This is a ‘weed’ I’ve been wanting to learn more about for a long time. It’s a very popular plant for foragers, right up there with Mullein, but I first learned about it as a preferred late season food for the bees.
In East Texas it seems to prefer roadsides and creeks to open fields and often appears nearby mistflower (conoclinium coelestinium) both in the family asteraceae.
Goldenrod and mistflower growing by the creek October 2024
Surprisingly (or perhaps not) Wiki has little info on this popular medicinal, and it wasn’t listed on a longtime foraging go-to of mine, Merriwether of Foraging Texas.
I can’t imagine why not! It’s a well-known medicinal in many countries and is plentiful in Texas even during extremely hot and dry summers.
According to The Medicinal Flora of Britain and Northwestern Europe, ”It’s first reliable record of medicinal use dates from the Southern Europe of the 13th century. It became much prized in Tudor England but, being imported, was very expensive.” (Julian Barker)
“Goldenrod was formerly prized as a wound herb as it is, indeed, astringent and antiseptic. Its principal internal use is for the kidney and bladder. I have found some justification for the BHP recommendation against naso-pharayngeal catarrh (and chronic sinusitis) but some skepticism has been expressed against this use. I think much of the variability in its efficacy may be due to the extreme polymorphism of the species which will lead, I am sure to the future recognition of subspecies.
”The aromatic leaves of the American S.odora make a once popular drink known as Blue Mountain Tea.”
“The flowering tops are used medicinally. Their constituents include tannins, saponins, bitter compounds, an essential oil and flavonoids. These substances give Goldenrod diuretic, astringent, vulnerary, anti-inflammatory, expectorant, antispasmodic, and carminative properties. In herbal medicine an infusion is used to treat kidney and bladder disorders, to improve kidney and prostate function, for flatulence and indigestion, and for chronic bronchitis, coughs and asthma. Externally Godenrod is used in poultices, ointments and bath preparations for varicose ulcers, eczema and slow-healing wounds.”
I’ve written several times about this tree in past posts and have been meaning to include it in the Herbal Explorations for some time. Thanks once again to Gavin Mounsey for putting a bee in my bonnet! His contributions are featured below.
Photo credit: Gavin Mounsey
A quick peak at a couple of those previous posts of mine to set the stage:
One of my favorite trees, the Sassafras, is flaming red now, one of the few to have changed so brilliantly in this unusually warm and dry fall in East Texas. Between now and winter is the best time to clip the leaves and dig up the tenacious roots so as to indulge in a couple of our ancestors’ favorite libations—root beer and Sassafras tea. Gumbo filé is also made from it, which is an essential ingredient in some Cajun cooking.
Our ancestors adored it, science calls it a carcinogen. At the same time vast groves of it are grown in regions of the globe more easily controlled, in order to mass extract their saffrole to make a highly concentrated and synthetic version of the popular street drug called ecstasy.
A quite undermined tree of the South, considering its illustrious origins and conspiratorial fate. It is a tree widely cultivated in Asia-Pacific as an essential ingredient to the popular drug, or versions of it anyway, generally called “ecstasy”.
At first, like cannabis, it was classified among the most harmful of substances by the FDA, though our ancestors had previously been very acquainted and attached to these and so many other suddenly ‘dangerous’ plants. Then while they were deemed “carcinogenic” by our government, simultaneously expanding was its cultivation in foreign countries for the manufacture of street drugs. This was actually before “Poppy Bush” but perhaps setting that very precedent for the former president?!
While I’ve no idea how to make the popular street drug, I can assure you it makes a deliciously fragrant tea, traditional root beer, and gumbo filé powder.
As for the drug version, I did come across this for any who wish to research further along those lines.
“The most common synthetic routes for production of MDA, MDMA, MDE (MDEA), and MDOH are from the precursor MDP-2-P. To get MDP-2-P first a natural source of safrole is acquired. Safrole can be extracted from sassafras oil, nutmeg oil, or several other sources which have been abundantly documented in Chemical Abstracts over the years. The safrole is then easily isomerized into isosafrole when heated with NaOH or KOH.”
Zubrick, James W. “The Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual: A Students Guide to Techniques.” ISBN #0471575046. Wiley John&Sons Inc. 3rd ed.
Some partial information from The Druid’s Garden, visit her post for much more!
“Sassafras has been called by many names and these names help teach us some of her power: auge tree, saxifrax, cinnamon wood, cinnamonwood, saloop, smelling stick, chewing stick, tea tree, winauk (Native American in Delaware and Virginia); Pauane (Timuca Indians); Kombu (Choctaw); and weyanoke (Algonquin).
Sassafras is typically a fairly small tree, growing 20-40 feet in height with a trunk 1-2 feet in diameter in the northern end of her range. In southern portions of its range, she can grow much larger, up to 100 feet high. Her wood is soft and light-colored with a faint aromatic Sassafras smell. Her wood is brittle, coarse-grained, and rot-resistant although it is not very strong. Typically, her wood has been commercially used for posts and lumber, but wood carvers also enjoy working with it. Sassafras is dioecious, that is, the male and female flowers appear on separate trees. The females will eventually have fruits ripen (which occur around midsummer) whereas the male trees will not.”
Medicinal Uses of Sassafras
“Sassafras Root Spring Tonic: As described above, the Sassafras was taken internally for a variety of healing purposes throughout the ages. Traditional herbalism recognizes Sassafras as a “spring tonic” or “blood purifying” or “blood thinning” herb and is used in the spring in quantity for this purpose. In 1830, Constantine Rafinesque wrote, “The Indians use a strong decoction to purge and cleanse the body in the spring” (Quoted in Wood, 315, New World Herbs). Wood notes that it “promotes clear thining in old age from good circulation to the brain, to improve the peripheral circulation to rid the joints of arthritic depositions, and to promote diuresis” (316). Euell Gibbons in Hunting the Wild Asparagus notes that traditionally, Sassafras Root tea was made with maple sap water for spring tonic. He noted that even in the 1950’s, when he wrote his book, that many folks still drink Sassafras tea “as a spring tonic, believing that it thins the blood and prepares the body to better stand the coming heat of summer.” Gibbons offers this medicinal tea: 3 tablespoons of honey, 3 tablespoons of vinegar (I would suggest a fire cider here) and 1 quart sassafras tea. Chill and serve as a spring tonic.
