12 MUST-KNOW Backyard Medicinal Herbs (Foraging Medicinal Herbs)

Hey you guys this is Josh and Carolyn with Homesteading Family and welcome to this week's episode of the Pantry Chat Food for Thought. This week we're talking about the top 12 herbs, medicinal herbs that you should know about that might be just wild in your backyard or in the area around you. So we're covering foraging top 12 herbs. And a lot of these are just about everywhere you don't necessarily even have to be out in the country for all of them. Absolutely yeah it's really good you know we we've talked a lot about gardening and about growing your own we've talked about growing your own medicinal herbs and your own food but foraging adds a whole nother element into it and that is that you don't have to do the work of the propagating and the growing right. It's just there and it's kind of waiting for you so it's just getting to know what resources you have in your environment that are out there waiting for you to need them when you get ill or when you want to reach a better level of health or whatever it is. And some of these herbs are just powerful they're they're made they're created to mine nutrient and some of the some of the things out of the earth that help them do their job very specifically. So we'll look forward to getting to that but first of all gotta cover a little chit chat and some questions. All right. So what's going on with you? Oh well it is spring around here so there is a lot happening there's a lot of gardening there's a lot of transplanting there's a lot of seeds started there's all sorts of things going on but one special project that I have been doing that I like to do this time of year because you know we go from being kind of fairly sedentary in the household during the winter you know not completely but still we're not out with big equipment we're not doing the amount of things but then we hit warm weather and it's like all of a sudden the equipment comes out you know kids have got weed whackers and nippers and all these different tools and different things going on so I like to look at our first aid kit around the house and make sure that we are really well stocked up so we've been doing a supply like check on that and we've been ordering some things I like to have those um you know we always call them vet bandage I don't know or vet wrap because I grew up around animals so I don't know what the human term for that is but the wrap that sticks to itself to wrap up any wounds or anything stabilize a yeah a sprain or something so that gauze pads just all the sorts of things that you might need and while my mind has been on doing this um have you guys seen the amount of shortages pharmaceutical shortages that are happening right now especially in antibiotics and so I was already thinking about stocking up on things and started seeing news articles on the different shortages that have been out there and I am really excited because now you guys know we're not like super big pharmaceutical people but I do think that especially antibiotics have their place like when you need them you need a place right when it comes to emergency uh first aid or or even some long-term prepping for medical you know medical things if you can't get somewhere quickly so I got really excited when I found that you can get home kits of backup antibiotics like for your family um and these are real you know straight from a pharmacy medical grade like antibiotic we're not talking fish antibiotics right that's what a lot of preppers talk about is like getting your fish antibiotics these are like full-on antibiotics with a complete user's guide and I got really excited to be able to just have these on hand in case there was an emergency and here we are in the middle of nowhere you know you can't possibly can't get to the pharmacy you can't get to a doctor you can't get different places and so um anyways this made me really excited that they're they're called the jace case and you can get this for your whole family they also have kid kits like pediatric kits for kids and the common things you might need for kids so anyways I wanted to share that with you because I'm really excited to be able to have these on hand I don't plan on using them I hope not to use them but in case I needed them they're here so check out the jace case if you're interested in doing something like that I'll put the link below and hey maybe I can get us a discount code for everybody because that would be kind of cool but it's a good thing to have on hand and just be prepared for an emergency in case it happens so do those are those just medicines is jace case all medicine yeah it is to what I can see it's all pharmaceutical type medicines but you can get like if you're on other that's what I was leading to is besides like some just generic backups of you know different things yeah can you get stocked up or can you work with them to get ahead on if you do have some prescription stuff that you have to have yes they will get you whole backup supplies it looks like we don't really have anything like that so I didn't look into it that much um I know you can get uh things like prescriptions for ivermectin and other things like that that can be a little bit harder to get so um anyways no good pretty cool to have that opportunity to get that so yeah good it's always being always good to be deepening our preps while we're not preppers