Elderwilde Apothecary

St. John's wort and visor 🌿

These never made it into the leaching process, but that's ok. One foraging project at a time. They are so pretty- I wish I'd dried them instead.

This Saturday! Going to be a great class, start the new year right! Lay down some goals and plans, and build a beautiful Year Wheel you can color and reference as you go.

Come create your own personalized Wheel of the Year! Class Jan 13, 2-5pm. Class includes tutorial/lecture, group meditation and free time to construct your wheels.

Start your 2024 by learning a new skill! 🎨✨ Classes kick off on 1/4, and we’re still offering a sweet 15% discount with code “happyholidays.”

Seats are up for grabs in:

🏺 Morning Pottery Sessions 🎨 Acrylic & Gouache and Digital Painting Classes 🌈 Watercolor and Oil Painting Open Studios

Limited spots available, snag yours now!

Thank you and for the photo!

On the good ship.

I'm teaching this class again, Saturday Jan 13! The last one filled - grab your seat now! A Year Wheel is a combo of a vision board and a calendar. Come start the year right with a group meditation, tutorial and free time to build your wheels. 🌟 Thanks so much for hosting us! Link in comments!

Comin up at EOM (end of month)

Curioser and curiouser

"Thistle make a nice photo," she thought.

"I cannot tell you what you must do," he admitted. "We live in a beautiful world which teases us with expectant joy around every corner. But really we are greeted by more of the same enigmatic silence, which is so full of beauty in itself but requires such patience that it confounds even the vastly complex human mind. I do not have all the answers. No, I am wise enough to know that it is really you that must lead us. When you run out of people to follow, people follow you.

I think I will go to the river to see the light. The sun itself is dull compared to the beauty it reveals with its light. Do not think of those simple things in life as being so unimportant, for they reveal to us the beautiful secret nature of all things."

Winter is a time of reflection

Homemade vinegar- post coming shortly! Isn’t nature amazing? This is inside a small apple chunk I sliced while getting ready to make my vinegar. ☺️ 🍏

jolis citrons

“We are still in Eden; The wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”​​​​​​​​
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The Oxbow, Thomas Cole, 1836

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,​​​​​​​​
Healthy, free, the world before me,​​​​​​​​
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.​​​​​​​​
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Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,​​​​​​​​
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,​​​​​​​​
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,​​​​​​​​
Strong and content I travel the open road.​​​​​​​​
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The earth, that is sufficient,​​​​​​​​
I do not want the constellations any nearer,​​​​​​​​
I know they are very well where they are,​​​​​​​​
I know they suffice for those who belong to them ​​​​​​​​
​​​​​​​​
Whitman, 1856

Time for the boats to hybernate.

Apple harvest. This is just the beginning! 🍏 Troy has a way with growing things that is nigh unto miraculous.

This year’s haul part 1: concord grapes.

Feeling festive after this unexpected elderberry forage on a hike yesterday; both red and blue off the path. 😍🍒🫐 The red are generally too time intensive to be worth processing, I’ve just learned (however the color ornamentally is just killer). For the blue we have big plans. Beautiful day for a hike, nice cool weather.

As young as they were, they seemed far wiser than us.

One of the two had a bad week.

Black currants have five times the Vitamin C of oranges, are high in polyphenols, and contain a trace of tannins. Black currant seed oil is rich in vitamin E. “Black currants.. are highly prized in Europe for juice products and their high nutrient content. Vitamin C concentrations can be as high as 250 milligrams per 100 grams of juice, even after 6 months of storage.”
Black currants have the widest culinary use among the currant family, being popular in the expected jams, jellies and syrups, but also pan sauces for duck and pork, as well as wonderful liqueurs.

Currants however, have a history of persecution. In 1911, currants were banned in the US because they hosted a disease called white pine blister rust that threatened the logging industry. Currants were so popular in Europe at the time that the opposite decision was made there, and the pine industry was sacrificed. Today most bans have been lifted in the US.

I hadn’t come across black currants yet, among my forays into foraging. They tasted a little like blueberries, very delicious. These were growing right by the lake, along with a set of currants that were more a wine color and transparent; I could see right through to their guts.

I had never noticed a current sold in a store here in the West, but I was delighted to see them all over the grocery stores in Chicago last summer!

Hairy Vetch, a nitrogen-fixer, is very useful in crop rotation and as a companion plant, particularly to tomatoes. This purple nodding beauty sounds like something you’d say when you sneeze. Despite the cognitive dissonance between its presentation and its name, it is both winter hardy and can fix as much as 200 lb/acre of atmospheric nitrogen. For this reason it is widely used by organic growers as a winter cover crop and in no-till farming. Studies have also shown that the presence of Hairy Vetch activated genes for longevity and disease resistance in the tomatoes, vs 2 other common tomato planting methods.

“Characteristics of Hairy Vetch-Tomato System” - Abdul-Baki, A.A., and J.R. Teasdale, 1997

Follow up:
“Hairy Vetch Mulch Activates Genes for Phytonutrients in Tomatoes” - Don Comis, 2008

Yellow sweet clover, Melilotus officinalis, is a nitrogen-fixing legume often used in pastures. It is exceedingly drought tolerant- found here in Salt Lake City up above the city, on a hike this summer. The yellow flowers attract pollinators- hives near sweetclover can yield up to 200 pounds of honey in a year. The seeds make an ideal food for game birds and small animals. Yellow sweet clover can be used for livestock, however, they may need time to adjust due to the bitter taste of coumarin in the plant, and will eat it only after their palates become used to the flavor. Sweetclover has been used as a phytoremediation—phytodegradation plant for treatment of soils contaminated with dioxins.

Strophariaceae. Today was my first ever mushroom forage. I’ve had a hard time finding much info about this variety online, so I let it be.
I did however come home with a nice batch of Shaggy Scalycap, which I plan to use carefully at home. ☺️

Do you ever feel as though you’re being watched? 👀

Guess what I found here locally? Do you know this variety? 🤔

Utah smudge sticks! $8 large $6 small. Handmade with love, locally-sourced smudge sticks. Sustainably foraged with care and positive energy. White sage (large or small) or Rabbitbrush (large). Rabbitbrush has a slightly sweeter scent.
Venmo or cash.

Our regal protectors. What have they seen? What have they learned? I wish I could ask.