PEP Badge: Natural Medicine

Where do you think it should be added?

I'm noticing that a LOT of these BB's still don't have threads. Do y'all still need help making BB threads for ones that aren't up yet?

We do need help! PEP/SKIP is volunteer run, so we all try to do as much as we can in what spare time we have. We'd love to have you on the team!

Here's a quick overview on How to make a BB thread. You don't need to do it perfectly! In fact, most of us make a BB, and then someone with a bit more knoweldge comes along and tweaks it to fit Paul's vision. That's perfectly normal! But getting the BB made, you've really, really helped!

Once you make a BB thread, post a link to it here: PEPpers in Action, and someone will come along and look over it for you and make any tweaks that might be necessary.

Here's a good example of a Natural Medicine Badge Bit thread: Stinging Nettle Decoction. The format is good, though it looks like the journal entry proof no longer needs to be a part of each Natural Medicine BB's requirements.

What I usually do is click the quote button on a BB's first post and just copy the whole thing, and then I go and change the words and links, etc, to match the BB I'm working on.

I hope that helps! And thank YOU for helping with this!!!

I'll get to work then! Y'all are helping me learn so much, I'm glad to be able to give back. I have a lot of free time lately, so I'll do what I can.

Applying for my natural medicine sand badge. Here are the bits:

Dry mullein leaf for a tea, infusion or decoction - https://permies.com/p/1284141
Create an infusion of horsetail - https://permies.com/p/1290671
Make arnica infused oil - https://permies.com/p/1290663
Make garlic infused vinegar - https://permies.com/p/1290667
Make a St. John’s Wort blossom tincture - https://permies.com/p/1285697
Make an Arnica Salve - https://permies.com/p/1292266
Make a ginger root decoction - https://permies.com/p/1291393
Make a Comfrey Leaf Poultice - https://permies.com/p/1290677

Did I understand this right?
To receive a sand badge in natural medicine, I have to:
harvest, dry and store (at least) one of the herbs mentioned. And then create (at least) one infusion, one decoction, one tincture, one vinegar infusion, one oil infusion, one bottle of syrup or some gummies, a salve and a poultice.

For the straw badge, one of the requirements is “ Complete 40 new BBs from the sand badge”. Do I keep submitting for BBs under Sand and then post the links to approved Sand BBs under straw when I hit 40, or do you want it done in some other manner?

Should "Harvest, dry, and store one of the following for a tea, ..." include fireweed like the "Make a cup of tea" BB does?

Chamomile is listed in salve section but not in the oil section. Also, how do the links become active?

Shannon Lawrence wrote:Chamomile is listed in salve section but not in the oil section. Also, how do the links become active?

Hi Shannon,
The links become active by volunteers, like yourself(?) that make the BB pages. You can take a look at Nicole’s post above for more information on how. I just built two poultice BB pages today and posted them to the peppers in action thread for review. I know I’m staff now but I started making BB pages last fall when I had only earned about 20 BBs so if there’s is a BB you want to submit, then feel free to create the BB page.

I think I qualify for this Sand badge.

Do: (extra credit from before this requirement was removed)

create a natural medicine journal

Do 1 of: harvest, dry, and store enough for a tea, infusion or decoction - create one

burdock root

hops

mullein leaf

red clover

rose hips

rosemary

stinging nettle leaf

Do 1 of: vinegar infusion (fresh or dried)

garlic

Do 1 of: oil infusion (fresh or dried)

mullein blossom and garlic

Do 1 of: salve (fresh or dried)

mullein leaf

Do 1 of: tincture (fresh or dried)

elder berries

Do 1 of: poultice (fresh or dried)

dandelion leaf

Do 1 of: syrup or gummies (fresh or dried)

blackberry

elderberry

Do 1 of: infusion (hot or cold) (fresh or dried)

blackberry leaves

ginger root

hops flowers

red clover blossom

rose hips

stinging nettle leaf

Do 1 of: decoction (fresh or dried)

dandelion root

mullein root

stinging nettle leaf

I would like to apply for a sand badge in Natural Medicine

To receive a sand badge in natural medicine, pick one from each of the following lists:  

Harvest, dry, and store one of the following for a tea, infusion, or decoction:
Dry strawberry leaf for a tea, infusion or decoction
Create an infusion (hot or cold) of one of the following (fresh or dried):
Create an infusion of tulsi leaf
Create a decoction of one of the following (fresh or dried):
Make a thyme decoction
Create a tincture of one of the following (fresh or dried):
Make an oregano leaf tincture
Create a vinegar infusion of one of the following (fresh or dried):
Make thyme infused vinegar
Create an oil infusion of one of the following (fresh or dried):
Make a rosemary infused oil
Create syrup or gummies from one of the following (fresh or dried):
Make a fennel seed syrup or gummies
Create a salve from one of the following (fresh or dried):
Make a peppermint leaf salve
Create a poultice of one of the following (fresh or dried):
Make a Plantain Leaf Poultice

It's been a real joy collecting these BB's. I drink infusions most days. I'm looking at my herb garden with fresh eyes and starting a list of plants for the future. I've already started on my Straw badge and enjoying the continuation of my journey. Thank you for your help and approving my tasks.

