ELDERBERRY ~ POWERFUL MEDICINAL PLANT!?!?

here we go [Music] you're watching off-grid with Doug and Stacey I also serve on the Chicago Police Department on the homestead home what's up homestead homies it's off-grid with Douglas Stacy I'm Doug I'm 18 and today is field trip Friday we're going to try to bring you guys a new show on Fridays now we're not saying it's going to be every Friday but we're going to try to take these field trips kind of around our state and just kind of share with you some of the neat things going on in Missouri and also I think some of them might give you an idea of making money on the homestead yeah I mean how many people love to go on field trips when you're a kid so Doug and I thought it would be something fun for us to kind of get out and then we were looking and there's so many totally awesome places just in our vicinity and even like on the borders of like Illinois where we're going to go that you guys will just love and get so many little tidbits I always say if you can get a nugget from something I mean every day it's just so worth it so I'm so excited we've been kind of planning this and I think you guys are going to love it so let's go to today's first field trip Friday and we're not going to tell you where it is until we get there so let's jump in the truck and head on down the road I can't wait [Music] [Applause] [Music] now we've heard it said civil comment that we were traveling with them but they said they'd never seen the middle of the highway the medium that's grass mowed it failed so what we do in Missouri is a lot of places that the local farmers come out and they actually go and bail and make big round bales out of the sinner islands necklace download a lot of lawn maintenance on at the state has paid one I thought it was really cool I mean we what we came from the city in so it came up there and you can see it all you know the barbers would do it and I was totally shocked but it's a great way to take care of your grandpa as a pony on public taxes so let's keep on going on this bit we're almost there we're have the big reveal on where we're going and what we're doing [Music] almost our destination going deep into the woods for this one I'm almost there so what do you guys just a little bit [Music] all right after a long drive over the river and through the woods over the ever hails hardness here we go alright guys so we're in the number one elderberry place in North America and maybe even yeah maybe even the world they do the juices they grow the elderberries they pick them and we're going to sit down today with the owner Terry and we're going to show you guys this operation and hopefully this sparks a little interest in you guys maybe you could grow your elderberries get with him he brings them in from all around this local area if you're around here in Missouri and if not at least mint you might get some education about it and maybe decide to grow some just for your little patch of home on the homestead so we're going to go find him right now at his place here oh are you guys doing all right oh you good to see ya good to see ya a long ways down here and you found me in the plucky brush that's right and doctor we actually saw him - when we were in Portland at the Albany Oregon Mother Earth News Fair so that's when we set all this up to come out and check out his operations so we're going to go down maybe buy the house grab a picnic table get you guys introduced to them and everything and then maybe later on in this video we're going to show you the fields of elderberries pick in the process and all stuff that's related to it so here we go and obviously there's a reason for the color of this table we like purple so we're going to get you guys a little bit caught up to his story I guess you moved out into this area in like the 70s it's 1979 we bought this farm and engineer and this piece of ground and started building the homesteads slowly working step by step living without anything to start with and slowly you've got water outhouses you're like it way up to so many materials to build a big house and then one thing we want you guys to know about it too is like he was one of the first people in the whole state of Missouri in Arkansas to get together like this organic coalition right we worked in the 80s to try to organize the farmers because have any markets and so to grow our hotels vegetables and some organically the only thing we could really do was to try to team up and build enough so we could sell them to the bigger markets and it works good we used to you know educated people we provide the financing form to get started and then we had the marketing opportunity and we really thought that was the way to approach to try to develop those things we had no support from anybody else yeah that's awesome so basically he just created community around something that they believed in with the organic food and then they got that out to the people and they all stuck together and actually this place where he actually lives is even like a bunch of them got together back in the 80s and bought the place as like a land agree yeah land group I will say calm you but not you know it looks like a land group a bunch of friends getting together and then they all keep in touch with each other and you know they've grown with each other and older with each other and you know that's kind of a neat thing it's like you know the true sense of community so cool so tell them a little bit about your operation what you have going on well today we're in the middle of harvest elderberry harvest August is the biggest month for us here in Missouri to harvest them they all start coming in so we are the berries are just starting we're going to get to go out to the field here in a little while and you'll see where we're harvesting the berries then we bring them in from the field and we have a processing facility here where we'll take the berries get them sanitized and deist in and put them into buckets and get them ready for the freezer so then we can make them into juice yeah so he's actually are the world's largest no I'm not sure not America produces the most juice that you choose your Hughes American so if somebody isn't sure like what does elderberries are what's the benefits could you maybe give them something brief on that well other berries have been used for medicine