Wise Women's Herbs

Wise Women's Herbs This is a page devoted to the use of herbs and related natural remedies. This page is not intended to substitute for medical advice. Thank you for visiting!

Wise Women's Herbs was started in June 1987 as a small (very small) business in northern Indiana. My business partner and I would go to the local farmer's market and sell herbs, oils, buttons, bumperstickers, etc. Over the years in Indiana, the store grew in product offerings. When I moved to Virginia in 1990, the store morphed a little, but kept all the original items. Back in Michigan ten years later, I finally was able to get a store front in Hopkins! I expanded my stock and added massage and Reiki to the mix. In 2005, I decided to sell off my stock for the most part and focus on natural healing and giving workshops (as Wolfbrook Holistic Healing). I've revived Wise Women's Herbs here on face book to focus on my herb classes and offering information on herbs.

05/29/2023

Wood Betony (Stachys officinalis) sample on bed. The story is that back in '88 I did not know what this plant was, or what it was used for, but had an attraction for it, and kept trying to find seeds to grow it. Finally I did find a seed company that had it listed, and when the packet came in the mail someone had written on it "last of these." So I planted them with care, sort of feeling like I was saving an endangered species, which actually I wasn't, but that's how it felt. One seed germinated, and from that spare beginning a whole patch was formed, and from that patch seed taken, and from that seed, eventually thousands of packets made, spreading goodness to more gardens than I would have imagined at the start. Now, generally you go after more diversity than the progeny of a single seed, but actually in this case it wasn't a problem. A more vigorous plant I've never seen, and eventually its virtues became evident to me. The rich, tasty tincture of fresh leaf turned out to be the best thing I could find to stem addictions--alcohol or drug--and since then I've used it plenty of times. Meanwhile the butterflies love the flowers. The flowers are for them. I use the leaves.

10/20/2021

Once the leaves fall you mght find this useful for identification

05/23/2021

If you love pretty foliage and flowers adorning your front porch, many stunning herbs are both beautiful and useful.
Here's a list of container-loving plants with ornamental and edible value:
Artichoke (Cynara scolymus)
Basil (Ocimum basilicum)
Calendula (Calendula officinalis)
Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus)
Chives (Allium schoenoprasum)
Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)
Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus)
Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)
Pansy (Viola)
Parsley (Petroselinum crispum)
Pineapple sage (Salvia elegans)
Purple mustard (Brassica juncea)
Purple sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Purpurascens’)
Rosemary, cascading varieties (Rosmarinus officinalis)
Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris)
Tricolored sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Tricolor’)
Variegated thyme (Thymus, select cultivars)
Beauty IS medicine, and we deliver it in spades in our Online Herbal Immersion. Join us for a plant journey that will grow your garden, stock your apothecary, pave the way for your herbal career, and bring you into closer connection with the plants themselves.
For details: 🌿 www.chestnutherbs.com/immersion 🌿
Photo of ornamental culinary herbs, edible flowers, and vegetables growing in a biodegradable peat pot © Juliet Blankespoor.

01/19/2021

The knowledge and ability to harvest elderflowers and elderberries for both food and medicine, will take you far on your journey to a self-reliant life. Naturally, you may be able to purchase small elder bushes

01/05/2021

Gorgeous and weird, lichens have pushed the boundaries of our understanding of nature—and our way of studying it.

11/13/2020

Anise hyssop is a delicious ally during flu season 🤩
Its flavor hints at licorice, mint and fennel - in fact, it's sometimes called licorice mint. It's safe for children and elders, and is in the same league as chamomile and mint (few side-effects, generally safe for most folks).
Anise hyssop is easy to grow in the garden; it's a short lived perennial with showy purple flower spikes that attract butterflies, bees, and all manner of buzzing life. Anise hyssop isn’t available commercially, so if you want to enjoy its beauty and divine flavor, you will want to grow your own. Some of you are lucky to live in its native habitat (Northern North America), and can harvest it from the wild.
Anise hyssop gets a big shout out in our Online Herbal Immersion—it's so tasty and healing that we feature it in our materia medica and a whole lotta recipes. Plus we include a cultivation guide! To learn more and to join us:
🦋 www.chestnutherbs.com/immersion 🦋
(Agastache foeniculum, Lamiaceae).
Photo © Juliet Blankespoor
*Please research any new herb and consult your health care providers for possible drug/herb contraindications and precautions before ingesting. Be sure of your identification before ingesting any plant or mushroom.

