Hello friends and homemakers! Today's topic is growing your own herbal tea. Herbal teas are some of the easiest things to grow, especially if they are perennial plants and come back year after year. In fact, you probably have some herbal teas already growing in your backyard, disguised as weeds or trees.

Potential Savings
I drink primarily herbal tea, or green/black tea & herbal tea blends. No coffee for me! Because of this, I tend to buy a fair amount of tea. In fact, I would probably say I drink enough tea to equal one bag every day, for the entire year. 

One of my favorite teas (Kroger Private Selection brand) costs $2.48 per box of 20 bags. That equals out to $0.12 per 2.0 g. bag of tea. A box contains 40g. (1.43 oz) of tea.

$0.12 per day x 365 days = $43.80 per year savings.

Return On Investment
As I mentioned before, if you know what to look for, you can potentially find herbal tea in your own backyard. You can also get a free transplant from a friend, or you can buy a small plant from a nursery. For our intents and purposes, I'll say that the plant or packet of seeds costs $2.00. So, that is your investment.

$41.80 return - ($43.80 - $2.00 investment) = 2090% return on investment

Hourly Wage
Collecting and preserving herbal tea is fairly straightforward. I go out there with a pair of scissors, or pick the leaves/stalks with my bare hands. Then I bring it inside and lay everything out on a cookie sheet. (Depending on the plant, I'll strip the leaves from the stalks either before or after drying.) Then I put the sheet in my gas oven overnight (the pilot light provides enough heat... I don't turn the oven on at all). When the leaves are crispy to the touch- and this may take up to two days- then I strip the leaves off of the stems and put them in an airtight container- usually a mason-type jar or recycled plastic container. Lastly, I label the contents.

Herbs commonly used for herbal tea: peppermint, spearmint, chamomile, raspberry leaf, nettles, pineapple weed, lemon balm. If you'd like to re-create some of your favorite teas, just save the ingredients list on the back of the box for reference. Unfortunately, many herbal teas have things like "natural flavors"... for example "peach flavor" or "pomegranate flavor" that you can't make at home. But there are some other ingredients that you can find at the store or make.

Common additions to herbal tea: stevia, hibiscus, dried ginger, dried orange & lemon peel. Whenever I have an orange (not very often) I try to save the zest. You can do this by taking a sharp paring knife and carefully removing the colored part of the rind... not the white pithy stuff! Dry the peel as you would herbal tea (in the oven) and break it into pieces before adding to loose leaf tea. Stevia is a sweetener that you can buy or grow in the garden. Hibiscus is very often used to add fruity flavor to teas. You can get hibiscus flowers in bulk, or buy tea bags with hibiscus in them.

I use a teapot with infusing insert to make herbal tea for Hubs and I. If I'm only making tea for myself, I just use a small tea ball infuser. You can also buy "press and brew" disposable tea bags, but I think that is too much bother for a $0.12 bag of tea. Plus it is a lot of waste. Brewing loose leaf tea allows you to use the old tea leaves for compost.

I figure it takes me about three minutes to prepare 2.0 grams of tea (as much as there is in a tea bag). Therefore: 

$0.12 per 3-minute increment x 20 (increments per hour) = $2.40 per hour 

Conclusion
​What I like about this "investment" (that is, planting a tea garden) is the high potential for savings. Tea for one person alone has the potential to save $0.84 per week. In a family with three or four tea drinkers, this little project could save over a hundred dollars per year. If you are gardener or forager anyway, why not grow some herbal tea?

Of course, the downside of this project is the "hourly wage". It's below my $4.00/hr. standard. However, some teas take far less time to prepare. This will increase the hourly wage substantially. For example, spearmint leaves are a lot less labor-intensive to prepare than peppermint leaves, which are smaller. Drying a whole stem of raspberry leaves and stripping them with a gloved hand is a lot easier than cutting tiny chamomile flower heads with a pair of scissors. So, some teas are better to grow at home than others.

Do you enjoy herbal tea? Have any tips or tricks for the rest of us?

Curly dock is a common weed found in fields, fence rows and ditches. In the buckwheat family, I've used the seeds before to make a coarse flour, and as I mentioned here, the plant can be used as alternative feed for goats and other animals.

Identification: In the winter, curly dock is easy to identify because of its dark brown stalks and seed pods. It grows 1 to 4 feet tall with leaves 6-10 inches long growing from the base of the plant. During the summer the plant's flowers are small and reddish or greenish. They eventually turn into small, brown, three-sided winged seeds. During the summer the plant is camouflaged a bit more, but you can still easily identify its long thin leaves with curly edges. There are other type of dock as well, but this variety is called Rumex crispus.
​
Edible: Young leaves can be eaten raw, but older leaves will be bitter and must be boiled in several changes of water. The seeds can be dried, threshed and ground into flour. I use a Vitamix dry container to make flour out of the seeds. I would recommend mixing this homemade flour into a white or store-bought flour for best results.

