Sunday’s foraging run was about just two things, more rosehips, and yarrow. We could have grabbed so much more chokecherry, but that wasn’t going to happen. We’re tapped out with what we can process and store for this year.
The trail we were on is frequented by other foragers and is a main walking path, so the 5% rule was in full effect as we went from bush to bush gathering ripened rosehips. A few bushes had the larger hips, which take longer to dry in the oven. I was putting various airfry trays through earlier last week, when I forgot someone changed the temperature dial on the toaster oven, and I ended up with one tray of very black round orbs!!! That tray had to go in the garbage. Another tray with a few large hips on it had all but one fully dry, so it is in the oven with another fresh tray. Once dry, we need to crush, then sift out as much of the hair as we can before it gets added to looseleaf tea blends.
We noticed a fair bit of very large yarrow leaves along the path, so on our way back, we picked a decent haul of yarrow leaves, just one or two from each clump we came across.
Some of the yarrow leaves were seriously large! This photo here was of one of the larger ones, though we’d picked a few even bigger than that one.
A cold had entered the house a few days prior, hitting my adult son first and hardest. By Saturday evening I was feeling it, and got NO sleep that night! So we were out there foraging with me fighting the onset of the cold. I began chewing on yarrow leaves, and at this time of year, one would expect them to taste rather sharp and bitter, but as the saying goes, when you are ill, every bitter thing is sweet. I revise that saying to be, when you are ill, what you need tastes better than it would if you were fine. The yarrow tasted downright pleasant and I chewed on quite a few leaves until finally they began to taste bitter.
At that point, Ashley tossed a few golden rod leaves at me to chew, and occasionally including a bit of alfalfa to get rid of some of the bitter flavour. By that time we were soon to leave the trail and head home.
Here’s a fun photo Ashley took of a young Ponderosa Pine flanked by two 2nd year Great Mullein. Click the image to view it better. The two Great Mullein almost look like spires off the pine’s branches in this photo.
Once home, I was using an anti-inflammatory/fungal/viral/bacterial oil infused blend of herbs that we’ve been making for 9 years now, applying it to my temples and sinus areas. That too felt really good! Dinner included bison broth that had been made from bones and spices. Seriously thinking of opening another jar of that tonight. My symptoms compared to my son’s are fast-tracked. I slept much better Sunday night and am largely clear today. I’m occasionally bringing out the Oil of Oregano topically on adenoids and internally, but not like Saturday evening or Sunday. Still drinking lemon water as needed.
Today’s focus was turning several jars I couldn’t refrigerate last week, into syrup. Some were starting to ferment so it was just as well to put them on the stove. 6 1 litre mason jars turned into 12 jars of syrup. The 10kg bag of sugar had a couple cups removed from a batch last week, and I had to pull one more cup out of the household sugar canister. The cost of a flat of jars plus the cost of a 10kg bag of sugar, means that those jars of syrup cost around $2.70 each. I consider these jars to be half-made jelly. It takes 2 pouches of pectin to make roughly 2 mason jars of jelly for a rough total cost of $5.19. Almost $2 less than the brand of jam we buy and half the cost of the brand names in that size jar. That will mean a long term savings of $20 in the brand we buy, or a long-term savings of $80 if we were to buy 12 brand name jars of jam! I think we’re doing things ourselves on this one!
We also discovered a bush of Artemisia absinthium growing near some tansy on the trail! It looked very much like pasture sage on steroids, with leaves similar to Great Sage, and a taste test said it was definitely Artemisia of some stripe. A quick reverse image search revealed that we have Abysinth growing here! Wormwood! Learn something new almost every day! Glad to see this bush here!
