October and nettle seeds

The south facing branch of the sycamore tree across the road from my suburban home has turned from green to yellow, showing autumn is finally here. The warm days of the past few weeks have brought both respite and a lengthening to the late growing season, but it is good to be reminded the wheel of the year is turning and change will follow soon.

September always fills me with panic. Have I grown enough? Has the harvest been enough? Have I foraged everything I need. Enough is such a strange concept. How many people do I need to treat? How many people will I need to feed over winter?

In previous years I could plan and estimate but these strange times make things more uncertain. Winter is coming and all I want to do is find my sheltered place, line my nest and hibernate for the duration. I know it won’t be possible but I can hope.

October is the time of roots and seeds, preferably gathered after the first frost, whenever that is. My ashwagandha plants are still vibrantly green. They were so late germinating and then growing back in July that they have hardly put out their flowers and the seed pods are still green. I will wait to see if any of them turn to orange in the next few weeks. Otherwise everything will be dug and dried or tinctured. There is no rush.

What I did find whilst I was pulling up the dead broad and climbing beans was a hidden last harvest of nettle seed. I remember finding some last seeds this time of year in local parks in the first year I gathered. I’d forgotten the time of gathering was quite so long.

Reading through foraging posts on social media, it seems everyone has finally discovered nettles make more than leaves for soup and fibre for fishing lines. The seeds carry a rich nutritive density. As with any medicinal plant, you do need to harvest and consume with caution.

The fresh seeds when eaten can send some people “high”. The American herbalist, Kiva Rose Hardin first pointed out that if you have a “dry” constitution then nettle seed will dry you out further. She lives in New Mexico, so she is very conscious of moisture and the lack of it. Another issue we have discovered is that if you have misused “recreational drugs” somewhere in your past, nettle seed will cause you difficulties.

We tincture fresh nettle seed  to support kidney failure, as first highlighted by David Winston. It is especially helpful in dealing with kidney pain when you haven’t drunk enough fluid. The dry seeds support exhausted adrenal glands. The usual dose is one teaspoonful taken in yoghurt or porridge or as a seed topping to salads.

We usually recommend they are consumed for at least three months or until the “patient” can’t stand the taste of them anymore. I have one friend with an incredibly stressful job who is still happily consuming her nettle seed two years after they were first given to her.

Dried nettle seeds can also be an aid to reducing dietary salt. They can be ground with salt crystals in a ratio of two: one to produce a useful condiment. If you want something a little hotter, add chilli flakes to the mix.

It worried me when nettle seeds at the farm were turning black and dropping off back in July, thinking I had not found enough for fresh seed tincture. The following month I found another stand of vibrant green, enough to put up nearly 5 litres of tincture. After our herb festival in September, huge nettle plants now covering all the Sanctuary like rampant triffids, dangled their seeds so seductively I was forced to pick them, even though I was there to harvest my damson tree and time, as always, was very short.

I did manage to pick my usual five pounds of damsons and these are now sitting on my jam shelves ready to eat. The quince harvest is very sparse but luckily my friend has a tree and shares her largesse with me. Two bottles of spiced quince gin and three of vodka are now infusing in the larder until Christmas and twenty small jars of quince jelly were made over two days this week.

Now, there are more nettle seeds from the garden drying in a paper bag over the kitchen radiator. I should have added another batch from underneath our hawthorn tree but I was too tired and now it is raining.

What I did pick was an orange flourish of calendula, waving from underneath the runner beans. I’ve lamented the lack of a dedicated calendula bed for the past two years, but collecting a few flowers here and there, self-seeded in the vegetable beds have given me a few to dry for anti-viral tea and enough to turn into oil for skin salves when next needed. There was even a rogue chamomile plant this year, providing enough to fill a tiny jar for emergency use in the future.

This gentle week at home has given me the time to decant this summer’s St John’s wort oil. Only two jars this years, but still plenty in the larder from previous summers. The dried vervain, yarrow and sage have also been poured into glass jars, labelled and put away. The vervain will be mixed with chamomile and lemon balm for IDGAS tea, yarrow for colds and conditions which require an anti-inflammatory and sage for mouth/tooth infections.

There are still bags of St Johns wort flowers, plantain leaves, red clover blossoms and other mysteries to emerge from the “hot cupboard” and put away but not today. I still have tomorrow. 

Of burns and bereavement

When a blogger fails to post for a long time, regular readers may wonder what is happening in real life to cause such silence. I rarely post about family events but on 9th February my mother died, following a long, debilitating struggle with ischaemic dementia which left her unable to move, speak or see. Death is a journey we all face alone and those who watch and share and wait can only wonder and hopefully grow through their own lessons offered during this time.

In my last paid employment, I spent eight years travelling around England training various organisations, including community nurses and army welfare officers, how to cope with loss and bereavement. I learned a great deal from the stories people shared and was able to make suggestions about things to look out for following bereavement.

The first was the lowering of immune health by grief which often causes the first twelve months to be fraught with viral infections and other more serious conditions, especially if a carer has neglected their own health to look after the person during the final period of their life.

The second was a propensity towards accidents and other events caused by a lowering of attention span or inability to be “sensible” or even to process information.

