Elderberry What You Need to Know! It is AMAZING

you know that there's a hundred and seventy-three known health-promoting substances in elderberry this is where we planted our midnight even when that size would make a nice plant because it was a protector of the gardens too [Music] hi and welcome back to the homestead today it's a little cloudy i thought we were going to have some sunshine but i'm going to bring a little sunshine to you guys today because we have a very very special guest here on our property and i've been looking forward to this for a long long time and i know you guys are going to have so much fun and learn so much your brains are going to be full of knowledge so without further ado i want to introduce to you a good friend of ours this is terry durham well hello thank you for having me out it's always a pleasure to be out here it's so beautiful this time of year and looks like you got a lot of stuff going on it is and terry is from river hills harvest and if you have not heard of him he is the elderberry ninja he knows everything about elderberry so we want everyone to know all about elderberry that's right that's right yeah we started growing elderberries about 20 years ago and we have worked with farmers all over the country to help them learn to grow the elderberries on farms and in their backyards and in their gardens so they can grow their own medicine because that's what elderberry is all about it's about being healthy and taking care of the earth because it's great for the earth as well as it is for people and animals well how are your elderberries doing well my elder berries are doing very well if you guys don't know this terry three years ago she helped me plant some elderberry cuttings around the chicken coop and what we wanted to do is come and show some of you guys because believe it or not we've had a lot of people that have watched that video wanted to know how your elderberries how your elderberries so i want to show you guys kind of what has happened and how they've kind of multiplied and and how easy they are to take care of so let's go on over and you guys can see what's going on at the chicken coop sounds great this is where we planted them isn't it yeah we planted i think i think we planted 12 plants uh just cutting some yeah she stuck those cuttings in yeah and then it went all the way around here i guess the first year that they grew you know they were about so high and everything was good they grew and then terry told me that he goes ahead and you want to cut them off really down really low so i want you guys to come over here and see how we did it see when you cut them all the way to the ground that way they all come up and they'll bloom kind of at the same time so you can pick them all at the same time and you know for us it kind of synchronizes the blooming and the harvest and it keeps them a little bit more manageable so don't be afraid american elderberry you can cut it to the ground especially here in the midwest it does really good and people like mow them over i mean you can do it and they still come back and they they just keep multiplying you'll never get these out of here they will be there forever and i have to tell you it was very very simple in february is when i cut them that's the time and then i saved some of my cuttings and then uh right now they're already starting to pop up and we're in april so and probably got some started up now around your fence rows and stuff where you've stuck them in they make great wind breaks so these are doing really well you can see how they're going to be nice big canes they'll even be bigger let's pull this back for just a second there's dozens and dozens of them coming up in here and these have only been coming up for like a couple weeks you can see how big they are already they'll they will jump by june they'll be way over your head up high this little netting i have here because the chickens will start pecking on the elderberries when they're young like this and they won't grow because over on this other side i'll show you what they did so if you do have chickens and you're growing your elderberries around see what they did they came and they just really chomped them all down they'll come right back out of it with a little protection though yup chickens love elderberry though it's so good for them you know what keeps them from getting the avian flu coccidiosis and staphylococcus that we know of and that was the main reason when terry came i thought i would love to have him around the coop doug and i have so much fun sitting around when you start the flowers are happening and then you start seeing the berries and they're jumping up trying to catch the berries and have a good time give them a little bit of shade they love to run under the elderberries if you know if you protect them in your chicken yard and get them going good and they'll be in there to help feed and give that medicine to the chickens because it's really good medicine for the chickens look they're even coming up underneath the bed i got them everywhere yeah they're shooting up they'll be coming up through the floor of the chicken house before you know it they're coming out over here over there they're getting plenty of fertility out there they are they do great in the midwest this is the belt through here illinois missouri iowa even in arkansas that's some of the very best elderberry growing regions you know missouri is the number one elderberry producer in the country now we have 50 of the nation's elderberries are growing right here in missouri wow go missouri i love it well you were telling me before that you can grow it almost in every state in the united states we work with people in every state to get it growing yeah even alaska and hawaii people are starting to grow them it'll grow all over this country everywhere all over the united states we import the united states imports 95 of the elderberries that