End of Season Ramblings

We've decided we won't be opening at the farm in October. We will continue to go to Lomax on Wednesday evenings and if anyone wants anything, I'm making deliveries to Nauvoo on Mondays around the noon hour.

I've been letting Grampa Tom go to most of the markets by himself so I could get stuff done  before he went into the fields.

Here's an old trike that I planted in my new peppermint patch. That thing has been driving me nuts! It doesn't work, but every child who comes here insists on riding it. Grampa Tom has been saying he was going to scrap it out for years now. There comes a time when a girl just has to take matters into her own hands! Can't wait till next year when I can sit some flowers on it :)

And I've been piddling around the house. Actually found my living room and kitchen. Now I have to organize the disaster that is my store room that has spilled over and taken possession of the grandkids bedroom as well.  Normally, I keep the kids room accessible, but when we had to rearrange the entire house to get the hospital bed in, everything got shoved in there and it has been accumulating :(

I've been harvesting and drying quite a few herbs.

This is my stevia. Yes that is a shower curtain. Don't worry. That bathroom hasn't worked since the pipes broke when we were pretending to be snowbirds several years ago. It's mostly just and extra storage closet now.

Stevia doesn't put out a great deal of fragrance, but this holy basil has the whole house smelling wonderful! Yes, I know, some of it has flowered. I like the flowers. They are pretty and they taste good! I'm betting they will make an awesome oil as well.

I've been experimenting with making massage oils with my herbs and olive oil. So far, I've been very pleased with the results. Our friend David heard about what I was doing and offered me several thousand little spray bottles to package them in. That should do me for quite a while :)

This week's goals: Start teaching/babysitting my grandkids. I'll try to post some of our activities on my Almost Unschooling Grama blog, pull a ton of weeds, pick my dried beans, dig more potatoes (still have several rows), study more on how to be professional about this blogging thing (I feel like a kindergartner who only knows how to count to 3), straighten the store room and kids room, build a fence around the new garden space I am making south of the deck, bring home more clay blocks from the neighbor's house ... yeah, that's how I roll ...

God Bless You All!
~Grama Sue

Alternative Health - Asthma Gone!

Yesterday, I did some pretty heavy duty cleaning and I didn't have to take any asthma meds! I'm not sure exactly what I am doing right, but I thought I'd share my supplement and oil routines. Maybe someone else might be helped.

Morning: chromium, garlic with parsley, a B complex, a pro-biotic, magnesium, hawthorn, ginkgo, cranberry, stinging nettles, ground egg shell capsule, and during the winter, vitamin D3

Evening: magnesium, selenium, ginger, zinc, hawthorn, garlic with parsley, cranberry, nettles and 2 ground egg shell capsules

I grow and pack the egg shell  and nettles capsules myself. I'm working on being able to produce my own ginger and may try to put some garlic and parsley together in a capsule sometime this summer. Not to sure about that though. I think the gel caps that I currently use from Puritan's Pride are odorless because of the combination, but I'm not sure if that is really the case or if they do something else to the garlic.

The ginger is a fairly recent addition. I bought a bottle a while back, but it made my stomach burn so I quit taking it. Then this winter, I decided to try it again, but make sure my stomach had plenty of food both before and after the capsule. That worked and I suspect it may be a major factor, because ginger is known to reduce inflammation.

I used to take 1000 mg omega 3  and 1000 mg evening primrose 3 times a day for my joints, but I have found that if I eat plenty of tree nuts every day, I can do without those, so I make my own trial mix out of several different types of nuts and dried fruits. I eat about a cupful a day. Lots of calories, but when you work like I do, that's not a big problem. I am also of the opinion that middle aged women need a good amount of fat on them to keep their bones strong anyway.

The other thing I think might be a major factor in the asthma issue is the oil routine I have developed. Last winter, I read somewhere that doctors are having some success treating back pain by putting people on anti-biotics for 100 days. Seems that sometimes bulging discs are caused by a bacterial infection such as pneumonia or a skin infection that somehow traveled to the spine and lodged there. This made sense to me, so I thought, "If I rub oils on my spine every day for a year, maybe the problem spots would heal up. So I ordered a back roller from a guy I "met" on a Young Living Face Book group and mixed up a concoction I thought might be helpful.

