal honeys

**everything is subject to availability. because we grow and harvest by the seasons there are limited quantities!**

fellow workers farm & germantown community farm are joining forces! November 5, 2009

the fellow workers farm collective formerly located in pine plains has relocated to germantown! our new address is

4872 state rte. 9G germantown ny.

we are looking forward to doing the herbal csa again and maybe a farmer’s market as well as a farm stand and eventually we hope to make a space for education and consultation.

a major winter project is compiling a list of all available products right here so keep a lookout for that.

now is a great time to send us suggestions of what you would like to see us grow next season!

sorry-i’m too busy with moving to post much more.

 

food justice, tree medicine and cold nights September 2, 2009

the food justice revival was a success! well, at least it was fun. and educational.  for those of you who haven’t heard, the food security roundtable is a group of farmers, food activists and supporters doing imporant work in the northeast-bringing fresh healthy food into food deserts, bridging gaps and making connections between urban and rural people, advocating on behalf of those who are unable to access or afford organic and local foods and helping the disadvantaged to be empowered, educated and  well fed.  the events they have put on have so far been fun, interesting, diverse and radical and i appreciate the organizers for all the hard work they are doing. chck out www.foodpower.org  for more information.

this saturday september 5th you will find me at farmacy herbs in providenc ri (my hometown!)leading a class called “tree medicine”.  it is a hands-on, participatory kinda class and i am very excited to be sharing my tree knoweldge, and to learn from the other particiapnts too.  go to www.farmacyherbs.com to learn about this and other upcoming classes, and also to see what kind of exciting work is going on there.

germantown community farm, which is our sister community nearby, will be hosting a wonderful weekend of skillshares, food and music on september 26th. their annual parties are always a great time, a chance to reconnect with good people and a time to shake your booty a little or a lot.  find their schedule and more information at www.germantowncommunityfarm.blogspot.com

i just read a great book: folk medicine in southern appalachia by anthony cavender. i was led that way by endless late night foxfire reading and it is a weird mixture of history, pertinent herbal information and a little weirdness. i reccomend it to people who are a little obsessed with reading every herb book  they can find-like me.

so, i finally succumbed to the late blight. it is pretty horrific actually, a horror movie for nightshades. the rain has been pretty outrageous this season, our area has declared a state of agricultural emergency. just a little reminder of how rough this farming business can be, how you can lose all your sage plants in a weekend, and how fortunate we are that we are not life or death dependent on growing our own potatoes to make it through the winter.  now that the nights are turning cold i am thinking about digging roots again, and i am excited to see what is going on with  yacon tubers i planted.  i have been propagating calamus lately, harvesting the last of the monarda, i put up some sweet annie, some lobelia too and i am officially ready to start looking for maitake! i was excited to find wild scullcap growing by the swamp along with a very delicous smelling wild mint and more coltsfoot. some are not scared off by approximately 22 inches of rain a week….

halfway through herbal csa July 31, 2009

summer defined

it appears that we are halfway through the delicious summer season and halfway through our herbal csa. i am swimming in peaches and plums over here and i’m putting them up like mad. i made peach butter and sour cherry butter, then my favorite winter treat-peaches cut up and tucked into a jar, covered in brandy. bust that out in january and you will make friends! then i tinctured the bark,leaves, and pits for medicine. now i must tackle the plums-maybe more butter, some plum kuchen and of course crisps. the blackberries are coming ripe, and boy are they plump this year! very juicy, kind of sour. i can’t wait to make more jam.
in the veggie gardens i have cauliflowers about to harvest, they are so cute. my giant parsnip has reached 6 feet, and i am saving the seed from that as well as carrots and mizspoona-don’t tell monsanto! (those bastards) a groundhog has eaten the turnip tops and soybeans, tunneling beneath the fence to chow down on the feast. it is a luxury that i am not TOO mad-thanks to our bartered csa share from germantown community farm. i also found a few ripe cayennes yesterday and i am nibbling sungold tomatoes. recently i discovered the biggest zucchini in the entire world…it probably weighs a ton.
in the wonderful world of herbs i have been spending a lot of time harvesting which feels good-the payoff of midsummer. goldenrod is flowering, vervains, scullcap, monardas, and so much wonderful tulsi. the calendula is especially resinous this year. this is the first time i’ve grown milk thistles and they are the prickliest spikiest most outrageous thing i’ve seen in some time. the sages could be better-they aren’t too fond of excess rain but they’re pretty tough. i have harvested a lot of red clover blossoms, a lot of lemon balm and yarrow and rose petals. the st. john’s wort oil is looking lovely this year, i am infusing all manner of medicinals in oil for fall salve-making.
in other news, i am putting together a little zine of photos of the stash of herbalists around the country. it is called stash and it’s just for fun, a way for us to connect and see what others are doing and how they are doing it. so if you have a stash, send me a few photos with captions of your herbs, tinctures, oils or whatever you feel like sharing. include a short bio and if you want, a photo of yourself. please do so soon, as i’d like to have it out before september first. i will send you a free copy if you participate. and no, you don’t have to be a “professional” herbalist or anything-all who make medicines are home herbalists! i will post when they are ready how to get your hands on one too. send your questions or contributions to traci at fellowworkersfarm@gmail.com

