nettle time

nettles rock! i'm drinking nettle tea right now...

so, it's nettle harvest time and i was blessed enough to get an invite with loki and ronan to go out to cougar mountain to a friend's place (thank you, anna!) to pick our fill. i couldn't find my gloves and loki forgot hers, so we were both bare fingering it and i have the stings to prove it. i'm usually pretty good at touching nettles without getting stung (grasp around the stem firmly, paying attention, and pinch!), but in a mass-collection scenario, you're bound to get stung because you're working fast and it's easy to brush your hand against the nettles (it's the light brushes that really get ya). i'm fine today (we went on friday), but for the last two days i have had the most incessant itch on my hands. last night, in desperation, i slathered my hands with my homemade deodorant, having noticed earlier in the day when i applied it that it seemed to soothe the sting a bit. it didn't really work. but it's worth a couple days itching and tingling for the stock of fresh, local nettles.

i have my nettles hanging from a string of yarn in the living room, loosely stuffed into little paper bags (you can dry herbs in big paper bags, as well, but i didn't have any on hand, now that i make my own shopping bags)...which i find to be the best drying method--they don't get dusty or exposed to light, and dry pretty fast (although i just remembered that i forgot to leave the bags open for a night to let the bugs out...i was on my second glass of wine when i was processing the nettles). another method that works well is those flat boxes like you get when you buy plants or that are under soda six packs and canned tuna...you can layer herbs into those and stack them perpendicular to each other and leave in a cool, dry, dim location for a couple of weeks (i don't have any locations like that in my house, but i'm just lettin' ya know). this method works for nettles because in this case we harvested just the tops, if you harvest the stocks, just bundle them up in small groups and hang to dry for a couple of weeks.

the main uses of nettles, in my opinion, are nutritional--for the record there are medicinal, foody (rennet for cheese), and fiber uses as well--it makes an awesome tonic being high in several vitamins and minerals, including iron, vitamins A and D, ascorbic acid, choline, potassium, phosphorus, and calcium. to name a few. also, it's super high in chlorophyll--a much better "green food" than those crazy pond scum varieties (like spirulina). so i mainly use it in my tonic infusions (infusions being extra steeped teas, basically) mixed with some oatstraw and mint or lemon balm for flavor (my goal this year is to start drinking tonic infusions every day again)...and i powder it up and add it to my breads, soups, stews, chili, casseroles, etc. when it's fresh and in season (in this area that is NOW) it's also a straight-up food, steamed in a bit of water for ten minutes or so it's an awesome side dish green. when i got home from harvesting, hazel was literally running around the house screaming "steamed nettles! steamed nettles!". and the pot liquor (the water left over from steaming it) is a quick shot of nutrition if you can drink it down, or add to soup, or (this is what i did) used as a hair rinse, or dump it on a plant (i've got a pretty good windowsill herb garden going at the moment).

hazel discovered a patch of nettles (the hard way!) over near where the girls have built their fort and yesterday loki went and harvested those. she was nice enough to give me a bag of them (yay!) and now those are drying on the string as well. i noticed a big patch of nettles in the east regional park last year, so i'm going over there today to see if i can score some just to eat on for a few days. there are also tons of gorgeous nettles growing in north regional park, but they are right next to the golf course, so i won't eat them, though they are really tempting and i think we did harvest some last year as far as we could get from the golf course, just for a meal though, not extended eating or medicine making. last year around this time is when the hashimoto's (as of yet undiscovered) was really knocking me down and i think i was just too damn tired to go harvest any for the year (i got my supply from frontier). so the pig pills, gym going, and extra vitamins must be working because right now i cannot imagine allowing mere tiredness to stop me from going nettle picking.

thanks again to loki, ronan, and anna for letting me tag along and for the extra bag of nettles.

today i am grateful for:
1) you guessed it: nettles
2) michael moore--the herbalist, not the filmmaker (though i'm grateful to him as well)...i heard michael moore died recently and i send my regards to the big herb garden in the sky. (his herb books/field guides are THE best)
3) wonderful friends
4) generosity
5) spring

update:it occurred to me a week or so ago, that perhaps the nettles we were picking at cougar mountain were the dwarf variety...which if memory serves is an annual, rather than the standard urtica dioica perennial variety--dwarf nettles are known for their wollap-packing sting and anna asked us to leave a plant or two in each five foot radius to re-seed...the lightbulb illuminates in my brain!