Honey Farm

Now, between my lunar calendar, biodynamic calendar, Chinese 5 Elements chart, bio-rhythms, meridians and menstrual cycle, I was beginning to feel a wee bit overwhelmed (wee as in the understated, Calvinist, Scottish vernacular). A little light-hearted relief was therefore warmly welcomed in the form of a field trip to the Honey (no, not Funny) Farm!

Our group, reduced by the absence of Catherine, our trusty leader, and Amy (who is making first-class films in another sphere) all met for a pre-trip herbal tea (aka coffee) at the RBGE and then left the classroom behind.  We were greeted by our minibus driver (identity unknown)  who arrived late, accompanied by his daughter who had been beaten up by neighbours - so it was a slightly bewildering drive down the A1, as he careened through traffic, mobile in hand, Radio Forth blasting… perhaps his meridians weren’t aligned either.

An hour later, having missed the turning by 5 miles, a backseat revolt was initiated and we finally repointed ourselves towards our goal: a rambling farm track past barns of double-decker London buses, ancient tractors and rusting trailers to arrive the Chainbridge Honey Farm.

Willie S Robson owner and patron of Chainbridge was raised into a family that has kept bees for over a hundred years, he hums, thinks and works like a bee. His love of his black honeybees (indigenous to Scotland – not foreign imports) is infectious. He is in harmony with his hives; he knows what they know, feels the weather as they do, frets over lost habitats and wards off disease and mites through proper old fashioned bee husbandry.  They appreciate it and return their gratitude by producing 65 tonnes of honey a year.

Heather 

Frances and Heather, Willie’s daughters, took us through the honey harvesting, cleaning, bottling and labelling process in their shining new Danish steelware facility. Imbued by the scent of honey everywhere, we were more than ready to sample a slice of their wonderful honeycomb fresh from the hive.  Beautiful thick, gooey golden nectar it is too. Fortified, we toured the beeswax and candle making rooms and finally arrived at the heart of the potions and lotions kitchen. Here we found an enlarged version of our own classroom – replete with giant mixers, mashers, strainers, heaters and oils - 60 litres big in this instance. Frances talked through their labelling and explained how the helpful Food Safety agency won’t let them describe any of their products as ‘healing’ or even 'soothing for dry’ skin,

Raw Beeswax

But healing and soothing it is. Honey has antibacterial and antiseptic properties and if applied to a wound will destroy bacteria and encourage the growth of new tissue and skin.  It is also known to have a beneficial effect on the immune system and is an anti-inflammatory. Different honeys have different characteristics such as Manuka honey from New Zealand where honeybees are surrounded by Tea Trees, the oil of which is a renowned antiseptic. Merged with beeswax, oat oil, and delicate scents, honey is also a wonderful treat for the skin.

Beeswax vats

Bee Farm Paparazzi

Sated and sticky, we headed north of the border again - driver calm, radio low, gently pulled by the rising moon back up the coast to home.

Chemical Elements

David Pirie, Medical Herbalist at the Tara Trust in Edinburgh came to the Gardens this week to give us instruction in plant chemistry; specifically the actions of primary and secondary metabolites. In a Socratic tradition our first proposition was to argue the premise of the topic – is it the chemical constituents of plants that are solely responsible for any physiological changes (and by extension, healing) in the body? Or is it the plant’s energy that affects healing? For intstance, South America herbalists match the sound resonance of a plant to a person before prescribing anything…so here we go

It actually all comes down to your gut reaction. Or rather the GIT (gastro intestinal tract) and how the metabolic process transforms foods /herbs in transit through the stomach, liver and bloodstream into the chemical compounds that nourish and heal.  Each plant’s chemical structure has a different action on the body, is released in different ways, works at its own pace and leaves when its ready.

Dr William Withering
with Digitalis

Dr William Withering discovered this in his seminal work with Dropsy patients prescribing the hitherto deadly Foxglove (digitalis). He realised that each patient required not only a different dosage depending on their tolerance but critically that dosages should decrease as heath improved. (The first dose of any toxic plant will make you nauseous – this set the dose for each individual).

Plants contains thousands of chemicals, categorised as metabolites: primary ones necessary for a plant’s survival and propagation; and secondary metabolites which are non-essential but that add a colour, flavour, aesthetic or action that contributes to its overall form. We often use only one part of a plant to deliver a specific healing action, but many herbs are best used holistically, balancing a potentially dangerous or toxic effect of a primary metabolite with a secondary one.  

 

It is these secondary metabolites that we turn to supply the key active ingredients in the healing process. They can be categorised most broadly as:

• Acids
• Alkaloids
• Carbohydrates
• Glycosides
• Isoprenoids & terepenes
• Phenols
• Amines
• Rubber Polymers
• and so on...

David expounded on these further, breaking down each into its primary action and uses (anti-inflammatory/ antiseptic/ mucillangenous, etc), its relationship with key internal organs, what plant were sources and any potential complications. 

Naturally we wandered in our discussions, pondering how smell might be the most powerful influence on the human brain, what influence emotional memory had and new thinking in psycho-neuro-endo-immunology….

