Make a calendula flower salve - PEP BB medicine.sand.salve.calendula

It took 6 weeks to prep for this BB because I had to make the Calendula oil first.  The slave took 30 mins. once I poured off the oil.  I had clean beeswax from once upon a time when I had bees...
I used essential oil of frankincense.  Have your containers ready because once you take the salve off the heat the wax will harden quickly.  Do not just rinse your container or the wax could plug your drains...do not ask me how I know this.  Use a rag you can throw away or use as a fire starter to wipe out the excess wax then wash.

Hi Dawn, it looks like you're missing a couple photos.  I see that they're over in your Calendula Oil BB so hopefully you can just copy them into this one and it will be good to go.  Thanks!

These are the missing pictures to my salve post. I just did not know how to directly attach them.

My calendula oil finished brewing so I made salve this evening.  My journal is on the computer so here's a cut and paste of the recipe and uses of calendula:

Calendula
Culinary?  All parts are edible
Medicinal uses:
Antibacterial
Antiviral
Antifungal
Antiinflamatory
Accelerates healing (safer than comfrey)
Soothes menstrual cramps, stomach ulcers and shingles
Bruises, burns, sores, skin infections, rashes
Cleans lymph system and swollen glands
Locations:
Middle of herb bed

Calendula Salve Recipe
1 c calenadula oil
¼ cup grated beeswax
4-6 drops lavender essential oil
Heat over very low heat until wax melts.  Test consistency be cooling on a spoon in the refrigerator.  Add essential oil after consistency is good and the heat is turned off.  
Keeps for at least a year

Note to self, when it says 1/4 cup of grated beeswax, it seems to be measured before it's grated because I had to add a lot more to get it to set up decently.  I used olive oil when making the calendula oil and did add the lavender essential oil which smells glorious.

Good Morning Guys and Gals and all you Permies out there!! It's a beautiful brisk morning in So Cal.

I have been self-teaching alternative herbal/natural healing for decades. Granted, I've gotten into a rut with those herbals I'm comfortable with, but what a rut!! I started with Jeanne Rose's Herbal Body Book and a companion book I don't remember the title of atm. Suffice to say she is/was a wizard with herbal concoctions, and I studied and studied to find the right herbs and such to make one whopper of a healing salve/ointment. I finally decided on the following (at age 18-20); lavender, chamomile, calendula (had never heard of it before), comfrey leaf and root, and a bit of orris root as a "preservative". Oils also make a difference as some sink in to your skin faster, and some prefer to stay on the surface. My base oils are obviously a good olive oil, and usually safflower, but I also add sweet almond and various essential oils to boost the efficacy of the product. Some people like the smell and some don't. For some it's the lavender, to others the cedarwood oil seems offensive or the tea tree.

I began by following Jeanne's directions, boiling the herbs in the oil. This only resulted in a burned-smelling finished product. Then it finally occurred to me to try the "sun tea method". Since I also made it extra strong with a 2nd "brewing of a 2nd batch of herbs, this took most of the summer. But then I hit on doing all this in a double-boiler method, but using a gallon sized glass jar. (I make a craptonne of this each time and it gets me through a couple years.) So, now I put my gallon jar in a larger pot with something to keep the glass from touching the pot, a circular round of crushed foil, a rack for the pressure canner, whatever. Then I allow the whole thing to simmer for several hours on the stove. It really speeds up the whole process. I can now "cook" a batch in a weekend rather than the 12+ weeks of sitting in the hot sun.

So, then I have to squeeze out as much finished oil from the herbs as I can. In the future I would love to own a cider press just for this purpose!! I'd also love to be making $$ from this recipe, but I'm not willing to jump the hoops necessary to be "legal" in the eyes of the crooked government. Enough said.

There is a formula somewhere as to how much wax is needed to solidify to "x" hardness based on how much oil you are using. I don't know what it is and have to look it up periodically. It's been nearly 5 years since the last batch was made by my mom just months before her passing. She was so weak that she asked for my help finishing it.

So, then heat the finished oil and the wax and add the wax while stirring the oil so it mixes well. Then you absolutely must get it in containers before it cools in your big container!! I now put some in brown glass jars, some it lipstick tubes for easy carrying.

I also grow my own calendula now, and only have to purchase if I'm making a large batch. I use calendula flower in teas also.

I will check the requirements for the BB and see if I have any old pix to post.  

"Note to self, when it says 1/4 cup of grated beeswax, it seems to be measured before it's grated"     Pretty sure by 1/4 cup they meant by weight not volume. You can still grate it if you like, but always weigh it to get a correct "measurement".

Now that I actually discovered we had calendula in our garden, I picked what was available and am ready to make all the calendula things!
I have made some lip balm before, but no salves, so this was an interesting experiment.
The recipe for salve is from Petra Ahnert`s "Beehive Alchemy". The book is filled with a lot of great things to make out of gifts from honey bees. Honey, propolis and wax, oh my!
Recipe is 79% herb-infused oil, 20% beeswax, 1% vitamin E oil.  That latter to increase the salve`s shelf life, but I want to see how long it`s going to keep without extra stuff, so I just cut that out.
Book says 95g oil, 24g wax, but that`d use all my oil! :O Wanting to keep oil for other things, I did something akin to halving. PLan WAS halving, but the pouring went a bit overboard, so I tried scaling up a bit. Hopefully it works!

Anyways, here`s my salve!