Winter Wildcrafting + Recipe: White Pine Cough Syrup

Well, here's what it looked like on the day before Thanksgiving last week...got one special snowstorm all day and all night for my b'earthday!!

Spent as much time shoveling snow off the trees as off the ground...Lost some precious grandma cedars and pines, more on that to follow. Now, I'm gathering rose hips and hawthorn berries for medicines...as they are both so delicious after the "frost".

As you can see in the photos, I'm still putting away the last of the autumn harvest including late blooming calendula (with Victoria's help) even as the rose hips are being gathered daily to be made into glycerites to add to pine syrup and also to dry for tea.

I lost a huge limb of my beautiful white pine tree out front and so will be making cough syrup for days.

I use 2 cups of well cut up fresh needles and tiny twigs or branch peelings per 1/2 gallon...cover with boiling water...cap, let sit a minimum of 8 hours...12-24 or so is even better...

then, squeeze out needles...steam off half the liquid on the lowest flame, uncovered (without boiling the infusion) or atop a wood stove as shown in the last picture ...when you have it down by half, take off the flame and add your honey (any type) to taste...and spirit (any type, to taste)...I usually add about 1 tablespoon honey per cup and 1 ounce spirit per cup...

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