Homemade mosquito repellent

Yesterday I had a lot of mulching to do, my sister has commissioned me fix up her yard.

I do wish I had some before and after picture of the shade garden I put in for her, but that was before I started blogging and documenting everything.

Anyhow, as it is a shade garden and right by a little creek there is typically loads of mosquitos. And the times of the early morning or at dusk when it it not too hot to work, even more so.

I have long been wanting to make a homemade mosquito spray, as I do not like to use regular repellent, and find that the natural versions from the health food stores, does not work very well.

I found this idea on The Herb Gardener, this spray includes garlic and cayenne pepper, and to that I added some yarrow. I used I'd say 6-7 big cloves, smashed them up skin and all, put them in a food processor with about a cup of water and 1t of ground up cayenne powder, the recipe calls for fresh peppers, but I did not have any on hand. 

To this I added a good amount of yarrow, flowers leaf stem and all.

Mashed it up really good in the food processor, I love the way it looked and even smelled, I do love garlic, and then I set it in the sun for a few ours 

before straining it through cheese cloth into a spray bottle.

Once strained I added a few drops of lavender essential oil.

I applied a liberal amount to my skin, wondering if the cayenne was going to burn in any way. It did not,

it did feel a bit sticky at first but once dried that went away. I think it worked really well, perhaps not 100%, yet really well, I could do all my mulching without feeling the constant attack of the mosquitos and when I came inside had not one bite.

This may not be the repellent I would use if I was going to town, well actually I rarely put on repellent, but for garden work or a hike at twilight this is the perfect solution for me, with the added bonus of absorbing the benefit of the garlic through the skin.

~Happy rainy monday~.

Yeah, we are getting some rain:)

Green super goodness, and Kombucha update

Happy saturday to all!

 I wanted, among other things, to share one of our food passions; Spirulina, click for more info.

It is one of my husbands absolute favorite foods, second perhaps only to his "famous" pesto. Anyways being a mostly vegetarian family these spirulina shakes have really helped us get our protein needs filled.

Spirulina is a blue green algae and is packed full of  protein, 60% in fact, of pure vegetable, easy to digest protein, plus beta carotenes all your vitamin B's and all the other vitamin letters actually, and the list goes on. To make a shake, we use frozen bananas, we always keep broken up banana pieces in a container in the freezer, to these we add usually rice milk 

(cow milk some how seems to come out too heavy),  sometimes almond milk 

or on occasion soy milk.

Then we add raw honey and almond butter, blend it all up and enjoy. We have also added nutritional yeast, black strap molasses, soaked cashews or wheat germ all depending on what we have on hand.

Best of all the children LOVE these shakes, they have been raised on them and have no issue what so ever with the green fishy smell of the powder of the thick green consistency of the shake.

this is what the powder looks like (in case you are not familiar with this super food)

yum!!! Truly delicious..

No more pictures momma!!

And I wanted to share my Kombucha progress. A few weeks ago I set out to 

grow my own Kombucha mother, and two weeks later to brew my first batch using this mother. Today I enjoyed a first glass of this batch. It turned out so delicious, perfectly fizzy, not too sweet~perfect~ I am so happy with it, I mixed a glass with some of the echinacea syrup from the other day and that too tasted great, the children really liked it like this.

I poured the batch into two glass bottles and saved a quart to start a new batch.

(if anyone reading this is from the Asheville area, and would like a mother to start a batch, 

I now have an extra, if so leave a message in the comment section)

~May your day be wonderful~

Making Echinacea syrup

Using herbs has become a way of life for us, and every year I become more proficient and add more knowledge and experience to this wonderful way of caring for my family 

( even so I am certainly still a novice herbalist )

I enjoy all aspects of the herbs, from growing and caring for them, to harvesting and then preparing the herbs.

I love using fresh herbs whenever possible, and right now the Echinacea are in full bloom which is the time to harvest the ariel parts, last year I made tincture from the roots, and the plants I have growing now are just slightly too young for harvesting the roots (which should be done in early spring or fall after the third year of growth), so I decided to harvest some flowers and leaves and make a syrup for the children, they LOVE herbal syrups, as they are sweet and tasty.

I will use this syrup as a supplement and give it by spoonfuls everyday for as long as this batch will last, a few weeks probably. Echinacea is great for immune support, colds and flu.

I also added some Bee Balm flowers for taste, and they are also great for common colds and such.

And just because I had some cherries laying around looking sad, I also added them to the concoction for sweetness and flavor, as echinacea can be strong flavored (especially the root).

I also added one comfrey leaf, just because:)

My basket of goodies 

So pretty isn't it, all chopped up

with the cherries added, just love how it looks, so colorful

after it is all chopped up, I added water to cover and brought it to a boil, and then left it to simmer until

the water reduced to about half

this is what it looked like when done, at which point I strained it, and squeezed out all the remaining liquid from the plants. Then added honey, about one cup of honey per quart of liquid.

and here it is strained, sweetened and ready.

This will keep in the fridge for several months, although it wont last that long in this house.

 ~happy healing~

And in case anyone is interested a great simple reference book on common healing herbs, how to grow them and use them, this is one I love  "Growing 101 Herbs that Heal"

Another great informational book is Rosemary Gladstar"s  "Herbal recipes for vibrant health"

There are so many wonderful titles, yet these are great basic herbal books.