Last session of the day took it all and gave us one last twist – how elements of taste should also be considered in understanding treatments. The Chinese believe that a person’s life energy (Qi) runs along meridians in our body, linking and affecting all our organs. Each organ in turn is associated with an element (Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Metal) a season, an emotive state and a taste (sweet, sour, salty, bitter and pungent). By understanding the relationship of these elements we can adjust the Yin/Yang balance to maintain and obtain optimum health. 
 

Divine Intervention

Back to school – hooray!  Last week’s snow, frost and lack of trains, planes and automobiles kept us from the shimmery gates of the RBGE. Today we bundled back in and let the sun shine gloriously upon us through a sea of snow banks.

Our previous homework assignment had been to ‘draw the constellations’ in readiness for today’s topic – Biodynamic Gardening. Great rolls of lining wall paper were drafted in and I spocked out Hugh’s ancient protractor and Rosie’s bag of coloured pencils to accomplish the task. 

Fortunately Fate has smiled on me as I had found a most wonderful book – Celestial Charts ~ Antique Maps of the Heavens (by Carole Stott) as Oxfam earlier in the week. Having spent the week reading it and not doing my homework, I decided I should refocus and opened my Faire son Potager a la Lune.  This was a mistake - I had to read that too and by the time I got through it, was thoroughly bewildered by the multiplicities of lunar considerations one should take into account before sowing, cultivating or harvesting a bean that I was ready to throw the trowel in…

Duncan Ross, however calmly led us through the labyrinth of Tropical, Sidereal and Biodynamic gardening techniques that have emerged from Rudolph Steiner’s seminal work on the subject. Consulted by farmers and producers in the early 1920’s Steiner's philosophy was that the sun, stars and moon all affect our lives and influence growth, health and productivity of all living things around us.

The Biodynamic movement has its roots (sorry) in both ancient planting methods and in new interpretations of the effects of the lunar and solar calendars. More precisely, how the moon passing through the constellations affects life on Earth as well as it’s own gravitational pull.

In practical terms, Steiner’s philosophy also involves a bit of ancient lore and (some would argue) mysticism.  Where organic gardening focuses on the health of the soil, biodynamic takes it a bit further and gives consideration to the nature of each plant, the biodiversity of the garden, associated animals and their enhancement with cosmic preparations.

To illustrate this we clambered up to our practical beds where we filled a cow’s horn with fresh manure and buried it 3 feet deep, there to mature and gestate.  Come March we will dilute the contents of the horn with water, potentise it and disperse this across the newly dug beds. Throughout the year we will also add floral water potions to the compost to give it true bio dynamic qualities.

We ended our day with a dose of hot ginger tea and explored the beauty of Floris Books’ Stargazer’s Almanac, which shows the night skies from an Edinburgh perspective.

Happy Hogmanay!

Snow, snow, snow!

Pitch black darkness greeted a very white and luminous landscape this morning. We’ve had snow tumbling down since Sunday and it looks like it’s setting in for a long term cosy.

Thinking I would bundle up and make the train got less and less likely the longer I waited.  Finally reason regained the upper ground and I decided to stay put. And so it appears did everyone else – class was canceled and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief.

I took the opportunity to dig through Wikipedia and summon up answers to questions on base oils and borage and (as usual) got dragged down routes I didn’t know existed.  (You could live quite happily in a snowy kingdom if you had the internet by your side.)

Research did prevail and I got started on a few nodes of knowledge. Wiki providing a rigorous scientific resource with Google complimenting it on images.  Losing several hours, I got lost in the Ancient Greeks and their use of olive oil, Mediterranean herbs and calculating planting time by the constellations.  South America yielded beds of roses and rosehip seed oils that deliver eternal youthfulness and scar reducing qualities. And finally castor oil beans revealed their complicity as a key tool in Mussolini’s torture of prisoners….

Time for a walk!

Soil Secrets

Poyntzfield Herb Nursery

Our day started with ginger root tea: grated, steeped and infused with honey a revitalizing and warming tonic to counter the crystalline skies outside.  Duncan Ross had joined us, far from his herbal estates on the eastern reaches of the Black Isle to teach us rootimentary (couldn’t resist…) truths about composting and efficient herb growing.

First we enjoyed a virtual trip to his Victorian walled gardens, fortified against the glowering Highland fringe by 12 foot walls, sturdy hedging, poly-tunnels and deep trenches of compost and seaweed. A beautiful mosaic of green, grey beds, Poyntzfield Gardens grows over 450 types of herbs that’s up from the original 70 they started with in the 1970’s and sells throughout  the world. Secret to their success is a triple row of compost bins slowing digesting and decomposing the efforts of last year’s harvest. Wild weeds (herbs?) grip and root to the upper layers exposing an archaeological striation of the midden below.

But the day was too nice to miss so we abandoned our pens and tea and took off to the practical beds of the RBGE’s nursery gardens - there to establish with secateurs, pitchforks and spades our very own patches and prepare the ground for next year’s abundance.  We carefully plucked the seed heads of dried yarrow, fennel and borage,  snapped off the gritty broad bean pods, pulled comfrey and horseradish roots and catapulted heaps of expired herbaceous material onto the Herbology compost heaps. 

