Top 7 Backpack Remedies: Plant Allies for the Trail & Road

Top 7 Backpack Remedies: Plant Allies for the Trail & Road

My sweet friend, fellow herbalist, sister wild woman and student, Ananda Wilson, just did a lovely post over on her blog that’s inspired me to do something similar. I don’t have any cool little tincture wraps like she does, but I definitely have a set of my top 7 backpack remedies (that’s 6 tinctures plus a salve). I really did try to match Ananda’s wonderfully efficient number of five, but dammit, I just couldn’t do it. Now, any first aid kit is going to adapt to a given situation, grow according to need and vary wildly depending on the bioregion of the person creating it. With that in mind, this post isn’t an attempt at prescribing a perfect med kit. Instead, it’s just a description of the 7 herbal preparations I’m...

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A General Guide to Creating an Effective Pain Liniment or Salve

A General Guide to Creating an Effective Pain Liniment or Salve

That’s 8 yr. old Rhiannon sitting on a rock ledge looking out at the budding Cottonwood trees, one of my favorite pain salve ingredients. ~ Pain salves are used for a wide variety of purposes, but are most commonly applied to sore and often inflamed joints and muscles. This pain and inflammation can stem from many sources, including arthritis, fibromyalgia, old injuries, myriad chronic diseases that result in systemic inflammation (including many auto-immune diseases and some viruses such as Hep C) as well as acute trauma to some part of the body. With the exception of an acute injury, most of these disorders are symptoms of other underlying issues. With this in mind, realize that using a pain salve as a bandaid for your discomfort rather than addressing...

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Primal Eating – Ramblings & Resources

I’ve been fiddling around with ways of eating for a long time now, with occasional ventures into the extreme (vegetarian for seven years and nearly two years of raw foods, for example) and sometimes trying to finagle my way back to “normal” eating (that would be the kind that includes bread and cereal, a complete and utter failure, I might mention). The most successful route by far, has been when I do a basic “paleo” type of diet (and for your information, my blood type is A+, which really makes me think very little of the blood type diet), that includes lots of wild (or grassfed, when I can get it) meat, eggs, veggies/greens and happy fats (lard, coconut oil, palm oil, sometimes butter, nuts) as well as moderate amounts of fruit,...

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Good News – Cellulitis Update

I’m happy to say that this case of cellulitis (see previous post) has been much easier to treat than the one earlier this year. Today, Loba’s walking around fairly easily, almost no redness in the foot and just a little swelling. We continue to do the soaks, poultices and internal tinctures, but I expect she’ll be completely back to normal in a matter of days. Yippee! Plantain, Alder and Beebalm formed the core of my treatment here, and have proven themselves over and over in stubborn infections from a variety of causes. These are nice simple herbs, all commonly available as weeds in North America or easily grown. The Peach fixed that wasp sting right up too, it’s good and dependable that way.

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Green Chile Season & Another Case of Cellulitis

Green Chile Season & Another Case of Cellulitis

This may be the best time of year in the SW – the ground is moist, the garden is full, the weather cool and the green chiles roasting. Green Chiles are good in damn near anything, this morning for breakfast I had an apple, a wedge of extra sharp chedder chees and a pile of freshly roasted green chiles. Around here, you can find an outdoor vendor with a roaster selling green chiles (usually with a choice of mild, medium or hot) in almost any village or city, most of the chiles coming from the nearby green chile capital of the world: Hatch, NM. You buy them by the pound, and while our current 35 lbs (weighed when fresh, less after being roasted, even less after being skinned and seeded) sounds like a lot, I assure you that I’ll be looking for more very...

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Bitters: Beverages with Moxie – Guest Post by Susan Belsinger

Susan Belsinger, herbal author and kind reader of the Medicine Woman’s Roots has graciously contributed a guest post to my blog for this month’s blogparty. This interesting and informative article even includes a good many recipes for using bitters in tasty recipes. Bitters, Beverages with Moxie Arthur O. Tucker and Susan Belsinger Many of our pre- and post-prandial tipples have a long, distinguished history as herb mixtures to cure ailments.  For example, Benedictine dates from about 1510, when the Dom Bernardo Vincelli at Fécamp, France discovered an “elixir” to revive tired Benedictine monks, and he even claimed that it cured local fishermen and peasants of malaria.  We know that Benedictine today contains lemon balm, arnica, hyssop,...

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