Edible: Indians used to make a lemonade-like drink with sumac berries. Berries can be bruised and boiled (one book says "soaked in cold water"), strained to remove the fine hairs and berries, then add sugar to taste. The berries can be stored and dried for later use as well. 

One variety of red Sumac is a common Middle Eastern and Mediterranean spice. It was widely used in Europe to give food a tart flavor before the Romans introduced lemons to the area.

Animals also love to eat sumac. As I mentioned in this post, my goats love to eat sumac fruits out of my hand. Poultry also enjoy sumac, as well as other animals like rabbits, moose, deer and mountain sheep.

You may notice some tiny brown worms in the sumac fruits. Though it's probably impossible to avoid the worms entirely, by harvesting early in the season (July) you can get the fruit before most of the worms do. While picking off berries with a fork, keep your eye out for worms or a lot of worm droppings (dark brown grainy bits). Wormy fruit clusters can go to the compost pile or animal feed. Chickens love worms!

Medicinal: A gargle for sore throats can be made with a strong hot tea from the sumac berries.
​
Other: Sometimes the wood of this plant, greenish or orange in color, is used for napkin rings or picture frames. Sumac stems can also make effective hand drills after they have been dried, or blowtubes and pipestems by burning out the center pith. When green, they work well for weaving baskets.
 
Cautions: There is a poison variety of Sumac that has drooping white fruit clusters. If the fruit is white, don't eat it! Otherwise all red fruits are perfectly safe to eat and feed animals with. :) 

********
Brown, Tom Jr. Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. New York: Berkley Books, 1983. Print.
Angier, Bradford. Field Guide to Wild Edible Plants. Harrisburd, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1974. Print

Rose hips are easiest to find during the winter. Incidentally, they are a great source of vitamin C when other fruits are in short supply.

Identification: During the winter, wild rose hips are easy to find because of their bright red color. The fruits range in color from orange to dark red, and vary in size up to an inch in diameter. The ones I find are typically less than half of that size. Wild rose brambles can grow from several feet up to 12 feet tall, and will have prickly thorns as will any rose plant. The leaves are compound and saw-toothed, like garden roses.

Edible: Rose hips can be eaten whole, or they can be steeped in boiling water to make a tea very high in vitamin C. Even the leaves and roots, if washed well, can be steeped into tea. Some people make jelly, jam or syrup from rose hips, though my wild rose hips are far too small to make it worth my while.

Medicinal: Being high in vitamin C, rose hip tea is great for the immune system and preventing cataracts. During WWII the British government collected rose hips on a massive scale to be made into syrup and used as a source of vitamin C for children. The seeds are also a source of vitamin E, and the fruits traditionally have been set aside until the end of winter to use as a blood purifier. 

In animals, rose hips can be used to treat female ailments including leucorrhoea, metritis, and miscarriage. 

Other Uses: Rose stems can be used for making baskets.

*******
Brown, Tom Jr. Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. New York: Berkley Books, 1983. Print.
Angier, Bradford. Field Guide to Wild Edible Plants. Harrisburd, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1974. Print
Levy, Juliette de Bairacli. The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable. London: Faber & Faber, 1991. Print.
White, Linda B. The Herbal Drugstore. United States of America: Rodale Inc., 2000. Print.

 Edible: Tender stems and leaves can be eaten raw, but tougher stems should be boiled. I've used chickweed before as a substitute for lettuce in tacos, because it has a nice, light flavor. It grows a large part of the year, and even now as late as December it is growing here in Michigan. A great source of fresh greens before or after the garden is producing.

The plant contains a lot of copper, good for all homestead animals except sheep.

Medicinal: The leaves can be mashed into a poultice to treat rashes and burns. It contains many of the soothing and tonic properties of slippery elm, and can be used as a tonic for the digestive system as well as external ointment for eye lotion, rheumatic inflammation and stiff joints.

Chickweed is an important tonic food for poultry, especially young chicks, and can be used to help treat coccidiosis in chickens.

Cautions: Do not let sheep (especially lambs) gorge themselves on this herb, as it has too much copper for their diet.

****
Brown, Tom Jr. Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. New York: Berkley Books, 1983. Print.
Angier, Bradford. Field Guide to Wild Edible Plants. Harrisburd, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1974. Print
Levy, Juliette de Bairacli. The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable. London: Faber & Faber, 1991. Print.

