Herbal Revolution: 65+ Recipes for Teas, Elixirs, Tinctures, Syrups, Foods + Body Products That Heal

HERBAL REVOLUTION

65+ Recipes for Teas, Elixirs, Tinctures, Syrups, Foods + Body Products That Heal

KATHI LANGELIER

Owner of Herbal Revolution Farm + Apothecary

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

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DEDICATION

To my beautiful parents, Patricia and Raymond, and grandparents. xo

INTRODUCTION

I can feel the wind blowing on my face and bare arms as I walk to the upper growing field. I smile as I hear the sweet sounds of the wood thrush singing from the trees that run along the right side of the field. I approach the first plot and turn to walk through the tall hyssop aisles as I head to the chamomile patch in the plot beyond this one. The hyssop is in full bloom and their tall purple spires are buzzing and vibrating from the bumblebees and honeybees.

This daily action of walking outside in nature is an important one. These walks are meditative and open me to being in the moment. They provide me with information on how the plants are doing—are they happy, healthy and thriving? Or are they looking ill and needing some tending?

This practice helps me tap into my intuition and creativity. Medicine making for me has always been part intuition, along with critical thinking, science, historical evidence and a splash of creativity. If it weren’t for my relationship with the plants, I wouldn’t be making medicine or running an herbal business. I owe everything to them.

AN HERBAL BEGINNING

When I was six, my family moved from the city of Lewiston, Maine, to the farming community in Turner, Maine. I remember that feeling of wildness expanding. Suddenly, we went from having mostly houses surrounding us to a forest that nurtured my imagination, a place where I could run and play. I could disappear into another world, a world where the plants and animals talked with me.

I can’t remember which memory happened first, but I do remember some of the first memories of tasting plants. They happened the first summer we moved into our new house. I’m guessing dandelion came first because it’s first to bloom and I was obsessed with it, like most kids. I could rub it on my sister to make her skin turn yellow, and it had a thick white liquid that was sticky. I remember tasting that white liquid and how the bitterness seemed to run over every part of my tongue. It was intense, but I loved it even more. Red clover was next, this one being a very different experience. I remember picking each little flower and tasting the sweet nectar on the tips. The memory of that sweet nectar has stayed clear with me to this day.

I feel so fortunate to have grown up in rural Maine during a time when there were no computers or cell phones. I was able to spend most of my time outside, exploring the natural surroundings and learning the plants that grew around me, which ones I could eat and which ones were poisonous. In 1994, I moved to the coast of Maine, where I worked at a co-op and bought my first herbal books by Rosemary Gladstar and Deb Soule. I cherished these books and still do today. I pored over them by candlelight in my cabin and made every single recipe.

By 1995 I was teaching outdoor education, leading wilderness trips and apprenticing on farms. I went on to continue working on organic farms throughout my twenties in Maine, Vermont and California. Many of these farms grew not only produce but also medicinal plants. When they were putting up their food for the winter, they were also making their medicine. Between all the books I was reading, all the wilderness trips I was leading and the farms I was working on, my herbal foundations were growing.

By my early twenties I knew I wanted to farm, but it wasn’t until around 2007, while in massage school, that I realized I wanted to grow mostly medicinal herbs, and not only that, but I wanted to start an herbal products business. I had been making my own herbal products for well over ten years, sharing them with friends and family, but then people started asking if they could buy things from me. I thought they were being nice. So in 2009, while attending my first herb conference, the International Herbal Symposium, I decided to enter the herbal products contest. I was looking to gain feedback on my formulas and blends from well-known experts in the field instead of just friends and family. To my surprise, I ended up winning first place in the categories I had entered, received great feedback and got to meet Rosemary Gladstar! It was such an uplifting experience to receive such powerful affirmation from an herbalist I had been looking up to for so many years. It truly gave me the confidence I needed to go home and create my company, Herbal Revolution.

