Herbal Home Remedies Class

Herbal Home Remedies Class

at

Housman Farms

  In this class you will learn about a variety of herbs and how you can turn those into remedies to treat your family.  This will be a fun,

hands-on class. Together we will make many different herbal preparations.  When you go home, you will take your own Herbal Home Remedies Kit with you, and the knowledge and confidence to care for your family naturally.  Plan to spend the whole morning at our farm.

The value of the Home Remedies Kit exceeds the cost of the class.  Plus you will receive all the recipes to continue making these remedies at home.  The few hours you will invest in this class will forever change the way you care for your family.  We promise to make it worth your time and money!

$50.00

9:00-12:00 am SATURDAY, MAY 19th

Limited space available: call to reserve your spot

Visit our classes page for more details

Sunday Afternoon Fun

Today was wet (it rained all day yesterday) and cold, so Mike worked in the shop with Ben and Jonny this afternoon.  The boys are making (with Mike's help) toy electric cars.  They both own a remote control car, but making one is much more fun than owning one. :)  I wish I could explain how they did it, but I have no idea. :)  Here is a picture of Jonny's car.  He got his done today.  Ben is still perfecting his. :)

Cats and Dogs

Here is a picture of the newest member of the farm.  He has actually been here for a few months, but Emily hasn't had time to write about him...too busy with bunnies I guess.:)  His name is Gentleman, and he is a Ragdoll cat.  Isn't he beautiful?  Emily is hoping that he arrived in time to be the father of Lady's kittens.  She is getting big and will be having kittens soon.
 

Gentleman

He has the most beautiful eyes!

Our guard dog, Jackson

And I had to include a picture of our faithful guard dog, Jackson.  Now that we have puppies, Jackson looks old, but he is still a great guardian and a huge asset to the farm!
 
A week or so ago, Mike and I were in bed, almost asleep when all of a sudden I heard a scream that sounded like a woman wailing. With wide eyes I said, "What in the world was that!"  Then all the dogs started barking like crazy.  We both flew out of bed and went running to the back door.  Then we heard it...the howl of a coyote. We hear coyotes often, but this one was in the back very close to the house.  I wish I had thought to grab the camera and video the scene.  It was pretty exciting!  I stood at the back door listening while Mike went for the shot gun.  Then pretty soon Em was startled awake and showed up at the back door asking what was going on.  The puppies were penned up, so all they could do was bark, but Jackson was out in the slough keeping the coyotes at bay.  As Em and I listened, I said, "I love Pyrenees!"  I wish we had 50 of them...but that would be too much grooming! :)  Well, Mike scared them off, but didn't get a shot at them.

Until next time....just another exciting day on the farm! :)

Health Journal - Drink Your Vitamins

Em and I like to sip tea.  What's even better is having friends over, baking scones and having a tea party!  Many times tea is thought of as an alternative to coffee or plain water, but tea is so much more than that.  Herbal teas are foods that feed our bodies all kinds of vitamins and minerals.  And in our family they are an alternative to taking supplements.

Our family used to take a lot of vitamins.  But over the years I noticed that the more vitamins I took the worse I felt.  Then we finally quit taking daily supplements, and I have noticed that the odd symptoms that I had for years disappeared.  And the more I have learned, the more I am convinced that most supplements are not good for us.  They are either in forms that our bodies cannot use -and are many times toxic to the body, or they are separated from the other nutrients essential to their assimilation in the body.  Foods are our safest option!  And herbs are foods!

With a little study, you can become familiar with the nutrients in specific herbs.  Most Americans are deficient in calcium because we eat so many processed foods and pasteurize our milk, so that would be a good mineral to start consuming through herbal teas.  Both oat straw and horsetail (shavegrass) are high in calcium.  Another great herb to start with is Alfalfa.  It is loaded!  Red Raspberry leaf is also a wonderful herb to have around - nothing compares for pregnant women and children.  It is good for the flu, constipation and fever.  I could go on and on. 

A basket of Chamomile tea

Below are some recipes for teas that I have made for my family.  I try to make tea every morning, and we drink it with our breakfast.  There are a couple secrets that I have for making a yummy tasting tea that my family will like.  First I include at least one herb that has a sweet and palatable flavor.  Some examples are: cinnamon, peppermint, spearmint, fennel, licorice root, and anise seed.  My second secret is cream and honey!   Most children will suck down anything loaded with cream and honey! :)

Also, not all teas are created equal.  I do not recommend drinking teas out of a box.  I have found that these teas are not very good quality.  Your efforts will be much better rewarded if you buy bulk organic herbs. (mountainroseherbs.com or bulkherbstore.com)

The possibilities for tea recipes are endless, but this list will give you some ideas to help you get started.  As a general rule, use one teaspoon of tea to one cup of boiling water.  Pour the water over the tea and steep for 5-15 minutes.  When I make tea for my family, I just heat my water in an eight cup stainless steel pot.  Once the water is boiling, I turn off the heat and add my herbs.  Then I put the lid on and let it steep.  Always cover your tea while it is steeping!  If you don't, the constituents from the herbs will evaporate, and you will be left with an inferior cup of tea.