For the concoctions, do they need to be individual herbs?
I just infused oil with plantain, calendula, and dead nettle. Plantain was the bulk of it, so can I submit that for the BB of making a plantain oil? Another example -- there's a recipe I'd like to try that's a spiced ginger decoction with cloves, cinnamon, and bay leaves. Can I submit that for the ginger decoction, or does it have to be only ginger?

If you're submitting for the plantain BB and there's enough plantain in there to be a good infusion by itself, plus you add more stuff, I think that's fine.  I don't think you can get the plantain and calendula oil infusion BBs by doing one infusion with a bunch of plantain and calendula in it.  Each BB would need to be its own infusion.

Can we submit for Quinn BBs if we treat ourselves for ailments or does it only apply when you have helped someone else?

Great question.  I think it needs to be someone else in order to keep everyone honest.

I just finished the Straw Badge Requirements!
You can check out my PEP2 Adventure Log or my personal profile.  The list is long so I've not copied it here but I can if you prefer. Also, I completed the sand badge under the old rules (journal, 1 harvest(dry & store), and 5 other concoctions).

I completed :
10 Quinn BBs
13 Harvest, Dry, & Store
8 Infusions (water)
4 Decoctions
3 Vinegar Infusions
5 Tinctures
5 Salves
3 Syrups
7 Oil Infusions
3 Poultices

Mike Haasl wrote:Great question.  I think it needs to be someone else in order to keep everyone honest.

I agree at the straw level but what about Wood Level?
All the Quinn BBs say "friend" and all the Watson BBs I've read also say "friend" but one of the BBs says you can help yourself.

Prove you Helped 6 people with natural medicine BB:
Minimum requirements:
- Help six different people with your natural medicine prowess
- One of these people can be yourself
- Refer to them by the number or pseudonym that you used throughout the Natural Medicine badge

Does that mean that I can do Quinn and Watson BBs for Wood Level credit on myself or a friend?

Good question...  I think that it makes sense to be able to do Watson on yourself but not Quinn since it would be easier to cheat .  So I'd propose doing Quinn and Watson BBs for your friends and Watson ones on yourself for Wood level credit.

I discussed this with Paul and he agreed with my thinking.  I'll do some edits to the badge to reflect this.  Thanks for bringing it up!

I believe I completed everything for my natural medicine sand badge. Here is what I did:

1) Ginger Root Tincture
2) Ginger Root Infusion
3) Ginger Root Salve
4) Ginger Root Syrup
5) Ginger Root Infused Oil
6) Ginger Root Poultice
7) Garlic Infused Vinegar
8 ) Ginger Root Decoction
9) Dry Peppermint for Tea

I'm thinking about going for this, but honestly it seems like a lot of redundant work for someone who's been a student for ~20 years and practicing with clients for 5. For instance:
-If one has dried an herb for tea, why take pictures of the infusions/decoctions as well? Maybe for the first one, just to prove one has the concept down, but after that it just seems repetitive and Instagrammy rather than an effective documentation. Why not just keep client records? After all, it's wasteful to make infusions without an intended recipient, unless it's a nutritional preparation like nettles that one can drink nearly any time.
-What kind of quality-control is going into these journal entries? I already saw someone describe mugwort as a sleep aid in this thread, which is a pretty big misrepresentation (it increases the intensity of dreams, which could be seen as a benefit or detriment), and a lot of the information readily available to people is vague and treats nearly every herb as a panacea, rather than assessing them for their strong points with clinical data to back it up; while I understand the value of documentation, I'm more concerned with quality information than proof that someone can write notes (this is also a somewhat ableist way of prioritizing, speaking as someone with a neurodivergent brain). Personally,  I don't have an herbal journal, but I do have a class notebook, many reference books, and pubmed (okay, actually scihub). I take classes only with clinical herbalists with significant experience, and ask questions when I get conflicting information. If I get bored in the wintertime, I *could* crib from Thomas Easley's Modern Herbal Dispensatory, but all that would prove would be that I can copy things down. I'm not saying I'll do that, just trying to point out the need for a different approach here, possibly.
-My apothecary has about 50 different tinctures in it, almost all wildcrafted or grown myself. Do you want me to spam y'all with photos of each jar/label? Each in a different thread? Same for all of my dried herbs? Is there a place where the solar dehydrator I'm building this summer should go?
-my clinic notes are usually a page long for my first session, and grow from there, and I don't think I could ever say for certain that what I offered was what caused the change. I can offer strong correlation, but not causation (sorry Watson). Should I post my whole file on each person, with the name blurred out? What should those of us who treat people rather than conditions do? Often people come in with layers of issues, and the protocols are working to support overall health, sometimes in an allopathic ('this for that') manner, sometimes in a more whole-person fashion. Is there a place for this kind of treatment in the PEP badge? Shouldn't there be? What about all the people I work with who don't fall under any of the conditions listed? Might it be more useful to list categories of conditions rather than individual ones? Examples might be by body system, acute vs chronic, with subcategories, etc. Also, what are our diagnostic criteria? I've treated three people with endometriosis, only one of whom had had surgical confirmation of lesions. Are we going by western diagnostic criteria, which don't acknowledge a problem until a biopsy is done, or can we allow that someone without health insurance but who has debilitating pain 2 weeks/month probably isn't just making it up? Conversely, what are we doing to filter out people 'curing cancer' that was never diagnosed?
-is there any required reading? Are ethics covered? What are our community standards for ethical wildcrafting?

