My family and I packed up and headed to the woods for a very long awaited hike for our first of the years wild harvest. We packed up our clippers, gloves, rubber bands, phone, and a large cup. We always have a list of what we need to be sure to get or look out for. However, exploring and new discoveries are also really fun. This time of the year our sites are usually set on the nettles and Japanese honeysuckle. We don’t normally have to search too hard for stinging nettle. We tend to forget about this every year and it has turned into a game of who will find it first. A game that no one remembers we are playing until the winner is announced. This year it was my oldest daughter that first complained of the stinging and itching sensation completely covering her legs. Yep, she had found the stinging nettles. Not wanting any part of their wrath, I glove up when I cut these down or let my husband do the honors. We tie the ends tightly with a rubber band so that they are ready to be hung for drying. Stinging nettle loses its “sting” as it dries. However, open pores and a fresh plant will make a person feel pretty miserable until it’s washed off. My son found the purple dead nettle this year. Always searching the ground, he was excited to see this beautiful ground cover. He also spotted some hen bit. We don’t use a lot of that but I do collect a little each year. These are both much easier to find this time of the year when there isn’t much competition in terms of over growth. However, the stinging nettles can be found throughout the summer as they just get larger and larger. We collected many Japanese honeysuckle blooms. They always smell so wonderful. I love including these into a lot of our blends and different projects throughout the year. I will probably collect these a few more times before I have enough for the rest of the year. I like gathering them and getting them at different stages of their life cycle for magickal uses. A new collection this year was this beautiful cluster of fragrant white flowers that we found. They smelled so amazing and were stunning to look at. They hung from a drooping tree and we had to cut a few entire clusters off so that we didn’t lose the tiny flowers connected. When we got back home, I hooked paper clips to the rubber bands of bound plants and strung them up on my drying line. The flower buds I collected were laid across a mesh lined drying rack and then I label each plant. See I learned the hard way that even though I know exactly what these plants are today, my memory doesn’t always serve me so well and a dried plant looks much different than the day it was harvested. This goes double for new plants I need to identify. It is much harder to research a plant by appearance if it’s all dried up already. So I immediately sit down and research and write tags for every harvested plant. In the weeks to come I will collect more nettles, more honeysuckle and I will begin looking for the much anticipated hemlock to return. We sold out of this less than half way through the year last year and so we will seek to triple last year’s supply this year. At the same time I will be harvesting flowers and herbs as they bloom or become available, as well. Roses are beginning to bloom this week, lilacs, lilies, marigolds, pansies, etc. are all making their debut as well. Harvest season is among us. Photos: The Cynnamon Charmed crew during our first wild crafting trip of ‘18
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Keri Nichol
Founder, Artist, Herbalist, and Writer Archives
August 2018
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