'Tis the season for harvesting nuts! A few weeks ago I wrote a post about gathering and processing black walnuts. While those are my first choice of free Michigan nuts, another good nut for foraging is the hickory nut.

October is the month when you will find hickory nuts scattered along roadsides as you go for a daily walk or bike ride. It's easy to identify the shagbark hickory because of... well, it's shaggy bark. It always looks like it's peeling off.

Once you find a tree, you can probably find some nuts on the ground as well. It's easiest to find these where the grass is short- say alongside a corn field or close to the road. Some nuts will have the hull on, and some of the hulls will have fallen off. I try to get fresh-looking nuts with part of the hull on. Sometimes there are nuts left from the year before that have bugs in them. This will have a little pinhole somewhere on the nut. It will be disappointing if you bring home a load of empty nut shells.

Be sure to store the nuts someplace where mice cannot find them. Because yes, they chew through the shells. You can either store them in a mouse-proof container or hang them in an old nylon stocking.

Once you're ready (this could be anytime in the winter), the nutmeats can be extracted. I usually crack hickory nuts with a hammer on a hard surface- cement floor or cement block. Hickory nuts are much harder to crack than black walnuts, and there is less nutmeat to show for it. However, I very much prefer the taste of hickory to that of walnut. Plus, cracking nuts is fun for anyone old enough to use a hammer. It's cheap fun for kids. My sister and I spent hours out in my dad's shop cracking hickory nuts. Eating the yummy nutmeats was reward enough. :)

Have you ever had hickory nuts? What do you use them for?

It's that time of year again! When everyone pulls out the box of Halloween/Thanksgiving/Autumn decorations and gives the house a facelift. Everyone, that is, except minimalist cheapo DIYers like me.

Last year I was committed to not spending a ton of money on Christmas decorations. 1) Because I'm a tightwad, and 2) because our apartment doesn't have a lot of storage space, and 3) because I was (and still am!) trying really hard to suppress the hoarder that lives inside of me. One of the decorations I came up with that was cheap and easy to store was a wreath of fresh evergreen branches. I used a few different kinds of greenery here on the property, some pinecones and a bow made from ribbon in my craft stash.

I decided this year to use the same idea for harvest time, but with fall colors and materials. It wasn't totally free because I bought $2.00 worth of fake flowers/leaves from the dollar store. I wanted some color that would last for many weeks.You can find nice fake flowers in garage sale free boxes or secondhand stores as well.  In addition to the fake stuff, I used several different grasses, golden rod, curly dock, wild rose hips, and hot peppers from my garden. Foraging isn't just for food and medicine!

I posted the video tutorial I used for my Christmas wreath in that article, but the directions are pretty simple. After collecting materials, I used floral tape (you could use wire or anything green) to make little bunches. 

After making the bunches, you can lay them on the metal wreath holder thingy and wrap it with wire. You may have to add more stuff, wrap with more wire or utilize a hot glue gun to keep some things from falling off. Then when everything is done, you can tie a ribbon to the metal frame and hang it wherever you want.

Some other decorations I decided to do for fall were setting out fall-ish candles (apple pie, pumpkin spice, etc.) that I already had or bought at garage sales. I bought an $0.88 harvest-themed hand towel at Walmart to hang on our oven door in place of my cherry-themed one. Another thing I've done is put some squashes on our porch. These decorations are semi-useful and inexpensive, yet not cheap-looking banners or window clings.

What is your favorite way to decorate for fall? How do you keep yourself from buying too many decorations?

Identification
Black walnut trees are large 50 to 150-foot trees with large compound leaves. Each leaf is 12-24" long with13-23 leaflets. Black walnut leaves are often some of the first leaves falling in autumn. They give off a spicy odor when crushed.

What you will be looking to collect is the fruit, inside of which is the nut. The nuts are covered in a warty green husk. If punctured or broken, the husk will stain fingers brown, even though it is yellow-green. When I was little, we would often play baseball with walnuts that were at this "green" stage. Most of the nuts will fall from the tree in September and October.

Harvesting & Preparation
The great thing about black walnuts is that the processing will not take an entire day. You can collect the green nuts one day (or little by little). When you have a decent amount, lay them out on the driveway and drive over them a couple times to get the husk off. Then let them sit somewhere to dry. It would be wise to wear gloves and barn or work clothes when working with the husked nuts, as they tend to stain easily.