we are we do strive to live prepared right in all areas of life so yeah and to be able to help ourselves and others in the case of an emergency cool what else anything else uh gardening that's a gardening we're trying to keep up with the spring grass that likes to show up in the cottage garden and pulling out all the grass before it gets to taking over if we catch up with it in the spring then it doesn't become a huge problem the rest of the year yeah so what about you what have you been up to wow well getting ready for the grass to grow actually out in the pasture I stepped into the garden the main crop garden and uh it's um started cleaning up a little bit yeah but the grass is what gets going first and so we're actually just getting ready to spread uh manure from the deep bedding in the barn and the manure the pasture and get up some of our seasonal temporary fencing and and get ready to get animals out to pasture once the grass gets up enough so I say grass and I kind of like grr like yeah you say grass and your eyes light up you gotta not be dissing the grass so much it provides us with probably 50 of our food yeah uh we are we are largely grass-based system but the grass shows up you want grass some places you don't want it other places you don't want it in the cottage garden nor the main crop garden which it's not a struggle there we've we've conquered it in the main crop yeah but um but no we do want to encourage the grass out in the pasture right for all of our dairy and meat yeah products so anyways yeah it's all about getting ready for that and it's just that cusp of like here it comes and all of a sudden we're gonna go from sitting still to walking to walking a little faster to probably all the way to full out sprint yeah uh without anything in between so kind of getting ready for that yeah and excited for it it's nice to be seeing a little more sunshine when we're warmer days and always excited to get some animals out the pasture and we've been working on clearing the next bench up on our property more pasture that's a lot of work gonna take quite a while but um starting to work on thinking about clearing that area getting trees down and how we're gonna solve that yeah that's exciting yeah it's exciting to see it move forward yep well today's pantry chat is brought to you sponsored by layman's um which we're just so excited about because this is a company we have purchased from for for 20 years forever yeah probably before we would have well i would definitely say before we would have ever said we were homesteading oh yeah before we knew to even call it homesteading what we were doing yeah um so you've been bringing things in from layman's what are some of the things that we've purchased from layman's in the past i thought okay we've definitely gotten oil lamps from them we've gotten um granny wear dishes for like camping or when we lived in a small cabin that was kind of like camping canning supplies particularly lids they're one of the best sources especially for usa made lids yep definitely um let's see we've gotten cedars from them and tools from them various tools yeah yeah yeah we have a uh we actually have a nice grain mill i don't even know we've unboxed right yeah somewhere that i got when i was there right yeah and so we've gotten all sorts of great yeah it's a backup grain mill it's a hand crank one instead of my electric one which i do plan on continuing to use my electric one while i have electricity but it's good to have a backup um but yeah so we're really excited to have them as sponsors and i think you should go check them out if you're not aware of them because they have so many great tools that are all geared towards more of an off-grid uh non-electrical life so it's kind of cool yeah real good and they just they keep growing and adding new new things so it's not all i mean it's all kind of old-fashioned but there's a lot there is a lot there for the modern homestead oh definitely yeah cool cool oh and we do have a coupon code for you guys 15 off your order at layman's that is 1 f h 5 c t wow we'll get that in the notes for you so you can just copy and paste that'll make that a little easier all right all right good okay a couple questions of the day okay got one here for you i didn't catch we have a couple options okay take a pic okay uh so nicole braceno asks from the can i ferment that video fermented foods are definitely an acquired taste and i'm new to ferments and struggling to get my family to eat them let alone enjoy them we understand uh any advice um yeah actually i do have a lot of advice one good piece that i think has been really helpful for us back in the days let me give you a little encouragement first once people start eating fermented foods at some point you get over the taste and your body starts to crave them and it the whole scenario flips and before long your kids are begging you for more sauerkraut on the table um that is what now happens in our house so we'll go through a half gallon jar of sauerkraut if i open it up and let people take servings out of it in like no time flat like one meal um so you do have to just kind of break through this initial wall of taste barrier because it's a different flavor than we're used to in our modern palate um so some ways of doing that one you can do things that are naturally sweeter think of beets or carrots and don't let them ferment as long it may not be ideal