“Blood and Circulatory System: Today, herbalists recognize sassafras root as a warming, spicy, and aromatic herb that functions as an alterative (tonic) for the liver with mild antiseptic qualities. It has a specific action on the blood and circulatory system, stimulating blood flow and enhancing periphery circulation.”
Gavin Mounsey offers more interesting info in his recent note:
“The small tree known as sassafras (Sassafras albidum) was once one of the most prized plants of Turtle Island (aka “North America”). In 1565, Francis Drake returned to England with a cargo hold full of sassafras roots, and set off something of a craze for sassafras tea, or saloop. By the next century it had become a major export item, almost equal in value to tobacco. Europeans accepted the claims of most eastern Native American tribes about its effectiveness as an all-purpose medicine and tonic, and that combined with its wonderful taste and aroma — Thoreau called it “the fragrance of lemons and a thousand spices” — eventually guaranteed its place as the root in root beer. John Lawson, an early explorer of the southern Appalachians, wrote in 1709, “Sassafras was a straight, neat little tree… treasured by the Indians for its aromatic roots, from which, when pounded, a potion can be brewed to refresh or cure, according to his needs.”
“Early colonists consumed a lot of beer, and it probably didn’t take long before someone got the bright idea of adding sassafras roots to the mix of herbs and spices typically added for flavor and medicinal effect. It might seem strange to think of beer as a health drink, but for many centuries, it was far safer to drink than most available sources of fresh water, being first subjected to a prolonged boil and then made alcoholic. Weak beers were consumed in roughly the same quantities as Americans today drink Coke or Pepsi, but with less serious health risks, since the sugar was all turned into alcohol (and medicinal phytochemicals can be effectively preserved and delivered in a bioavailable format in naturally fermented alcohol based beverages).
“The modern herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner (Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, Brewers Publications, 1998) has this to say about brewing with sassafras:
“Sassafras was the original herb used in all “root” beers. They were all originally alcoholic, and along with a few other medicinal beers — primarily spruce beers — were considered “diet” drinks, that is, beers with medicinal actions intended for digestion, blood tonic action and antiscorbutic properties. The original “root” beers contained sassafras, wintergreen flavorings (usually from birch sap), and cloves or oil of cloves. Though Rafinesque notes [in 1829] the use of leaves and buds, the root bark is usually used, both traditionally and in contemporary herbal practice.
“Beer” was used loosely to refer to a variety of lightly alcoholic drinks made with whatever sugar was on hand; both the recipes Buhner offers, for example, use molasses instead of malted grain, as does this one I found in The National Farmer’s and Housekeepers Cyclopedia from 1888:
“Root Beer.—To make Ottawa root beer, take one ounce each of sassafras, allspice, yellow dock, and wintergreen, half an ounce each of wild cherry bark and coriander, a quarter of an ounce of hops, and three quarts of molasses. Pour boiling water on the ingredients, and let them stand twenty-four hours. Filter the liquor, and add half a pint of yeast, and it will be ready for use in twenty-four hours.
“I was excited to see the mention of wild cherry bark — something I had considered using in my own brewing, but hadn’t found any actual mention of until now. I have brewed with all the other substances mentioned, though not all at the same time. (I wasn’t terribly thrilled with the flavor of yellow dock in beer.) But I’m more of a purist than Buhner: I do insist upon using malted grain (or malt extract) as the primary source of sugar, though I will use molasses or honey as adjuncts, in small quantities.
“And I feel the early colonists probably made their root beers, spruce beers, and other healthful brews with malt, too, whenever they could. From an early date, many larger farmhouses had their own brewing operations, and taverns brewed beer in every town and village, first with malts imported from Europe, but quite soon from locally grown grain. A 1685 report from William Penn suggests that malt was substituted for molasses as soon as real brewing became practical:
“Our Drink has been Beer and Punch, made of Rum and Water: Our Beer was mostly made of Molosses, which well boyld, with Sassafras or Pine infused into it, makes very tollerable drink; but now they make Mault, and Mault Drink begins to be common, especially at the Ordinaries and the Houses of the more substantial People.
“In 1750, the Swedish botanist Peter Kalm, interviewing a nonagenarian for his book Travels in North America, learned that the early Swedish colonists of what is now eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey had been “plentifully provided with wheat, rye, barley and oats. The Swedes, at that time, brewed all their beer of malt made of barley, and likewise made good strong beer.” And of sassafras specifically, he wrote, “Some people peel the root, and boil the peel with the beer which they may be brewing, because they believe it wholesome.” He adds: “The peel is put into brandy, either while it is distilling or after it is made.” Nor was ordinary tea neglected: “An old Swede remembered that his mother cured many people of the dropsy by a decoction of the root of sassafras in water drunk every morning.”
“Kalm also mentions the preservative and antiseptic properties of sassafras, which must’ve played a role in its popularity as a brewing ingredient as well (hops were far from the only herb understood to help keep beer from going “off”):
“Several of the Swedes wash and scour the vessels in which they intend to keep cider, beer or brandy with water in which sassafras root or its peel has been boiled, which they think renders all those liquors more wholesome. Some people have their bedposts made of sassafras wood to repel the bed bugs, for its strong scent, it is said, prevents vermin from settling in them. … In Pennsylvania some people put chips of sassafras into their chests where they keep woolen stuffs, in order to expel the moths which commonly settle in them in summer.
“A slightly later (and much more famous) botanist-traveler, William Bartram, mentioned a very different root beer formula from the standard recipe, which makes me wonder how many other sassafras-based concoctions might have been made at one time. Writing about a southern Appalachian plant now known as Bignonia capreolata or crossvine, he wrote, “The country people of Carolina chop these vines to pieces, together with china brier [i.e. Smilax pseudochina] and sassafras roots, and boil them in their beer in the spring, for diet drink, in order to attenuate and purify the blood and juices.”
“Lo how the mighty have fallen. Safrole, the active compound in sassafras, has been banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since 1976 as a supposed carcinogen, and as a consequence sassafras may no longer be prescribed by herbalists, though commercial brewers and root beer manufacturers may still use a safrole-free extract. For the homebrewer willing to ignore the FDA’s finding — which even the very conservative Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America rejects as absurd — it’s a matter of locating a thick stand of sassafras on some dry ridgetop and getting permission from the landowner to dig a few roots.
