Friday, July 22, 2011

appalachian herbalism at camp pleasant

Last weekend we hosted our first publicized herb workshop here at Camp Pleasant Farm. Admittedly, I did little for this effort, since my head is stuck in pickle, kraut, and farm world, but Melissa, together with our friend Andrew Ozinskas from Henry County, pulled off a wonderful day of working with herbs. We had about 20 people attend a 5 hour day complete with fresh lunch.



This blog post is just to share a glimpse of this kind of work that is being done here; it is in no way an attempt to pass on knowledge of herbs or how to process and use them. If you are interested in learning and attending gatherings in the future, don't hesitate to get in touch. We think this was a success and we plan to do more of this kind of workshop in the future. That said, enjoy some pics...


After a little meditation to get us all in the mood, we ventured out into the landscape to look at plants and listen to Andrew. We didn't make it far before we were circled around a plant we all recognize in July, Queen Ann's Lace, which I am sure is known by many herbalists by a more complex and fitting scientific name. If anyone can take a common"weed" and talk for 20 minutes and hold everyone's attention despite a heat index of 100, it is Andrew, who is a young, and frankly brilliant, herbalist. I am honored to have him at Camp Pleasant and I hope we continue to facilitate learning environments with him.

Crossvine, a powerful medicinal which was found and talked about. Each of us in the workshop were encouraged to pick a plant from the landscape and fill a jar with it. Later, when inside, we talked again about each herb and added alcohol to the jar to prepare a simple tincture...so everyone went home with a little something.



After working on individual tinctures, we moved onto a larger process of distilling essential oils from plants. Andrew gave us a nice description of what essential oils actually are (chrystalline particles on plants), which I will not attempt to recreate here. Again, I only want to give people a taste of the workshop and encourage you to get in touch if you would like to learn this stuff for yourself. (I'm a farmer and a very amatuer blogger, not an herbalist in any fashion...)



The essential oil distillation setup, including a pot of boiling water on the left, feeding steam into the large glass carboy filled with a mugwort-type plant. The steam travels around the plant matter, absorbing, among other things, the essential oils, which then travel to the right and through a condensor, which is being cooled by water being pumped around it via a small fish-tank water pump in the plastic bucket near the carboy. The essential oil and hydrosol exits the condensor at the bottom right of the picture and is deposited into a little funnel-type container where the hydrosol can be drained, leaving behind the essential oils.
A chalkboard drawing of a simpler distillation setup, which might be the topic of a future workshop, where participants would be given plans and details of the components of a small essential oil-extraction system for the home. Yes, that is a chalkboard on the wall. Just get a can of chalkboard paint and cover up a part of your wall, and presto, you have a chalkboard in the house. We have two. We love them.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Summer and Gratitude: There I am with it

Well, we're in the thick of it now. Whether watching weeds grow inches every week, or tubing with friends on Elkhorn creek, it is most definitely summer.

I thought I'd just write a bit of my mid-summer thoughts and realizations about farming, on a bit of a personal bit...

First off, let me say, I love growing plants. I love farming. That is, I love having my work with plants being the most significant work in my life. It makes me wonder what it is in each of us that drives us to certain passions like working with plants, or with music, or as teachers. What makes me do this? What makes me give up salaries, health insurance, financial stability, climate control, dinners out, and other goodies of the typical work life for constant physical labor, headaches from homework plans involving complex biological, economical, and social conditions, and low pay? Especially when there is already so much food being produced and thrown away by the society around me? Why do this? Why am I not traveling the world in some other passionate pursuit?

Of course, these are questions that are easy for me to answer, and that is what I wanted to share.

Last Saturday morning, I woke up around 4:30 am to finish washing veggies for market. I walked out into my little produce washing area, set my coffee cup down and watched the steam pour into the stars. I walked to turn on the hose, my rubber boots making a familiar scuffle sound that takes parts of my brain simultaneously to farms of my past. I remember my boots scuffling amongst horse manure in Maine, and in a backyard turned into a veggie patch surrounded by an Indiana cornfield, and I am filled with gratitude for my life. I wash carrots, bent over with a hose, gently rubbing the roots onto the ground to loosen the soil and make them shine a bright, crisp orange. How did something so bright and orange form in the dark, dank soil? I wonder and smile, and take the best carrot and crunch it in my mouth, and for a moment, I need nothing ever again except that sweet carrot, whose flavor is so fresh and alive that I dare not swallow it, but rather chew it endlessly so I can prolong the experience of tasting it. Having worked for several minutes with the carrots, bent over, I stood up to stretch my back and to take another hit of coffee, which was no longer steamy, but was still under stars, which, now that the sun had begun its slow rise, were beginning to fade into the brilliant pinks and purples of dusk. Cue the birdsong, those first few notes of awakening from the trees. And there I am, with it: stars, dusk, birdsong, and muddy carrots. There I am with it. Gratitude filled me like the air in my lungs, touching my blood and all over my body. Gratitude for feeling an intense, intimate experience with the living earth around me. For as long as I can remember, since being a child full of wonder in the woods of Indiana, I have wanted nothing more than to remain intimate with the earth around me. That, ultimately, is what keeps me farming: I want little more in my life than moments of gratitude for and experiences with the life around me. I am there with it; that is why I do this. Honestly, for me, the food and sharing it with my community, and all the vitality that comes with that, is secondary. Its a close second, but it is secondary to such moments.

Such a close second is the food!

About a week or so ago I was out on a far side of a cabbage patch, admiring the quick summer growth of the plants, looking down to my left, when, out of the corner of my eye, to the right I spotted the first, large, deeply black, ripe blackberry on the vine. I had had a few of the small wild variety, but this was one of those Chester Thornless ones, the ones that can be so big that children have to take bites out of them instead of eating them whole. For two weeks I had been watching them turn from green to red to dark red, waiting anxiously for the blacks to appear, for they are the sign of sure sweetness. I paused, took a quick breath of relief at my wait being over, and exhaled in a preparation for this thing that was about to come, and popped it in my mouth. Immediately my head rose, pointing my face toward the sky, my eyes close, my mouth is ecstatic from the sweetness. But most importantly and much to my surprise, my brain is clicked into a more smoothly-running gear than before, like when you plunge into cool water on a hot day, where suddenly everything everywhere that has ever happened makes absolute sense. I am tasting, no, I am experiencing, the blackberries for the first time since last summer. My body is remembering the previous year and it is immensely grateful not only for the return of this cycle and for all that passed during the last year, but for the simple fact that it is here to experience the cycle. It is there with it. I think of what I used to think of when I thought of the meaning of the word taste (that it is simply a sensation that happens in your mouth and brain), or even what I thought of the meaning smell (that it indicates what is in front of your nose and associates it with memories), and I realize that eating food fresh from its ecosystem (especially when you are intimately inside/alongside that ecosystem on a regular basis for many years) becomes a life-enhancing act full of gratitude, wonder, and joy. That blackberry made me laugh, then cry, in ecstasy. That's right, I cried when I ate a blackberry. I'm pretty sure that makes me really cool and not a weirdo or a phoo-phoo freak. The entire experience was validated when I gave my friend John Rodgers his first blackberry of the season on farm day last week. Bam! Like he'd been shot with some powerful drug, his eyes shut, his head went back, the world faded, and there he was: in blackberryness, the sweet, dark, giving world of the fruit. His eyes opened and he began to try to articulate his feeling when I quickly butted in and asked if it made him think of last year's first berry. Shaking his head in a quiet but sure agreement, he finished his berry tasting with a content smile.

Ahh summer! Here we are with it.