on the health side but it will start helping your family adjust to the flavor and get those good probiotics at a low level in and then you can start fermenting them longer before you put them in the refrigerator or into cold storage the other thing that has been really really big for us is getting one like i take people's dinner fork and we fill it up with one fork full of a ferment and that fork full gets set on their plate and before they can use that fork for anything else they have to put that bite in their mouth um so it's just one bite and one bite is like more than any capsule you will ever get filled with probiotics and enzymes so it's really really powerful you don't need more than that but just have that filled already so that has to go in their mouth before they get to start using their fork to eat their food yeah so that just helps us like remember to do it and get it in our mouth even if we're kind of going i don't really want to take this um oh well you have to before you get to eat your food so yeah and if you have a husband that you're having a hard time telling him he has to try the carrots carrots are what won me over uh early on in the journey the carrots uh in the early to mid stages are like they're like candy to me really really very good so um just kind of got a fine thing that resonates with people and and i think like carolyn said uh starting out with them giving them to them a little early in the ferment they're maybe not as ferment rich probiotic rich um but they're good the carrots are excellent yeah very good okay let's see um a question for you from tricia on the no barn smell equals healthy management system okay josh's barn management yeah it was do you have multiple pig species i know the cooney cooney you have are non-rooting do they turn the deep bedding over for you or do you have to have a different breed for your rooting that's a great question so we are utilizing two different species we're raising the cooney coonies on farm breeding them um and so they're kind of our permanent staple here but no they don't root and so they do not turn the deep bedding so we buy a couple of feeder pigs every year and um turn them out we've got them right now they're little babies they're in one of the stalls and here within the next couple weeks the animals will start to move out of the barn and those pigs will start to move around the stalls and start to turn the bedding and um and i don't really want to raise those pigs so we just buy a couple for that system now for a lot of you that don't want to raise pigs and i wouldn't go into like raising and breeding pigs quickly just buying feeders is a great way to go no matter what and it's great for the deep bedding system and then you don't have to carry the pigs over the winter all right um diving into the main topic today right so herbs medicinal herbs primarily here is what we're talking about that you can forage or should be able to forage somewhere in your area even if you don't have an herb garden yet or anything like that so of course we have to start with all the legal stuff we're not doctors we're not anything certified this is not meant as as a medical advice it's more talking about what uh what you can do or what has been done with herbs in the past is probably the thing to say and helping you to know about some herbs that you should get to know but as always it's really important that you do your own research and make sure that things are right for you some of these herbs do have contraindications with pharmaceuticals so please be careful be especially careful if you are nursing or pregnant you always want to look into things um and there are great sources out there that tell you about the safety of herbs um in fact i have a whole training that tells you how to know if herbs are right for you i'll try and put that link down in the description for you too the other thing is is that if you are interested in the sources and our site citations for this and where we're getting our knowledge from check out the attached blog post because we have links for you cool all right well we got a few to get to yeah we better just dive right in dive in i'll bring them out and you tell everybody about them okay one of the most ubiquitous ones that you can find just about anywhere with the little asterisks that i'm going to have but dandelion dandelions yeah you guys if you don't know about dandelions this is one that you should add to your herbal studies for this year because yeah they're everywhere right but there are incredibly powerful on the herbal side they are hepatic which means they have a liver support to them they're um choleretic which means that they increase your bile production so right there and they're diuretic and they can have a laxative effect so right there that's going to tell you right away that this is going to help tone up your system and it's going to help you get rid of waste and toxins right so this is going to help you with digestion it's going to help you with your hormone function because your liver as it helps your liver it's going to help your um your liver detox the excess hormones that are in your body so it's going to help you with a lot of things so this is an herb that i really recommend you look at you get to know especially it's a great spring herb after we're coming out of winter and our bodies are kind of sluggish maybe we've been eating more preserved