we use here all from europe that's just crazy a lot of it from that's crazy why i mean yeah and then you'd think why do they have to import it when it's right here well mostly because the farmers hadn't taken it up to try to develop into a commercial crop so that we could do it efficiently but we've been working on that we have some great farmers now that are growing elderberries and our supply is increasing so remember always look for american elderberries that's what you really want because they are better than the european they don't have the precursors of cyanide and the berries the way the european does so you don't have to cook them as much you know the european berry you need to boil it for a while to get rid of those precursors of the cyanide so that it doesn't make them sick but the american you don't have to boil it like that so we can keep more of the nutrition in our products so we think it's a far superior and that's the sambucus right the niagara is what's from europe sambucus and that's what most of the what you'll buy at the store is all that you want to look for that american elderberry on the label if you really want american elephants because our american elderberries are glad that it's american elderberry because we know that it's better okay now terry i know a lot of people are wanting to start raising elderberry and you can find a lot of elderberry even where you live if you're going on the road just make sure it's not in a contaminated area like if they're spraying for row crops or anything like that but um you can start your own cuttings so what time of year would you suggest we like to see people do it early when there's good moisture in the soil we like to cut them in february or march and then plant them as soon as we can after that right so i let mine go there all winter they were big and tall and in february i cut them back and then i replanted a few all around the property but i do have some extra um [Music] and uh they've been sitting for a while and they'll still be good right they'll probably still be good they have a lot of life force in those elderberries you remember how to cut them up or you want me to show you again i remember but you can show because you're the expert all right all right so we're just going to take one of these elderberry you want to be able to identify it if you're going to try to get some wild stuff it's one of the most important things to look for is opposite buds that means there are two buds that come out right across from each other then there's a piece of stock and then there's two more buds and more stock or two more buds so it only takes two series of buds to make a propagation you want to put a pair of buds in the ground and appear above the ground all right we usually start at the end a little damaged there where looks like you just would break that one off when we get in there we go it's usually on the bottoms we'll cut them on a 45 degree angle and there's the two buds at the bottom and then you go up a section then we cut it off straight it a couple inches above the second set of buds so then you have a nice piece with cut on the bottom two buds and two butts here and then you're going to put it in the soil i'm going to put those bottom buds about three inches or so below the surface of the soil and it'll put a shoot out at the bottom so you can just keep going up your stock it's nice and green there on the edges so you know it's still alive doesn't have any damage in the pip if it's black or brown in that pith you don't really want to use that one it might have some virus in it so then you go straight across above that another 45 up another one we could probably make some little ones out of this even if we wanted to and even when that size would make a nice plant you could do this one too you might as well the more that you never have too many elderberries that's what i say so there we go there's opposite buds it's got those little bumps up there's two more bugs and now you have a handful of trees you can start a whole row in your garden from two little sticks that's right but just make sure if you're gonna put them someplace you know these are good maybe against a fence somewhere or if you want like a fence row for protection but if you put them like right in the middle of your garden they might overtake it so be aware they love good soil and they can just spread really fast in the garden so a hedgerow an edge a little fence someplace that's the best place right work the soil up a little bit where you want to plant them put some compost in there compost is really important to the elderberry because they they really utilize the microorganisms in the soil to get a lot of their nutrition they actually will give up 20 of the carbohydrates that they make to feed the soil microbes so they're great for the soil in that way so when you have that compost in there it's all inoculated with good stuff you put it in there they're going to take off and grow and have that symbiotic relationship with all the soil down there so let's go into the garden i'm going to put these in a pot right now because i can't decide where i want to put them right now so let's go do this and we'll show you how to plant them [Music] so that's a nice precise pot there to get started in but they do like to grow best out in the garden after you get them going though and so you put some compost in here so we know that it's going to be inoculated like we were just talking about which it's always important to have that in there for them good soil and then make sure it's nice and loose right so i think it's pretty good it looks pretty good there all right and then it's so simple watch stacy just stick them in remember you want to put that bottom set of buds these buds this is where it's going to root from it doesn't really root from the bottom of the stick it roots from these buds and they're going to come root there and it'll set up new little