Celebrating elderberry season!

Walking in more than one Earthaven neighborhood in July, you would have enjoyed the dark, luminous clusters of elderberry hanging from both the older, taller trees and ones just beginning to bear. And while folks do harvest some of the white flower clusters earlier in the season, also enjoyed for food and medicine, it’s the berries that get folks out there with boxes and buckets.

This year, neighbors Susan and Bob Broadhead’s crop (at Full Circle) yielded many boxes and bags of goodness for families and herbalists across the watershed.

Soon, elderberry jams will appear, just for their deliciousness, and then the syrups, many doctored with favorite herbal extracts to boost the healing power of the berries, and to serve as season-changing tonics. Come Christmas, local herbalists will be selling a variety of healing concoctions made with elderberries. and those who haven’t made their own will be stocking up for Winter.

Varieties of Zev’s standard elderberry syrup recipe appear every year. What would you do with yours?

Zev’s Elderberry Syrup Recipe

 For 10 pounds (or about 1.5 gallons) of berries:
Cook elderberries slowly, on medium low heat, about 2.5 hours, adding 1/8 to 1/4 cup at a time of the liquid from a decoction of:

1) Appalachian Reishi mushroom, 2 cups
2) Maitake mushroom, 2 cups
3) Chaga mushroom, 2 cups
4) Burdock root dried, 1 cup AND

5a) for a preventative syrup, you can add 1 cup astragalus OR

5b) for a syrup to take once you get sick, you can add 1 cup osha root.

You also need 190 proof alcohol, (raw) honey, and apple cider vinegar in these proportions of berries to alcohol to honey to vinegar: 4:2:3:1.

After straining the decoction, cover the remainder with alcohol and set aside. Cook elderberry mixture till skins turn mushy—the consistency of thick tomato soup. Strain skins and seeds through a sieve and add to mushroom-root-alcohol concoction. Cook the elderberry syrup to a consistency between tomato soup and maple syrup. Let cool just to body temp before adding the honey. Mix in the vinegar and alcohol—also using the alcohol from the soaked ingredients.

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From our first annual Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference event in 2005, we quickly discovered that women in the Southeast were ready and eager for this community of teaching and connection that we were creating at the conference. We discovered that we were filling a deep need. Our first conference drew 250 women, a high number for a start-up event. By 2010, our sixth year, over 800 women attended, during a rough economic time when event after event was collapsing.

It seems that part of the draw to the conference comes from the authenticity that we bring to it as organizers. We use the weekend to give women a taste of the way we actually live. For us, green business and sustainability aren’t just buzz words: they’re the way of life. Our office and apothecary run entirely on solar and hydro electricity, our homes and offices are built and heated by wood from our land, we grow much of our own food on our adjacent farms and gardens, we raise our children in a community context and we practice herbal medicine, natural health, and women’s cooperation in our everyday lives.

Renee, Corinna, Ema, and Lee are the organizers of the SE Women’s Herbal Conference and all live at or near EH.

The Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference, ‘Bringing Back the Wise Woman Ways,’ takes place on October 14-16, 2011 at beautiful Lake Eden in Black Mountain, NC. It’s a weekend to learn, connect, and deepen into the Wise Woman Tradition: earth-based healing, local wisdom, & deep nourishment.

For more information and to register, visit sewisewomen.com

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          In November, the Useful Plants Nursery hosted a fall sale and Plant Jam. This was the first UPN event hosted at Earthaven and many people came out to see the nursery, hear local speakers, and take home some useful plants!

          In December Earthaven hosted a tour from the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA) annual conference in Black Mountain. Here they are hearing about Yellowroot farm from Julie McMahan and Andy Bosley.

Join us Saturday, December 12, 10-6 for the Bizarre Bazaar. We’ll have supervised craft making for children of all ages (dry felting, holiday decorations, snowflakes, etc) and a snack and drink table – have some/leavesome. Bring a musical instrument and make a joyful noise. Vendor tables available by donation and reservation. Call 828-669-2073 to reserve a table or for more information.

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The Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference is the sister company of Red Moon Herbs –  sharing the same mother, owner and director, Corinna Wood. Corinna, a long-time Earthaven member, runs these two businesses here at Earthaven, employing not only herself but other local women, bringing much-needed income to families in our economically depressed Appalachian region.

Two Earthaven women, Corinna and Lee Warren, as well as a neighbor, Ema Carmona, work year round to organize The Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference, which offers hundreds of women the opportunity to learn, connect, and deepen in to the Wise Woman Tradition. This year marks the 5th anniversary of the conference which will take place in Black Mountain on October 2-4

The Wise Woman Tradition is very close to many of the values embodied at Earthaven. In brief, it means simple living, earth-based healing, and local plants. It encourages connection to place, honoring of cycles, nourishment of the body–of the human and of the earth, and community with each other. The conference is an opportunity to introduce these ideas to women from many different walks of life in a format and style that is empowering and deeply transformative.

The conference draws hundreds of women (expected participation this year is 500) from around the Southeast coming for classes taught by more than 30 teachers, herbalists, wise women elders, and gifted healers. They will teach more than 50 classes on topics such as: Herb Walks, Tea Blending Secrets, Herbal Skin Care, Herbal Baths, Menstrual Health, Menopause, Women’s Wellness, Nutrition, Phytochemicals, HPV, Shamanic Breathwork, Talking Stick, Self Esteem, as well as art, dance, yoga, poetry, and more.

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