foods not as many fresh foods our livers are feeling a little slow and laden from being inside so long this is a great herb to really get into other things that it can do for you it can remove warts just the sap of it applied to warts if you have children you know that that comes around regularly um so it's a great way that's cool yeah apply it you know often until it goes away it's a tonic blood purifier liver cleanser all of those great things um and it helps with a ton of different things when you cleanse your liver you usually cleanse your skin so those are really really attached but also as you have things that are diuretics and they're helping to cleanse your system like cleansing your blood in your system they really help a lot with joint pain um things like gout uh or rheumatism or anything like that wrapped up in joint pain so these are a great this is a great herb and this is why it's one like number one on they're all great herbs i love them all and they're all really useful but some of the ways that you can use these you can use them in salads soups smoothies stick them in a blender as greens you can make a green powder out of the leaves um you can cook them up uh you can cook up their roots too not just their leaves but you can cook up their roots because there's a lot of medicinal power in the roots themselves um you can make them into teas i love my dandelion root tea i have one pretty much every day most of the time definitely if i start noticing any skin problems i go to once a day for a dandelion root tea um and of course you can tank shrimp so pretty cool you didn't mention my favorite which is to fry them in a little you can make a little batter out of some flour and some milk and fry them in butter or lard they are if you like um what's a little fried zucchini here oh yeah they're actually better the this is the flower heads the yellow flower head part in the spring right it is so so good i feel like we have a video out there somewhere we might we love doing that over doing that in the spring once a year we try to do it i'm thinking just some of the other stuff we've been going through with some of the detoxing and the test blood testing we've done yeah we ought to hit that hard this year that's a good idea it does now one caveat to dandelion though is a lot of places spray their yards so be careful and just you don't you don't want to take up something that's been sprayed so just be knowledgeable probably really good for all of these when it comes to basic foraging and forage off roadsides like give yourself some room off the roadsides because the toxins from the road itself will go into the ground yeah and get sucked up so but your yard hopefully you're not spraying stuff in your yard anyways and most people have got grass i've got some dandelions somewhere and you know leave some of them leave an area i know we all want to get them out of our nice yard but but let them go somewhere and proliferate because they're great they're enjoyable and like carolyn was saying very good for you all right i would tell you the story about the time i tried to make dandelion wine but i think we might go too long so there's still a few bottles in there it's not aging all that great don't don't over add sugar if you try to go that way but that can be a nice way to get uh remedies in in fact old-fashioned herbal medicine a lot of times they would use uh like winemaking and they would put they would either infuse the herbs directly into already made wine or they would make wine from the product itself so you know you think elderberry wine dandelion wine those are kind of and i know some of you don't drink alcohol but you got to remember this is a long-term preservative that even people that don't generally drink alcohol use to preserve because it's one of the best ways to preserve some of these things for the long term yeah not have it deteriorate on you so just consider the value of it if you're thinking about wanting to preserve it because obviously dandelions are around for a certain part of the season yeah um moving on we got a lot to cover here so okay we better keep moving through them if we're going to get people uh the information uh nettle and i assume we're talking the wild nettle which i would refer to as stinging nettle is that accurate or or there i don't know another nettle wild besides stinging nettle stinging nettle is uh definitely what we're talking about here and the parts that we use for stinging nettle are either the roots you can use the roots but more commonly you use the leaves and the stems or all the aerial parts for that so kind of common or similar to the dandelion um nettles a diuretic uh and an antioxidant which means that it is also doing that kind of cleansing for your joints so it's really good for joint problems it has a really interesting property though that we don't see a whole lot in herbs and that's an anti oh gosh pulmonary is that what you're getting now anti proliferative it's just hard to make it roll off the tongue yeah which means that it actually stops cell division and growth so if you have a wound that's not a good thing right you want the growth if you have something like a tumor then that's a great thing you don't want that to grow and spread and so in its place it's really good when it comes to certain topical issues like that but it is very very anti-inflammatory and by being anti-inflammatory it