River Prairie Apothecary

08/01/2025

Stepping outside for a brief moment in the smokey sunshine with bumblebees, a friendly monarch, blossoming echinacea and blue vervain. ☀️ 🌞 🌼 ✨
Happy

08/01/2025

Arg… I spent too much time outside 😫my poor throat and lungs 😷

Herbs to the rescue!

DIY

(you probably already have some of these plants dried in your house or maybe fresh outside. Grab that headlamp!)

I work with aromatic and healing culinary plants to soothe and assist the body with dealing those gnarly tiny particles we are breathing when there’s in the air.

Materials:
Fresh or dry plants ✔️
Aromatic plants (you want to smell and won’t react to)✔️
Heat safe bowl ✔️
Recently boiled water ✔️
A towel ✔️
15 minutes ✔️

How to:
- Put your Herbs in a heat safe bowl
- Boil water and pour over herbs
- Carefully breathe in the steam, but start from further above as you can always move in closer
- Put a towel over your head (and steaming bowl) to increase the effect of the steam start
- Enjoy the steam for 5-10 minutes, or longer if you are really enjoying it.
- At the end of your session go ahead and try and cough up any loose phlegm.

Tips:
* Feel free to take breaks.
* breathe in and out alternating between your mouth and nose.
* stay hydrated! Continue to assist your body with flushing out the toxins by drinking water.

Why?
The steam is soothing and assists the natural cleansing process of the tissues of your respiratory system.

BONUS:
Do a foot soak when ur done!

Herb ideas:
* Mint, oregano, thyme, rosemary, beebalm, mountain mint, basil, ginger, cedar, pine, lavender

… what else can you think of that would be really accessible and lovely to breathe in?

07/17/2025

If you had just 60 seconds in a greenhouse to grab whatever plants you want for free, what plants would it be?? 

07/10/2025

Gigi guided me through my Master Herbalist training. Take the opportunity to learn with her if you can 🙌

Schedule a 1:1 health consultation with Gigi Risberg Stafne this summer or join her for a natural-botanical medicine course:

Herbal First Aid
Course Recorded
(See our social media post)
July-August

Friday, July 18
Walk on the Wild Side: A Guided Herb Identification Hike
Golden Light Healing Retreat
Green Bay, WI-Lake Michigan Region

July 19-20
The Herbal Apprentice Certificate Course
Golden Light Healing Retreat

July 21
Natural Approaches to Lyme Disease
Virgo Sunrise Healing Center
Menomonee, Michigan

July 22
Free Peoples Clinic
Midwest HWB Chapter
Midwest US

August 1-2
Midsommar Herbs: Wild Medicine Course
North House Folk School
Grand Marais, MN-Lake Superior
—Course is full—

August 7
Nordic Inspired Oxymels
American Swedish Institute
Minneapolis, MN

August 15-16
Self Care to Community Care
Herbal Apprentice Certificate Course
Duluth Folk School
Duluth, MN

August 21
Herbal Plant Identification Hike
Red Cedar River Trail
Northwood Campus
Rice Lake, WI

August 25
Master’s in Herbalism Program
Program begins this September
Lunchtime Tele-Orientation

August 26
Free Peoples Clinic
Midwest US

Gigi is available weekdays for health appointments:

https://greenwisdom.weebly.com/clinical-services.html

Questions about courses above:
gigigreenwisdom@gmail.com

07/09/2025

Inspired by someone currently participating in my Herbal Garden Share program (thank u 😘), I decided to give a go at making natural shampoo… Which I quickly realized is way more complicated than I initially thought so I gave in to the online hippies who suggested using chickpea flour and rye flour to make a paste to wash hair. I was super skeptical…I really did not think it would work. But it DID work! I will follow up in the comments later tonight on how exactly I did it, along with the instructions on herb-infused apple cider vinegar wash and a final herbal hair rinse (basically it’s just herbal tea.)… i’m so happy with the results! I’m totally giving up the ‘poo 😅

Edit/update: (more detail details on how I did this below)

Wash:
Hair paste is 2 TB flour (chickpea, or rye is recommended, I used both just for fun)
+ about 1/2 cup water (optional: use tea!)…

I followed this recipe but then did make some adjustments so that I got the right consistency. You might have to play around just a little bit. It’s intuitive.

I liked making my washing paste the consistency of hair conditioner. It won’t lather, so don’t expect it to act exactly like shampoo. But it still works!

Takes a little more effort to rinse it out, especially if you got whole grain rye like I did… next time I use the hair paste I think I might try just chickpea to see how that goes as the consistency is more fine.

If you don’t have a ton of product in your hair to wash out, you might not even need to wash the entirety of your hair anyways. Just focus on the roots.

The flour paste removes grease and oils from your hair. It’s also restorative to your hair as it contains B vitamins.

Once you rinse it out, follow up with an apple cider vinegar wash to further remove buildup. It’s very cleansing to your scalp. It’s actually quite Conditioning to the hair, I know, sort of counterintuitive? Seems like it should be harsh and dry. That is not what I experienced. And I have very fine dry hair with an oily scalp.

For me, I have more sensitive skin so I think I will dilute the vinegar next time. It leaves your hair feeling really smooth and shiny, it felt strong on my scalp, but it was not too harsh on my actual hair. however, I don’t love the smell so I think I will make some mint infused apple cider vinegar to try and make it a little bit more of a pleasant experience.

My final step was doing a hair rinse with herbal tea. I didn’t wash this out. I loved this part!

You don’t have to do all these parts. You could try one of these applications for your hair. Use your regular shampoo, but follow up with an apple cider vinegar rinse. Or just try an herbal hair rinse the day after your shower when you’re not washing your hair.