shoots there and it'll send up new leafy shoots there so pointing them down you know if they happen to have some little leaves or they're butted out very much just be careful when you're putting them in there so you don't knock the fresh little buds off these are still pretty dormant so they're they're doing pretty good think i should do five five's a good number or seven either way i think i can go for it all right i put all seven of them because you're gonna pull them out of there right so you can take these out now when they get started and then plant them maybe two to four feet apart four feet works really good for people in their gardens and so with seven of them four feet apart that's a nice 25 foot long row perfect yeah that's just enough for a couple people to get all the berries they need for all their health benefits just from that little bit of stuff right there yeah because i know i will tell you i know a lot of people who wanted to get into it and they were planting like 100 elderberries and it's like i have so many what am i going to do with them and so make medicine for your friends that's right well elderberry is always good to have on hand to give away to people it's a great friendship plant you're giving them some medicine something that everyone should have one in their back garden you know hippocrates was one of the very first people that loved elderberries he wrote an entire book on elderberries and he gave it the name the medicine chest of the people and so if you're gonna have anything growing in your garden for your health it should be an elderberry because you can use it for lots and lots of different things it's such a strong anti-inflammatory that it reduces inflammation really really well and people get inflamed from all kinds of stuff any kind of disease life gives you inflammation these days it seems like stress yeah so elderberry every day for everyone you know you look throughout history and how what an important plant it was in the gardens they would have that the big elder plant at the front of the garden because it was a protector of the gardens too some of the original things they used it for was for blow tubes do you have a blow tube for your stove that you can blow through for the fire because it has a pith in the middle and when they're green you can knock that pit that really easy and make a long hollow wow we have a bunch of these we'll have them at our conference for people to see and just so you can stand three feet away and direct that air right on that coal you can only imagine if you didn't have any ability to make fire and you collected fire and you wanted to keep it going if you had to collect it and you couldn't really make it if you didn't have matches to be able to breathe life into one little coal and turn it into a big fire that was magic and you'd carry that stick with you everywhere you went maybe take a little piece and stick it in the ground at the next camp i love it be ready to go well you know what i wanted to do with you today and i want to do with you guys today is we're going to go in the outside kitchen and we're going to show you three ways that you guys can use elderberry just very simple little recipe things that you can do and utilize them at your home or your homestead all right let's do it [Music] all right here's a tradition here with terry that we have to do before we show you these three great ways that you can use your elderberries that you're getting what are we gonna do terry we're gonna do a shot for your health you know we believe in people doing that daily little shot of elderberry juice or one of these other great products that you can make yourselves that gives you that boost get rid of those free radicals in your body it makes every day a good day to your health thank you two years [Music] good stuff really nice and sweet isn't it this is good we have purple teeth maybe a lot of people get those purple smiles when i do that you don't have one so it'll drop on the end of your nose all right so while i wanted to talk to you guys about with terry is there's lots of ways you know you can do your elderberries in the summer time you're going to have fresh elderberries but a lot of people might dry them or possibly if you need to order them from dairy or some place you know because you don't have access to them and you want the health benefits or how elderberry tastes you're going to probably want to get some dried elderberries so those are these are the new american dried elderberries you always want to look for american elderberries that's important and we were going to uh try to take these and we're going to show you three of the basic ways or four of the basic ways to preserve them so that you can use the berries all year long and it's really easy to dehydrate the elderberry because they're so small some people just do it in their greenhouse under a shade or just very low heat very low heat like 150 200 degrees at the most so we're going to what we're going to do today first we're going to moisten some of these elderberries eighty percent water we take out eighty percent of all that water to make these dried berries so we try to use twenty percent berries and then up to a hundred the eighty percent of the water and that should soak most of it up and then you'll have a nice little bowl here of the of the elderberries and they'll rehydrate and they'll be just like they were when they were fresh and so we're gonna we're gonna add some berries to this this warm water here [Applause] you can see they're already starting to turn that purple so that's really easy way to do it then you can eat those fresh like that let them hydrate up like that and they're delicious and full of stuff there's lots of ways to preserve elderberries you can preserve elder everything with just a few different methods you know with a vinegar or with alcohol or with uh syrup or sugar or something or honey and that's what