11/11/2020

Celebrated healer, Vernon Cooper, of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina, who practiced the rituals of healing he received from his ancestors.
“My grandmother passed her healing power on to me, [when she was on] her deathbed in 1917. She said the ability was a gift that had been given to our family for four hundred years. She told me, ‘You will be the last one with that gift in our family.'
There's nothing happens to a person that can't be cured if you get what it takes to do it. We come out of the earth, and there's something in the earth to cure everything. I don't fix a tonic until I'm sure what's wrong with a person. I don't make guesses. I have to be sure, because medicine can do bad as well as good, and I don't want to hurt anybody. Maybe it takes some herbs. Maybe it takes some touching. But most of all, it takes faith"
—Vernon Cooper, Lumbee healer. The Lumbee tribe has lived in the coastal plain of North Carolina for centuries, and most Lumbee continue to live in rural areas of Robeson County.
Quote and image shared via on Instagram.

11/11/2020

Did you know violets possess a second kind of flower, which is colorless and subterranean?
These secret flowers are readily visible this time of year if you gently move away the soil from the base of violet plants.
Most people are familiar with violet flowers (Viola spp., Violaceae), easily identifying the group by their heart shaped leaves and distinctive white or purple blooms. However, I would venture to say that most folks are not savvy to violets' second kind of flowers, which grow hidden underground, never opening their petals to the light of day.
These cleistogamous flowers (Greek for 'closed marriage') do not open to pollinator or breeze, yet produce viable seeds. The white cleistogamous flowers pictured here will never turn blue, as there is no need to attract a pollinator. The fruits will develop underground and release their seeds directly into the soil or close to the surface 😮🌸
Want to learn more about the secret lives of violets? Visit the blog: http://blog.chestnutherbs.com/even-violets-need-a-plan-b
Photo © Juliet Blankespoor
*Please research any new herb and consult your health care providers for possible drug/herb contraindications and precautions before ingesting. Be sure of your identification before ingesting any plant or mushroom.

09/15/2020

North Carolina folk healer, Emma Dupree (1898-1996).
The following is from Harriet's Apothecary (follow them on Instagram for more inspirational stories on Black healers and wellness leaders):
“Born in 1897, the traditionally lucky seventh child (among 18 siblings), Dupree grew up on the Tar River and was known in her family as "that little medicine thing" because of her early understanding of herbs. "All that we see, everything that is growin' in the earth is healin' to the nation of any kind of disease," Miss Dupree would always say.
From the time she could walk, Dupree felt drawn to the land. She would roam the woods, plucking, sniffing, tasting weeds. She grew up that way, collecting the leaves, stems, roots and bark of sweet gum, white mint, mullein, sassafras in her coattail or a tin bucket. She'd tote them back to the farm, rinse them in well water and tie them in bunches to dry.
In the backyard, she'd raise a fire under a kettle and boil her herbs to a bubbly froth, then pour it up in brown-necked stone jugs: A white-mint potion for poor circulation; catnip tea for babies with colic; tansy tea - hot or cold - for low blood sugar; mullein tea for a stomach ache. Mixed with molasses or peppermint candy to knock out the bitterness.
Her kind of folk medicine dates back centuries. As an elderly woman she shared much of her knowledge with doctors and medical anthropologists, who came to her so they could understand more about the medicinal properties of native plants."
Photo by Mary Anne McDonald

06/22/2020

"Every particular in nature, a leaf, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Learn about to fractal holographic nature of the universe that explains the physics behind the above quote in the free Unified Science Course in the Resonance Academy.

Enroll at ResonanceScience . org

Photo via Alfie Daye

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