creates some pain relief when you have um you know some topical especially pain um so this is another one of those herbs it is extremely nutritive which means it just has a huge amount of nutrition packed into it what we like to use it for what we use it for every single year in our house is seasonal allergies mixing a combination of nettle with alfalfa and we take it in capsules um can really really help with the seasonal allergies so we have a couple kids who just take a lot of that every single year and it really helps my understanding with the nettle too it's one of those herbs that you can take all year round and take a pretty decent amount of so if you regularly struggle or you just want to get in the habit of taking it to be ahead of seasonal allergies and uh or or even you know it helps with cold preventative and whatnot it's one of those things that a lot of herbs you don't want to take constantly it's one of those herbs that you can take constantly yeah absolutely and with that nutritive power in it just having so much nutritional power in there you want to take it regularly so it can be a really good thing again there are times where you don't want to take nettle so make sure you're doing your own research to make sure it fits for you and for any conditions you might have um you can make nettle into just like a potter of like spinach um you can put it into a tincture you can put it into teas you can put it uh you know into capsules you can kind of smoothies like you can do all sorts of things with it it will not sting you once you do something to it like cook it or blend it or something like that so don't worry about that part i'm just having fun remembering it's one of the earliest herbs that you and i probably played around with early together way before we were married probably 25 years ago probably foraging it and experimenting with cooking and and you know i mean it wasn't it wasn't all over youtube or so it was pretty pretty novel at the time it's just fun yeah okay um herb number three again another one that is nettle nettles maybe not as ubiquitous uh say dandelion it's around but this one is pretty close and that's plantain comes in different sizes and forms a little bit but it is just about everywhere yeah you have the the narrow leaf and the broad leaf and we will have the latin names for you in um in the blog post also so you can check out there if you have any confusion as to what we're talking about but um plantain is a great herb to have around and you probably have it out even if you live in the city you probably have it in the sidewalk cracks or something not that you should harvest it there unless that's your only option um but it grows everywhere and uh the parts that you really use mostly are the leaves you can use all parts of the plantain including the seeds and the roots so it's entirely edible you can just take the whole thing and throw it into a blender if you want um but plantain is very astringent which means it tightens up puffy inflamed tissue so you think of like a wound and you know you get that red as as everything is uh irritated and everything's irritated yeah so if you get that on there it's going to help to tighten that up and reduce that inflammation if you think of a sore throat that's another place where that can be really helpful um what's really cool about it though is that it's antibacterial it's actually in general antimicrobial so it's actually really strong for those things it's anti-inflammatory so not only does it help reduce the puffiness and reduce the water filling up an area but it also takes the inflammation out of the area and it's also demulcent which means that it soothes mucus membranes so i mean you can just see right here like this is an amazing herb for wounds of any sort the other thing that it really does is it helps pull out any debris or foreign substance that is inside your body or your skin so if you have a splinter you have an insect bite you have anything like that plantain is just amazing for it yeah this is a great one to teach your kids because for like insect bites stings or little splinters different things right kids get these things all the time outside and so we can teach your kids how to just go find plantain and our kids will do this they'll just go and have a little something they just go find it chew it up a little bit and put it on there right and poultice it and it can it can calm especially those those bites and stings calm it down it is usually quickly the first herb that they learn how to forage for themselves in their house because it's really easy to identify and it does not have any close lookalikes or anything like that right and it's everywhere so it's a great herb to get to know there you go i like it okay here's one i know zero about here uh not that i know much about any of them she's the resident expert here but um cleavers so cleavers also known as goose grass is it might be one that you don't just like know off the top of your head but as soon as you see it you'll be like oh that's that plant that's all grabbing me or you know it's kind of obnoxious cleaving cleaving to you yeah it's got these little hooked hairs on it they just kind of like grab you um and it's it is important to know right at the top when we're talking about cleavers it can topically cause a reaction for some people so you do need to be careful when you're gathering it if you don't