for thousands of years you know Hippocrates was the first person to really get excited about elderberry so he wrote an entire book on it he believed he could heal any part of your body with a part of the elderberry and he used every part of the elderberry that barca cambium leaves the roots he decocted it with different kinds of wines and stuff to make his different medicines and hydrosol you made from it all different kinds of stuff and he can heal any part of your body with a part of the elderberry probably the best reason that it worked for so many different things is because it's one of the strongest anti-inflammatories oh and when you reduce inflammation that's a read-along no breathing yep and even life and stress lead to inflammation right that's right I'd like people to do that daily dose of elderberry juice 1 tablespoon it's great for your immunity you won't give any viruses it protects you from those helps with your blood sugar it's really good if you a story all the way down to some of the things that they're working with prostate cancer which they've cured in mice at the university now and all primers which is real exciting for people that they're working with the Alzheimer's where they've reversed cognitive degeneration and people using our elderberry juice just by taking a pure food such a nutrient-dense thing that it pumps them up and help them man I'll tell you that it's amazing is the more you guys are getting educated and hopefully the more we bring these type of videos to you guys who it is medicine food is medicine not medicine is not your food so and I got to tell you I tell you guys often when we first moved out the OP grid and all that I love elderberries and I make lots of things as well so we made a tincture didn't we yeah I've done videos I do yeah different things with it right that was one of my main things that I wanted to do when we moved out there was like half of my list the first thing that I got was six years ago yeah we have two little brand new plants we just planted this year yeah I'm start selling plants here in a couple months eyes and cuttings to people all over the right are the new selections yeah we're looking forward to that but that was I think I wanted the first time I want to move it I wanted to plant a whole bunch of the good stuff the Evans we have to do our fed so we had to do this validated I never got elderberry did so it's like oh it's obvious spotted by heart right now American oddly enough when we first started this journey you know we were just like probably you guys we were watching a lot of YouTube videos and I don't know what these things are flying by what are they learning systems right yeah none of the source yeah do that so actually I saw some of Harry's videos six seven years ago when we were researching like what we were going to do is stuff and it was really neat they were out in the fields and you know he actually invented like a small-scale harvesting machine right sea-skimming nice dimming machine right so I mean he's done all this out of necessity because he loves the elderberries and he wanted to make sure that you know de-stemming of them was an important thing and we're going to go over some of that stuff a little bit here in the video but it's just neat now that we're sitting across from you and you know we've reached out and now we're here at your place so we always find that very interesting - so how many gallons I guess are how do you put it into like weights and measures well we we pack about 1,500 pounds on a pallet in buckets and that's like a unit force and then we'll probably do about 40 or 50 pallets this year and that'll make quite a bit of juice no matter whether - elderberry life they love Missouri knows art they love the mild climate we have here just a bit too cold you're a long growing season well the very really loves is water and we have some of the best spring water for growing elderberries anywhere around if you give them good food and good water they're going to grow nice and tall and be healthy just like us just like that just like raising teenagers anything have you a lots of food lots of water and walking one time we grow our elderberries in full Sun you're right a lot of times people think that they reach in the shades right but they don't make as much fruit right that only makes sense they'll have as much energy they'll bloom nice they can balloon full in the shade so if you just collecting the flower and you can have stuff there's a little bit more shade but Sun makes those sugars there like that freeze oh I'm a fan so the yeah it's like the Wild Kingdom out here so be a the you you have like your own patch I guess that you grow and stuff and then you teach other farmers to how to grow all the berries and how to make it a business for their homestead or house right well we see you know this is we see this is a unique opportunity for farmers we rarely get a new crops that we can grow elderberries almost 95% of the elderberry products and things that are usually United States are imported from Europe and it'll grow in every state in the United States I've worked with people everywhere and it will grow any state from the southern tip of Texas where it's so dry all right give it some water it can take the heat and it'll make fruits and everybody can have those growing in the garden in a fence row and make your own medicine from it yes Ike to never understand when I was getting a tour ad you know get it or order it from Croatia or whatever I'm like why do we why are we bringing that stuff because the farmers here didn't embrace it as a crop Ryan used to be so much of it along the railroad tracks and along the ditches but when they start spraying herbicides right ry penida and so there's still a lot of elderberry that's not as much as there used to be yeah and people used to get out and pick them a little more wild fruits in it and I think some of that knowledge is lost probably because they don't want you to know how medicinal they did and you know especially with this is Alzheimer's work at the University you know the pharmacies pharmaceutical companies like 30 new Alzheimer's medicine variety hit the market right and they very vested on as elderberry juices - always been theirs right but you can't patent now the very useful I happened it but you can grow it in your own yeah that's what