For me, since I don’t do anything else with my hair normally, I don’t even put a lot of product in it, these aren’t too many steps for me.

Really it’s just three different things I’m putting on my head, so it’s not that different from shampooing Conditioning and then spraying something on your hair after you’re done.

I spray the herb tea on my hair while I’m still in the shower so I don’t make a mess. But you could put it in a sq**rt bottle and Not have to do it in the shower necessarily.

If you can mix water and flour together, you can do this. If you can make herbal tea, you can do this.

Apple cider vinegar is shelf stable so you don’t need to store that in the fridge. The paste and the tea can be stored in the fridge… The paste will last up to a week in the fridge. I would assume the tea will only last a few days, depending on what sort of tea you made and how much natural antioxidant or antimicrobial is in it.

I added an extra step by instead of just using water with the flour paste, I used tea. I might even dilute my apple cider vinegar, rinse with the same tea. Obviously that won’t be shelf stable anymore if I add that much water to it and lower the acid content… i’ll just have to blend that together in the shower and go for it.

I’m now on day two and I put my hair up, but I’m still impressed with the results, I’d say it’s about as greasy if not a little less than when I use shampoo.

So why am I doing this??

For fun, and because I’m inspired by the people I’m working with right now and the ways in which they are learning new things and trying new things…

But also… If you think about it… My body is so busy producing oil to replace what I’m constantly shampooing off my head. That has to be depleting, right? It’s already hard enough to get the right oils, to get enough healthy omegas.

Apparently your scalp is supposed to modulate how much oil it’s making, and in theory should produce less when you stop using harsh soaps on it.

Also, I’m just trying to consume less overall and buy less and especially reduce how much plastic I’m purchasing. DIY stuff feels so good to me. It feels grounding.

Oh! By the way, if you have very dry, course or curly hair, you can use coconut milk or coconut cream instead of the water/tea component when making the paste for your hair washing. Apparently that is better for that hair type .

I’m so curious how this will go in the long-term! I’ll keep you updated 🙂 and maybe I’ll find some further hacks to this process to make it easier. I’m not the most consistent creature and honestly I can be a lazy Herbalist so I don’t stick to things that take too many steps… We’ll see how it goes! Thanks for your interest 🙏 let me know if you play around with this and have any success!

06/21/2025

Happy summer solstice! It’s been an epic weekend so far and it’s not even halfway over yet.

Solstice Eve a friend and I went to Bird trivia at the brewing project. 17 out of 42, I think I’ve earned my amateur birder badge 🤓

I started my solstice day yesterday at 4:20 AM and made it all the way well past sunset 🥳😜

My friend and I enjoyed a cloudy sunrise on top of Mount Simon with some cute strangers who had the same idea.

And then I got to end an epic day around the campfire with lovely folks and a little fire spinning too (I was too tired to spin, but I got to enjoy!)

May there be lots of light in your life,
may the good outweigh the bad,
and may the life-giving people, experiences and things in your in your life shine even brighter in contrast with the challenges and the shadows that life also brings us... Happy summer solstice! 

06/06/2025

The yard office was *happening* this week!

I’ve been wandering barefoot, enjoying interactions with visitors coming to buy plants, spending time with the seasonal blossoms like Rose, Angelica and Valerian, and sharing what I know along the way to assist everyone with their new plant babies…

The most magical time of year, that’s for sure!

I’m also so grateful for these cloudy afternoons as I’m currently having to take doxycycline for lyme-disease treatment, which makes me sensitive to the sun, and I’m already pretty fair skinned so I’m so glad I’m still able to be outside. And also thank goodness the air quality is better!

Being an Herbalist, I have so many tools available to me to take care of most minor health things… So when I do have to go in for stuff, it’s usually for more major things…

I haven’t had to take a conventional remedy like this in a very, very long time and it started to take its toll on my guts yesterday…

But I know what to do and I’ve been enjoying all the bland, soothing foods, taking a probiotic in between my antibiotic doses, eating as healthy as I can, and preparing to give myself extra love and care to rebuild my gut flora in the coming weeks.

I’m approaching this med with gratitude and a bit of curiosity, instead of just being sad I have to use it. I’m literally living the gut brain connection… Yesterday, as I was feeling more icky, I was also noticing how much it was affecting my mental health. When my guts are not happy, the rest of me is not happy either. I felt extra sensitive and like I didn’t have a lot of patience to deal with minor issues.

Day 4 and I’m figuring out how to time what and how I’m eating and also adding in some herbal support as needed. Visits with folks coming to get plants is definitely helping as well!

I was yesterday years old when I ate my first fresh lychee fruit… I don’t know what it was but when I was standing in the grocery store last night, looking at them, my body was screaming EAT THAT. So I bought a whole bunch of them. Luckily, I like them. Makes total sense that my body wanted them seeing as the fruit is really soothing and mucilaginous. Bodies are incredible!

06/04/2025

First flower harvest of the season for sun tea!
Holy basil and roses 😍

So, are you growing medicinal or culinary basil plants? If you harvest the flowers off of your basil plants, they will keep leafing out and grow bigger. You can even start clones by putting the cuttings into water, they will root.

I’ve got lots of holy basil babies to share! Pop-up plant sales starting this week, Thursday, message me if you want in! I don’t have a huge variety of plants this year, but I have a lot of of the classic Herbs that I go through quite a bit of in my clinical practice like holy basil and moldavian balm.

I use organic and self collected seeds from my own plants, started in an organic greenhouse, transplanted into organic potting soil… I only use the best of the best!

💗🌱💗