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Building My Home Apothecary (Pt. 2)

On this episode: I've made a bit of headway. Woot!

By Ashley LichensteinPublished 5 years ago 9 min read
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Hey-O!

In my last blog, which you can find here, I talked about how I kind of got started, and am experimenting on my husband. I also said I'd make another blog post soon. This isn't exactly "soon", but here it is, nonetheless.

After my last post, this journey was pretty slow-going. *Snippet of backstory* I am a wife, and we have four boys, ages nine, six, four, and one. Most of my days, as you might imagine, are hectic and busy, and that's not even considering the days when we leave the house. That's probably why this has been slow-going. I've still only read up to chapter six in my textbook *cry face*. On the bright side, I HAVE discovered some things about cattails, added to my herb garden, made some bath bombs, started a jar of loose mint tea, planted some organic russet potatoes, and successfully made elderberry syrup, and lots of homemade bread, all of which makes me feel quite witchy and productive!

Next up is cattails.

Apparently, cattails are crazy medicinal. Cattails grow in marshy wetlands. We have a plethora of them in the low spots on our property. When I learned this, I was so excited. I started reading about their uses, and how to harvest and garble them. It appears that they are really only useful when they are fresh, although you can dry the rhizomes for later use, and I am going to try to prepare the gel that is between the young leaves for storage; I'm thinking of drying it into a powder to be reconstituted later. I'll need to get some little jelly mason jars for that, though. Anyway, like I said, we have a bunch on our property. The other day, my husband was tired of looking at the miniature swamp in the backyard, and he started ripping those SOBs right out of the ground.

Our own personal cattail swamp, which is a mixture of Cattails, Mexican Primrose, Pennywort, and I'm sure a few other unknown-to-me plants.

As he was pulling the cattails out, I was picking through the pile for my own stock, while shaking off several "what on earth are you doing" glances from my love. Almost all of the parts of the cattail are edible, but I was especially interested in the rhizomes and the gel. The rhizomes are mostly starch, but they can be eaten raw, or can be sauteed down in some butter. So, I just had to taste these and see. The gel is high in vitamin K, and has some analgesic properties. It can be spread onto a wound to stop bleeding and ease pain. The stalks can be used to help cushion a splint, the rhizomes can be macerated into a poultice for wounds, as well, as can the pollen on the females, which is the part that looks like a corn dog. So, if you ever find yourself injured while you're out camping, and there are some cattails nearby, YOU'RE SAVED!!

This is the big pile I mentioned sifting through to find the rhizomes I wanted.

These are the ones I chose. You can see the rhizomes, roots, and leaves.

If you don't know what a rhizome is, it's basically a stem that grows horizontally, under the ground, and connects to neighboring cattails in a network, just like ginger does. As you can see in the picture, the rhizome is that long thing growing out of the roots.

The rhizome is kind of squishy and fibrous. A good edible one is solid white. The one in the picture is a good edible one, but the white part is inside of the foamy insulation that is kind of brownish orange and dirty. When you peel that layer of insulation off, there is the starchy edible part. You'd think it smells real earthy, but to me it smells kind of flowery. Upon tasting this part, it tastes just like it smells; flowery. I am having trouble imagining how it would taste smothered down in some butter, but I supposed it could taste good. I'm excited to play with these again, and try to harvest some of that pain-relieving gel.

Next up is potatoes.

Not much excitement here, really. A few weeks ago, I bought a bag of organic russet potatoes from the grocery store and tucked them away in my potato bin until I decided to cook them. A couple of weeks later, I finally got around to it, and lo and behold, a few of them had sprouted in the bin! Yes! Plant them! So, I did what any green green thumb would do. I called my grandma. She said I could go a head and plant them. So, cut off the sprouts, and a bit of the potato that it was attached to, and just put in a hole in the ground that was about three inches deep. They need lots of sun, not too much water, and they should grow pretty easily.

Sweet.

So, I did just that. That was about a week ago. No visible signs of progress, yet. Will update at a later date.

Moving on. ----------

ELDERBERRIES!!!!