know if you have a problem with it or not you might want to use gloves or just put a little bit of sap on some skin a small spot just to see um so just be aware of that but the action for cleavers is really anti-inflammatory it's also cooling and cleansing um it's got some strong detoxifying powers to it and it's also a diuretic where really really really comes in handy is again wounds so it's a place where it just really helps to speed the healing clean out any toxins that could be getting into the area and create a real anti-inflammatory response which is great to have um there are other some other uses it's diuretic so it can be really good to reduce you know if you're having bladder infections or any problems like that are you having too much liquid you know in your body your body's just holding on to too much it can be great for that usually those diuretics are also really good for joints if you're having joint pain um skin issues uh eczema uh this is great because it's a great anti-inflammatory and so it really helps to calm down skin issues um it's also known to help with hair growth hair growth i don't know i haven't tried it but it might be worth trying um and you can use it in all different ways teas infusions tinctures you can use it you can juice it use it as fresh juice or add it to things um some people say it's good as a coffee substitute i'm telling you right now don't touch my coffee don't even experiment it's not going to happen here so if you try it let us know okay now this herb is kind of a cool one sheep sorrel so any of you guys this is not talked about a whole lot in the herbal world except for in one place and that is in asiac tea so if any of you guys have heard about asiac tea um you know that it runs in the cancer circles sometimes the autism circles it is a traditional tea that has been around for a long time and um sheep sorrel is one of the main ingredients in that tea and it is everywhere it is in the grass it is all over the place it's another one of those things that you don't really notice but it is all over the place um it's really strongly antioxidant it's um really strongly diuretic and so it really creates this great detox situation where it really helps to detox the body um it helps with chronic bowel issues which feeds right into the detox inside right gets everything working functioning correctly which you know we we know that detoxing is an important part of any sort of bigger treatment for things like cancer or anything like that so it kind of just really feeds into that really well um it is so strongly antioxidant that it's really good for like your immune system also if you're struggling if you're sick and you have some viral like you know dead things coming off of viruses you're trying to detox your lymph and all of that that antioxidant property can go through your body and help to reduce any of that free radical damage that could be happening very cool yeah it's really good how do you take it how do you take it tinctures you know most of these things it's like you need to get it as close to your ailing tissue as possible so if you have to take it internally it's tea tincture eat the thing powder it and take it by the spoon fill or mix it mix it into applesauce um they're kind of generally the same if you want to put it on topically then an infusion or mashing it up and sticking it right on there and kind of a really simple process is a great way to go cool all right here's another one that is very very ubiquitous everywhere and that is clover yeah yeah there are over 250 varieties of clover and they are all medicinal all good for you yeah they have different properties so sometimes one will be a little stronger and things like white clover versus red clover there's something called zigzag clover we don't have a lot of it here but that's another really common clover zigzag clover i think that's more common in europe excuse me clover is a great thing to help again detox your body systems but we're really talking about blood here yeah it's going to help detox the blood which is really important if you're dealing with ongoing health problems again if you've been sick if you have skin issues if you have any like any odd symptom that you're like gosh i just don't know what this is but it's kind of weird and it shows up here and there a lot of times that means you're struggling with something that's toxifying your system you need to get that out and so that is where clover really really comes into play but also another really one here's a fancy word for you it's anti scrofulis anti scrofulis that means you know when you're sick and your lymph glands swell a whole lot it's going to help drain that it's going to help us that's your scrofula have scrofula when you have these swollen lymph glands and it's going to help to drain that and move everything out so especially at the end of an illness if you have a bunch of viral stuff leftovers that you're trying to deal with and your body's trying to deal with it um uh sorry bacterial is where it really does well is bacterial not viral um then that's going to help you to get through it move it on clean your body up so you can get over that kind of sluggish or that part where you might like get sick right again if you do too much that's me so that's really helpful for that and again you take it in all the different ways put it in it actually tastes pretty good so you can put