we're gonna do today are you guys ready we're gonna do three different ways that you guys can preserve your elderberries and then also use them for lots of different uses all right all right let's get going so we have the three jars we're gonna put a little equal amount of these berries in each of the jars third okay and each one eighty percent of their water even then all you gotta do is just add some vinegar to one on one of them you're gonna do raw apple cider vinegar so you don't wanna have the pasteurized make sure it's raw so it has all of its active compounds and all you're going to do is pour that over the dried berries now here's a little note this is metallic that's vinegar so metal and vinegar don't go very good together so what i like to do yeah that vinegar it will eat a hole right through those lids in no time i learned from experience on that yeah haven't we all so i have my lid on tight how long do you think that should it should soak like that if you want it to be more flavorful you could go you know a couple weeks at least you know after a week or so it would be okay for me i like it to go a few weeks to really get the flavor and then what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna shake it really good i'm gonna stick it somewhere where i can see it where i'm shaking it every day or so and then after that time i'm going to strain it through once it's strained then you're going to use this beautiful liquid that has all the nutrients the vitamins and minerals from the elderberry you're going to use this on your salad dressings you can make a berry salad yeah you could if you had blueberries in your salad with some pecans and some goat cheese you could then easily turn that into a shrub if you wanted to add some sweetener to it afterwards you could use those berries like what have you used you can make those berries into chutney if you want yeah i think we did that one time on one of your shows one of our last videos yeah and it's amazing uh chutney with this is just fabulous so if you haven't tried a chutney go watch that video that terry and i did like for me i like to do raw apple cider vinegar um 20 minutes or so before i eat because it helps with your digestion you know you could do that you could just chew it kind of like just like we just did a shot of jelly because you're going to get the benefit health benefits of the apple cider vinegar and the elderberry so you can do that these are freeze-dried elderberries a little bit different now the freeze-dried elderberries we pick these in the morning we freeze them in the afternoon and then they go directly in from that frozen fruit into a freeze dryer and they are filled with nutrition but it takes a lot of energy to make them so but they're very stable they last for many years but we're going to make a quick shrub out of it since these are american elderberries we don't have to cook it and that keeps all those health benefits in there okay just remember american elderberry it's beautiful look how big and nice those are so good tastes so good too so we're going to try to put about a third of the jar full this is going to be some really strong stuff it might be a little heavy on elderberry but there's a lot of it so then it's just one part of the berry one part of the honey raw honey one part of the rye apple cider vinegar are you helping me measure terry you got your finger on it there you go that good probably a little bit more yeah and then finally it smells so sweet and good the honey all right now is that not beautiful look at the way that looks and you'll have to re-do the same thing with the paper on that metal lid for that yep same thing you're going to let it soak for about a you use about a week for you a week yeah you know where i learned to make these at from that book that hippocrates wrote he was making shrubs 2 000 years ago and using it for medicine and i saw that recipe i didn't even heard of shrubs before and we made it up and i let the first batch set on the counter for a year to see how it would do and it was still perfect a year later it was just as good as the day i made it because it doesn't take any refrigeration for these you don't have to keep them in the refrigerator at all and they'll last for many years well the cool thing about these is like even the 1700s and colonial times the sailors would be you know on the seas and they didn't have their distilled spirits with them and so this was kind of like an alternative it's sort of like it's like the original soda and they were making it with lemons and citrus fruits so they could get that extra vitamin c so they wouldn't get drunk with it then they were you know they were bringing a lot of rum around too so then they started mixing it with rum and it got all confused but it's really good for the health just mix that with some sparkling mineral water that's filled with nutrition too and it's great so forget soda no one should be buying soda anymore you can be doing good old shrub there's some good health benefits of shrub all right so what do we want to try to do next you want to try to do the tincture we can do the tanks right now these guys are still soaking we're still soaking it up okay all right so now we are going to make a very concentrated a tincture is a very concentrated extract so you can use an extract you can use roots you can use leaves you can use flowers and you can do berries so we're going to do an extract with the elderberry right so what you're going to need is a form of ethanol which is going to be vodka you want it to be about 80 or 80 proof at least so if you make your own liquor to do tinctures which is we make up from our fruit trees we make wine then we distill it to be able to make our tinctures here look at that beautiful color now it looks like a cocktail it's beautiful yeah it's an alcohol it's going to eat away my lid so i'm going to put my parchment over my tincture shake it up i'm