“The tree grows like a “weed”, and with its distinctive leaves it’s impossible to mistake for anything else. How will you be able to tell if a given root is sassafras, and not from a neighboring tree? Just scratch and sniff. If it has “the fragrance of lemons and a thousand spices,” you’ve hit pay dirt.
“This species along with a handful of others will be introduced to several community food forest projects I have in the works intended to both provide habitat for displaced Ontario Carolinian forest non-human inhabitants while also providing food, medicine and materials for humans in a regenerative way.”
That’s so great to hear, Gavin, let’s set The Science straight! 😊
This posts aims to answer the question: Would there be anything redeeming about August in East Texas if it weren’t for the watermelons?
I repeat this every year. But I can’t help repeating it again. When we first came here and I’d spent my first August, I was mostly without Hubby because he would often get stuck offshore in the Gulf for bad weather or working over for vacationing colleagues. I swore I would find a way to travel in August, just like the French.
The heat is brutal, the garden mostly gone. Actually, it amazes me anything can survive out there, and yet, plenty of plants are thriving.
And now I can’t imagine having a happy vacation when we’ve got bushels of grapes to harvest and after that bushels of pears, which then must all be processed.
Into wine! I know I shouldn’t whine. It’s not every year we get either good grapes or good pears, and this year we’ve got both.
My wine lab, soon to be greatly expanding. 😊
Wine-making has proven to be a reasonable replacement for my sudden loss in cheese-making ability. That story has only gotten worse, so I’m going to avoid telling it, at least for now. Like I said, August is bad enough already.
The healthy half of the herd.
While we have made hard cider from the pears and a bit of wine from grapes in past years, I really had no idea how versatile wine-making could be. Since last post I’ve added cantaloupe wine to the rows—joining Elderberry, Blackberry, Wild grape, and mead.
Cantaloupe wine? Who knew! But after giving these great big delicious 20- pounders to friends and eating them daily we still had so many and they were ripening so fast we had to do something. We forgot to keep track, but we had at least 15 of them, off only 3 plants.
‘Ole Tyme Tennessee’ melon
Enough to make 3 gallons of wine. I plan to make cider from it as well. Imagine all the fun we’ll be having wine tasting in December! (That’s exactly what I’m doing, a lot of imagining, to keep my mind off the miserable sweltering reality.)
Now we’ve also got a couple buckets going of our cultivated grapes: white and red muscadines, sometimes also known as Scuppernongs.
“A glass of scuppernong wine is better for a body than a shot of penicillin.”
If you’re not from the Southern US you’ve probably never heard of Scuppernongs because they don’t have a good reputation among wine connoisseurs and don’t grow north of the Mason-Dixon line, as far as I know.
And they aren’t really suitable for table grapes either, unless your table allows for a lot of spitting.
Good enough for country wines, they say. So, good enough for me!
In fact they are really delicious. Beyond bursting with juicy sweetness, the green ones especially have varied and complex notes, sharp and earthy. The red ones have such an huge pop of intense grape flavor I’m reminded of manufactured fake grape flavors from childhood, Jolly Ranchers and Bubbalicious gum. Sad, but true, since I never tasted such fruit as a kid.
Except, that these have a tough skin and big seeds. And they are really a pain to harvest. If the weather were nice it wouldn’t be so bad at all. But the thing about muscadine grapes is they don’t ripen in nice clusters like the fancy grapes of more civilized peoples. 😆
Every other day we’re out there gathering these plump gems from under their enormous vines, one by one, little jewels among the masses of deep green leaves. They’ve done remarkably well this year, after a dismal last year, and a meager crop the year before, and just when we were starting to worry all our hard work planting them was wasted.
I wish we knew the trick, Hubby tends the vines and he did nothing different this year from the previous.
Our beautiful grape vines beneath a disgusting chem-filled sky.
We did have the big rain with a nice temperature drop, which also brought down another big tree, right through a fence, as per usual. It seems we lose a big tree with every rain event these days.
Too bad, because that oak has been providing a lot of acorn forage for the critters in autumn. There are several other nearby mature oaks looking like they are also about to keel over.
But, the pears have been spared and that will be our next big project in the blazing heat. Yay! 🤪
Three hard pear trees, two which were the only cultivated fruit trees here when we arrived, abandoned and still producing, bringing the feral hogs many happy meals. They produce prolifically when they produce, which is every 3 years on average. Plus one we planted in our still struggling orchard, it does really well most years, having gotten the regular run-off from our duck tub from it’s early years.
But the real pièce de résistance this year especially has been the watermelons.
They’ve not been as prolific as the cantaloupes, but they are some of the best I’ve ever eaten. Watermelons are Hubby’s preference, so he’s been in hog heaven every day, and the hogs are in a similar heaven with all the rinds they’ve been eating.
August has a few redeeming qualities after all. I don’t think I could make it through otherwise.
At sunset, within one hour they all open together while the bees get furiously busy. If you can’t catch the scent at just that initial pip of release, it’s instantly gone. Such an inimitable fragrance, enough to keep a woman longing, just long enough, that August might be gone again, and we’ll forget. It’s not so bad, right?
Until the next August.
Datura inoxia perhaps signaling the season of intoxia? Because we’re making lots of wine and it helps to get intoxicated to get through it? 😆
A few choice quotes from Juliette de Bairacli Levy who did not mince words about her views on modern medicine.
This excerpt is from 1952! It’s astounding to me that it’s only gotten worse in the last 70 years. They keep doubling-down, and the public keeps buying it up.
“The present-day farmer has been educated to consider disease as inevitable and the only scientific cure as being in the artificial remedies of the modern veterinary surgeon who through over-rigid orthodox training and himself under the influence of advertisement, is too often a mere vendor of the products of the vast and powerful chemical and serum manufacturers. For the vested interests in modern medicine are stupendous. Businessmen who have never owned an animal fatten like breeding toads upon the ailments of farm stock which need not know sickness at all if they had daily access to the herbs of the fields. The true farmer should cultivate his own medicines in his own fields, and he should not consider himself as being a farmer if he has to resort to outside help for keeping his animals in health, and healing them when in sickness. Science is providing the ruination of true farming; the only thing that I, and countless others, have noted as flourishing alongside science, is disease!—disease of the earth, disease of crops and disease of the animal and people who feed on the diseased produce.”