AN HERBAL REVOLUTION

Herbal Revolution started as a passion, vision and dream, and I jumped in headfirst. Over the years, I’ve offered herbal tinctures, elixirs, vinegar tonics, teas, body products, herbal oils, flower essences, hydrosols, seed garlic and more. I started selling directly to my community through farmers’ markets, events and fairs like the Common Ground Country Fair and through our website. Over the years we have grown and expanded to selling to co-ops, natural food stores and natural grocery stores.

To me, being a farmer goes far deeper than sowing a seed. On a daily basis, I care for the land, the insects and the animals. I’m a steward. I listen to the land every day. I’m a student of my surroundings and ecosystem, and a teacher of this knowledge about the food and medicine I grow. I believe sustainable farming can help support food security and health access to people in my community and throughout the country.

Herbal Revolution is now going into its tenth year. Holy, holy. We have a 23-acre (9.3-ha) farm with currently about 5 acres (2 ha) in medicinal herb and vegetable production growing for the Herbal Revolution products. I share the farm with my incredibly talented, handsome and ridiculously funny partner, Gus Johnson, along with a collection of goats, a donkey, a pony, chickens and cats.

About 2 miles (3.2 km) down the road from the farm in Union, Maine, is Herbal Revolution’s headquarters. We have a production and manufacturing facility where the plants are dried and stored, and where all the products are manufactured and shipped out. The second building is in the process of being renovated into our retail store and café, where we will host events, music, herbal programs, classes and workshops year-round. We have so much exciting work going on, but it always comes back to the plants.

Herbal Revolution, the name, was inspired by dandelions and other plants bursting through sidewalks and up through concrete and pavement, saying, F*** you! You can’t hold us back. The resilience of these plants is beautiful, inspiring and motivating. If they can be this strong and resilient, then we can too. We can stand up to all the bullshit and make change happen, first within ourselves and then within our communities, which then will ripple out to other communities and continue from there. We hold a lot of power; it’s easy for us to forget that.

Knowledge is power. The more knowledge you have about yourself, your body and ways to support your health through preventive care, the more power you have. I live in the United States, and this country’s health care system is very good at tending to acute and emergency situations. It’s truly amazing, and I couldn’t be more grateful to the skilled doctors and surgeons who save lives every day. It’s saved my life, my sister’s life and my dad’s life.

All that being said, I think the system is failing when it comes to preventive care, good nutrition and supplemental therapies. There is a lot of work that can be done to keep people from getting to full-blown heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and lung-related diseases caused by smoking.

This is where it’s vital to educate yourself, understand your body and appreciate the risks that go along with eating certain foods, smoking, drinking, using drugs and living a high-stress life. This also means taking it a step further and understanding all the things you can do to support your body through foods, herbs and supplements. It can be so hard to change patterns. Many of these patterns can easily start as a way to cope with stress and trauma, but after a while those ways of coping become their own stressors on the body and add to your health risks. So the more you know, the more powerful you are!

SPREADING THE REVOLUTION

I felt moved to start an herbal business not just to make and sell products, but to create a life where I could talk about plants to others, to share the knowledge that I have learned and continue to learn. My goal has always been to help bridge the gap of food as medicine and medicine as food. Herbal Revolution is about creating opportunities to bring people and plants together. It’s about empowering people to take control of supporting their health through the use of plants. It’s about encouraging and inspiring others to take the step to starting their own herbal revolution.

I hope this book supports and nourishes you on your herbal journey and inspires you to become more connected with the plants. I hope it helps you become more curious, leaving you with eagerness to continue expanding your herbal knowledge and caretaking your body and health.

Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for wanting to work with the plants. And thank you for your support.

A MODERN GUIDE TO HERBAL MEDICINE

SOURCING HERBS: GROWING, WILD HARVESTING AND SUPPORTING OUR FARMERS

My work with the plants has everything to do with starting Herbal Revolution. If I didn’t have a deep respect, love and a connection with the natural world, then I couldn’t imagine having a business. This is a lifelong relationship. So, of course I’m going to encourage you to create relationships with the plants.