 

Tea Recipes

All the recipes below are made with 8 cups of water.

1T. Oatstraw
1T. Alfalfa
1T. Peppermint
Alfalfa has been called the "King of Herbs" because it is so rich in nutrients.  Oatstraw is high in calcium and magnesium and is usually found in herbal combinations relating to the heart.

1T. Nettle
1T. Peppermint
1T. Licorice Root
This tea is good for fatigue or exhaustion.

1 tsp, Anise seed
1T. Nettle
1T. Red Clover
1T. Licorice Root
Red Clover is a great blood purifier.  Nettle is rich in chlorophyll, iron, and vitamin C.  It is also a natural anti-histamine.

1 tsp. ground Cinnamon
2 tsp. Red Raspberry leaf
2 tsp. Dandelion Root
2 tsp. Peppermint
Dandelion is a good blood purifier and liver cleanser.

4 slices of Ginger root
1T. Black tea
1T. Peppermint
Ginger is great for morning sickness, nausea, and, motion sickness

1T. Catnip
1T. Fennel
1T. Red Raspberry
Catnip and fennel are good for stomach discomfort, indigestion, gas, and bloating.  It will also help a colicky baby.  Raspberry leaf is high in vitamin C, manganese, iron, and niacin, and it also helps with an upset stomach.

2 tsp. Alfalfa
2 tsp. Nettle
2 tsp. Horsetail
2 tsp. Peppermint
1 tsp. ground Cinnamon
Horsetail is very rich in silica.  Cinnamon's anti-fungal properties will benefit the whole body and make the tea taste yummy! :)

As I said before, the combinations are endless!  Other herbs that I like to use for tea are:
Bilberry leaf and berry, Elderberries, Chamomile, Mullein, and Lemon Balm. 

Tip: Whenever you are using a root, go ahead and add the root to your water right away and let it come to a boil.  Roots need to cook longer than leaves and berries in order to get the properties out of them. 

Enjoy your vitamins and minerals! :)

Chicks!

If you ordered chicken for pick up in June, your chicks arrived on the farm yesterday morning.  Just in time for our 20 degree weather! :)  No worries though, they are warm and cozy in our chicken coop, and Ben is taking good care of them! :)

Growing Garlic

One of the traditional signs of spring around the farm is when the garlic starts to nose its way up through the straw mulch. It has been peeking out for about 3 weeks now, the earliest I've every seen, due to the early spring (caused by solar flares, but that is a topic for another day).

Garlic plant on March 26th

Late last fall we added HUGE amounts of composted manure and chicken offal to this garden. Garlic loves to have lots of compost to feed on, so we happily obliged it. After quite a few trips over it with our rototiller the soil was nice and loamy... ready to plant!

I had hoped to plant the garlic in early October, but the weather was so warm that I was concerned it might grow to much. So I waited until mid-October.  (Six weeks before the soil freezes is ideal)

Harvest time will be the end of July.  We'll have well over 1000 bulbs for sale at our market.

Farmwife's Journal - April 6th

It is 31 degrees outside right now, which probably means we will lose all the fruit set on our apricot trees.  They bloomed really early this year due to the nice weather, but we figured we'd get hit with frost again.  It is rare that we have a good apricot harvest.  Why we try to grow them in Minnesota, I don't know!

Apricot trees

Now that lambing season and sugaring season are behind us, we are looking forward to chicks arriving next week, and the goats will be kidding in about a month or so.  We still have plants in the greenhouse, but we also planted a lot of seeds in the garden.  The weather was so beautiful, we just couldn't resist! :)

Yesterday the children and I uncovered our strawberries.  The 50-60 bales of straw that we put on them last fall was pulled into the center row and trampled down.  Now we will have a nice "cushion" to sit on when we pick, and hopefully we will have less weeds growing up between the rows.

Uncovering strawberries

We also washed sap buckets yesterday.  Normally we would just spray out the buckets, store them, and wash them more thoroughly in the spring, but this year our buckets were disgusting!  The warm weather brought with it quite an abundance of flies, and much of the sap we collected was dumped because it looked like fly soup! :(  Needless to say, our buckets needed a thorough cleaning!  So we scrubbed them, rinsed them, and left them in the sun to dry.  Then after supper, we stacked them in the sugar shack, and that ended sugaring season...not a very exciting one either!

Farming really is character building.  You learn to roll with the punches and take what you get.  Nothing is for certain, and you always feel very grateful when your hard work and long hours of labor are paid off by a good harvest.  But sometimes you work hard for nothing.  That's just life on the farm! :)