“Professor Szekely had declared emphatically, that the curing of the ailments of his patients is often a simple task in comparison with the freeing of their bodies from the accumulations of chemical drugs lodged in their tissues — the drugs derived from orthodox medical chemo-therapy, and from the poisons sprayed upon fruits and vegetables by the modern farmer, or placed in tinned and bottled foods as preservatives. Many of his patients are Americans, and in present-day America the chemist seems to be running amok, spraying and poisoning everything edible.” ~Juliette de Bairacli Levy, 1952, The Complete Herbal Handbook For Farm And Stable
The influence of advertisement, you say? Naw, can’t be that!
I’ve been doing lots of research concerning the goats and so appreciate the kind help and suggestions from others.
It really is a quandary just like I went through with the bees. Treatment-free types are the anti-Vaxxers of the animal husbandry world, getting similar treatment from the established voices—that is cursed, mocked, belittled and silenced.
And that’s not the worse part, not for me anyway.
It’s far worse not being able to find honest, untainted information. The goat world, like the bee world, is dominated by the industry standards, which has penetrated into every conceivable space of our reality.
In the U.S. that means public-private partnerships that wholly infiltrate the information and therefor the society through the university system and popular organizations like the 4-H club.
Many of our best and brightest agriculture enthusiasts start very young, showing animals and winning awards based on criteria that then get distributed into general farming life. Very little attention is paid to the actual results of this process, not even the simple stuff—like considering whether purebreds are really the best option when stellar looks and trainability aren’t the owners’ top priorities.
Which got me thinking . . .
Might we make an analogy that it’s kinda like ZaZa Gabor playing a starring role in a film like Deliverance?
In other words, are we trying to raise the equivalent of thousand dollar racehorses in two-bit barns? Is that the problem? Or part of it?
“I get allergic smelling hay! I just adore a penthouse view, darlin’ I love ya, but give me Park Avenue!”
My goats hate the rain (makes for a bad hair day?), and would prefer all their meals to be served to them promptly, 3 meals plus snacks, in their communal space (breakfast in bed), with minimal foraging required (just enough to stretch their legs and ease any boredom) plus they need regular brushing (all natural boars hair brush) and their hooves trimmed (mani-pedi), and routine expensive toxic treatments (Botox).
We get frustrated, obviously, but whose fault is it really?
When I got into this I went for the most popular and trusted source who was calling her style ‘natural’.
That’s for me, I want natural!
The most popular ‘natural’ goat rearing book on the market and she has a YT channel.
I’m not saying this is a bad book, I’ve certainly learned a lot from it, but knowing what I know now, I don’t call it ‘natural’ anymore.
These farmers and breeders may be on the path less traveled, but they are most certainly not off the Big Pharma Ferris wheel. And personally, I find that poor word choice to be deceptive.
For example, they advise breeders to cull rather than to risk populating the community of farmers/homesteaders with genetically inferior animals, which sounds like the wise and conscientious choice to make. Right?
Clearly a diligent and conscientious goat farmer/breeder concerned about good health in humans and animals, yet still considering the most natural methods as including enormous amounts of processed inputs and Big Pharma treatments.
However, they’re advising culling the animals which are not responding to the poisoning protocol, not only the ones who are truly resistant to the parasites. And as for true resistance, could they really know which ones, since they’ve been dosed at birth through the milk or, even more likely, in utero?
Yes, the ‘natural’ methods they espouse still include dosing the goats with drugs, just not so indiscriminately, which they at least recognize has caused a huge issue of drug-resistance in the goat-rearing community. They still rely on highly processed feed, hay that’s been sprayed, and they recommend medicated feed for kids. Many of them also advise vaccination.
This is what passes for ‘natural’ now.
So, for the barber pole worm, the notorious sheep/goat killer, which was the most likely culprit in Bluebonnet’s demise, the issue is said to be that these awful worms cause anemia. But, listed on the side effects of the popular dewormers in use is also anemia.
Hmmm. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Ivermectin—the infamous horse dewormer both celebrated and cursed during the Convid—has a shockingly long list of potential side effects. Interestingly, in all the social media arguments back and forth among suggested protocols and what or whom was being censored and why, I don’t recall that list coming up anywhere.
These above-linked articles show studies proving its toxicity, but when it comes to the studies themselves, I don’t have much faith in them either. The kinds of studies I’d like to see are those that are appropriate to their environment, and no one does those kinds of studies. No one in farming is dosing their rabbits every single day with Ivermectin in a lab setting. What we need are multi-generational studies with real control groups in natural settings, as in real nature. Science doesn’t do that, yet somehow we accept they are ‘controlling’ inputs and outcomes, and that those results are remotely relevant to the average user, that is, those of us not living in a lab.
Besides Ivermectin, Safe-guard is another farm favorite in these parts.
The following comment comes from my dear friend Kath, a certified herbalist who was also previously a professional nurse in the UK.
Safe-guard:
“I can’t quite believe how bad this drug is! Taken from this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9413524/ ‘When fenbendazole was last reviewed (15 years ago), the literature supported the drug’s lack of toxic effects at therapeutic levels, yet various demonstrated physiologic effects have the potential to alter research outcomes. Although more recent reports continue to reflect an overall discordancy of results, several studies support the premise that fenbendazole affects the bone marrow and the immune system.’
‘. . .lengthy and expensive treatment regimens. including the use of fenbendazole and mechanical disinfection, that may fail due to inadequate ovicidal effects.’ (Ie: won’t kill the worm eggs)
So, step one: Kill a few worms. Weaken the animal. Don’t properly kill the worm eggs. Re-emergence of worms when these eggs hatch. Weakened animals can’t fight off new worms. More drugs. Vicious cycle.
So, companies which make & market this drug very conveniently refer to the old research which states no side effects expected & ignore the possibility & reality of new research showing significant risk. Hmm 🤔
Basically use of this drug this means causing ongoing serious depletion in overall resilience & significantly increased susceptibility to further parasite infestation & whatever-it-is that we used to call infections. Worse potential recovery from anything. And all from a drug whose stated purpose may fail!