SANITIZE THIS! July 9, 2009

i have been reading a great book, sort of a “people’s history of american housewives” called a thousand years over a hot stove by laura schenone. i don’t know if she intended to be so radical but she lays out the struggles of women from pr-columbian to the present american melting pot in hearth and home to forge an identity through food, and in some cases healing. we can draw many parallels between these two-food and medicine- throughout time-two different but interdependent ways of healing and nourishing that defined us culturally, spiritually and practically. much of our identity and culture as well as our power has been traded in the past century or so for consumer goods and conveniences, and at a great cost. certainly it is understandable how after years of back-breaking labor and hunger women would wish to heat up some canned meat, throw on some pants and go dancing. similarly, after multiple epidemics and fevers, i see why women would be happy to hand the responsibilities of caring for the ill over to someone else. and they could not have foreseen a hundred years ago just how far this would go…but we lost a lot in that trade, and only now are we beginning to see the long-term results.
certainy i am not speaking against the true achievements of modern medicine- hygiene, emergency care, diagnostics have certainly saved and improved some lives. modern food systems have kept more people fed…but it has been a surface feeding. a great longing exists, though it is often not defined or understood. and we can not nourish that longing with products that come in packages. modern medicine often fixes things quickly and on the surface without providing a deeper cure. modern foods are often convenient and assuage hunger but provide no deeper nourishment. often, both cause as many problems as they solve. iatrogenic prematurity, obesity, tooth decay, infections, environmentally-induced cancers and asthma- all fall under the ill-defined category of “side effects”. generations of women’s wisdom are “collateral damage”, lost to modern people. the loss of farmland and forageland, medicinal herbs and unpolluted wilderness are just part of modern life. connections are not made, and the loss of our connection to our sources of nourishment and healing is one of the great underlying causes of modern depression and discontent.

we have allowed someone else to define our food and health as well as our pleasure, love, family, home, entertainment and education. in other words, our reality. we have eliminated many of our cultural and class differences in lieu of a predicitability, sanitization, packaging and directions. our dependency now defines us as a culture more than anything else and our desire to be free from all discomfort as soon as possible has kept us in high heels and neckties, in little climate-controlled boxes and attatched to reproducible results.
yet the fringes still exist, they have not been and cannot be totally destroyed. immigrants and the homeless exist outside of law-abiding middle class lifestyles. healers and midwives, hustlers and shamans and drifters defy the laws and standards of modern america to bring what is needed into communities, to provide healing or learning, or just to get by. herbal healing is such a vast well of wisdom that there an be no experts or rules, just a grassroots network of amazing people who answer to noone but the plants themselves. of course we have attempts to standardize and corporate-ize herbs and healing but the rsistance comes in many shapes and sizes, and we are forging our own movement and knowledge base which they will never own. as long as we define ourselves as consumers first, wildness will never be understood or respected as the basis of our salvation. the great illusion that life is knowable and controllable will continue to lead us down the road to isolation and sadness. our fears will be exploited by those who wish to gain money and power at the expense of nature, community and connections. but those who grow and prepare foods, forage the fringes, pass on and preserve knowledge, grow and make medicines and provide healing and comfort to those in need give us as a community a gift greater than we can imagine in this moment, which will only be fully understood by future generations.

the strawberry: further proof of infinite love June 11, 2009

if you have been wondering about, you know, infinite love and that kinda stuff-behold, the strawberry! such a perfect little package of wonderfulness. i love for the brief 3 weeks in june that we can harvest strawberries here and at thompson-finch farm which is an organic pyo farm in ancram. ( www.thompson-finch.com ) we spent a day there, then spent 2 days freezing, jamming, and of course eating raw, drying, blending smoothies, baking mapley crisps… sigh.
every time i get sick of life/this place/myself i get a big ol’ smack of love from plants. i went for an evening walk and fell into a huge patch of calamus. i have been looking everywhere for calamus! for a long time! i wandered through the swamp in amazement, then got my hands down into the muck and pulled up some rhizomes. they are fascinating. i love being fascinated by plants, when it’s just like what is this thing and why i am i so lucky to be accessing it right now?
i have also been under the spell of rosa rugosa right now. the smell could only be called intoxicating. i love being snuggled into the spiny branches dodging bees and pulling off petals which are so hot pink as to be called immodest….it’s a real hussy of a bush in my yard, i tell ya.
what else is blooming right now? cinquefoil, lemon balm motherwort, red clover, chammomile is just starting, oats are on the verge of milky plumpness, some tulsi is flowering, daisies are open and california poppy-a study in contrast. the bees are beside themselves and i go nowhere without pruners and a basket of some kind.
we are eating a lot of mustards and arugula from the garden, cilantro, garlic scapes. i found the first rip mulberry of the season today, only a matter of time before they rain their juicy love onto the tin roof-all night! its like this: plop! roll-roll-roll-roll. plop! roll-roll-roll-roll. over and over all night, i could charge admission it’s so fun. birds really come out of the woodwork for that event!

