{"id":703,"date":"2012-06-28T16:24:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T16:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/2012\/06\/28\/tincture\/"},"modified":"2012-10-22T14:25:24","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T14:25:24","slug":"tincture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/2012\/06\/28\/tincture\/","title":{"rendered":"Tincture"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>With the profusion of flowers this early summer as well as the sunny, warm days we have been having, I was inspired to try tincturing. For several days I reviewed <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Making Plant Medicine<\/span> by Richo Cech. That book is the definitive text on getting the numbers and formula correct. Seeing the equations for testing alcohol content and yield brought me back to Ms. Key&#8217;s chem. class in High School. What a disaster I was. I was so bad at math, I couldn&#8217;t even blow anything up in the lab. Thankfully, I found my math skills &#8211; especially as they apply to practical applications &#8211; like making folk medicine.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Red clover is in bloom everywhere here on this former Dairy Farm. It has many spiky red\/pink petals shooting off of a central stem. It&#8217;s wonderful in salads &#8211; when young &#8211; and it&#8217;s great in tinctures. According to <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Making Plant Medicine, <\/span>it helps with lowering cholesterol, and removes metabolic waste products from the body. It&#8217;s helpful too for fixing nitrogen in the soil. So inspired, I set to gathering the clover flowers.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Gathering is a magical process &#8211; especially from what grows in profusion in the landscape (non-endangered species, and situated well away from roads, septic systems, dumps etc&#8230;). It is powerful to me that I can make folk medicine my own way. These plants are from here, where I live, and I harvest them with mindfulness. I believe that such intention and love is an important constituent element in the healing process. So after gathering, I roughly chopped the flowers and then ground them in a Cuisinart with Everclear.\u00a0 After all was combined, I put the mixture into a labeled jar, and topped it off with more Everclear to make sure that the medium was completely covered. I shook it up and after 6 weeks of infusing, I&#8217;ll strain out the solids, and then have a good base tincture for creating formulas. (Note, this is a BASIC methodology not intended as a primer &#8211; consult manuals like <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Making Plant Medicine<\/span> and others by certified herbalists for proper directions.)<\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-l39zfgcrrPc\/T-yEgl1OcJI\/AAAAAAAAAcw\/h5XEvX11xCE\/s1600\/IMG_7827.JPG\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-l39zfgcrrPc\/T-yEgl1OcJI\/AAAAAAAAAcw\/h5XEvX11xCE\/s320\/IMG_7827.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-tNKEgr-H41M\/T-yEkQLtKwI\/AAAAAAAAAc4\/4W8GfLjUr_A\/s1600\/IMG_7751.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-tNKEgr-H41M\/T-yEkQLtKwI\/AAAAAAAAAc4\/4W8GfLjUr_A\/s320\/IMG_7751.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-5NLko36X7m8\/T-yEoBVX8tI\/AAAAAAAAAdE\/z0iUE7Kg3fo\/s1600\/IMG_7804.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-5NLko36X7m8\/T-yEoBVX8tI\/AAAAAAAAAdE\/z0iUE7Kg3fo\/s320\/IMG_7804.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the profusion of flowers this early summer as well as the sunny, warm days we have been having, I&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/2012\/06\/28\/tincture\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-herbal-medicine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2QAns-tincture","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecotropy.net\/php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}