So, what to do imo is to work to build resilience by nutrition, herbs & healthy living & maybe try to introduce some wild blood when freshening.
I think this drug is an agenda in itself – not only for animals but humans too. Heavily publicised on Google as an amazing off-label cancer cure. I’ve met people who have been persuaded to take it! That’s right – make their own chemo cocktail!
It’s an agenda because I know how heavily ptb come down on any complementary health practitioner making public statements about cancer cure. It’s literally against the law.
And they put it in animal feed too. It’s a very shortsighted & stupid approach.”
Short-sighted, I couldn’t agree more!
Another popular dewormer: Cydectin From Drugs.com
‘Not for use in female dairy cattle 20 months of age or older (including dry dairy cows), veal calves, and calves less than 8 weeks of age.
For Treatment of Infections and Infestations Due to Internal and External Parasites of Cattle.’
Kath: “This ‘who not to give it to’ suggests it’s toxic to humans & cattle/goats – they wouldn’t make a statement about veal calves if it was a safe thing for humans (or animals) to ingest. Funny how they can balance the illogic of ‘don’t give to babies’ & ‘dose babies by mother’s milk’.
The type of nerve receptor that are targeted by this drug are only found in invertebrates – creatures that don’t have a skeleton. So drug companies have jumped to the assumption that it will paralyse (& kill) only parasites/insects. However – & this is important – the target receptor in invertebrates is very similar to the mammalian – human & animal – receptor for glycine – an important neurotransmitter. Chances are that this drug & its family are at least partly responsible for human & animal depletion & neurological problems, perhaps even paralysis, in goats by direct dosing & in humans via eating meat& milk products/drinking milk from dosed animals.”
Seriously! And they have the nerve to call these treatments ‘natural’ and of course, that old reliable, safe and effective!
(Thank you so much Kath for your addition to this post and to Highlander in last post’s comments for your help and advice, I’m very grateful for your efforts and experiences!)
New marketing suggestion for the CDC:
Hey Moms! If your kids get all their shots on schedule, you’ll look just like Za Za!* 😆 *Results may vary. Consult your pediatrician. (Who, by the way, did a hell of a good job dressed as a pig at last year’s luau in Vegas at our promotional conference that counts as continuing education credits and gets billed to the State. Remember Rule #1: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!) 😉 1
It’s been a challenging month on the wee homestead. We’ve had some successes and I am still hopeful for more positive outcomes, but I focus on them overly, because I’m being a bit avoidant, because really, I’m still concerned.
The determinate tomatoes are long gone already, but Hubby’s made many delicious jars of puttanesca and salsa for our future enjoyment. Must keep up morale!
So I’ll share about that this post, along with some happy snaps and surpluses, to help the medicine go down. I know it’s part of the lifestyle. Life, that is.
Yes, I’ve gotten better at it. That is, the death part of life. But also, we must understand our own limitations, and for that we must first broach them.
So if there are still any rose-colored glasses sort of readers remaining here, armor up.
Bye, bye Bluebonnet.* (I share more about my observations on her death at the end, for those who choose to go there.)
I’m so sad to say we’ve lost one of our new mamas, and her mama, our herd queen Summer, has also been very ill. Several of the does are too thin and are not producing enough milk. This all happened quite suddenly. I was training them on the milk stand for a month, even getting a bit of milk from one, I had high hopes of daily cheese-making by now.
Summer and her daughter Bluebonnet, who I figured would one day replace her as herd queen.
The learning curve is so very high and I’ve set myself impossible standards. I do understand that, though that understanding changes little.
I want a treatment-free herd, or no herd at all. Like with the bees, which took me years of failures, I simply cannot stand the industry standard. I cannot abide such total reliance on pharmaceuticals and exotic inputs from far-off lands. I cannot trust the science. I refuse to believe the only way to raise healthy pets and livestock is to poison them with vaccines and parasite treatments and feed them full of processed foods.
There has got to be another way! A much better way!
And I aim to find it.
We are not directly poisoning our garden and still have plenty of success despite the manufactured crazy weather.
I truly believe a large part of the problem is the processed foods causing the need for the supplemental treatments. It’s a vicious cycle and I want off, and I want ALL I see around me every day off it also, including the land, the water, and the air and ALL the critters!
Is that so much to ask?!
But I already know the drill, thanks to the bees. Every professional and expert says that’s impossible. Like with the gardening when we first got here. Every farmer, every gardener, every Farm & Ranch professional, repeating—You’ve got to spray. You’ve got to treat.
There’s a swarm up there, can you see it?It came off this hive and we watched it, amazing! The large pine in front of the tractor is where it stopped. Too high up to catch, but I’m happy to report another totally treatment-free colony repopulating the county.
“Here, follow this quarterly poisoning routine, and all will be well.” NO!
Is it any wonder they all readily accept without objection whatever the hell is being sprayed over our heads at regular intervals?
The latest geoengineered filth-filled skies over our property.
We’re not giving up yet. As long as we have irrigation it will be a jungle out there. But without it we’d be screwed, that’s for sure. It hasn’t rained for nearly 3 weeks.
(Photos below Left to Right) The datura is a blessed monster. The sweet potato vines are prolific and a favorite snack of Summer’s. The melons and green beans are thriving. The indeterminate tomatoes and some of the peppers are doing fairly well under the shade cloth and I’ve been succession planting the cucumbers.
From the front: New cucumbers coming up with purslane to help cool the roots and shading from above, old screens protecting some struggling Romaine lettuce, and a growing grove of well-watered elderberries.
We’ve also been lucky to get some wild grapes, which are now fermenting along with the mead and the blackberry and mulberry wines.
He is literally Hubby’s Shadow!
It’s not an easy life, but it’s a life well-lived. Our first figs of the season, along with our last blackberries.
