Extracting honey

When Spirit Williams put out a call for help with extracting some honey, I volunteered. I hadn’t seen Spirit or Helen in ages so it seemed a perfect time to reconnect. Also I’ve always been intrigued by beekeeping –not to mention I have a complete adoration for both beeswax and honey—so here was an actual opportunity to learn something about the process. Nick Delmatto also responded to Spirit's call. The three of us extracted almost 30 quarts of honey with just a few hours of pleasant work and conversation.

 

Spirit Williams and Nick Delmatto extracting pure, sweet honey.

 

Making a healing balm

Prepping for a simple, natural life includes making at least some of my own

Herbal healing balm is easy to make.

medicines. Healing balm, a must-have in any natural medicine chest for minor cuts, scrapes and burns, is easy to make and will last up to a year when cared for properly.

First I make an herbal infusion. Calendula is one of my favorite herbs to use for this. It makes a bright yellow, pleasantly scented healing oil that is actually gentle enough for a baby’s bottom.

Calendula

For this batch of healing balm I’m mixing self-heal with calendula blossoms because my calendula crop this year is pitiful and I’m saving what I can to make some calendula soap. Self-heal, a Eurasian herb that grows wild throughout meadows and woodlands, contains anti-oxidants and possible anti-biotic qualities among its many other attributes being studied. The long history of medicinal uses for self-heal includes treating wounds and bruises.

Self-heal

Chop the herbs into small pieces and fill a jar about 1/3 to ½ with the herb. Fill the jar the rest of the way with olive oil, cover and label with contents and date. For solar infusion you set the jar on a sunny ledge. Gently rock the jar back and forth once a day and strain after two weeks. Store in a dry, dark cupboard until ready to use.

Self-heal gives the oil more of a funky green scent similar to what comfrey does, so I have no qualms about adding essential oils to cover up the smell while increasing the healing power of the balm. You can’t go wrong with lavender (Lavendula officinalis). It heals, soothes the senses and it smells good. But for a super-potent balm, I use tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia). I used to try disguising the tea tree smell by mixing it with lavender or another pleasant smelling essential oil, but it doesn’t work; tea tree is going to stink no matter what you do to it. But the tea tree healing power far outweighs its unpleasant aroma. My tea tree healing balm is not a pretty perfume, but it’s my go-to when I’ve got a wound to heal and I want to fight off infection.

I reduced my formula to make a smaller batch. This makes enough healing balm for three 1 oz jars.

2.5 oz infused olive oil

.2 oz shredded beeswax or beeswax pastilles

9 drops tea tree essential oil

I use a small ceramic pitcher for melting the beeswax into the oil. I don’t like using a double boiler because of the steam possibly contaminating the oil, so I heat in the pitcher directly over an iron trivet placed on a burner turned down low. Never, ever leave the stove unattended when melting wax. Even long before there’s a fire hazard is the ruination of a perfectly good herbal oil. You don’t want to do that. I stir occasionally with a stainless steel butter knife until the beeswax is just melted.

Cleanliness is critical when making herbal products. I changed my thinking about using paper towels when I started making healing balms. Paper towels are a simple, sterile and inexpensive way to cover your work space and wipe the jars and lids. Plus, you can then use the wax-and-oil-coated paper towel as a fire starter. And it’s much more efficient than hauling water, using a fossil fuel to heat the water and scrubbing all the oil and wax out of linens to make them sterile. No. I will use a paper towel, thank you. That is, until tshtf and I have no other options. Then I might be tearing up my sheets, lol.

So after melting the beeswax in the oil slowly over low heat, stir in essential oil and pour the melted balm into sterile jars. Voila! You can’t get much simpler than that and you make an important contribution to the medicine chest off grid, on grid or anywhere in between.

Store healing balm in a cool, dry cupboard. Never let any moisture into the jar. Even one tiny drop of water, say from a damp finger, can ruin the ointment by causing bacteria to grow in it (which would actually make it dangerous to put on an open wound!)

If you are interested in more details about making healing balms and the herbs to use, find a trusted source of herbal knowledge. I can name a couple of excellent authors from the books on my shelf. Tammi Hartung wrote Growing 101 Herbs that Heal, which was a textbook in an edibles and medicinals class I took. The gorgeous manual is still one of my most valuable resources. Another herbalist-author I particularly admire is Rosemary Gladstar. She doesn’t know this but she’s been my herbal mentor by way of her books and her Earth-mother persona.

Botanical perfume, an ancient tradition

Don’t you just love the word unguent? It conjures up a medieval perfume studio and the ancient, handcrafted traditions of herbal infusions and distilled essential oils. Healingbalms, salves and solid perfumes are all unguents. They’ve been around for at least 4,000 years, and making them is still a valuable self-sufficiency skill. I will write about making healing balms in another post, but for now I want to dwell on natural perfume. With a handful of essential oils, I can forget about the heat and humidity for hours at a time by designing or fine tuning an aromatic creation. That's what I call survival.

Fourteen years ago while I was happily building my herbal soap business, I encountered Mandy Aftel’s book, Essence and Alchemy. I suddenly wanted to immerse myself in the artisan perfumeries of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, on into the Middle Ages when alchemists blended spices from the Far East with aromatic plants they grew in their indispensable medieval herb gardens. Essence and Alchemy takes you to those places and more, yet is also a practical DIY for natural perfumer-wannabes, full of fascinating historical info and Aftel’s contagious passion for this antediluvian tradition.

Perfume wasn’t always about smelling sweet or spicy for the opposite sex. Throughout history and for millennia before that, shamans and other spiritual people used infused scents to help them enter a mystical state of being. The ancient Egyptians buried pots of scented unguents with their god-like rulers to help them on their new journey into the afterlife. Of course the Romans took it all to a more decadent level with their scent shops in the bath houses. Then along came medieval times with their popular perfume studios. It’s no wonder really, why perfumeries were so important in their culture. Those poor people were probably desperate to smell something other than unwashed bodies. Or dead bodies during plague times. But away from the city, in a crone’s cottage in the woods, or a wealthy woman’s still room in her manor house, or a friar’s herbal workshop in a remote monastery, making herbal potions could afford to be a more romantic endeavor. At least in the minds of some of us modern day dreamers.

I make my solid perfumes with organic jojoba oil, essential oils and natural beeswax. I like to blend with a journey in mind, medicine for the spirit. When you inhale these natural perfumes, you can feel the evocative energy contained within the essential oils and absolutes. It’s heavenly. 

My collection so far:

Night Journey Earthy and spicy, inspired by the idea of crossing the veil. This one is my signature scent, created when Lew and I were living up on Chapel Ridge.

Earth Day A warm, woodsy blend that evokes the sacred, making it perfect

for meditation. Contains amyris (often called Haitian sandalwood), cedarwood, frankincense, rose otto, oak moss and various balsams.

Enchanted Path A spicy citrus top chord, floral heart and a sweet & sultry base meld into an uplifting confection that sings of bright magic and new beginnings. 

Meadow Journey through a summertime field of sweetgrass and wildflowers, where each step releases a sensual, earthy breath. Grounding and relaxing.

I sell my solid perfumes for $29. They come in a .25 oz glass jar, tucked into a drawstring linen bag. I also make simple chords (usually base chords), single notes (everyone loves lavender), children’s scents and herbal spray perfumes. Prices vary from $8 to $18 for these. Email me if you’d like more information.