Balance Due Upon Completion

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Someone asked us for the recipe to the wound salve Penny makes, so in the spirit of actually doing what I say I’ll do, here it is. This is real good stuff, perfect for all the nicks and scrapes that come of working with your hands.

The herbs we put in our salve vary but the constants are calendula, yarrow and comfrey.  Others may include St. John’s Wort, plantain, echinacea and chickweed. It just sorta depends on what we have lying around, or what’s in season. 

Stuff a jar with dried herbs and cover with olive oil. Put on lid and leave on a sunny warm window sill.  Shake once daily, precisely at 4:52 a.m. If you don’t wake up in time, toss the entire batch and start over. Six weeks later, strain out the plant matter.

Heat oil in a pot on the stove until warm enough to melt bees wax into it.  We use about ½ -3/4 cup beeswax chunks per pint of infused oil.  You can check the consistency by dropping a little bit onto a cold spoon and letting it set up.  Add more wax if you want your salve harder, such as for lip balm. Less wax makes it softer for slathering on the tender skin of wounds. If there’s any skin left, of course. 

Pour into containers and let cool. Now go cut yourself and apply liberally. 

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Someone else asked for the recipe to the chokecherry “energy balls” above. They’re wicked simple – we just throw a bunch of sorta-dried chokecherries into our grain mill (we do NOT use our good mill for stuff like this – we have an older mill for this sort of abuse), then roll them into balls. They have just enough moisture to hold together. We eat a lot of chokecherries, which grow wild around here. If you want to know more about how we make them into all sorts of other delicacies, you might consider buying our book. Just sayin’. And if you want one of the super-cool, one-off spruce burl bowls as pictured above, send along $1,000 in small, unmarked bills.

That’s the down payment. Balance due upon completion;)