A little spring foraging...for nature's medicine

I have written before about foraging for wild edible plants, but I also like to forage for plants that have medicinal properties. Most often, the haul I take home will serve multiple purposes as it’s a bit difficult to separate the activities!

I have been waiting for Spring to really announce itself so I can get out and forage! And last weekend, which happened to be the spring equinox, was perfect for a long relaxing walk with the opportunity to gather some wild goodies.

Foraging is very much a spiritual and mindful experience for me. I get to exist in the present moment as I engage with and walk among nature. From the moment I put together my foraging kit (my bag contains good kitchen scissors, a small bag (preferably paper) to hold the herbs, garden glove for thorny or stingy plants), choose the walk to take, then identifying, harvesting and later preparing and using the plants it’s a special experience.

Before heading out, I usually have in mind what I would like to gather, and how much I require. If I am going to be using it for adding to a meal, I will only take what I need for a few days as the wild greens are often softer and less resilient so tend to lose their freshness pretty quickly.

If I am gathering herbs for making into medicinal remedies, I will still only gather enough to prepare and store for what I think I need over that season. Although the greens are free and I usually don’t deplete an entire plant, I don’t really like to waste what I forage unnecessarily. I also tend to only collect plants that I think I will actually use. That means I need to put in some hours of research to and make a plan for what I want to find.

I have a large collection of books that I spend many hours pouring over as I research what I want to gather, how to prepare it, if I want to turn it into a remedy or just store as a single plant.

My haul over the weekend included the following for both food and medicinal purposes:

Dandelion

Parts used: Flowers, leaves, roots

Season harvested: Gather the young leaves in Spring when they are less bitter taste, and wait until Autumn to harvest roots (although these can also be harvested in Spring).

Uses: Flowers and leaves are edible and good for using in salads or can be added to cooked dishes. Leaves when dried can be made into an infusion that can help with digestion or as a diuretic. With this collection, I used all the leaves in our dinner.

Red clover

Parts used: Flower heads

Season harvested: Spring and early summer

Uses: The flowers can be dried and stored, or used fresh. Fresh they can add colour to a salad. Dried and stored they can then be made up into an infusion and used on skin that is inflamed with eczema or can be gargled for sore throats or mouth ulcers.

Blackberry

Parts used: Collect the young leaves early in spring before flowers appear

Season harvested: Spring

Uses: The leaves are dried and crushed for storing. These can then be made into infusions that can be applied as an external use on skin that would benefit from antiseptic or antifungal treatment. The dried leaves can also be made into a tea and drunk by someone who has a cough or used as a gargle for a sore throat or mouth ulcer

Chickweed

Parts used: Leaves and stems

Season harvested: All year round

Uses: As food chickweed makes a great fresh addition to salads or cooked into a meal such as a pasta sauce or curry; it can also be made into a lemonade style drink using the juice of the chickweed as it is a good source of vitamin A and C. I used all this chickweed in our dinner. Chickweed is also great to use topically either turned into an ointment, but also to crush and use fresh as a poultice for itchy skin and rashes.

Also, since my special spaces post last week I have now found the perfect spot in my laundry to pop a small set of drawers for herb storage with the top to dry them without being disturbed. And even better, it’s not out of sight and therefore not out of mind (which can sometimes lead to forgetting all about them!).

Future posts will build on my herbal collections and include recipes on how I prepare and use them.

Happenings from the past week and idle chat...

Hanging out time:
~ We've just completed 2 wks of school holidays. Our first! We had a lovely low-key holidays - mostly hanging out at home together, playing board games on rainy days in front of the fire, catching up with friends, stargazing on clear nights, a trip to the art and culture museum, a bit of crafting, and catching up with our unschooling friends (Danielle declared to them that she is a School Kid AND a Homeschooled Kid - she wants to claim both labels still lol).

Blokus - a game for adults as well as children, where once you know the
rules and figure out how to make strategic moves, age is not an advantage.

~ Apple Magic: Find the secret inside.

~ Nathan pondered whether Kapiti Island (just off our coastline) is taller than the Eiffel Tower - so we did a bit of googling and found out that Kapiti Island is 197m taller.

Garden:
~ Minimal garden happenings this week - my seedlings are coming along well (when I remember to water them and take them out/or air out the greenhouse so they don't overheat). Chicken coop got a clean out and poop added to one of the garden beds in preparation for my seedlings when they are a bit older.