gonna put this someplace in my house where i can see it i'm gonna shake it every day or so and i'm going to let this alcohol extract or tincture sit for about a month now i know a lot of people after you want to keep it in the sunshine probably no don't put any of this in the sunshine yeah you want to put it somewhere where it's away from dry it's really pretty when the sun's shining through it but it's best to keep your medicines in the dark yeah and then what you're going to do after a month or so a lot of people will strain it i don't strain mine i let mine just sit and soak in them do you how do you do i do that for a long time yeah i let mine sit for a while sometimes up to a year yes definitely i have a persimmon shrub going right now that it's been there for a year you know it keeps it stable because the alcohol will keep it stable so i'll i'll go ahead when this is finished you can either strain it you can put it in those little dropper bottles and what you're going to do is you can use like a squirt of the dropper bottle and you can put that in some water and you could drink it if you want some of the properties of the elderberry i'll probably do more drops under my tongue i kind of like that or that's a little strong that's a little too strong i like to mix it with honey you can make it with honey and take it well you feel those drops all right just a little note when if you guys are making some of this stuff you always say oh i remember but you'll forget or you'll forget what it is always label your lids so date is always good to put on there on your label besides what it is definitely [Music] all right we have two more left to go here this is going to be with honey so we're going to make an infused honey so you know it's fun to have honey that has different flavors so if you're going to use that if you put it in your tea or if you're going to put it over uh you know make it in your salad dressing as well with your vinegar you can do that so it's just another way to add a little flavor two super healthy things in one pot a little bit of both these are dried berries so for it to ferment we'll talk about that in a minute you need to have the moisture content in it this has been dehydrated so we won't have it so all i'm gonna do is leave this in here for a few days they're starting to get mixed in there yeah so i'm just infusing these berries and then you'll put that through a strainer and strain the berries out eventually you could just eat them with the berries in there they'll probably get nice and soft you could you could or if you do want to strain them you could do that just as long i would probably set this in some warm water so that it's thinner consistency so it's easier to strain and you can just put it through like a mesh strainer let's look at it and it'll turn it'll start to turn a little bit more pink it'll be like a pink kind of honey and who doesn't like pink honey [Music] so here's your bonus one we're gonna do so you're gonna get four we're going to show you how to do honey fermented elderberries like terry was saying before when we i did the infused one since it's been dried out it won't ferment because you need the moisture from the berries for it to ferment because generally honey has like um 18 of the moisture or so and then once you go above that that it'll start to ferment so we're gonna strain these these have been sitting so now they're all puffed up again he's gonna strain them through so we got the water out of it i'm missing them terry okay all right so here is my rehydrated elderberries and then all i'm gonna do is cover it up with my raw honey so now i need a lid [Music] i'm going to mix this up the honey with the rehydrated elderberries that's probably the hardest part when you're doing up like fermenting with these berries or what with the honey is just get the honey mixed in with the berries so the thing with this is very very important you need to flip it i keep it where i can see it away from the sun and you just constantly want to flip and it'll all go down then it'll go to the bottom that was magic then you're going to flip it again and you need to do this you know the first day or so you want to really get it all blended up really good now don't you have to burp it too oh yeah so what's going to happen is the honey is going to start to ferment and it will explode and start oozing all over the place if you don't put it on a tray and you don't watch it every day because every day you're going to need to just burp it a little bit just like that and you'll hear go all right so it's very important that you do that back and forth back and forth burping it every day and then after two weeks 10 days 14 days or so then you're going to have this wonderful honey fermented elderberry does it stop fermenting at a point where it stops burping where you can hear it is yeah usually after the first couple weeks it's going to be very very active and that as it goes on you're going to notice the honey is going to get very very liquidy because of the liquid from what you put in the berries so it's going to be much more watery yes and then i like to let it go if you wait a month or so you could go two months three months you know and then that way you can just take this no no it'll be fine [Music] so now we showed you guys quite a few different ways that you can preserve your elderberries and this is just some of the ways that you can store it gotta store that stuff somehow preserve it for the whole year these are all great ways that we just did to preserve it and you know in these ways preserve the all the antioxidants and phytonutrients and stuff that are in the elderberry really really well they're stable in there and elderberry is just filled with antioxidants you know i mean it has over 14 000 orac units is one of the ways that we measure the antioxidants in there something like a blueberry everybody loves it i love they're about you know 