I call it simple to make it into a stabilized product right hey guys don't forget we're going to leave the link down below to his website he has the juices they're probably their story just like things is they want to try to hiding their garden right super simple like in this here are the cuttings just stick them in the ground or unrooted and they grow like a willow and you ship those all over the u.s. we ship them all candidates and the Canada anywhere basically they won't you know here we've sent them to Europe and right a little more trouble we got to get a Fido certificate right on your stuff but we try to send them out and actually if they're from Canada I have friends in Canada that can just ship right over and make sure in Canada that are much growers because we buy a lot of cuttings from our growers we try to buy as much from the people to grow on the berries and a little bit of cutting supplement that cool adds more values yeah more things to sell from the elderberry right I mean you guys are always asking how to make money on your homestead this is just another way now if you're local in this area you also work with other elderberry farmers and they bring their elderberries to you and you guys work that out right right yeah and if you want to try to grow them and make money because they're a profitable crop right row you know our wine grower wine grape growers that would do elderberries today make twice as much profit going elderberries as they do the very best wines or elderberry wine well for us to sell to make other products right right and we do sell to wineries rights more and more elderberry wine being named it stopped there so I think right now we're going to head over to the fields that I think we have some people out picking right now we're going to show you guys that Holden is out there and we'll come back here and we'll get the processing started and you get to see the whole process of how we pick those berries from the field and clean washed in the bucket and ready for the freezer field trip Friday here we go all right [Music] [Music] so this is one of our production fields this field here has about nine acres of elderberries there's three selections we're standing in front of the old heirloom Adams - it was released in about 1928 it's still one of our favourites to grow it grows all over the country really well you just take those cuttings and stick them in very vigorous it's more of an indeterminant type it'll grow and set fruit and then grow some more and bloom again and such some more fruit you have to pick it over a longer period of time now if we move down through the field the second block in here is to Bob Gordon's and that's one of the brand new releases from the elderberry Improvement Program that the University started back in 1997 they released it about mid 2000 around 2006 or something like that we like it and it's a little up almost the opposite of the atom's - it's a very determinant type so it comes up it produces most of its fruit it's all right at the same time so we don't have to pick it nearly as many times so when you say the University so these are more hybrids they're not a GMO or hybrids with all these are selected from the wild okay we're superior plan okay and we put those in trials there were quite a few of them and then the very best chain and all the trials got to be replicated trials to see how well they would do very good we know that these varieties produce good berries even clumps that ripen all at the same time a gold medalist yes but the best ones are still out there on your farm we have not found the best ones these are just some of the ones that got selected in the beginning that I've done well this one comes from the Osage River around a negative american campsite you could probably move the elderberry around with them when they changed lamps because it was so easy they give us credit peace off stick it in the ground the next place they go after a few years they would have another other place you can pick the elder goes so from cuttings to what we're looking at right here what kind of a time frame is it well usually by about year three you can get them looking like this this field of about six this is 6 year up-and-comer school it had never had any water until last year and then now it has an irrigation so it's doing a lot better than it was the beginning to get some dry years there for soybean so even though they're dry years they still grow pretty good and dryer row and it will produce some right but you know when we're trying to maximize our production to make money at it we're going to have some profit out of this to do it right so you know when you're farming and you want to be successful you got to try to mitigate every little risk you can and by having irrigation you can mitigate a big part of your risk so it's important to have that irrigation on there you have a more consistent crop and it comes in August when there's not a lot of water sometimes and they can dry up really easy if you don't have that ability to put that [Music] [Music] [Applause] so how do you know which berries to pick well you really want to look for them to get pretty black so you know you see a lot of these ones are a little more ripe up here so sometimes we'll just take them off like this just part of it gets done and sometimes you'll get a full head that's right usually the stems start to turn a little red that's not always the case as there is fair ripening quickly and so we'll hit this a couple of times a week each row you can really you know a lot of them aren't on yet but it will be this is some nice elderberries in here it is not the time but I was going to talk a little bit about how to propagate the other days because everybody has elderberries drilling the farm in the Midwest in the creek or in the fence row and if you watch and you look for the very best ones once you get big heads that are all purple and then those are ones you might want to take back and put in your own Pinto and put in your own garden it's really easy to move the elderberry when it's dormant it's best to you do them after they have all the leaves are gone and you can see that elderberry is opposite leaved it has two leaves that come out of coughs from each other section of stem there and two more so when we want to make an elderberry propagation to grow we want to