I'm sure I could come up with more, but I've used up enough of your time already, curious to see what you have to say.

I'm just interpreting Paul's vision here so I'm not sure I'll be exactly right but hopefully this helps.  There are multiple reasons for everything so I'll just pick one reason that might resonate for each question.

1. Why dry more than one thing?  We're allowing people to show that they have built the skills.  So drying 6 things shows more experience, learning, tips and tricks than just doing it once.  
2. Why not keep client records?  Go for it but in PEP we shy away from documentation tasks preferring action tasks.
3. Quality control?  Not much required to get badges/BBs.  If someone has the wrong plant in their photos we'll likely fail their BB but since there's no way to tell if they really made a tincture correctly, we leave it up to them.  It's in their best interest to make good product so people getting into the Straw/Wood/Iron badges are likely going to be attempting to do a good job and seeking guidance as needed to learn better.
4. Spamming photos of 50 tinctures?  Sure, IF you have the required photos for each of the BBs.  Old work is fine if the documentation and proof can be posted.  Each one goes under its own BB, you aren't creating new threads in PEP, just replying to existing BB threads.
5. Solar dehydrator? Great question, that should be in there somewhere but I don't think it is.  I'd take pictures as you begin, during and when it's done and post to Homesteading Oddball or the Oddball badge.
6. Treating people vs condition?  I'm guessing we look at each ailment on its own since it's even harder to prove you helped a whole person.  So that's why the Quinn list is worth only 1/2 point and just requires a happy customer.  The Watson list requires some sort of proof (photo, tests) that you helped them.  Anything more vague than that and the certifiers will never be able to tell if you really did anything.
7. Required reading, ethics, standards for wildcrafting?  None since it's a world wide forum and standards/expectations vary from place to place  We're just trying to show people have built their skills.  

Mike Haasl wrote:
2. Why not keep client records?  Go for it but in PEP we shy away from documentation tasks preferring action tasks.

My point was largely that you do require documentation, via the journal, photos, etc, and that it's not in a very efficient or intuitive fashion. My actions are growing, propagating, wildcrafting, making preparations, and treating people; you want me to document that to get credit, which I understand, but I'm trying to see whether the system can be made more efficient/intuitive, especially for someone who isn't just starting out, and in the ways that herbalists actually treat people, which is often as a whole person rather than as just a symptom or a disease state. Even for distinct ailments, most of the time all I have is the client's word to offer as proof that I treated the condition, for instance, my giving skullcap, pedicularis, and black cohosh to my housemate when she was suffering from severe headache and neck pain. It helped, but you really only have my word to go on that, although my client notes are eventually going to be submitted to the American Herbalists Guild, for what that's worth.

You're welcome to ignore all this, of course, but I am essentially offering free labor here to help make this a more useful process.

We did remove the journal stuff a while back so it probably is referenced in some earlier BB posts.  Are there places where it's still listed as a requirement?  If so please let us know.

There were all sorts of BBs proposed for things like "Plan a food forest" or "Draw up a construction project" and they were all rejected since the output was just paperwork (like with the natural medicine journal).  They were removed in favor of "Grow a food forest" or "Build a thing".  So when I say PEP favors action skills, that's what I mean.  

To certify a skill, we need to work with something so photos or video is the system we went with.  Natural medicine is tricky to prove so we just had to go with the Quinn and Watson approaches (proof via a thumbs up or proof via photos or tests).  It's clearly not perfect but it's the best we could come up with for free.

Hello! 1st time poster! My friend introduced me to this a few days ago and I am very excited to begin. I've been reading through forums and writing down which badges I'd like to work for.