35 as many antioxidants as in the elderberry and the combination in the elderberry is the thing because there's lots of kinds of antioxidants and some have more important health benefits like the antiviral aspect of elderberry is incredibly strong it's one of the strongest antiviral foods that we can eat so we love it for that antiviral part of it and there's so much great great new research that's going on to prove all this historical stuff we've known for a long time how good it is but now the scientists are starting to prove it so it's easier to get out there and tell people how to how to use it and how good it is for you know that there's 173 known health promoting substances in elderberry it's filled with so many different ones the university just published a paper show on what they thought with 173 health promoting things in that pure elderberry juice foods like this are just wonderful that you guys can start growing yourself and if you can't grow them you can get them from us anytime or other growers around the country that are growing their elderberries and we brought a few other of our products you know we work with other growers all around this is some delicious elderberry honey that some friends of ours that are spinning up with our elderberry juice powder which is another product that we have you could buy this is freeze-dried elderberry juice little bits of it can turn things purple adds that little extra function to the food so it has more nutrition in it you can put it in almost anything and then we have the freeze-dried berries we talked about that we made one product with that and and this fun kit now these fun kits are really really nice because you can make three different products with just what's in there it has the dried berries it has these nice instructions on how to make a shrub or how to make a cordial which is a honey sweetened juice and then turning the rest of that into a chutney and chutneys are so delicious you can eat them with all kinds of stuff i love rice with different kinds of chutney in there that's mixed with it to eat adds that more function to it okay so we have lots of lots of different products on our website at riverhillsharvest.com you can go there and order stuff we still have a few cuttings left only for about a week though and then they'll be gone but then in september we'll be taking orders to send those out next winter and we have a lot of exciting stuff going on with our educational platforms that we're doing we have a new series of classes that we've put together that you can purchase online and learn all about how to grow elderberries how to do it and make some profit at it because if you're out in the country and on a farm you still got to have some money you still got to pay your taxes and want to buy something once in a while so you need that cash flow and elderberry is great because you can grow it and then you can add value to it and make so many different products that you can sell all around your neighborhood to your friends and your family and you're doing something great for them helping them be healthy and you're doing something great for the land the other thing that's coming on is our big conference we have every year this is our 20th year for doing our elderberry conference this year and it'll be in columbia and it's going to be fantastic this year columbia missouri 9th and 10th june 9th and 10th and the 11th is the day for the beginning workshop where we just teach people how to they're just starting to learn about elderberries but the university has a really large grant to do research on the health aspects of elderberry and all those researchers are going to be there and mixing it up with the farmers themselves so that they know what the farmers really need out of that research and we're really looking forward to it it's going to be exciting be three days long of just filled with great great information yeah you can find all that information on riverhills.com and as well you can find terry at our conference the homesteading life conference which is august 7th and 8th and he will be there talking all about elderberries and having a lot of his products there as well yeah we'll do some hands-on stuff and i am looking for it that's one of my favorite shows to do now anywhere that we go all over the country i just love that boat ride and the evening yeah hopefully you're gonna do that we are we are gonna be on the riverboat cruise right nothing like a whole boatload of really great people together having some community it's good stuff so i really appreciate you coming today well thank you so much i love coming up here have me back it a little bit later and we'll make something else maybe we'll work with flowers are great so yeah terry come back and we'll talk about elder flowers all right well thanks everybody all right we'll see you guys later on the next one bye [Music] i hope you guys enjoyed all that information about elderberry if you guys got any questions about elderberry terry has put together an online course that you guys could sign up for down below i'm going to leave a comment the first comment in this video is going to have the link on it you're going to sign up there and take an elderberry class learn how to grow elderberries and some of the producers that are really making uh you know some good money with elderberries a lot of times we're always just trying to bring you guys ways you can make money on your homestead and this is definitely one of them all right smash that thumbs up on the way out hit that like button and uh make sure you're subscribed we'll see you on the next video [Music] you

Channel: OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

Views: 384,704

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, cooking from scrtch, self sufficient, growing food, how to grow food

Id: Ksgc8p3pDTI

Length: 36min 17sec (2177 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022