A Czech classic—so simple—Bublanina, made with blackberries or any number of fresh fruits in season. (Comment below if you want the recipe and I’ll post it. )
*The observation which I’ve found most interesting from Bluebonnet’s death, was that her kids adjusted immediately. She died the evening of the full moon last week. She left the corral with the rest of the herd in the morning, she seemed to be improving, I thought. But then in the afternoon she planted herself under a tree on a hill and wouldn’t leave, even when evening came and the rest of the herd returned to the corral. I went and sat with her there at sunset and stroked her neck and she laid her head on my shoulder. I wanted to be hopeful, but I felt she knew, and I felt horribly helpless. I hope that the feeling of helplessness is the worst feeling in the world. The next morning I woke before dawn and I went back to the tree in the dark, the full moon shining on her corpse.
There was a bit of relief for me that her kids adjusted so quickly. I find it odd really, it was like an immediate weaning. While her mama, Summer, is so ill she stopped producing milk, but her kids are still so attached to her their health is also suffering because they won’t go out and eat with the rest of the herd or accept being bottle fed. I’ve been mixing them special feed dosed with milk replacer and they are doing ok, and Summer today joined the herd again to forage, which I’m praying is a good sign. 🙏
The gorgeous Mimosa tree is considered an undesirable and invasive species by many US experts, if you can believe that!
But to herbalists worldwide it’s a treasure. And to butterflies and bees it’s a feast!
In the ditch, in the garden, or rising above the canopy and full of butterflies, it’s a striking specimen.
Another much maligned and misunderstood plant joins our growing list today. Hard to imagine calling this beauty a ‘trash tree’, but a great many experts call it that, and worse.
The Mimosa tree . . .
“Is another dog. Although beautiful when healthy, it never is. The root system is ravenous and destructive, and the tree is highly vulnerable to insects and disease. Shallow, destructive root system. Not even good for fire wood. Destructive roots, short-lived, crowds out good plants. Not a good tree for Texas,” he resolutely concludes.
Texas Gardening the Natural Way: The Complete Handbook by Howard Garrett “The Dirt Doctor”
Garrett is considered the foremost organic gardening expert in these parts, he has a popular radio show, has published several books and he has his own organic product line. He was the first gardener I learned from when I started gardening here.
And worse, he convinced me! I wanted one from the first moment I gazed upon it, but I resisted, for over a decade.
Luckily in recent years I’ve revisited that poor choice and lazy thinking to discover how wrong these experts can be.
Baby Mimosa growing in the ditch near our house. I dug them up and planted them in our garden. The trick to getting them started is lots of water, but they will become drought tolerant with age. The growth habit is similar to Elderberry in our region.
What a (typical) shame to learn how very wrong they can be! Along with Wikipedia and a great many other popular info hubs.
“In the wild, the tree tends to grow in dry plains, sandy valleys, and uplands. It has become an invasive species in the United States, where it has spread from southern New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, west to Missouri and Illinois, and south to Florida and Texas. It is cultivated in California and Oregon. Its seeds are wind-dispersed and numerous, and they are fertile even over long periods of drought. Each pod, which resembles a flattened bean pod made of paper, holds about 8 seeds on average. The pod bursts in strong winds, and the seeds can carry over surprisingly long distances.”
It is certainly for the ‘mess’ they create with their seed pods that some may not find them suitable for their yard or garden. And naturally, farmers and ranchers malign any plants which dare to interfere with their livestock management preferences.
But, venture away from those slanted sources and the light shines on this ancient medicinal treasure.
Mimosa—The ‘night sleeper’ so nicknamed in Persian thanks to its usefulness as a cure for insomnia, among its many other medicinal and practical uses.
A bit of history: “The stem bark has been used as a sedative for hundreds of years as recorded in the Pharmacopeia of the People’s Republic of China(Nehdi 2011, Zheng 2006, Zheng 2010) and as an anti-inflammatory agent for swelling and pain in the lungs and to treat skin ulcers, wounds, bruises, abscesses, boils, hemorrhoids, and fractures, as well as to remove carbuncles. The dried stem bark is used as a tonic in China and Japan.(Ikeda 1997) Indigenous people living in the southern mountainous region of Korea prepare the root as an infusion for bone diseases.(Kim 2011) In India, a chloroform and methanol seed extract has been used to treat bronchitis, asthma, leprosy, and glands infected by tuberculous.(Gautam 2007) A bark extract to treat insomnia, diuresis, asthenia, and confusion has been used in Asia.(Nehdi 2011) The plant’s flowers have been used to treat symptoms associated with palpitations, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.(Nehdi 2011, Samwald 2010) It’s common name of Shabkhosb (good night’s sleeper) in Iran is indicative of its use to treat insomnia.(Ebrahimzadeh 2017)
Mimosa are used in gardens for ornamental purposes, in sandy areas to prevent erosion, and along roadways.(Chang 2011, Irwin 2003, Nehdi 2011, Pardini 2007)”
A Mimosa tree on a country road in East Texas just after its bloom cycle in late June.
“Albizia belongs to Mimosoideae and are native to Asia and Africa. It is a kind of multifunctional trees and they are always planted as ornamental trees. In addition to using it as foliage, green manure and timber for furniture production, the bark of Albizia is herbal medicine and the seeds are a source of oil. There are about 150 species in the genus and 17 of them can be found in the southern regions of China. Albizia julibrissin and Albizia kalkora are two familiar species, which are planted in China from tropic to temperate zones [69]. Although Albizia spp. are of great importance, little was known about the diversity of their microsymbionts. de Lajudie et al. [15] found that two strains isolated from Albizia falcataria grown in Brazil were Bradyrhizobium; Chen and Chen [5] classified five strains isolated from Albizia julibrissinin China as Bradyrhizobium sp. and Rhizobium sp. These results indicated that Albizia trees nodulated with both fast-growing and slow-growing rhizobia.”
The petals make a delicious and refreshing flavoring for tea or Kombucha— a unique taste reminiscent of nectarines.
Gavin Mounsey, author of Recipes for Reciprocity, recently shared some of his knowledge and links about this amazing tree, which he’s cultivating in his food forest designs all the way up in Canada:
“Another interesting fact about this tree is that it is being investigated for it’s potential in Phytoremediation (for both heavy metal soil remediation and for it’s photocatalytic activity for cleaning up toxins humans put in the air) and a more specialized field in what is called “Phytomining” (it is a nasty industrial process used for profit but it hints at more holistic applications of this species for real time remediating/mitigating of geoengineering heavy metals in the air and soil.” (Read more: Regenerative Agriculture: Solutions Watch at Corbett Report)
The pods are plentiful and can be used for animal feed, according to TCPermaculture.