these two bugs to be above ground and two of the buds to be the low ground so we'll cut a 45 degree angle on the bottom of that and cut it across on the top and you can just take that piece of stick and just stick it in a pot put it in some water or plant it right into the field where you want to grow it and take care of it give it its water and it will grow be sure to give it some compost because elderberries love you're trying to select though for one for your garden you want to try to select the one very best one and then make number of propagations out of it so that you have a consistent row going and they'll produce their fruit in a similar time frame and then you can you can utilize it easier than have to pick it a lot of times with a little bit one of the ways that we help do that is by cutting the elderberries all the way to the ground every year we totally focus them down to the ground these are all one-year-old shoots coming up when we do that that synchronizes the blooming and then that synchronizes the fruiting so that we have that consistent harvest and it's much easier to get out of the field with a couple times [Music] [Music] you [Music] well now we're back in the little processing shed we have here where we bring all the LG bearings from the field and farmers deliver their elderberries to us here and we're going to start to process them I'm going to take the berries we're going to put them into this shaking machine of shakes and separates the stems from the berries berries are going to fall down into this colander down here and we'll catch them and they will move over here to our triples wash system like sanitized water and then two rinses will drain them and we're going to pour them into the 20 into the pails 25 pounds into the four gallon buckets seal them all up put the number on there because we have to know where it came from watt farmer what day we packed it we all put our code number on there and then they're ready for the freezer will aggregate them and get them stored so we can make that good juice all year long all right should you start move around to solve and we're moving from there over to the sink and they have bigger thing so there's merge right now and the ones that are growing close to the top so that would send different things that we're going to slip that out so the ones that aren't ready for harvest are going to float yeah and then occasionally they have really large stem so we'll look for that too all the parts of an elderberry have some precursor cyanide and it except with juice and the flower so we like to conjugate on the juice but we have to get all the green ones out and there are still some that get mixed up in our berries to make sure we get those goes out I'll leave we don't tell anyone to eat the elderberry because it's the seed and the seed does contain some of that precursor of the cyanide in there though I eat them I know people that do if you eat something to make just eat a couple of it makes you nauseous don't even some people are very sensitive but most people are not anymore that's in Annapolis we have a serious problem so the stems the leaves the bark they all have the sign on them so don't chew on your elderberry sticks don't make little teething rings out of them they used to make teething rings out of them for kids make your Mountain um well no we don't want to do that you so amusing for lots of different things try to keep the juice a little bit but not very much never over like 160 70 degrees and I don't help get rid of any sign either happens to be in there all right [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I saw you put a date on there what that for the bass number so we start with the year 7 and then the Julian calendar number with day that's all when you put the water inside you know like rinsing them off or whatever you were looking at a gage what's that yes Southwark scale so we weigh down to twenty four point five thousand and two thousand four hello so you guys ready for your tasting of elderberry product yeah this is the pure elderberry juice and it's not made from a concentrate from the very pure berries fresh squeezed buggy process Maui two unique thousand berries to make one bottle like this mm and filled with all that good nutrition all the antioxidants it wasn't doing with the high heat the answer is Asian right keeping all the good lemon there so we you know just that one little tablespoon like that now we think dry wine when you first taste appear elderberry juice and not apple juice it's filled with those big one there for you Phil I got to have money too so would you just say maybe a shot of this a day to keep the diner level spoon a day as all it takes if you're having health problems its active in your system for about eight or nine hours and so you can take it two or three times if I'm just having a cold or somebody's getting a cold you want to give it to them three times a day three times a day morning you're like cleans everything out and you know if you're just doing it proactively to stay healthy that one little shot in the morning I'll clean their free radicals out of your body reduce your information give you all that stuff it's ready for the day and I'll say nothing tastes better than honey an elderberry I love honey an outfit I love pure elderberry yeah oh yeah anything I'm on his right mind Cheers the best in the world right there that other elderberry juice you'll know how good that is right right this is the second thing that we make this is the elderberry cordial this is elderberry juice that's sweetened with honey put cloves and cinnamon in there that way it's great if you have a sore throat that cloves and cinnamon will kill any kind of pain that's in your larynx the elderberry juice reduces the inflammation and then that honey get to the garlic row days in there where it needs to be and maybe if you're giving it to the kid I might have just that little sweetness in there too oh you know I think I started out by making this was like cough syrup I made for my kids and write it all right kind of like elderberry pie very sweet right but you know one of my favorite things to do with this is put it in some pots heat right put it in some hot tea and also you have that Allah berry jeez you've got all like honey sweetens it the cinnamon and cloves it's delicious you can give that one