Soothing poison oak naturally

Last week I had, unfortunately, a raging case of poison oak.  It was bad.  Head to toe and no fun at all.  I've still got the rash - that is now healing - all over me, but luckily the unending itching did end and all that's left is a bit of healing.  But I took the opportunity to take some pictures of one of the things I did to get some relief so I could share it here with you all.

I made a soothing oil/poultice from the leaves of the plantain plant.  You can make a poultice of sorts with the leaves of the plantain plant to sooth poison oak, ivy, or sumac.

There are a couple of different kinds of plantain that grow locally around here.  The broad leaf and the thinner leaf which is sometimes referred to as "snakeweed."

This is the broadleaf, which is what I have growing in my yard.

The ones I have don't really grow very large so I wanted to get some of the bigger think leaf variety.  There happens to be a large field right next to my church, so I took off with a couple of friends and we went plantain picking.  I was able to not only get a large amount of leaves to make my oil, I also got one very large and mature thin leaf variety pulled up out of the ground and it is now living happily in my yard.


That's it sticking out of the bag there.  :-)  The neighbors probably wonder why I have a huge "weed" (to them) growing in my yard that we won't mow over, but I want this plant to stay big and healthy should I need to harvest from it again.

Now, on to the how-to.  You want to take the leaves of the plant and tear them off.  Wash them and then pat them dry.   Now warm up some olive oil on the stove.  *Do not get it too hot or it will break down the healing properties of the plant!*  We're going for baby bottle warm here.  (Yes, my counter is cluttered, but I've got approximately 4 feet of counter space to my name.  So there ya go.)  Now you want to put your leaves and some oil in the blender.   I don't have a blender - it died at the hands of my son - so I use my processor.  Works just fine.



You don't want to use too much oil.  You want it clumpy, not runny.  I also added the stalks of the leaves as you can see here.  They have healing properties too and I was so miserable I wanted all that was coming to me.  The stalks will make your finished product more fiberous - so if you're planning on eating it, just know that.  Yes, you can put this mixture on pasta and eat it to get even more of it in your system.



This is what the finished product looks like.  Store it in a lidded container at room temperature.  When it's on, don't plan on moving around much.  It's messy and you need to keep it on you until it dries and then reapply as many times as you feel it's needed.  I sat down and covered myself and the chair in towels and put a thick layer over my arms, then covered that with flour sack towels.  I also had it in my scalp really bad so I worked it into my scalp and then put my hair up in a towel to keep it here.



Now, what this is does help soothe.  It gives some comfort.  It is not a cure.  The amount of help you get from it will depend on how bad you have the rash.  I had it quite badly so this did help, but there was still discomfort.  However, for 24-36 hours after I used this, I could tell a difference between the areas I treated it with and the areas I didn't.  My arms and scalp were about to drive me crazy and after I used this, even though those places did still itch, they felt much better than my legs that I didn't treat and didn't have the rash as badly on for the next day and a half.

So, even though this is not a cure it is a comfort measure.  And if you ever find yourself in a situation of having one of these rashes and you're not able to get drug store style help or you want something natural instead, this is good to know.  When you're that miserable even a little bit of comfort sounds like a very good thing!

How does your garden grow?

I've got almost all of the garden put in.  Just a few more seedlings left that I will have to figure out how to squeeze in there.  Right now we have planted: several different heirloom varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, basil, leeks, strawberries, chives, lots of zucchini, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, pie pumkins, two different types of watermelon, blueberries, blackberries, a self pollinating apple tree, and a banana tree.

I'm quite pleased with how the garden is going thus far this year.  I'm using some new (to me) organic soil amendments this year and I'm quite pleased with them.  Of course, I have the rabbit hay and chicken poop but I'm also using "Mega Fish" and "Mega Sea."  The Sea gets used on everything once a week and the Fish gets used every other week.  I had heard that it makes things grow bigger and stronger and I have to say that, thus far, that is exactly what is happening!  I'm a convert of these products most definitely!  It's funny, when you're mixing up the Mega Sea into your water (I use rain water) it actually smells like the sea when you're at the beach!  And the Mega Fish smells a bit like...well...fish, lol.  But I don't care because I really like what I see it doing for my garden.  I get these products from a Bulk Herb Store vendor.

I'm also fixing to start putting together my next order of chicks for meat.  I'm trying to time it such that the week that the ones I have outside need to be slaughtered, the ones I will have in the brooder will need to be moved outside.  I'm a bit nervous over the endevour as I already have 40 chickens outside and I'm fixing to order about 25 more, lol.  But if things go like they should, the last 25 will be in the brooder and won't come out until the first set of 25 meat chickens are no longer in the yard.  This is proving to be a very interesting summer, lol.

Doin's at our place

It seems that Mother Nature has enjoyed fretting me at every turn the past few weeks.  I have only managed to get about one half of the gardens in because if we have not been having storms we have been having tornadoes and if we haven't been having tornadoes we've been having hail and...you get the picture.  All has not been lost as in spite of having weather I have managed to get new berry bushes in, lettuce, spinach, leeks, basil, strawberries, and tomatoes in the ground.  Still a good bit to go, but tis nice to at least have that much done.  I also managed to get my 30 chicks out of the brooder and in a temporary enclosure outside.  Temporary because 23 of them are meat birds and I'm not building an entire coop for critters that will only be with a us a short time.  I built a lean-to against our out building.  I must say, it has worked quite well even through the storms and tornadic weather.

Simple and basic, yes.  But that is generally the way I do things and more often than not things work out to my favor.  It's not shown in the picture but the whole thing is covered in bird netting.  The lean to is covered in 4 layers of tarps.  The dog house, which was sitting around not being used, is a second choice for shelter and where we put their food when it rains. 

A third choice for shelter is my old composter.  I heartily dislike this thing as a composter.  Will never use it as one again.  But it works great with some hay and chickens in it.  This chicken run is not as much of a fortress as I have for my laying flock but in our area we have been blessed with a minimal amount of predators that are interested in chickens.  To date, we have had no issues at all.  We will be building a chicken tractor shortly for the 6 easter eggers and 1 dominique in this group and will pull them out to live in it.  Then the only thing left is to let the meat birds age and fatten up at bit.  As far as meat birds go, they are happy.  I did, after all, promise them only one bad day in their life.  Sounds a pretty good deal to me - we certainly don't get only one bad day!

So now, if I can only manage to get Mother Nature to stop dumping bucket of water atop my head and blowing twisters my way - I'll get the rest of the garden in!