My youngest little love just turned one a couple of weeks ago. He recently came down with his very first fever. It came on in the night, and stayed for several days. I usually leave those fevers alone and let them do their job. I give fevers three days to do their thing, while treating symptoms, and keeping baby comfortable, before we head to the doctor to see if we need a little assistance. This particular fever had overstayed its welcome. So, I went over to my mother-in-law's house to pick up my car, and what to my wandering eyes should appear, but a cluster of what I'm fairly certain are elderberries growing right there next to her house. She's been my mother-in-law for quite a while now, and I've been to her house a thousand times in the last two years, and I've never noticed them until this day, the day I was taking my baby to the doctor for his first fever (which I found interesting). Naturally, I picked as many as I could. We went to the doctor, and the doctor couldn't find any obvious reason for the fevers after he tested negative for flu, RSV, tonsillitis, strep, and inner ear infection. We decided it was likely viral, and he said "Sure! Elderberry Syrup should definitely help him!" Great! You don't have to twist my arm. So, back home I went to get my berries and start concocting this new medicine for my apothecary... I mean baby. Medicine for my BABY.

Aesthetically pleasing picture of the elderberries I picked.

With a baby in one hand, and berries in the other, I found a recipe or two and started garbling my berries, removing all the stems. This. Took. For. Ever. When I was all done, I ended up with about six Cups of fresh berries. Elderberries are full of cyanide, if you weren't aware. You HAVE to cook them. If you eat them raw, you could die. No lie. It was quite difficult resisting the urge to snack on them as I went, because they smell like something delicious. Even the kids were like, "Can I try???" to which I'd reply, "ABSOLUTELY NOT! They are POISONOUS!" and they'd scurry away, afraid for their life. :D

So, I cooked them down in some water, simmering them for about 30 minutes to kill any bugs that had hitched a ride home with me, and to denature the cyanide, smashing them with a potato masher every so often. This part smells especially good! Then, I had to squash and strain the begeezus out of them, in a sieve, first, then with the sieve lined with cheesecloth, or in my case, a tea towel, because I had no cheesecloth. After that, I simmer the juice some more, with some lemon juice, honey, a couple of cinnamon sticks, and some freshly ground cloves. The end product tastes pretty good! And it sure is pretty!!

P.S. Baby ended up breaking out in a rash after his fever went away, indicating a timely case of Roseola. He's fine.

Finished jar of elderberry syrup

__________________________________________________

And finally, the last little leg of my journey so far, brings me to my tiny little wanna-be herb garden... and by garden I mean a few pots of some herbs that are currently sitting on my porch.

Currently, I've got parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme, basil, avocado, and carrots.

The parsley and mint, I've had for a bit. The rosemary, thyme, and basil I acquired fairly recently, and it's doing well. I planted the carrots just the other day, and I'm hoping the seeds will germinate. I'll update on that later. My avocados are new, and I'm very hopeful.

We are not fortunate enough to have a private well. So, we are forced to have city water, and our city water is dismal, at best. Sometimes, I come home, and our whole house smells like sewage. As you can imagine, it has killed other herbs I've tried to grow. So, I have to water my plants with rain water or filtered water.

The other day, I was planting my carrots, and I noticed my neighbor watering her plants with her garden hose. So, I hollered out to her to ask if she had well water or city water, and I told her how our city water keeps killing my plants. She went on to tell me that she DID have city water, but she usually collects rain water for her plants. She is currently out of rain water, but they have a filter on their house for the city water. AHHA! I want one of those. So, we chat across the yard for a minute about our plants, and then she says, "Do you want any avocado plants? I have several." Uh. YAASSSS!!!

I sent my oldest over there, and he came back with the long planter of avocado plants (pictured above). SCORE!!!

I guess I'll really have to play this one by ear, and research along the way on what to do and when to do it, as far as transplanting, and pruning. Hopefully, eventually, Momma won't be buying avocados from the store anymore... A girl can dream, right? Let us manifest this. ;D

And now, you are fully abreast on the happenings of my growing apothecary. And when I learn, hopefully, you'll learn, too. Sometimes, it's boring. Sometimes, it's exciting. It's always something, though. I like to think I'm teaching my children about these things, too... and my husband, even if he's only half listening. Lol. Also, please consider tipping me. It'll definitely come in handy when my husband finally builds the various structures I've requested, and with buying seeds and things so we can keeping growing the apothecary and learning everything we can from the process.

Until next time.

Love Love Love.

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About the Creator

Ashley Lichenstein

I’m a Certified Lactation Counselor, wife, mother of 4 boys, positive thinker, and perpetual student of the world.

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