a try to the difference too and if you want to try to get away from sodas confuse the cordial you can mix it with sparkling water it's a delicious little drink that you can mix with that you can put a little bit of vinegar in there then it's like one of these shrubs the shrubs make the very best soda drinks that's the elderberry cordial kind of a European recipe more or less that we adapted that was tasty well that's the cordial and it's a little sweet for some people but really kids will drink that right down and you mix it with other beverage it's really really good now this is the the other beverage we make for drinking which is our elderberry lemonade now this is made with cane sugar so we have a honey product and nothing product and then a sugar sweet up so like with this lemonade would you drink a bottle of that we're going to drink a bottle of this unlike the others where you're just going to take a little bit you can mix this with some water or you can do lot of different things with this oh that's really good ooh sweet I like a little tart and soon will I know I don't like clubbing that one bottle then has the 1 tablespoon of elderberry juice in it if you have need for your dose for the whole girl I say yeah taking we've tried other ones we've made elderberry peach juice and celebrate pear and few different things but illuminated what we've been sticking with you like to taste the jelly my grandma's recipe that sugar in it yeah I don't wait for sugar but we don't have too much my grandma's recipe is yes we'll put it on when he's look active here for you that farmer owned and farmer drove everybody involves a farmer marketers to people produce to berries to the people shoot in the video and that's all they're doing the same thing here we've got dogs in their age that's Ryan's good that's what builds community it is good at all the varied resource on yeah yeah it's so good for everything so that right there you just spread it on your toe somebody on your toes worry about amount you have it yeah a little bit yeah thought your things you can do with jelly yeah and make it into cell address into something like sandwiches here we go there jelly will attach you body or something like that so not again shows you how versatile the elderberry is too because you have all these different things that can set the elderberry provides for you so and they're in it's so good it's so good for you and there's a hell with flowers we've hardly even talked about varieties you know it's another whole thing that people use from the elderberry not what would they use a fork well they're simple to take off and to dry em to make them fatigued oh there you go simple really really good teas I like to make this alfalfa elderflower you put 80% alfalfa leaf got some really nice ones clean it really good twenty percent elderflower it's delicious delicious tea you're not you know hydrating the flowers let them air dry right species right on you can freeze them first if you're going to in further processing right we'd like to make an elderflower syrup out of it that you can make other things out of here you can turn that into wine or lemonade or number of different thing too much information for you guys all right I'm going up stuff haha it is it's good to learn all this stuff alright so we'll allow let's go over to the front porch there we'll wrap up this video oh my goodness I cannot believe it I didn't turn the volume on on that last clip as you guys can see so I don't know I can't even remember we talked about so much stuff I can't even remember what we sat in that thing basically though Terry and his company I'm going to leave the links down below and in the description box and I'll even pin a comment on this video they sell more elderberry juice than anybody in North America in the world and he is the it's the purest algebra juice you can get no additives no nothing so if you guys are interested in that kind of stuff you might want to hit his link check it out and he was kind enough to give us two bottles that we're going to give away in this video so all you have to say is I love elderberries and leave that down in the comment and we're going to leave this open till the end of the month and then we're going to pick a winner and we're going to send the two different people out one bottle of the elderberry juice so make sure you leave your comment down below don't forget to check us out on Facebook Instagram and Twitter and I've been using elderberry juice in my konbu shot they're not really good and we make the tinctures actually we have a video right here making tinctures and juice and all that stuff so make sure you check all that stuff out check out his link in case you guys are interested lots of cool stuff there stay tuned for some videos with Stacy making some fermenting things lots of fermenting things right some shrub all right we got some cool stuff video coming up I'm going yeah we got fermenting on our mind we're pulling all this stuff out of the garden fermenting yeah you pull in the ferments out doing some more mason top-fermenting so that's it make sure you leave your comments down below hopefully you guys like field trip Friday we're going to try to do these for you guys we're not sure how it's going to work out but we're going to try to keep them going and that's it anything else that's it but I'm looking forward to field trip Friday yeah and find ones plan yeah we love it so thanks for watching and we'll see you guys tomorrow okay hey guys thanks for watching our video you might want to check out these videos and if you want to become a homestead homey click the sure boss below we will be tomorrow

Channel: OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

Views: 241,493

Rating: 4.9651117 out of 5

Keywords: Off Grid with Doug and Stacy, Doug and Stacy, Doug, Stacy, Off Grid, off the grid, off the grid living, off the grid homes, off grid living, off grid cabin, off grid with Doug and Stacy, off grid solar power system, off grid house, off grid homestead, off grid solar, homestead, homesteading, homesteading for beginners, homesteading off the grid, natural food recipes, holistic health, holistic living, elderberry, healthy drink, elderberry jelly, wranglerstar, MEDICINAL PLANT

Id: nOZgjBdH2Vo

Length: 37min 32sec (2252 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 18 2017