I hope this is ok- please tell me if not. I saw someone post suggestions for badges and I had some thoughts for the natural medicine PEP.

1 idea is a badge for creating a 1st aid kit with at least 6 (or another number) of natural preparations made by the poster.

I also thought that offering a herbal-related service could be a great iron badge. For example, clinical herbalism, a small-batch herbal care product business, herbal street medic, herbal mutual aid, etc.

Welcome to permies.

There is already a "create first aid kit" badge bit here. No reason it couldn't include natural preparations.

There are also badge bits for healing other people. That can include using natural remedies.

I've completed enough BB's for The natural medicine sand badge!

Harvest/Dry: MULLEIN https://permies.com/wiki/129033/pep-natural-medicine/Dry-mullein-leaf-tea-infusion#1273241
Infusion: HORSETAIL: https://permies.com/wiki/119138/pep-natural-medicine/lavender-blossom-infusion-PEP-BB#1275913
Decoction: WILLOW BARK https://permies.com/wiki/152938/pep-natural-medicine/decoction-willow-bark-PEP-BB#1336321
Tincture: STINGING NETTLE https://permies.com/wiki/162900/pep-natural-medicine/stinging-nettle-leaf-tincture-PEP#1474521
Vinegar Infusion: THYME https://permies.com/wiki/167117/pep-natural-medicine/thyme-infused-vinegar-PEP-BB#1430652
Oil Infusion: YARROW https://permies.com/wiki/167823/pep-natural-medicine/Yarrow-leaf-blossom-infused-oil#1428373
Syrup: ROSE https://permies.com/wiki/119046/pep-natural-medicine/rosehip-syrup-gummies-PEP-BB#1337868
Salve: ROSEMARY https://permies.com/wiki/166075/pep-natural-medicine/rosemary-salve-PEP-BB-medicine#1338202
Poultice: MULLEIN https://permies.com/wiki/166308/pep-natural-medicine/Mullein-Leaf-Poultice-PEP-BB#1338199

Is there an actual, physical badge I can buy? or make with permission? Like a girl scout vest with patches? Hehehe. Maybe a hat would be better for a permies project. or a carved walking stick.

I just strained my stinging nettle tincture that was going about 6 months... This is my kind of SKIP!

I'd like to post a few things I have done to help my family but don't really care to put their pictures on the threads... Is the image of us together and the image of them with a thumbs up totally necessary? (Also not sure if I could get my daughter to give me a thumbs up even if I tried lol)

Also, for the Watson list if there is something I did to cure myself but is not on the list (Tachycardia) could I make a new BB post for it? No idea how many points that'd be, but I'm proud of myself for getting out of the mess I was in last year.

It says you have to have a picture of them so that seems to be required.  Putting a black line across their eyes would probably still be ok.

If you have additional suggestions for ailments, you can post them in the PEP Refinement Ideas thread.  But creating a new thread for it won't make it become part of PEP and might confuse people.

I would like to suggest the plant datura inoxia as an herb that can be used for salves and poultices.  D. inoxia grows widespread in Montana and is wonderfully medicinal.  

Update:  All the requests for badges have been moved to individual threads.  Please request your badges by clicking on the badge headers in the top post and following those links.  Please continue to request individual BBs by following the BB links.  Thanks!

Can we add goldenrod (solidago) to the "dry" and "infusion" lists? (It might have other uses but that's the ones I can vouch for)

It's my go-to herb for urinary track irritation (pre-infection) and it's often recommended for hay fever.

Widely available throughout the world and easy to identify.

Kena Landry wrote:Can we add goldenrod (solidago) to the "dry" and "infusion" lists? (It might have other uses but that's the ones I can vouch for)

It's my go-to herb for urinary track irritation (pre-infection) and it's often recommended for hay fever.

Widely available throughout the world and easy to identify.

Hey Kena, the PEP requirements are pretty much set, especially since the book came out. PEP is also "Permaculture Experience according to Paul," the owner of this site, so it's whatever he deems important for where he's at in Missouri. He encourages others to make their own PEX (permaculture experience), though you may or may not get badges for it depending on how fleshed out it is. For example, Mike has created PEM (Permaculture Experience according to Mike), and there's also PEA (Permaculture Experience Anywhere), and I believe you can get badges for both of those. On the other hand, I have a mini PEX for myself, but no badges for mine.

Goldenrod is one I've been meaning to learn more about, especially how it's used for hay fever! Sounds like a great suggestion for my own PEX.

Goldenrod grows in Missouri- they even have their own species (Solidago missouriensis) . But I totally get that the list has to be finalized at some point, and that helpful plants can be overlooked.

I'd highly recommend looking into it because it complements well the rest of the natural pharmacy, and it's so prolific that it can't really be over foraged.