If you've ever wondered what it would be like to participate in Goldthread's Farm to Pharmacy program, planting, harvesting, and learning how to properly process and use medicinal herbs, I hope to give you a weekly glimpse at the banquet of color and texture we experience at Goldthread's Conway, Massachusetts farm on Tuesdays. Enjoy!
Harvest baskets full of Angelica and calendula, ready for the drying room.
Chocolate mint after being harvested, dried, and garbled, the process of
hand-picking the leaves from the stems of the plants.
Dried calendula and mugwort.
Farm to Pharmacy interns harvesting the intoxicatingly sweet scented flowers of Clary sage . . .
. . . which were immediately brought to the wood-fired steam distiller and transformed into both an essential oil and its less concentrated co-product, hydrosol.
A floral water such as this one is perfect for applications where an essential oil would be too strong. They can be spritzed directly on the skin, added to creams, or used to freshen up a room.
Echinacea.
The learning garden.
The towering Greek mullein were also ready for harvest on Tuesday.
Combined with fresh garlic and infused in olive oil, mullein is a traditional remedy for ear aches and ear infections and is a best-seller at our apothecary in Florence, MA.
Grassroots medicine — a feast for the senses!
— Melanie, Goldthread Marketing (and Farm to Pharmacy intern)
Beautiful photos, as usual. I wouldn't expect anything less from you. It looks like you are really involved and invested in what the Farm is all about. My feeling is that if you love something, it is easy to learn about it because you care so much about the subject. I'm looking forward to reading more and more as time goes on.
ReplyDeleteI have planted chocolate mint in my garden this summer...I loved the scent. What might I do with it?
ReplyDelete