You could say that my gall bladder issues have stemmed from providing support to my parents over the years and neglecting my own health. On Thursday, March 26^th 2015, I managed to burn/scald myself by tipping an overfull pan of boiling bolognaise sauce over my left thigh whilst trying to keep our back door from flying open in the wind. Whilst I was more concerned about losing half the contents of the saucepan, the accident provided a wonderful opportunity to learn about treating burns at home with herbs and other household products.

The general UK advice about treating burns can be found here .  It  says

• Stop the burning process as soon as possible. This may mean removing the person from the area, dousing flames with water or smothering flames with a blanket. Do not put yourself at risk of getting burnt as well.
• Remove any clothing or jewellery near the burnt area of skin. However, don't try to remove anything that is stuck to the burnt skin because this could cause more damage.
• Cool the burn with cool or lukewarm water for 10 to 30 minutes, ideally within 20 minutes of the injury occurring. Never use ice, iced water or any creams or greasy substances such as butter.
• Keep yourself or the person warm. Use a blanket or layers of clothing, but avoid putting them on the injured area. Keeping warm will prevent hypothermia, where a person's body temperature drops below 35ºC (95ºF). This is a risk if you are cooling a large burnt area, particularly in young children and elderly people.
• Cover the burn with cling film. Put the cling film in a layer over the burn, rather than wrapping it around a limb. A clean clear plastic bag can be used for burns on your hand.
• Treat the pain from a burn with paracetamol or ibuprofen. Always check the manufacturer's instructions when using over-the-counter (OTC) medication. Children under 16 years of age should not be given aspirin.

What it doesn’t tell you is anything to aid the cooling or healing process. Nor does it identify first (reddened skin) or second (blisters) degree burns but only tells you when to head for hospital for

• large or deep burns – any burn bigger than the affected person's hand
• full thickness burns of all sizes – these burns cause white or charred skin
• partial thickness burns on the face, hands, arms, feet, legs or genitals – these are burns that cause blisters
• all chemical and electrical burns

Also get medical help straight away if the person with the burn:

• has other injuries that need treating
• is going into shock – signs include cold clammy skin, sweating, rapid shallow breathing and weakness or dizziness
• is pregnant
• is over 60 years of age
• is under five years of age
• has a medical condition such as heart, lung or liver disease, or diabetes
• has a weakened immune system (the body's defence system), for example because of HIV or AIDS, or because they're having chemotherapy for cancer

Although my burn measured the distance from my knee to a hand’s width up my thigh with two blisters measuring 1” by ½”, I decided I preferred to stay at home rather than spend up to four hours in a crowded A&E department.  It’s been a while since I looked at first aid treatments for burns so I was unaware of the advice to cover with clingfilm. I did know the aim was to keep the skin intact if possible to reduce the chance of incurring infection.

After dropping the saucepan I removed my socks and trousers and rushed upstairs to kneel in the bath with my thigh under a running cold tap for as long as I could. I moved, reluctantly, when my toes told me they were developing frost bite. Then I sliced off two large aloe vera leaves from the triffid which sprawls over our upstairs window and lay on the sofa daubing the juice from the centre of the leaf onto the entire area of the burn.

It is amazing how aloe vera removes heat from burns. It is also really important NOT to treat a burn with any oil or salve until ALL the heat has gone. This is because oil traps heat underneath the application.

If you don’t have any aloe vera plants or juice then look to other cooling herbs – elderflower, rose, chamomile, bergamot (preferably wild monada fistulosa). These can be applied as a tea, herbal water or diluted infused herbal vinegar.

After a couple of hours, I used a St John’s wort salve that I had to hand since St John’s wort is specific for healing burns. I covered the burn area with clean cotton fabric (I use a piece of old sheet for most of my first aid treatments!) fastened at each end with micropore tape. I wanted the burn to be open to the air so it didn’t become soggy.

I didn’t take any painkillers because the soreness disappeared after the first night of sleep and the burn itself was only painful thereafter if pressed.

I continued treating with St John’s wort for three days. I was concerned that the blisters were still filled with liquid, so on the fourth day decided to try a honey poultice. I mixed calendula (for skin healing), St John’s wort and yarrow( to reduce any inflammation) oils with a teaspoon of honey (a gift from Cornish herbalist, Nick Jones, last August) and spread it over the wound. When using an oily poultice like this you do need to add a plastic backing unless you want stains all over your clothes!

Two days after applying the honey poultice, all the blisters had dried up and the burned skin area was diminishing. I then made up a salve from calendula, St John’s wort and yarrow and this has been applied twice daily ever since.

It takes at least three weeks for a burn to heal. I’m really pleased with how my burn is progressing.  It itches occasionally which tells me new skin is growing.  I try very hard not to scratch!

Two things I might have done differently would be to have applied a cooling vinegar or flower water after the aloe vera and not applied the salve until before bedtime (around 12 hours after the accident).  Knowing now how effective the honey was, I would have applied the poultice sooner and maybe made two applications (one per day) for two or more days.  If the wound had been worse I could also have applied a marshmallow root poultice to keep the area moisturised.

This summer I am also going to make a burns honey from apothecary’s rose, bergamot and evening primrose flowers. I made a jar several years ago when Kiva Rose Hardin first posted her recipe but no-one suffered with any burns so I ate the honey instead! Kiva Rose recommends the honey for burns where there is a chance of infection. Given how successful ordinary honey is at drawing moisture from a burn blister, I can see how an infused herbal honey would be even better.

Everyone hopes accidents will not happen but if they do, they provide a useful opportunity to learn new skills.