Good times at BDVP this week! With the help of Grow Appalachia we began our series of Make It/ Take It classes. These hand's on classes are intended to bring clients and staff together to share in creating a home-grown or handmade product for participants to take with them. Monthly classes will include container gardening, working with herbs, jam-making and canning. In our first Make It/Take It class of the season we made a homemade healing salve with fresh herbs from our garden. The salve was made with the infusion of comfrey, lavender, rosemary, lemon balm and plantain. This herbal ointment is a nourishing moisturizer that is excellent for bumps, bruises, scrapes, dry skin, and insect bites.
To make the salve, we harvested these herbs from the garden and roughly chopped them . We added coconut oil and olive oil and brewed the mixture in a double boiler for an hour. We then strained the infusion (twice) and put it back on the double boiler with beeswax. Once all of the ingredients were melted and stirred, we poured it into jars and allowed it to cool…and Waaa…Laaa! Salve is complete.
While the herbs were brewing we had a great group of women and kiddos making hand-rolled, beeswax candles. Everyone got to keep one for themselves and we will be selling the rest on Sunday of Mayfest this year along with some other crafts and products from our farm. We are hoping we can sell some of our home-made goods to help fund our craft groups and farm projects. We also hope that these projects can offer some small business ideas for our clients to work with as they move forward.
OUR HOME-GROWN SALVE
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| Chopping our Herbs |
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| Freshly Chopped Comfrey, Lavender, Rosemary, Plantain and Lemon Balm |
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| Strain it Once... |
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| Strain It Twice... |
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| Melt the Wax |
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| Pour into Jars, Let it Cool and It's Ready To Go! |
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