~ Continuing to harvest enough silverbeet to bulk out and add to most meals. Feijoas appear to be coming to an end - but we've gorged ourselves every day and haven't had any excess (aside from sharing with friends we visit).

~ Chickens are off the lay for winter it seems.

~ Simon's built a bike shed. The kids bikes used to live up on our covered porch by the front door - but now that the table and chairs are there, the bikes have just been shunted around. Since this photo was taken he's added a wooden post up the side and top to protect us from the the sharp edges. He's left the bottom section open so it doesn't get too damp in there. It's a long shed and the open end will mean that it should be mostly sheltered from any rain driving in in that direction. And that's my poor very under-used bike in there too.



Around the home stuff:

~ Ick, tax pack has arrived to complete. And homeschooling paperwork to claim a bit of "payment" for the part term when we were still homeschooling. I won't go on too much about the parking fine when we met up with a friend elsewhere and forgot to check for limited-time parking signs! Oops.

Herbal Healing:

~ A friend had a nasty cat-bite on her hand. After being tended to by the doctor and medicated up, I also suggested the chickweed poultice for the swelling. After 2hrs of having the poultice on she said she noticed the swelling down and could move her fingers more than she could before. The wounds also oozed a little as Susun Weed said would likely happen.

~ I had my third chickweed success in as many weeks - Danielle got 3 huge mozzie bites on her ankle over the weekend that really swelled up the whole area and itched like crazy. After returning from being away for the night, I popped a handful of chickweed on and wrapped it up for a few hours. Voila! Upon removing it 2hrs later, we discovered the swelling had completely disappeared. 

~ And another chickweed story. I really seem to be attracting these! Nathan came home from school with a sprained ankle yesterday - painful and quite swollen. So at bedtime (for some reason it still seems to take a while for my brain to click in that I could be using something herbal instead of doing nothing), off I trotted to gather some chickweed and a bit of plantain, which also has anti-inflammatory properties. I crushed and broke it up and strapped it on as before. The swelling was downa  bit and will repeat it again. Love that stuff. I reckon I've well and truly learnt a good deal about chickweed now.



We've dubbed the white cloth (old nappy cut up into squares) and one of Simon's
stretchy sweat straps from inside his bike helmet as the chickweed wraps. 



Herbal healing - Chickweed



Not a great picture - the chickweed in my garden is only starting to come through after a
hot, dry summer. I actually had trouble finding some to take a photo.

 I had the opportunity to use chickweed a few nights ago.

Simon came off his mountain bike a few days ago and gave his knee a good whack (no external abrasions). All was well, if just a bit sore from the bang, but two days later his joint was sore, flaming red, and hot. It was obvious there was inflammation, but I was also a bit concerned there could be some sort of internal infection brewing. First up he drew around the red area (it was about 15cm long and 7-8cm wide just to the lower side of the knee), just so we could keep an eye on it. I then thought to pull out my herbal books to see if a poultice could help (it was 11pm Friday afterall, so really just a wait and see anyhow since he was otherwise fine). Susun Weed suggested a chickweed poultice as being particularly useful for sore, painful, "hot", and inflamed joints (the saponins in the chickweed has the ability to open cells and draw out infection).

So, off out to the garden we went and gathered up a large handful of chickweed (I had weeded around a patch just a few days before so knew right where to go). We laid it over the red area (just lightly crushed in my hand, and it was already wet from the rain), wrapped a cotton cloth over it and secured it on with a piece of strapping and safety pin. Susun suggests that 10mins to 3hrs is all that is required. Simon went off to bed and I said he could remove it if he woke later on (which happened to be about 2hrs later). In the morning we had a look and there wasn't a trace of redness and the swelling had gone down.

I guess it's entirely possible that this would have been the outcome without the poultice, but it was good to know that it didn't "fail" either.

Chickweed has many uses including treating inflammatory skin conditions (hives, eczema, itchiness, abrasions and wounds, boils, burns), colds and flus (dissolves and expectorates thickened membranes), stomach ulcers, inflammed bowels, sore eyes (conjunctivitis).

Edible: It can also be added to salads (the tender young bits are best), made into pesto, added to green smoothies or in place of spinach in a hot dish. It's packed with nutrients - sure makes sense to use a "weed" that seems to grow freely in most gardens without effort!