It’s notable umbrella shape when provided with plenty of space has me wondering if it might be the tree represented on some old gravestones in our area.
Mimosa? Are our ancestors trying to tell us something?
Mostly happy snaps this post, plus a few weather woes.
Hubby’s gorgeous melon patch is starting to produce more than just a feast for the eyes. He’s come up with quite an integrated system there and when I expressed how impressed I was with his companion planting scheme (and wondered whether he’d been taking a permaculture course on the sly) he informed me it was all a matter of frugality.
His penny-pincher logic is: the melon mounds have a lot of water run-off and sometimes erosion, so he added a ring of clover at the base of them. It’s just a bonus they are also good for the soil and the bees. The sunflowers are fodder for the goats and the chickens, plus they help shade the melons. The sea of black-eyed Susan’s just turned up there, apparently as impressed as me with the space.
Hopefully the melons don’t go the way of the onions, which has been our worst year yet. Luckily the garlic still did fine, which is from our saved seed, which previously came from a nearby friend’s saved seed. That has become a theme.
Elephant garlic does much better here than anything else, and I’ve tried many others for many years. I think I’ll give up that practice now and stick with what works, avoiding future costs and frustrations.
The success of the tomatoes and peppers so far has also been thanks to saved seed. I bought several varieties of each from the store, just for more variety, and those are the ones suffering more from the rain and high humidity. Several have already died, a few aren’t growing at all, and several of the others have bad issues.
Ours on the left, theirs on the right.
The purchased squash is already full of pests before giving us even a single fruit.
At least we got a few zucchini off our own saved seed before it too is already beginning to succumb to some kind of mold.
But other saved seed, the Trombetta squash and the mystery squash from last year, have proven to be more resilient than the popular varieties.
The filth-filled skies continue and not even the regular rains clear them up for long. I’m sure the sorry state of the skies has nothing to do with the crazy storms, right? The intense lightening, sudden flooding rain bursts, intolerable humidity, hail, tornadoes, and so on, that folks are experiencing across the country?
Just ‘mother nature’ they tell us. OK.
Well, too much ‘mother nature’ is not so good for the garden. It looks plenty green and lush, so that’s nice. But, look a little closer and we find it’s not so pretty below the surface.
But we’ve been relatively fortunate so far this year, just lots of rain and some wind gusts. Others have had far worse.
The yucca didn’t get lucky, but the blossoms are still lovely, even on the ground.
There’s some long-term requirements that fall on Hubby, which I mentioned last update, an upgraded culvert is required now in order to drive to the back half of our property. He’s already gotten started on that, a huge undertaking for sure. After that he can look forward to tackling the pond that’s now washed out.
In better news, there’s been some amazing growth in just one week.
A side by side comparison of 8 days growth.
We’ve prepared for the swelter season by crafting another shading system where these tomatoes and peppers should be much happier into late summer. It’s recycled from another project and a bit awkward to move through, but it should do the trick just fine for supporting the shade cloth.
The asparagus beans, a first timer here, have really taken off in the last week. I’m excited to try them!
In even better news, the mamas and kids are growing well. We’ve started forcing them out of the corral during the day so I was able to give that space a much needed refreshing.
It seems they sometimes prefer following the chickens instead of their mamas. 😆
I’m getting the first fresheners ready for milking by training them on the milk stand. Soon it will be time to start separating them at night so I can milk them in the mornings before putting them back together again during the days. It’s not a happy time for anyone and I’m not looking forward to it.
But, I am looking forward to making lots of cheese again. We’re getting a bit of milk from Chestnut, who rejected her boy, and her girl is only nursing from one side. So, if I weren’t milking her she’d become even more lopsided than she already is.
It’s not a lot of milk, but enough for a little mozzarella now and then. I’ve found another method from my new favorite YT channel which is completely natural and far more tasty than the vast majority of those found online.
Raw milk mozzarella, mmmmm!
Unfortunately, the 2nd time I tried it was a failure. But, 99.9 % of the time a failed cheese can always become another delicious cheese. Some of my best cheeses have been from failures.
Not necessarily the case with failed wine. This cheese ‘failure’ will be soaked for a couple of days in the leftover must of the now fermenting wine, another tip I learned from my new fav YT channel.
This one was mulberry and I’ve also started a blackberry.
The blackberries seem to very much appreciate the extra rain and our harvest has been great, inspiring me to make blackberry wine for the first time. Last year’s harvest was very disappointing after getting some kind of strange disease right after their flowering period. (Not normal development, despite what several folks claimed at the time.)
I’ve decided to try more natural, traditional methods with the wine-making, like with the cheeses. Modern methods require all kinds of chemically-obtained inputs, which most insist are necessary for a fool-proof product.
Yet, last year we had a major failure using that method and ended up with several cases of vinegar. Very disappointing after all that work. We have had great success in the past or we might be too discouraged to try again.
Blackberries, banana peppers and Nigella seed pods
Traditionally, country wines were not made with all those foreign yeasts and I don’t really want my blackberry wine to taste like merlot anyway. While we may not have a decent cultivated grape harvest this year, the wild grapes look promising again. Also the pears are looking good, could be a bumper crop like we get only every few years.
If so, I’m going to do some side-by-side experiments, traditional methods vs. modern methods, and make a real project of it.
Blackberry wine in the making, hopefully
It’s easy to find lots of instruction using the identical modern method. For that I’ll rely on this book.
The wild grapes are looking promising. Our cultivated grapes still uncertain.
It’s not as easy to find good instruction on traditional methods, no surprise there. But this channel has a lot to offer and she uses nothing but a homemade fruit fermentation starter for her wines.
A teetotaler who makes wine, don’t see that everyday!
She also teaches how to make natural sodas and mead on her channel which I’m also very eager to try.
Blackberries fermenting beautifully after 36 hours.
The elderberry is also liking the extra rain. I might even try to make elderberry wine too. The blossoms are excellent in kombucha and will make an effervescent ‘champagne’ like beverage or flavor a cordial. And the goats love it. It’s just an all-around fantastic plant that is popping up everywhere now, so I’m going to create a big grove of them trailing down the hill.
