every HOMESTEADER should GROW this berry! Elderberry

well hello and welcome back to the log cabin today as you can see it's a beautiful day I don't even have my coat on we get seven inches of snow and now it's almost gone so I thought it would be a perfect day to cut my elderberries and I even have a special visitor to come help me today I even have a cabin here now looks like my greenhouse is turned into my little junk drawer don't look at this right now but we have to work on that a little bit later now I'm gonna get my lapper and get to work [Music] Terry Durham from River Hills harvest and he has the largest algebra juice producers in America do you believe that I believe it we make it every day you are one of those original hippies right haha well we've been homesteading since the 70s so we're still at it it's our 43rd year well that's awesome cuz you have a good product and you've taught me so much about L very well this is the perfect day the snow is gone it's nice and warm it's been dormant enough for the plants to be cut and so I think we ought to take some of these elderberries out and turn them into some new propagation so you can have even more out here in the field okay let's go so Terry why would people want to grow alder berries well you know it's like having our nature they're nature's medicine chest right in your backyard you can make your own medicine out of it you can eat it you can make pies out of it it's good for the Earth and it's good for us and I think everybody should have some growing in their gardens and these are nice looking plants you've got here going to you have you put these in it's been two years two years need to be cut down you remember we planted these yeah well why don't you remind us cuz we have a lot of new subscribers here well elderberry is great for the chickens you know just two berries a day he'll keep him from getting coccidiosis avian flu great diseases that helps with and it's also great shape for them and they love to be underneath it so around the chicken house here they get some nice habitat yeah it's so funny Doug and I like to watch overly er they'll be down here and they jump up and try to get the berries I mean it's very entertaining and definitely this has been a definite must we have had so much fun having them here so I'm so happy that you helped us plan them here well they'll be much thicker once we get done trimming them so first time we're going to do is cut these back off as much as we can and prune them back to the ground so go ahead and start cutting them down get off what you can and then we'll take them off you like to trim them all the way to the ground so that they'll come up from the root system we're gonna trim this year old cutting down we like to do it all the way to the ground it's kind of important to get them all the way to the ground when you can because then it will come up from the roots underneath when it comes up from the roots it has a lot more stability it won't blow over and break nearly as easy all right now we've made some really nice branches here and we're gonna cut them up into cuttings now then we can't more then you can have more we can plan a whole fence row you have a nice hedgerow of elderberry now we're talking we can feed everybody well the birds love it chickens love it and the soil loves them too Oh elderberry has that very close relationship with the micro rhizomes and the things in the soil all that web down there it'll feed 20% of its carbohydrates or the energy in it it feeds right back to the organisms in the soil so it keeps them all healthy gives them little places to eat all right let's pick these cuttings up take them up to the porch we'll cut them up into the little and I'll show you how to preserve it for spring so Terry how do you know you know which ones to pick to make the best cuttings from well the very best wood is the one year old stems and there'll be a long piece like this one okay and it has good healthy wood in it so we're going to cut it up cut it up into pieces we'll make a couple cuts here so we have a couple of smaller twigs this is a nice hard one it's good shape now if you look at this cutting elderberry is opposite budded you can see are there two buds that come out on both sides it has a little section of stem and then two more buds and so the idea of what we're going to try to do is to go to the bottom about an inch below those bottom two bugs and make a 45-degree cut then we go to budge two buds up here we're gonna cut it off right there and that makes a nice little elderberry cutting see it has a 45-degree angle on the bottom you put that in the soil about two inches deep and you'll be right there it will sprout from the bottom and make leaves from the top and you'll have a whole new plant from that one little cutting we have enough here in this pile to do a large row now you are talking about it's about to do with a year old ones so what happens if you use like one that's three years old it's just bigger pieces in the older wood it's harder to cut and they don't sprout quite as well as the new would then one-year-old twigs gotta get the young pops right pops up the best all right should we get on this and get this all cut up yeah you're looking like you've done it before we do a lot we sell a lot of cuttings to people all over everybody needs them in their garden you know and we love to help young farmers get started growing elderberries because it's a great opportunity for them yeah and then a lot of these people and if they grow them