Well, in all fairness, spring only started today and this post is mostly about yesterday, when I went to spend the day on our land and, after reviewing the plans and where we’ll be cleaning up and creating paths, I checked them to see if I wanted to forage / take any plants from the places that will be cut.
This way – since I know the plant will be removed anyway – I don’t need to be as careful as I would’ve otherwise. Since I can take the whole plant, I won’t need to forage it from a different place either, which will leave other areas mostly untouched.
The one thing to be mindful of, though, is to not make this ‘remove all things’ a habit. As I wrote in the Foraging and common sense post – never take it all (in fact, never take more than half) and never take more than you’ll effectively use!
That being said, I decided to bring home some lavender (the wild we have is lavandula stoechas species) and rosemary (also wild). The rosemary has already bloomed, and the bees are super happy just flying around, so the least we can forage now, the better. We do have tons, though!
So, what will I do with these, you might ask? The idea was to make a lavender + rosemary infused olive oil that I could then use in balms, skincare, etc.. However, I decided to wait for our own garden lavender to bloom because: 1. The species we have here is a bit better in terms of medicinal strength and 2. Because the flowers are the best part to use of this, and they’ve not bloomed yet.
In the spirit of using what I foraged, though, I will make:
- Flavored rosemary olive oil: to use on roasts, salads, etc..
- Relaxation pillows / sachets filled with dried lavender leaves
This means that the next steps for me are:
- Lightly dry the rosemary (24 to 72h)
- Put all lavender in groups and hang them to dry (on the sun during the day, inside during the night) until it’s fully dried
These are the projects I have happening at the moment. I like that we have so much of all these that if I like the result we can make loads later on and create a sort of basket for Christmas gifts – how cool would that be ?