Some brief updates this post and not as many happy snaps as I’d like. But, it’s been so busy and carting my tablet around everywhere is not usually an option, especially where it’s wet and dirty, which is a lot of places at the moment.
Kidding season is over and it’s been a bit stressful, no surprise there. I’ve been wanting to try something new—which is the greatest lost homestead technique I could think of—making our own rennet.
We’ve only had goats a few years now, all of this still feels very new, but, we do want to keep moving forward on the path to self-reliance, so this one is pretty essential on that list. It was as challenging as I expected it to be!
I am squeamish, so that’s the first of the issues. Hubby does all the slaughtering and butchering and for a while I did help plucking chickens, but then we got a machine, so I don’t even do that anymore. I’m not accustomed to seeing the interiors of the animals, let alone having to identify all the parts.
So, trigger warning for this section for anyone reading more squeamish than me! Move to the next section, if you please.
For the briefest of intro lessons, rennet is made from the 4th stomach of the ruminant animal, the abomasum.
This photo is from a calf, so for us we were dealing with far smaller features. Obviously, this is a precious commodity. The abomasum must come from a nursing animal, as it still has the enzymes required for cheesemaking. It can also come from a stillborn, an unfortunate event turned into a beneficial one with proper immediate attention.
In our case, we’ve had 2 stillborn, one this year and one last year. This year we also had a very small doe, a first freshener, who had fairly large twins. We decided to cull one of her kids as part of our efforts. Of course this is never an easy decision to make, and I lose sleep over stuff like this. I was never meant to be a goat farmer, I just want to make cheese!
Anyway, I am glad for the tough choice and going through the trouble to acquire this precious skill. Hubby and I sat down before the guts together, at the kitchen table. One of the great many sentences I could never have imagined I’d be writing!
It’s not easy to find information on the how-to’s of this process, and I certainly had no one to call or visit for advice. It was not enough information to substantially build my confidence, that’s for sure. Sometimes that just takes doing it.
Luckily, I did find one YouTube video, and one blog, both again working with a calf, for which I’m exceptionally grateful.
Another brief aside about rennet, if I may bore many readers a bit further! As I’ve written before, most cheese made today, at least in the U.S., is not made from real rennet, it’s made from a lab-grown rennet substitute, made by Pfizer.
While it’s not that expensive for home cheese makers to buy animal rennet online, relatively speaking, considering only a tiny amount is required, I don’t want to have to entirely rely on far-away sources for such an essential item.
Another thing I’ve been experimenting with to overcome this issue is vegetable rennet, again, from a natural, local source, not a GMO lab-purchased source. We have figs, so that’s what I’m using, but nettles are another source.
It’s not possible to set a large hard cheese with this method, but it works for soft cheeses and very small, what I’d call semi-hard cheeses (because they don’t need a press) like the one I just tried after discovery this channel’s excellent demonstration.
This cheese is so easy! I’ve only just made it, so I can’t yet vouch for the taste, but he makes it look delicious. For this cheese you don’t need any special equipment—no molds or cultures, no aging fridge, and no rennet. Instead of the cute baskets he uses I just poked some holes in an old sour cream container. (And can I just add how much I adore his heavy accent and classic Italian hand gestures!)
We did eventually figure it all out, and here is our final product, now drying for 3 months or so, according to processing directions. It will then be sealed and last for many years and make many dozens of cheeses.
A great big thanks to the multi-layered efforts of man and nature for this magical gift!
In weather news, we’ve had a lot of rain. While I mentioned last update how much I love the rain, it is causing problems. We lost most of our onion harvest, for starters. This is a big disappointment because we were so close to harvest, just a couple more weeks. Not anymore, they were rotting in the ground, we had to pull them, lost a great many, and the others are mostly very small still.
So between the pitiful potatoes and the sad state of the onions, we are not starting off too well. The peas are already done as well, because of the heat, but that’s pretty normal here.
What’s not normal is my usual complaint—the manufactured weather. We can’t drive to half our property until Hubby upgrades our culvert, a huge undertaking. But we are very lucky this time around! No hail, or tornadoes, or other immediate disasters to deal with, like a great many.
Yes, more manmade clouds above our head. We’ll learn what NASA calls them next post.
But, I have a future Geoengineering Update in the works, so I’ll save further lecturing and complaining for now!
Instead we’ll end with a snap of one of our favorite dinners, just how we like it, burned to perfection! Not our pepperoni or cheese this time, but some just foraged chanterelles, homemade sourdough crust, and homegrown pork sausage. 😋
An interesting week on the wee homestead, worth a quick update with many happy snaps and a couple of video clips.
We’ve had some wonderful days and nights of rain, too much for most, but quite fine for me. Hubby will unfortunately have to repair some fencing, nothing new there.
All the usual erosion issues will fall on him and his little old tractor once again, so I make great efforts to contain my glee. Our water is out and so is the phone, but that’s not unusual either.
The creek overflowing its banks and the pond washing out.
Shadow sniffing around, but not nearly as tuned into the wildlife as our livestock guardian dogs. In fact, he seems to be a bit allergic to the great outdoors, especially in summer!
I think he prefers his time lounging in the hammock with Daddy. 🥰
He does also appreciate chasing the pigs and goats and sheep, as much as we keep hollering at him to knock it off.
If you’re wondering what’s happened to scar up poor Pattie’s back like that, zoom in on the following photo to find the culprit.
The rains have certainly seemed to wake up the wild life—just in the past few days we’ve seen a scorpion, 2 water moccasins, 2 copperheads, and Hubby even thinks he saw a coral snake.
I followed one for a couple of minutes as he made his way back to the pond.
Water moccasin making its way back to the pond
There are some more pleasant sitings as well, like these, wild butterfly weed (Asclepius) and Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia).
And some cute mushrooms that I haven’t been able to identify.
The garden is doing fine, tomatoes are growing very well, all from our saved seed. Beans and cucs just coming in and the peppers are getting their first flowers.
The first datura bloom, the German chamomile flowering by the snap peas and a nasturtium blooming near the wild spiderwort (a medicinal I’ve posted about here).
In closing, a quick view of honeybees bathing in Poppy pollen.