I know a lot of times do you buy them by the we try to buy every berry we can find because they're pretty hard to find most people want to use them or make something out of them themselves but we encourage people to grow them it's a great cash crop to have on the farm we have great trainings in fact we have a training coming up in June and then we have another one in March the mentoring training is in March that's where we get people ready to put commercial plantings in a nests in Missouri all here in Missouri Missouri you know has more elderberries growing commercially than any other berry that's pretty cool and then you know what I wanted to talk to you about is the difference between our North American our berries here compared to other countries well sambucus does grow elderberry grows on every continent but they're different plants and the one we have here in North America is quite a bit different than the one from Europe but they that most of the medicines that we can find at the store are made out of the European where you buy dried elderberries they're almost always European and so the American elderberry just has more antioxidants in it and we really like to promote it we think it's better for people you don't have to worry about the potential cyanide in American elderberry we spent five years with research to show that it doesn't have the potential of cyanide and American elderberry that the European does so if you're buying dried berries you still need to address that by boiling them or heating them a lot and they do lose a lot of antioxidants when you do that but they have so much medicine in them that they will they still will work but it's not the best you can get so you know by American grow American or American grow American you know this elderberry is a native plant grows all over the country we've worked with homesteaders and farmers everywhere and I think I'm gonna have a whole hedgerow here yeah plant them two foot apart in no time you know if you plant for your home garden or your homestead it only takes about a 20-foot of elderberries 1015 cuttings taken care of in a row we'll give you all the medicine your family will want it will be able to eat want that one it'll keep everybody healthy you'll have some left over for the birds even yeah that's what I like you know I like everyone to get a little bit of it because when I saw that when we work with the chickens the chickens just had such a good time and you know they go and get their shade in the summertime and they get to eat the berry so I'm like I need to get a lot more elderberries out here we're going to show you what we're going to do with them now until it's time to plant them you can you can have a lot of cutters there so I have a couple jars that I Voisin some paper towels and put it at the bottom and then what do we do now well now we want to try to orient the cuttings so that the 45-degree angles are down and then we're just going to put them right there in that jar and that moist paper towel in there will keep it nice and moist it's going to be nice if it would all go down and so you can put a little lid on the top of it to keep them nice and moist in there was it fit in there yeah and then some of these shorter ones while we put it over in this other one and we'll just put some water in there and they'll just sprout right on the counter and you have some nice little growing plants there mate and they can watch them go - yeah my little elderberry babies and you can give them away as presents when people come to visit perfect we like to use the cuttings we want them to be about you know this size which is about a pencil size up to you know this size a little bit larger we cut three quarter inch to a quarter inch makes the very best cuttings so you can could just plant these right now if you wanted to by going outside into the garden sticking this point down the ground about that deep matters fact let's go plant one right now that point down just stick them right in the ground about two inches get that bottom buds in here by the chicken shop that'll be nice and fertile they will grow fast now that was easy so now I got my jar filled up I'm gonna put a flat on right right and then what's the deal you want to keep the moisture in there so that they stay moist and they'll last for quite a while I like that well you'll have to keep putting a little moisture in there to make sure it stays nice and moist but I don't stand right it just doesn't quite century we'd like to use Spagna moss off so that works good and if you have don't have a jar big enough you can use a plastic bag then this one I'm not going to put a lid on of course I'm just gonna use it sort of like I just put fresh cut flowers and I might have it bud and just keep it on my counter and enjoy it and within two weeks they'll be all leaved out there you have a nice little bouquet of elderberry babies okay where do I keep this in the meantime well the refrigerator is probably the very best place to keep it that'll keep it right around you know thirty to forty degrees in there and they'll store for months like that okay and we'll put it in our roots I like a root cellar will work good so we got that all wrapped up so now we are going to make and Al's very cordial and what is a cordial Terry well a cordial is like a syrup that's made with honey it's much better than using that white sugar in it so we're gonna make the cordial we're gonna put some cloves and cinnamon in there and some honey to sweeten that juice up right here we have