Gently turning the soft earth with fingers and forks, we cajoled the last weeds and stones from the summer field left the beds to sleep under a snug blanket of black plastic

Lichens & Fungi

Week 7

Pharmacology 1 – taking us further into the deep realms of science we began to break down the constituent parts of herbal remedies to understand what works where and how. Like the 7 steps to self-enlightenment, 12 to abstinence, 13 stations of the cross there are 14 components that make up a Herbalist’s cabinet of cures:

1. Acids
2. Alkaloids - Antraquinines
3. Bitters
4. Carbohydrates
5. Cardioactive glycosides
6. Coumarins
7. Cyanogenic glycosides
8. Flavinoids & antrocyanidins
9. Glucosilinates
10. Gums & Mucilaages
11. Phenols
12. Saponrins
13. Tannins & Pseudotannins
14. Volatile Oils

Louise Olley

Briefly outlining their qualities and uses we identified the plants containing these essential elements and how they worked, but further exploration will take place in 2 weeks. The morning had other delights in store.

Lousie Olley, Lichen Curator of the RBGE arrived with her own special box of tricks – in her case, plastic bags of sticks, twigs and branches covered in a hairy variety of green, yellow and brown lichens. Lichens are the result of symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae – one provides protection and the other nutrition. Rumour has it that the fungi might actually be ‘farming’ the algae for its own gain, but let’s not go there…there’s enough to divert us elsewhere.

Lichens are divided into different types: fruticose, foliose, crustose, and leprose and each clings to life in a unique way. And we in turn use them in a variety of ways: for fibre, fuel, tanning, fermentation, dyeing embalming, poison, perfume, food and of course, medicine. Best known to us all are:

What kind of lichen is it?

• Icelandic Moss (Cetraria islandica)  - in cough syrups and eye-makeup remover
• Usnea filipendula  - for wound dressing, uterine complaints and model-making
• Wolf Lichen (Letharia vulpine) – used to poison wolves in Scandinavia
• Dictyonema sericeum – a hallucinogen used by native S Americans to curse people.

Useful, I know!

The afternoon we moved up the food chain (well, maybe) to the fungi kingdom. Professor Roy Watling, Maestro Mycologist, took us through a repertoire of helpful, useful and down-right dangerous mushrooms. The uses for fungi and mushrooms are bewildering! Hats, handbags, deodorants, razor sharpeners, elasto-plasts (band-aids to my compatriots), snuff, horse brushes, painter’s tableaus and aphrodisiacs. Fungi (Fomes formentarius) was also used to carry fire – a type of living tinder box – from ancient times and indeed evidence of such was found at Skara Brae on Orkney and on the person of the famous Öitz skeleton, the 5,300 year old man found in the alps.

Professor Watling & his fungi collections

Our final lesson required a tonic – one of our own harvest of Sea Buckthorn gathered from the sandy banks above Gullane bents.

Buck Up! - Honey Tonic

1.      Heat several cups of Sea Buckthorn berries over a medium heat, mashing with the back of a spoon until you have a thick orange pulp.

2.      Strain through a sieve and return to the pan. 

3.      Add a cinnamon stick and honey to taste and melt together.

4.      Strain into bottles. Stores in the fridge for about 1 month

A herbalist version of Sunny Delight: no E colours, but loaded with vitamins C and A.

Tonic makers

Weekend Rambles

November 2010

Shoreline Apple Tree

Catching up on my long over due homework (sorry, Catherine!), I went off to capture what I could of a late autumn harvest of berries in and along the East Lothian coast

Sea Buckthorn along North Berwick Golf Course

Sea Buckthorn abounds – it scrambles, twists and twines into a Sleeping Beauty fortress along the ancient sandy dunes from Gullane to North Berwick and beyond (to Russia, I believe). Brilliant orange berries cluster in huge abundance in the joints and branches of the extremities of the silvery bushes. A forager’s trove– if armed with impenetrable gloves, long-sleeved coat, thick boots and very sharp secateurs.  The trick is to snip and freeze the berry-clad twigs and thorns intact – the berries will snap off easily once frozen solid.

Sea Buckthorn harvest

Along the country roads are farm lanes lined by hedgerows bursting with hawthorn and autumn berries.  But with few lay-bys (pullouts) it can be tricky to stop to gather – and if there are any sloes in the area, you run the risk of social ostracisation if pillaging someone else’s patch….  So I returned to the fringes of the NB golf course and found a solitary weather-worn patch of berries, on a gnarled bush thick, rich and plentiful.  Nearby was a stand of young Dog rose – covered in luscious ripe hips which fell neatly into my basket.

Do I have to de-seed these??

Haddington Herbals

A sojourn inland to the county town brought me to the new Haddington Herbals – a lovely old/new shop located at the end of the High Street. Filled with natural remedies, cures, cosmetics and lotions displayed in the antique cabinets lovingly restored. They also sell mixing oils, dried herbs, and essential oils for us DIY enthusiasts.