If you can, grow a garden with some herbs that are interesting to you, even if it’s just a container garden in a window or on a porch. If you don’t have either of those, then visit open garden spaces and botanical gardens, and take walks in the woods or down your street. Just walking down the street in a city I’ve found at least eight, but often way more, medicinal plants. These plants you wouldn’t be able to harvest, but instead you can get to know them—how they grow, where they grow, whether they are resilient to heat and drought and whether they tolerate little sun and lots of rain. What do their leaves, stems and flowers look like? When do they flower? When do they go to seed? What do the seeds look like? All of these things play a role in learning more about each plant and how to work with it.

In the back of the book, you’ll find some great seed and nursery companies I like to work with. So please, go and get dirty. Get your hands in the dirt and grow a relationship with some plants. In my opinion, this is where the medicine and healing begin.

You can also look for a local farm that grows herbs. A lot more farms these days are expanding from just growing produce, and more and more people are starting herb farms! Visit your local farmers’ markets. While you’re getting your veggies ask your farmer whether they grow any medicinal herbs or would consider it. Supporting your local sustainable farmers means you’re supporting healthy farming practices, which grow healthy food, which provides you and your family with the best nourishment.

I always encourage either growing your own plants or purchasing from your local herb farmer, but if neither is an option, then there are some great herbal businesses you can order from online (see Resources).

For all your recipes, as best you can, I encourage you to use ingredients that are organic, non-GMO (screw you, Monsanto) and come from places that support sustainable practices. It can be done! Pretty much everything from what you put into your body and what you use topically on your body should be chemical free.

MY THOUGHTS ON WILD GATHERING

Throughout my life, I’ve traveled to the same special places time and time again to harvest certain herbs. When I did this, I would go through the checklist of what I was smelling (had the smell changed or was it the same?), what was I hearing (was it active in sound like the year before or not?) and what I was seeing (how did the stand of plants look; were they in abundance and healthy or was there less?).

There would be years I’d see less of one plant to the point that it should not be harvested. When this happened, I would sit and think on that plant. I would think about why I was harvesting it to begin with. I would meditate on the energy and medicine it offered. These moments I spend with the plants have been profoundly awakening and centering to my senses—especially the sense of listening to my gut and helping me tap into my intuitions and feelings. There are times when we absolutely need to use the plants internally or topically in order to receive their medicine, but there is also a great deal of medicine and lessons to be learned from just being with them, observing and paying attention to their habitat and listening to them.

Each year I would also see some plants in abundance. I would check in and explore whether there was a reason I might be seeing more of these plants. Was it because I needed to pay closer attention to it? Did it offer a medicine that I, my family or my community need more of? And so on.

Wild gathering is magic. It’s how I first started working with plants and did for many years before I started growing so much of my own because there simply weren’t any other places where I could get herbs. Over the years, I’ve come across many people who I feel shouldn’t be wild gathering due to lack of knowledge and skill to safely and respectfully wild gather. This is one of the main reasons I hardly do it anymore, and I encourage people to grow their own instead. I only wild gather a few things these days, and only if the plants say it’s okay. Last year, they said no.

Because this book is not focused on growing, harvesting and wild gathering, I’m going to strongly encourage you to hold off on wild gathering and stick to either growing your own or supporting an herb farmer. Wild gathering requires knowledge, skill and deep intuition. If you have this, great. But if you don’t, then please wait until you’ve received more knowledge.

It’s always of the utmost importance to ask for permission from the plants, but especially when wild gathering. You need to have a keen understanding of the plant’s habitats, character, growth cycles and patterns. Most importantly, is it a plant of abundance, like dandelion or chickweed, or a plant that is rare, endangered or in threat of being endangered? Also, just because a plant is perceived to be in abundance doesn’t mean it is. At this point, there are so many more herb farms growing plants that there is less of a need to wild gather. See the Resources section here for some recommendations.

A place to start is learning about the plants in your area that are endangered, threatened or at risk. You can find all this information at the United Plant Savers site (unitedplantsavers.org). I encourage you to become familiar with these plants so that you