one of our elderberry fun kits and we're gonna see what we got in here you can use to make the nice cordial you have instructions some freeze-dried elderberries a little muslin bag that inside this muslin bag we have a cinnamon stick and some cloves you guys have cloves and cinnamon sticks and some freeze-dried all the berries you can do this is all it takes need a mason jar and you're going to need a strainer and a funnel either two cups of hot water for the best results we'd like to have that just boiling and then let it set for just a minute or two and then we're gonna put in our spices it's kind of like brewing tea I know a lot of people will put their boiling water immediately into something you need to let it kind of rest a little bit so that's what I've done I boiled the water I've let it sit a little bit and now it's time to put in here two cups I can't see where is the to cuff you going right that a little bit more there we go perfect can only got two do we put this in a little mesh bag so it won't be in the berries when we strain them out we're just gonna put that down in there put the cap on it a little bit balling spices right let us sit there for a few minutes and then we're gonna add the freeze-dried after about five minutes of the tea brew in there and steeping moments late el well moments late el it's been about five minutes I think we can add the freeze-dried elderberries now we love the freeze-dried elderberries because they have all the good stuff in them so I put the whole thing and put the whole thing in there look at it go so you look at instantly goes in now we can just put the lid on that now set for five minutes and then we'll strain it out well it's been about five minutes I think it's time to strain the berries off I don't want to put that in there do we leave all those berries cuz we're gonna use them later perfect let's just dump those over here in this bowl so we're gonna use those for something else now don't want to waste them gotta use every part of this thing right waste that what not you let slip rinse that rinse that out and we're gonna pour the juice back in man just do it yeah I've hit the measuring I'm measuring it back in here one thing if you guys don't know mason jars do have measure measurements on it one cup two cups I know for me I was using them forever and I had no clue that I was on there I'm like oh my gosh I could just use that all right it's like that right up two cups of nice juice and we're gonna put in 1 cup of honey or you can use any kind of sweetener you want you could use a gobby you could use molasses you could use sugar if you wanted to anything one cup in there will sweeten it up you don't need your good eye tell me when I'm there one cup that's good that'll be delicious is that honey from your own lives it is oh that's gonna be so good sargans they feed bees know we have to do is put the lid on there shake it up a little bit put that get that honey into suspension and then you'll be ready to go you can store that in the refrigerator now for several weeks and then when when I take this every day is best but if you start to get the flu or you're feeling a little bit down then you want to take a little shot of that a couple tablespoons at a time and if you start to get sick of feeling like you're sick you can take it up to three times a day about eight hours apart now to give you nice healing coverage for the whole entire new system oh yeah we all need a little boost in here keep you from getting the flu help regulate your blood sugar there's a lot of different stuff for us and now we're going to do something really special that Doug and I are gonna actually eat little later than your supper yeah with the rest of Valda berry so we're gonna try to make an elderberry chutney I love Japanese and a lot of people don't know what a chutney is but it's like a relish or kind of a sauce and we're gonna use it on top of our burgers tonight we're having hamburgers cuz you don't wanna waste any of those elderberries now we've already made one thing with it now we're gonna make another okay you're the chef today whatever listen we're gonna mix these ingredients we have the leftover freeze dried berries that we just pulled out from making our poor jewel then we're gonna add an apple that we've chopped up already one large apple nice onion right out of the garden yeah right out of our garden out back then we have a little ginger we're going to put about a teaspoon of ginger in there I like the way you do it I don't either my mama taught me how to just pour now you could use curry or this is a kind of a mixture but curry or you could put all different kinds of stuff on the chutney put that on there a little bit we can adjust it more Indian flavor you know I didn't know you little salt and they will need 1/2 cup of that vinegar apple cider vinegar then we're gonna put that on the stove and saute until it comes down and gets nice and thick and those onions and apples cook up with the elderberry it'll be delicious nutritious don't want it too hot on the stove but you want to get it to cook to get those onions and the apples and stuff to cook it if I take it maybe 10 or 15 minutes for it to thicken and turn into the nice chutney we don't let it burn don't want to burn it and this is perfect actually day like the today my stove is perfect it's not too hot it's Charlie just right nicely Cimarron there oh that looks so beautiful at elderberries color and everything still has a lot of power left in it this looks good I can't wait