summer is rolling in with blooms and brass bands June 8, 2009

well, i sure do have my hands full with..well, flowers mostly! i am planting my ASS off, literally, i have planted so many delightful medicinal herbs. i spent a lot of time today harvesting red clover blossoms, comfrey leaf, and motherwort. i love the about-to-flower-smells-so-good moments of late spring/early summer. the rosa rugosa is going nuts with hot pink flowers, muy sexy, the bees are all over it. mulberries are blushing too, and the tiny peaches are literally compelling. our wonderful honeybees are having quite the time gathering the abundance, and me too.
in other news, the wonderful tuba skinny brass band has been tooting their horns around these parts lately-if you haven’t yet herd them, do!
we were delighted to receive our first csa share from germantown community farm last night, this included white “salad turnips”-yikes, what a treat! they grow things we have a hard time with like turnips and radishes.
also, we had a moment yesterday to go to kmoca which is some kinda art gallery to check out our nice friend lu’s art-it is a combination of metalwork and fiber art which is rather compelling including weird-fun stuff like a hair vest and not-as-weird-fun stuff like lovely embroideries on forged metal frames. yay, lu!
we are looking forward to a mushroom walk next weekend-milkies, black trumpets, get ready to meet your biggest fans…

some things are funny May 9, 2009

one thing that’s funny-maybe you’ve noticed-when people find out you are “into” herbs, they tend to pass on a lot of baskets. you know, “country-style” baskets mass produced in china, bought at yard sales. they were a big decorative thing like 10 years ago. i mean, not like baskets aren’t useful-they are-but how many do i need? say…3.
i am getting read for my first csa pickup-saturday may 23. there are 4 more shares open, and the deadline to sign up is may 20 so you still have a chance to join!
i was hunting lilacs the other day for wine and found myself in a field of horsetail, it was almost like hanging out with mushrooms-kinda prehistoric-they made me silly. i’ve since tinctured some and dried the rest.
i’ve also fallen under the spell of violets. in the garden, in the swamp, in the woods and open fields…violet seems to enjoy growing dang near everywhere around here. i love the flower and i have put up violet oil and tincture, a glycerite to be combined with milky oat, plus i’ve dried and candied, made a violet honey and violet-infused brandy.
i then started infusing everything else in oil-lilacs, ground ivy, cherry bark, mint, chocolate and vanilla, elderberry, dandelion flowers, chickweed.
i’m currently working on my masterpiece-raspberry linzer lip balm.
everything seems to be coming up around here, it’s green and delicious. we just planted a peach tree, and i am spending most of my time building a sage garden and pulling up garlic mustard.

the mighty dandelion April 28, 2009

bee my honey

it is dandelion season again, time to make my yearly plea to stop poisoning the earth and ourselves. dandelions. i do enjoy their sunny little faces, but even more so their powerful and abundant medicine. every part of the dandelion is useful. the flower makes great wine and a luscious petal-infused salve. the root is a deep liver cleanse. the leaves are good eatin’ a delicious bitter and a gentle diuretic. food for the bees. but even more important the dandelion is a symbol for the world’s complete backwardsness. not only is it considered ok to poison the crap out of our earth in order to get rid of dandelions it is actually strongly encouraged through tons of advertising and in many places one is considered a real wack job for not mowing, digging, and otherwise maiming them. for what?! to achieve the horrific pesticide-laced monocrop we call the lawn, which provides nothing of substance for earth’s creatures! it is ironic that the plant which we need the most we poison the most vigorously. the tenacity of the dandelion is intimidating. the mystery disgusts people. now, i have mentioned this before but that won’t keep me form saying it again. all pesticides and herbicides need to be eliminated. stop making them, stop using them, stop advertising them, stop selling them. no, there is no excuse and no reason to ever spray poison onto the earth, in the air, anywhere. we do not own the earth, we are just borrowing it. dandelions are tenacity incarnate, coming up through cracks in the pavement and so often we miss the lesson entirely. the dandelion has a sense of humor, but is losing patience with us. the dandelion asks, “must i paint you a picture?”

links and upcoming events April 15, 2009

somewhat less poetic than pollination yet with just as many possibilites are events! some upcoming dates for fun around here are:

thursday april 23 we wil have music here at the farm in pine plains. our friend todd will be traveling up this way, and he claims it will be playful and fun.  call for more info.

sunday april 26-fall ny convergence planning meeting. again, its here.

friday may 1st mayday party/fundraiser at farmacy herbs in providence-www.farmacyherbs.com

saturday may 9 party/fundraiser at germantown community farm- germantowncommunityfarm@blogspot.com

i will be selling stuff saturday may 16 at the mayfair at milbrook day school.

may 29-30-31 come to a big work party here at the bob/fellow workers farm-work and play together at last.

wild hive farm is really open now, they are serving food and of course breads and grains. you can eat, buy fellow workers farm products there and say hi to amy while you’re at it. www.wildhivefarm.com