After the nuts are dry, they should be stored for a couple weeks to let the nutmeats dry out. When you have time (perhaps when the weather gets cold), you can crack open the nuts. I use a heavy cement block/brick and a hammer. You will probably want to do this in a back room, workshop, or somewhere you can easily sweep up shells. For black walnuts, it will take a good hard whack or two to get open. After that, I've found the nutmeats are comparatively easy and quick to extract.

Black walnuts are a fabulous "survival" food. Three and a half ounces of nutmeat provides 628 calories, 20.5 grams of protein, 59.3 grams of fat and almost 15 grams of carbs. 

Though they don't give as much sap as a maple tree, black walnut trees can be tapped during early Spring, and the sap boiled down to make syrup.

Medicinal Value
Nutmeats are used internally to treat eczema. The green husks can be used to make a parasite tincture and are also used as a laxative. Wellness Mama says on her site that black walnut hulls are also good for easing digestive problems like flatulence and colic.

Other Uses
Black walnut wood is valuable in cabinetry and furniture making. The hulls have been used as a natural dye and ink. The nuts can be boiled to produce oil, and the inner bark makes good timber and cordage. I mentioned that walnut husks are known for killing internal parasites in people; it has also been used by many as a natural de-wormer for animals.

*****
White, Linda B. The Herbal Drugstore. United States of America: Rodale Inc., 2000. Print.
Tekiela, Stan. Trees of Michigan Field Guide. Cambridge, Minnesota: Adventure Publications, Inc., 2002. Print.
Brown, Tom Jr. Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. New York: Berkley Books, 1983. Print.
Angier, Bradford. Field Guide to Wild Edible Plants. Harrisburd, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1974. Print

Last year I remember seeing the small, shriveled-up fruits of an unidentified shrub and wondered if they were good for anything. Probably not, I told myself. Not enough fruit there to do anything with. Recently, however, I was able to identify this plant and discovered that it has many uses.

Identification
Common prickly ash is easy to identify because of its small, shriveled-looking berries. The tree is one of two members of the Rue (sometimes called Citrus) family in Michigan. The berries have a lemon-lime-orange smell to them, and the branches have small thorns. The tree is small; only 5' - 15' tall. The leaves are are 2" long with smooth edges and, like the berries, have a citrus-y smell when crushed.

You can find the Prickly Ash tree throughout Michigan in a variety of soils, but they are often found where I found mine- along forest edges and fence rows.

Medicinal Use
Prickly Ash is often referred to as "toothache tree", because it contains a citrus-smelling oil called zanthoxylin, which causes numbness in the mouth. You can chew on either the fruit or the yellowish inner bark. When I was younger I would often get canker sores and use numbing gel to make talking or eating less painful. Believe me, this Prickly Ash works even better! The numbness took at least a 45 minutes to completely wear off, though at first it induces salivation (drooling) so that is somewhat annoying.

Other popular uses of Prickly Ash are to improve circulation problems like intermittent claudication, rheumatism, arthritis, and aging- or cold-related problems. The Native Americans were especially fond of this herb and used it for achy joints and sore muscles. They made teas and infusions both to drink and to bathe with.

Prickly Ash is generally considered safe to use, even for children and women who are pregnant. 

*****
White, Linda B. The Herbal Drugstore. United States of America: Rodale Inc., 2000. Print.
Tekiela, Stan. Trees of Michigan Field Guide. Cambridge, Minnesota: Adventure Publications, Inc., 2002. Print.
Richard Whelan ~ Medical Herbalist ~ Prickly Ash. (n.d.). Retrieved September 2, 2015.

Medicinal Use
Jewelweed is most commonly used to sooth poison ivy and stinging nettle irritations, but it is also used for bee stings and other skin problems. To use, any part of the plant can be crushed and rubbed on the irritated area. This works best BEFORE the rash appears. My herb book lists the orange variety, Impatiens capenisis, as a remedy for not only poison ivy, but also poison oak and poison sumac. In addition to using fresh leaves, you can also make a tea from 1 heaping teaspoon of dried leaves in a cup of hot water for 10 minutes, strain and cool. It makes more sense to me, however, to just use the fresh crushed plant.

Edible
Jewelweed is also a wild edible. The young shoots (up to six inches tall) can be boiled and eaten after removing the leaves. However, use caution because older plants can be a mild purgative (make you throw up). The plant is also high in minerals, so only small amounts should be eaten or it should be mixed with other vegetables.

*****
White, Linda B. The Herbal Drugstore. United States of America: Rodale Inc., 2000. Print.
Tekiela, Stan. Wildflowers of Michigan Field Guide. Cambridge, Minnesota: Adventure Publications, Inc., 2000. Print.
Brown, Tom Jr. Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. New York: Berkley Books, 1983. Print.