this would be great I'm so glad this and you came today because this will be great on our hamburgers tonight [Music] this is thickened up nicely it's already I'm just gonna set it up here what there's a lighter for dinner and now we get one more thing to show you guys now for everyone's favorite this is a favorite of mine and I think it's so cool because it is like the original soda that's it a shrub I love shrubs you can make them out of all kinds of fruit but today we're going to make one out of freeze-dried elderberries and it is the simplest thing in the world to do so we're going to take our freeze-dried berries one cup of them and we're gonna put one cup of vinegar in that jar left use good apple cider vinegar you know you always want to use a live vinegar that's got a good mother in there when you do get your vinegars you want to make sure that they're cloudy you don't want them to be clear I always say if it's clear stay away from it you want it to be cloudy so I put my cup of apple cider vinegar in there dump the cup of freeze-dried elderberry Joe these are American freeze-dried elderberries that's River Hills harvest com get those elderberries freeze-dried American elderberries and now let's put it in 1 cup of honey perfect now all we have to do is put the lid on there now and shake that around for a few minutes just like making butter in a jar or something okay workout today it only takes about five minutes soaking in that vinegar and this will be ready to use we're gonna strain it off after about five you know I love shrubs that I've been playing with the shrubs for a long time and the very first shrub I made was one that Hippocrates but formula that Heba had to make it and it's super stable you don't have to have any refrigeration for it after it's made does never have to be heated so it keeps all those great nutrients in there and almost all the early sodas we're made with a shrub I know they used to use them and it's funny because you are the first person you got me hooked on shrubs and I've done so many different types of shrubs even with herbs you can use I love of one when my favorites actually is the lemon balm lemon balm lemon balm shrimp it is so good yes it's my favorite and you got me hooked on that one do so I use them and I love them so much and even when people come over it's just a special treat Oh what kind of shrub are we gonna have today you can just drink it like that I love to make it into salad dressings and I've gotten to where I use it in cooking all the time just to add a little extra flavor anything that needs a little bit of vinegar and there are so many different kinds brain these berries and you guys are getting lots of different little recipes aren't you today well the flu season is started and any time you're using the Helder berries to cook with the e to make juice shrub chutney you're getting that health stuff and this one will be a little sweeter so I'm gonna make another chutney with this one and I might even put some walnuts in this one the honey makes it a little slower to strain out very therapeutic though watching it you have a little bit out of there [Music] we've already strained it so now it's time to show you how to drink your straw now my favorite way is using a mineral water and I like this topo Chico with that gorgeous okay now you do the honors all right we're gonna have a little bit of the shrub I usually do 1/3 shrub to two-thirds mineral water or glass oh guy like it off the counter that tastes good let's take it to 20 20 20 20 it's a good health hmm dilicious wait that was Quan teri yeah we made everything and they were very fun kid today yeah you know the only two cups of freeze-dried Alva berries American American elderberry that was just amazing and I had so much fun and like you're helping out thing and especially getting my plants trimmed down and getting ready for our spring again they're looking good out there now and I made this really nice little guide and if you need to get some elderberries you can go to our website at River Hills harvest calm we sell the freeze-dried elderberries on there and we'll have those elderberry fun kits available real soon we'll have those for you we have juice and we have lots of cuttings and this is the time of year to order your cuttings River Hills harvest calm and you can see us around the country at different festivals and you can see Terry he will be at the home setting light conference in August so the links will be below okay we've had a lot of fun here today and I'd love to see you come by the website pick up some elderberry some cuttings get growing some good elderberry and your gardens and or start to farm some we'd love to help you start farming to make a little extra income so come to River hills harvest calm you can sign up for our newsletter on there and we'll keep you informed about all of our events and the programs that we put in around the country and come and see me at the homesteaders Life conference right here in Hannibal when it happens that's right and then if you guys are interested make sure that you click the link below if you want that sheet on how to do the cuttings which is totally awesome I really appreciate you coming oh I've had so much fun thank you for having me here and it's good to see you guys [Music]

Channel: OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

Views: 489,373

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

Id: kYYBlU4gbCA

Length: 26min 20sec (1580 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019