Grandma was a midwife and healer in the mountains of SE West Virginia. When my mom was a kid, she foraged and gardened for the ingredients for all kinds of curative teas and tinctures. Mom kept a tea garden next to our house. I learned some and then got even more curious, taking the recipes into adulthood and adding ingredients found in the Western US where I was living.
Now, I am in Georgia and very inspired to forage. Just foraging in the unattended backyard, I found Rose of Sharon (hibiscus syriacus), sassafras, and mimosa.
I am thrilled to have yet another region, a more tropical one, to try out my foraging and curatives. I will be sharing many things here including how to make bitters.
The hibiscus is an ideal diruetic and blood pressure-lowering tea. Instead of taking a water pill, I'd rather get antioxidants and liver health boosting side effects than chemical ones.
The mimosa tea is fantastic for relaxing, feeling good, and going to sleep effectively.
The sassafras is one you treat with reverence. You don't want to have it too often, but boy is it a tate of childhood. To harvest the roots and bark, look for 1- to 3-foot-tall saplings growing near mature sassafras trees. Dig them up. Simmer chopped roots and bark in water for tea, or sweeten and add seltzer or club soda for homemade root beer. Use bark and roots to make syrups, infused honey, and kombucha (will cover kombucha making on this blog soon). If you are prone to UTIs, this is a good tea. It can also reduce feelings of arthritis (great one when the barometer drops and your body aches). It's good for gout and immune system.
Sassafras leaves were made into poultices (more on these in another future post) to treat injuries such as sprains, bruises, wounds, and insect bites.
Some people dumpster dive, I forest dive for free ingredients.
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In memory of Grandma Edith "Edie" and my mom Anna "Sue."
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