Joy Hancock

I made a rose salve recently!

I heated up the infused oil in a double boiler. Then I shredded the beeswax, weighed it, and added it.

After the beeswax melted, I added beet root powder (for color) and vitamin E (for preservation).

It is softer than I thought it would be, but I'm fairly happy with it!

**Updated with oil I used: jojoba oil NOW brand

My mom has a rose bush so I harvested the petals and made an infused oil. I did the slow method and let it infuse for a month in a dark cabinet. Going to make salve with it!

We have wild narrow leaf plantain growing in our yard, so it's a good time to make plantain leaf oil!

I technically only have 2-3 nesting boxes, so I did this 2 different times (and many times since).

We bought strawberry plants from Johnny's Seeds this spring and I realized there were a lot of leaves I could harvest! I think I will try to make tea with them next.

Friend M
Sore throat
- Symptoms: sore throat, mild headache, coughing up phlegm, tired
- Duration: one day of mild symptoms when I gave him suggestions
- Severity: not bad enough to go to a doctor
- Medical diagnosis: none
Suggestions
- Behavioral: rest
- Food as medicine: homemade chicken bone broth
- Concoctions: homemade echinacea honey (I heated honey in a double boiler at a low temp for 5 hours with dried echinachea) and cough/sore throat liquid from local health market
Description of Success
- He drank bone broth 2 nights in a row and slept a lot for 2 days. He put the echinacea honey in tea, and took the liquid a few times a day. He also took colloidal silver.
- It worked!
- It took a day or two to see results. But I think he recovered quicker because he started taking those things right when he started to have a sore throat.

Our elderberry bush started blooming! Great chance to dry some of the ripe elderberries. I put them in the dehydrator on 135 for about 10 hours. They were small so I probably could have dried them in less time.

We have a row of liriope as a border around our pond that has taken over! Have you guys found ways to manage it? I'm leaning towards pulling it all up although I know that will be time intensive. If I do, what is a good non-spreading perennial to put in it's place?

What do you guys do for the flies that chickens attract? We have a neighbor complaining of the flies as he has a pool. We have put out fly traps and try to spray out the coop regularly. What suggestions do you have? Is it even possible to get rid of them completely?