Last fall, I had stuffed a jar full of rosemary and lemon balm and covered it with olive oil, so I decided to use this as my base oil. I took an empty essential oil bottle and put a dropper full each of Thieves oil, melaleuca, and oregano from Young Living in it. Then I filled it with my homemade rosemary/lemon balm oil. I topped it off with a roller ball and twisted it into my back roller.

I've been using this for a couple of months now in the morning and before bedtime. I really think it is helping my back. The pain isn't gone yet, but I seem to be stronger! Chiropractors say that asthma can often be cured if the back is aligned correctly. I don't have the time or the money to go to doctors much, but maybe this is healing my back enough to kick the asthma :)

If you'd like to order or become a distributor, go to my website. https://www.youngliving.org/gramasues

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Stevia

Stevia is a sub-tropical to tropical plant who's leaves are much sweeter than sugar. . Different plants have different levels of sweetness and there are even differences on the same plant from cutting to cutting so using home grown stevia can be a bit of a challenge, but the rewards are well worth it.  

Studies done on this plant suggest that the compounds in the whole leaf have anti-hyperglycemic, anti-hypertensive, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, anti-diarrheal, diuretic, and immunomodulatory actions. Most stevia found in stores contains only the stevioside compound that gives the leaf it's sweet taste. The other compounds in the leaf are those that do these jobs. What's really interesting about this plant is that it only seems to affect blood sugar, blood pressure, etc. when levels are abnormal. Sweet! According to the info out there, there are no known harmful side-effects like artificial sugar substitutes, however, I do know a couple of people who say it gives them headaches.

You can grow stevia from seed, but only "black" seeds will germinate. I did have a plant that flowered and put out seeds a couple of years ago that produced babies, but from what I've read, plants from seed may or may not have the sweetness of the parent plant. Propagating from cuttings is the preferred method, but I haven't been successful at that :(

To use the stevia, I dry the plants and put them in the freezer. When I want to use some, I grind the leaves in a coffee grinder and sweeten with the powder to taste. Stevia doesn't ferment, so it's no good for things like wine or vinegar and when making jams or jellies you really need a no-sugar pectin because it doesn't contribute to the jelling process like sugar does.

The plants are sometimes hard to come by. Last year I didn't find any until August and they weren't as sweet as other plants I've had, but I dug them up and brought them inside because I didn't want to be without this year.

They look kinda scraggly by spring, but once I get them back outside in the sun they will perk up. I've done this before, but I lost them last winter because I had to be gone and they didn't get watered enough. I'll wait until the temps stay above 50 most of the time before I put them back in the garden. I've killed a few by putting them out to soon. They love a thick mulch on well drained loamy soil. Raised beds are perfect for them. Once established, they tolerate temps in the 33-50 degree range quite well. I've even covered them like tomatoes when there was a light frost and had them come through fine.

Unless I can get enough quality plants, I won't be bringing stevia to the markets. So far, I've only been able to produce enough for my breads and jams, but it's really nice to be able to brag that I grow my own!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Basil

The basil that I planted last week is coming up! I'm so excited! For some crazy reason, I didn't get any started to bring in last fall, so I have been without fresh basil all winter. I've waited to plant until now because my experience with planting indoors when the daylight hours are getting shorter and shorter is that it just produces spindly things that die. I've got these in a south window under a sun lamp so hopefully they will make it. Can't wait till I have a heated greenhouse!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue 

Friday Favorites

Confession time. Although I've been growing them for years, I'm really a novice when it comes to herbs. I started growing herbs so I could have a little basil and oregano for my spaghetti  I'd buy a few other herbs from time to time, thinking I'd learn to use them, but rarely did. It's only been in the last few years that I've gotten serious about learning how to use them.  Growing Herbs for Beginners has been a major info resource.

Check them out: http://www.growingherbsforbeginners.com/


God Bless You All! 