it right in teas you can throw it in your morning smoothie and blend it out you can take it in powdered form all of those different things very cool yeah all right moving along we have another one that's generally i well well known these days i think but uh mullin mullin mullin yeah it's kind of gotten more popular in the last couple years yeah but um you know what uh mullin is really well known for is for its respiratory effects right it's very anti-inflammatory um it is very anti-spasmodic which means you know you get those like reactive coughs like you can't stop coughing you're kind of spasming your muscles are spasming in your lungs your lungs are spasming mullin is a great herb to calm that down it's also though very antiseptic and anti-microbial so you'll also see um remedies for ear infections containing mullin flower mullin blossom that has been soaked in oil usually sometimes it's in alcohol so that's really good um and it's pain relieving so it goes really really well in that ear when you have an an owie ear ear infection an owie ear that's mama talk coming out um so that can be a really great thing to have and it is everywhere it grows all over the place as soon as you know what it is you're going to see it all over and you can use the leaves you can use the seed heads when they're dry and it's the middle of winter and you're sick and you have nothing else and actually use those too um such a great herb to know about cool a lot of good stuff here a lot of good stuff i'm trying to go quickly because we still yeah yeah there's a lot here we could dive into each of them i know we could do i mean i don't know that we have to get all of them it's okay these are a lot of good things for people to think about um let's talk about saint john's another one that is uh pretty accessible and easy to find yeah and you know a lot of people notice one because of depression right whether it's an actual depression or it's a seasonal affectation disorder where you're getting to the middle of winter and you feel a little moody and blues or the end of winter that's when we might need a little more of that definitely get moody at the end of end of february yeah that's a grouchy bear for me yeah that does happen you need to give me a little saint john's we need to give you some of this yeah so it is great though uh and where it really shines when it comes to home herbalism aside from making your husband not so grumpy is um as a nervine which means that if you're having a nerve pain it can really help to do that so that's really important this is something i always put into things like ear oils for dealing with ear infections um it's uh it is very effective you can also put it in things like burn salves um for topical use on the burn but anywhere where you're having major nerve reactions uh it's really good to have it also does help to heal wounds a little bit so it's great to have in any wound preparations that you make so this is one of those real first aid type herbs that is good to have around because you know those things hurt and it's good to tell the the nerves on a wound to calm down or an infection or anything that you have going on that the symptom is presenting with pain yeah um so you know it does help with the healing but it helps you to deal with it it also can help calm you down a little bit if you're you know you have a child who's maybe really upset about something with getting hurt so um cramps another place that it really helps if you have a lot of cramping rheumatism things like that is a great way to go very cool yeah i'm trying to not like leave out the most important parts but still keep moving so remedies you can take it topically you can take it internally it is one that i want to say make sure you really do your research on especially if you're using it for depression issues because it definitely interacts with depressing depressing anti-depressants there you go thank you um but you can you know infuse it in oils you can make tinctures out of it you can make it into dried you know leaves that you can put into teas you can make powders out of it you can do all these different things with it the part that you usually use are the closed before they open blossoms or they can get a little bit of but it's really important you get them before they blossom they're yellow little yellow flowers but if you harvest them at the right time then when you push your fingernail into that blossom it should bleed red and it is significantly red it is like burgundy red so when you have a great infusion or oil preparation of saint john's wort it should turn bright red wow which is kind of interesting from a yellow flower sure if you wait too long that property is gone and you're losing the medicinal qualities of your herbs so if you get to the plant and you're like yeah it's all open you're not going to have a strong of a good denomination all right uh moving on to good old pine pine is on the list don't tend to think of pine as an herb but it is very useful well and it's so great because so many of us have pine all around us yeah so it's pretty impressive the best pine to use medicinally if you have pine around is usually considered the white pine there are some of the tropical pines you do not want to use they are very very toxic yeah so no tropical pines without doing lots of research but if you have white pines around and i think a lot of uh if you don't have