This year’s basic winter balm was years in the making.
Every spring I beg my family when they go on walks to please, if you’re walking along a body of water, search for Cottonwood Poplar trees and gather some of the fragrant buds for me to infuse in oil.
This past spring my husband did a lot of walking, and he gathered for me a lot of buds. When the spring buds of the cottonwood tree are infused in oil, the resulting fragrant oil is called, “Balm of Gilead”. Having spent so many years living a religious life, I recognized Balm of Gilead from the old testament of the bible and was excited to make it myself.
In the past, winter balm included the poplar buds, the infused oil, and canadian beeswax. It was fragrant and fabulous!
This spring, the buds were rather dry because the whole spring was rather dry. As I prepared the buds to be infused, I wracked my brain trying to think of other dried medicine plants to add to this year’s balm.
I had a giant canning jar stuffed with Comfrey that I had gathered and dried in the last spring that I lived on Vancouver Island. I decided to infuse that as well. It’s doing me no good in the canning jar, is it?
I also filled a large canning jar with dried Stinging Nettle, which I also used to gather when we ran our own little farm on a fertile acre we rented with our haunted home at the bottom of Mt. Sicker.
So this year’s winter balm contains: Balm of Gilead, Raw Canadian Beeswax, Comfrey, Stinging Nettle, and Olive oil – which is the kind of oil I use for infusing herbs.
Contact me if you’d like to buy some. It’s fabulous! $15 for a 4oz container.