Elder Berry Syrup

I always have a jar of Elderberry Tincture (Elderberries in Vodka or Vinegar (or both)) in my pantry. As soon as someone in the family gets the sniffles or a sore throat, I have the best remedy ready in seconds.
I made a very sweet syrup (non-alcoholic, of course!) for our older son (he brought a sore throat home from school) and a not so sweet version for a friend. Since it's always prepared with lots of LOVE, it'll help even better ;)

Recipe:
For a non-alcoholic syrup I
drain everything (so the liquid is without berries = a tincture)
add sugar or honey or agave nectar
heat the drained tincture to a rolling boil
let cool
serve (1 to 2 tsp 2 to 4 times a day; at the beginning more frequently, then just twice a day is enough)
until symptoms improve and/or are gone.

I hope this helps!

Snow on Herbs

I think plants are also beautiful in winter...

Echinacea, snow covered

Anise Hyssop, covered by the first snow of the season

Nuts, anyone?!

Yesterday I gathered some more Hickory nuts. It was rather warm ouside (55F) and with rain in the forecast, I needed to collect what I could before everything's to wet... Well, of course I left soem for the squirrels :)
One of the trees we have grows close to the road - that's the only one I use for my harvest. Everything else for the wildlife.

I love using them in salad (romain, spinach, cranberries, apples/pears, avocado, lemon juice and nuts) Yum!

Another treasury with one of my Tisanes!

How exciting, again I received an email letting me know that one of my tisanes is included in a treasury on ETSY :)

Here the link:
http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4cf3e2f0ee366d91816afb64/the-tree-huggers-holiday-gift-guide?ref=pr_treasury

 

And here some pictures of the

MINTY MEDLEY

Elderberry clean up

Yesterday was such an awesome day. Perfect to go outside an clean up whatever is left to do in the garden and yard. The elderberry bushes needed some help. They're totally tangled with vines. I startet cutting/digging the vines where I could get to them. Then I tried to get as much as possibe of those vines off the Elderberry plants. What a mess! Little H helped pulling - he's sooo strong! :)
I'm so glad that Elderberry is growing on our property. It's so simple to prepare and use and yet amazingly effective when fighting off colds. I always have berries and flowers (dried) in stock.

My first sale on Etsy!

I'm so excited! I sold my first herbal blend on Etsy!!! :) After just one week the Fruity Chamomile Tea found a new home. I'm thankful for Etsy, I really have to say. It's a really great way to start selling online. Easy to set up a store and apparently easy to be found.

Just in case you like to have a look, here the link to my store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/treehouseherbs

And to my delight one of my teas was listed in a treasury as well:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4ce88d052dba6d9121d400c9/hight-tea-at-raffles-a-non-team-treasury

Happy Thanksgiving to all

This year we had dinner at our friends house. We had a great time and the food was delicious! I brought Red Cabbage, with apples and cloves - our traditional holiday vergetable. (The next two cabbages are waiting to be prepared tomorrow - yumm :) I have to find out who brought the sweet poatoes - forgot to ask. They were outstanding, I need the recipe.
I hadn't baked 'Apfelstrudel' in a long time. It was good. I added cranberrieds to the filling - never tried it before but it turned out very tasty. I should have taken a picture, it looked very festive.

Yesterday was time for our Minty favorite...

...for the colder days: Peppermint, Oatstraw, Lemon Balm and some Elderberries. That's the mix even our boys drink up and request more of. Originally our older sons favorite was Peppermint tea. Over time I added some of the other mentioned herbs to give it even more benefits.

Well, it seems to work. We haven't had a cold in a long time. Except for our little guy. He refuses to drink up his Elderberry juice/tea/syrup, once he gets the sniffles... but more about that an other time. I need to go - lunch needs to be prepared :)

TreeHouse Herbs - The Story

Finally my first post on this blog to keep the story regarding "TreeHouse Herbs" documented (so I hope :))

For years I'm using herbs (as tea and remedies) from our garden for our family and friends, but I'd never thought that this might lead to open a business. Well, here we are: TreeHouse Herbs was born in October 2010.

How everything started:
I was giving a friend who was stressed out a little tin of my 'Stress Relief' herbal blend and was asked if I sold this somewhere. Just a few weeks before another friend had asked the same. I thought if someone thinks the blends could be bought somewhere, maybe they really could...

I asked the store owner of our Green Grocery store in town, if she would be interested in selling some of my herbal blends, and she was!!! Well, then it was just a matter of trying some samples and getting the first order ready.
And since this a little bigger than I even thought possible, I had to go officially into business.

We decided about the name (after we figured it wasn't so easy to find names that still have an available URL!!!) and I registered the business name with the County Recorder last week.
Now only a few things need to be settled (PO Box, business account etc) and then I just hope that some more orders will arrive :)

Of course it will not be THAT easy, but I'm working on getting an online store going and I plan to open a store on ETSY.
Good luck to us :) and thanks for reading.