white pine you might have a sugar pine especially in the weight of the west yeah and i think sugar pine is a part of that family yeah you can generally use pretty much all pines though as long as they're the non-tropical kind so um you know if you don't have these varieties it's okay you probably have something that you can use pine has started to come to public attention a little bit more post-covid because it has the quality of being incredibly anti-viral um what it actually does the action that it takes is it stops the virus from being able to enter your cell and take over your cell which is how viruses work they go in they take over your cell they use your cell's own manufacturing plant to manufacture more of them and then they destroy the cell after they've kind of gotten their use out of it and so what it actually does is it's it tells your body not to allow that virus into the cells so this is great because not all anti-viral things work this way sometimes they work after your body the viruses have already taken over your cells so if you can get to a virus before it has taken over your whole body pine can stop it in its tracks and i've actually had that happen quite a few times this year now where i'll take pine remedy i start going oh i don't feel real well and i take it and within 20 minutes i feel totally better it is absolutely amazing so this is something that's really good to look into especially this uh you know new covid area era that we live in because it's very effective against covid so if people have it around you um you know it's a good thing to start getting into your system right away yeah i've seen people in our house more and more just making tea straight from straight from pine needles absolutely so aside from that it's antioxidant it has huge amounts of vitamin c so it's really good um you know those are kind of the top things so that's what i use it for and what we keep it around you can make tinctures out of it our favorite is um a tincture with a little bit of spices in it to make it taste a little bit better because it tastes like you're sucking on a christmas tree it really does it is not pleasant so little spices and a little sweetener so that would be considered a look here um but you can definitely make it into tea uh you know you can dry it you can do all sorts of things with it but it's a really good one to have around very very cool all right number 10 probably might be a good one to wind down on okay but um stop at 10 stop at 10 we could just go on you could go and go this is thick so i'll tell you number 10 is number 11 is burdock you've got one here number number 12 is chickweed and i just i gotta cover chickweed because it's so amazing and it's this most like it's available when nothing else is in this winter we had the snow actually recede at some point and there was chickweed growing under the snow here in north idaho it's like growing happily look totally healthy we just need to wash the mud off of it and then you could totally use it and so it's another herb that's like get to know this herb because it's out in your yard and it's waiting for you not only is it medicinal but it's also good really good for food use you can use it as a green so it's a good foraging herb this is an herb that is really demulcent which again means it helps when you have irritated mucus membranes so think sinuses think throat think mouth problems anything like that it can really help with it's also an expectorant so if you get the stuff in your lungs and you can't get it out it's going to help to get that out of your lungs for you without having to cough and have quite so hard to get it out it's another really good lymphatic so it's really good to help drain that lymph system when you need it and it's anti-inflammatory so you can see chickweed is going to be good to eat it's kind of known as a tonic herb you can take a lot of it and eat it all the time put it on your grilled cheese sandwiches like it's great this is really yummy it has a nice little lemony zing you can put it in your smoothies you can do all these different things but it's just going to add a ton of nourishment to your body and help soothe your entire system and keep it working well when you take it cool yeah that is some good stuff that's well actually 12 but 10 covered yep good herbs that are easy to find yeah pretty easy to use and you know find what you have easily identifiable and pick one or two and start you know deep dive in it learn more about it and and put it to use that's the best way to get going on this if this is new to you right is just don't be overwhelmed by the 10 try to identify a couple here that are easily accessible yeah and start using them yeah dive in and start figuring out how to use them and then you can grow from there there is nothing like getting your hands into a project nothing like experience to really help move you along in your journey so yeah definitely don't just spin out on learning book learning yeah all of these yep take a few moments and go find some in your yard and start using them make it doable make it happen yeah yeah hey if you want to know about the herbs that uh you can grow in your yard that you should be considering growing this year then i'll have a link to you for another video on that for grown medicinal herbs so there you go sounds good it's been great hanging out with you guys today we'll see you soon okay bye