~Grama Sue

Got the Herb Garden Started!

This year I plan to put in lots of herbs around here. I also want to have lots of herbs to take to the market this spring. There's still snow on the ground, but I thought I'd better get some started. Hopefully in a couple of weeks when these are up and going good, it will be warm enough outside that I can set these in one of the raised beds and cover them with plastic. Then I'll start another batch. I don't have a whole lot of flowers in this batch, but next time I'll concentrate on them a little more. I'm thinking I'll probably do this most of the summer.  

So what do I have here?

Lemon Grass            Marjoram               Cumin

Thyme                      Catnip                    Asparagus

Lemon Balm             Chives                    Spearmint

Fennel                      Oregano                 Sage

Cocks Comb           Yarrow                   Parsley

Basil                         Rosemary

If you want to adopt any of these babies or if you have a special request, let me know!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

My First Exposure to Essential Oils

In the 60s and 70s when I grew up, science, technology and all the new medicines and chemicals were exalted as the answer to all the world's problems. Herbs were relegated to cooking and alternative medicine was vilified as quackery.

It's taken a while for me to get where I am, but today I turn to prayer first, then natural remedies such as herbs and essential oils first, and then to practitioners in alternative medicine such a chiropractors. The only time I turn to modern medicine is for emergencies such as broken bones that need to be splinted and life or death situations.

Several years ago, Grampa Tom and I were at the Small Farm Trade Show and Conference put on by the Small Farm Today Magazine that takes place every year in Columbia, MO. My husband's aunt had given me a beautiful long coat just before that trip and since it was cold, I wore it down there.

Unfortunately, she had some sort of perfume on it that wasn't agreeing with me so I was dealing with asthma the whole trip. It was either asthma or freeze. I should have known better. I've always steered away from perfumes, potpourris and other strong scents because of this problem.

While we were there, I came across a booth that was selling essential oils. One of the oils they were selling was marjoram oil. The sign in front of it said it was used to relieve allergies, asthma and respiratory problems. I was skeptical. The first day, I avoided even going near, but the second day I stopped to talk with ladies. They opened a jar of marjoram oil and invited me to just try breathing in the vapors for a few minutes. WOW! It worked! Needless to say, I bought a jar.

I still rely on marjoram oil a lot, but I also have a roll on product called Breathe Again, that is a combination of several oils that I love too!

When I was at the same conference a couple of years ago, there was a Young Living booth. At the time, I was having some severe pain in my neck. I've had some stiffness in my neck since a car accident I had several years ago (while going all of 5 miles an hour), but that day it was actually hurt! I was talking with the ladies at the booth and I happened to mention the pain in my neck. One of the ladies did something strange (Which I believe had something to do with the "Raindrop Technique" that Young Living teaches - I haven't had the chance to study it yet.)  Then she took some black pepper oil and rubbed it on my neck. It didn't get rid of the problem totally, but it sure did help!

A few months later, my daughter signed up as a distributor and started giving me oils. Last fall, I finally took the plunge and became a distributor myself.

There is a spiritual component to the company that makes me uncomfortable. It seems to me that much of the material tends to "worship" the herbs and the oils. Over the years, I've heard many herbalists and natural healers talk about how the "herbs" seem to talk to them. They rely a lot on "feelings" and "dreams". From what little I've heard about this "Raindrop Technique", it seems very similar. When I was a new Christian, there were folks I respected who said that anyone who uses herbs for healing or incense of any type was dealing in witchcraft.

I'm just not willing to throw the baby out with the bath water. God made all these things. When people don't understand how they work, they tend to spiritualize them. When I am seeking healing. The first thing I do is pray! God rarely gives me miracles. He usually gives me solutions and often times the knowledge comes in the form of a "hunch" or a dream. Who's to say that God in His mercy isn't responding to those who don't know Christ yet in the same way?  If it works, I'm going to use it and bring my Christian perspective into it unless God specifically tells me not to.

I'm just learning about all this. If you are interested in essential oils or if you've got questions, please ask me! I may not know the answers, but I've always learned best when I'm helping others learn what they need to know!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue