The Abundance of Mint & one for your Herbal First Aid Kit!

[Music] I literally just got a glimpse of what I'm wearing hold on like Muck Boots [Music] oh that's that's funny I mean it's a thing right Muck Boots and a dress y'all made fun of me in my last video because I was wearing jeans that had holes in them but let me just tell you jeans with holes in them is like farm girl AC so it's hotter today so at least I'm wearing a dress but I can't do sandals it's gotta be Muck Boots maybe we're gonna make this a thing okay are you guys new to the channel this is our Apothecary we have a good bit of herbs that we have foraged we grow we also ethically source and yeah and when we get to preserve them um like this one horsetail we found on our property and we freeze-dried it so I absolutely love being able to preserve the herbs for the length of time and look at these These are the wild rose flowers that we did and that we did the other day I'll put those videos down below if you guys are interested in learning about that but today we need some more mint so that's what we're gonna do today I'm gonna go ahead and plan on harvesting a good bit of our mint because that thing is completely my mint is untameable um but before it goes to flower I'd go I'd like to go ahead and harvest a good bit wash it and then bring it back and load it up into the freezer so I need my baskets and I need my Snips I might end up grabbing all of these really foreign but seriously I think I've got a lot of mint and this is just one bed I also have this bed right here that also is full of mint but I have to be careful because remember that little baby the little baby the little Nest that we have in there with with the mama and her her little eggs I had a lot of people ask about my female that I'm wearing this came from my friend Mandy over at Bellow beak I'll put the link down below if you guys are interested it is a bee keeping Veil however I found that it's been really awesome to wear while I'm up in the garden it keeps the gnats out of my eyes it also keeps the sun um my face is kind of covered you know so I'm trying to protect my face trying to protect all the things obviously my skin um but the gnats I think are my least favorite thing about gardening and they just come right at my eyes so it is nice to wear a veil when you're up working in the garden and its shade you know so all right I'm glad that we're doing this because I think if I were to have waited a little bit longer all of my mint is probably going to go to flour so this is great we're doing this now [Music] so we got a good bit already I'm going to take this back we're going to inventory because sometimes we get little pieces of grass so what we do is when we Harvest anything we will inspect it make sure that there's nothing funky growing on it and then I'm also going to go ahead and soak our mint um I like a salad spinner too and the reason is is because you can get as much moisture off as possible and then if there's anything anything yucky like that we will we will go ahead and pull now I only harvested the tops of it because this is going to come back and with mint the more that you harvest the more that it grows oh that almost made me want to jump because I thought something was on me anyways um the other thing about mint that I have learned yeah it likes to spread so if you are growing mint don't do what I did I planted it in the ground when I first had a garden here and I thought that I eradicated the situation well I did not plant any of this mint that we have growing in our raised beds um so yeah yeah lesson learned but at least we can use it at least we're blessed with it and then we're gonna preserve it so I'm going to take this back to the house we're going to wash it up and then I'm gonna bring it back to the apothecary the other thing that I'll add is I do get a lot of questions about our foraging baskets that I have when I harvest these came second hand at a thrift store because I am all for buying used and saving money I think I spent seven dollars on these baskets probably about eight years ago about that long but they've been my absolute favorite baskets I I don't know who makes them uh I don't know really anything about them I have three of them and they're all different sizes if I have any basket maker friends can somebody make me these I love them they're flat they're great for drying but you can see some of them have got some boo-boos on it um but I also will hang them sometimes I'll actually I used to use these as my hanging baskets as well I would put all my herbs on it and then hang them and dry them that way so if I have any basket maker friends in the house I would love like a million of these uh is that too much to ask for okay all right let's go let's let's go wash these foreign [Music] I know in mine I wanna like I want to go let it all on it so all right mom and I were kind of going back and forth because it really even I think it's I'm kind of curious because we have a combination I think so too so I planted this mint about eight years ago in the ground and then it decided to go everywhere I've already worn them to like it's like tomatoes unintentional okay you gotta do the whole Raptor thing so what I can do it's have you seen Children of the Corn this is the child of the tomato but I already warned them to make sure to like grow their mint in pots yeah do it in the container and be careful as you start to see the mint grow down to the ground it will attach itself and next thing you know we'll you'll have 40 plants growing over here yes and the more you harvest the more it grows it does so learn I learned lesson learned I will never have to grow mint again um but I also grew a lot of different varieties of mint so I had chocolate mint I had pineapple mint I had mint mint I had spearmint yeah peppermint all right or maybe did I already say did I already have Wintergreen I had that so we have mint and we don't know what it is it's what she's trying to say it's mint okay it identifies as mint because it's got that square stem yes and it has a menthol like yes smell it's very good for your digestive system and we know we have spearmint growing on the back side of the house and that looks a little different but now I'm not even sure if that's really spirit I don't know anyways there's thousands of different types of mint and we we have we have we have feral mint is what we have we do it's a barrel mint um well it's a science experiment um ultimately though meant we use it for our digestive system um and it's one of my grandmother's favorites so I brought some and I was going to try to I was going to try to get her up here but she is hanging back today um but we I brought some in and I put some in a mason jar oh it's so good she walked over and she just like it was so good it smells delicious I like it I I don't mind it at all you know when you're doing like the typical black tea iced tea um this is wonderful in that um or putting it in a jar and like just setting it out in the sun too uh or just if you're drinking water and you just put a spray again it's just to me it's amazing but again we think we know it's mint okay we're gonna call it feral mint I like that okay I like that that's a thing we might have created our own mint we create it the bees did well everything did but we're gonna go ahead and plan on loading it up into the freeze dryer now we're gonna use the leaves that is the main aspect of the mint that you are going to use the stem is usable too except it's very Woody um were I've learned with the Harvest Right freeze dryer that if you it's kind of like the money catching game they blow the window we open it up and we find a lot of our our plant matter well flowers yeah the flat the petals yeah that's what it was on the um so we're gonna leave them on the stem for for the actual freeze drying as well as the drying process and then um we are gonna hang dry some as well but when after it's dry all we're gonna do is just take our hand and just run it down the stem and then we'll take the stem discard it I'm kind of curious to see how this is gonna work with the stem because it might break the stem but that would be okay too because the aerial parts are all usable in some way shape or form right it's not gonna hurt us um if you mainly like if you're cooking with mint you don't want this done because it is harder um but you can use the leaves so we're gonna load this thing up and I've got four trays I will say that most people will pre-freeze things before they put it in the freezer I'm not gonna do that I I don't wanna I don't want to do that I'm fine we're fine well it's scary anyway yeah so might as well it's fine um and then whatever is left over we're gonna put it in the hanging basket that I have behind which we'll show you guys but really what I want you to see the difference I want you to see the difference after they've both been dried you're going to get the after of this portion like once it's been freeze dry and then the air drying the hang drying is going to take a couple of days so bear in mind on that it's you're not going to get that right away from me but you will get you will get the freeze-dried portion of it well they're gonna get it right away well this but not the not the owl okay I was going to say if you close out the video I know then it'll be long what I'll probably do is I'll post on my Instagram in a couple of about a week or so or post on my Instagram and then you can get a picture side by side of like what air dried plants look like and what freeze-dried now if you're new here I'm gonna just kind of fill you in this is a harvest rate freeze dryer um her name is Elsa I think that's fun but the freeze clean if you guys are interested in purchasing your own Harvest Right freeze dryer I do have an affiliate link I will put that down below the reason why we are choosing to freeze dry is because it literally will pull the moisture out of it but leave it leave all of the medicinal and and The Taste all of the properties right into the plant unlike dehydrating where you lose a portion of the medicinal properties of it as well as the taste and the smell and you you can you can literally see the freshness between the two and that's just natural it's not saying it's it's bad it's just it's I mean when you leave it out it's exposed to the air it's going to oxidize that's what it's doing when it oxidizes the color changes a little bit but freeze drying but freeze drying preserves it add its most fresh State and then through that process called sublimation it takes the gas it takes the moisture and turns it into basically like a gas and that's what freezes it that look I am not a scientist but I know the word sublimation I've heard it before because I understand it because I've seen it before but trying to explain it yeah there are I might not be completely 100 on that one so the main key aspect to why we're choosing to freeze dryers again because the shelf life you know I want to be able to preserve the food and the herbs not just herbs I mean I do leftovers we do refrigerator cleanouts at least once or twice we have so much leftover lasagna and spaghetti sauce because I cook we cook lasagna the size of a small child okay we even got Thanksgiving dinner in there for at least six people now yeah and we can eat it right in like within the next 25 years and it's still good so that's crazy I know it is um but I I have a good bit of videos about the freezer and some of the things that we've put in there one of our latest ones that we did was horsetail um and violets Forest Hill was beautiful but in short this I'm gonna walk closer to the camera oh yeah all right this is um just dried horsetail and this is freeze-dried horsetail so you can literally see the difference between between the two between the two and that's kind of the thought that's what we're trying that's what that's part of what started whoa look at this oh yeah you know so I think it's awesome and then also when you're doing this you want to kind of review the plants real quick when you're laying it out and any leaf that you see that isn't necessarily ideal if now would be a good time to remove it yeah you want the best quality that you can these look really good I know I clipped them and then I soaked them in water um for a good hour really oh good to go do I close it now yeah and what she's talking about is a little valve that's on the side that I always tend to accidentally leave open so we have to verbalize every time we close it because I've come up here I've loaded it and then I come up to check it and the valve is not closed and then I have to restart it Lessons Learned [Music] you want to check and make sure I close that way yes always double check go ahead I'm gonna hand it to you okay I think leaving them on the stem is going to be smart yep and if not there's enough out there we can we do this again we actually probably are gonna have to I my the peppermint that we've got growing and I only I still got a lot I know I saw she whacked one of the garden beds and it's only like that much well the other one I I didn't want to do because the gnats that little mama the little bird oh the birds in there yeah so I was like okay you can stay I won't do that I'll let you be I saw you have a couple of little bird nests on the uh on the lights up at the house too chatting okay here we go [Music] and it's freezing so how long do you think that's going to take I think it'll be done probably by tomorrow morning 12 hours yeah I think yeah it could be about 12 hours okay maybe you're gonna get instant gratification on this because tomorrow when I come back up when we come back up to check it yeah after we sleep and get up and I gotta go to work yeah and then we'll check it and we'll see if it's ready and we'll pull it out and then we're going to talk a little bit more about some of the medicinal properties um with mint because it's more than just mint we'll come back check this thing in the meantime you'll get instant gratification we'll see you in just a little bit and if you need instant gratification right now oh yeah I'll put a little fresh mint in my water and it tastes delicious and she also added some of our freeze-dried I did well I think you can't see that it already reconstituted it already it looks it looks brand new if you guys are curious about that I will quit that video so you can see how we preserved and freeze-dried see if like it I don't want to put my hands down I'll just share that video okay okay be back all right so one of the projects I think my mom and I are both kind of working on and talking about is that first aid herbal kit right and so when we start to look at the things that we have it's like would this make it in the kit yes I think it would make it in the kit because not only does it offer a a good taste but it's it's that anti-spasmatic that carminative it just calms down the belly right and then and then if your belly upset is caused by eating something that doesn't agree with you or even is bad then it helps to combat that uh-oh we have leaves falling crunchy oh I need a mess do you want the tray I'm always making a mess I'm okay with it this is actually really very I wonder if you can smell if it smells more yes I can smell the mint it's the mint is actually much stronger and this is a mild mint there's properties in the mint that will help with that anti-microbial your your gut health so like if you eat something that might be a little questionable it actually the anti-microbial and the antibacterial some of those properties in the peppermint actually will help ease that and then also kind of neutralize neutralize it so and kill those bad bacterias that are causing or could potentially cause other issues so it's not just good for flavoring it actually has some medicinal properties ah look at this got a little got a little smart here see what I did picked up a whole handful of just pulling out the sticks now not smart [Music] and Mama didn't raise no food we're learning come learn with us come here part of our journey we'll share our mistakes too a lots of mistakes but that's the beauty of life it's a beautiful a beautiful mistake sometimes this is crazy look at all that that's all the sticks I'm blown away I'm absolutely blown away okay here we go it's the last of it it smells so good it's very mild yeah it's not like it's not like super harsh yeah uh that's where I think it's this hybridized it would make sense oh where's our peppermint that we have up here it's like a seafood oh comparison okay let's do it um so this you got it right so I'm tired I know all right so this I just want you to see a comparison of the dried this is just dried peppermint and then this is freeze-dried so you can literally see the difference of the two this was one of the reasons why this thing has been on my bucket list for the last like five years and yes you can do other forms of drying but this was one of the reasons why um by by actually visually seeing the difference this is almost as perfect as fresh it almost makes me more determined to grow additional medicinal plants and just this is our part of our way of not only I need to get her into the garden and show her all the things that have been idling wait yeah I know I've been I've been I've been busy doing my other work that's okay we're showing we're doing we're growing and we're foraging and we're doing the things that that we can um in the time that we have so yeah so if you were to if you were to basically Harvest everything of the mint that you have right now how many more jars would you get probably at least five five more jars and then it would all re continue to grow because yeah you just gave it a headshot oh yeah it's gone it's definitely going to continue to grow so we're gonna do this again with a lot of the other plants I definitely think leaving your plants on the stem if it's a woody stem like that whether it's your holy basil lemon balm skull cab cabinet mint um oh gosh all of the things leave it on your stem I think it's going to be easier that literally came off well like nothing and the stems no they have they absolutely you can use them too most sleeves most is leaf um most warm to relief but anyways thank you guys for coming on this adventure with us yes as we preserve some of our peppermint really it's Honey's Dead mint at this point yes but did you show them what the dried mint looks like it's not dried yet it's so floppy looking so okay a couple couple little while what I'll probably do is if you guys are on my Instagram I will do a good comparison picture between the two so that you guys can kind of see it and follow along with what we're doing um I mean this is beautiful oh yeah but that's that's [Music] just lovely there's no comparison so all right thank you guys for coming along with us and as always don't be afraid to get your hands dirty and I'm wearing something old bye guys bye

Channel: The Honeystead

Views: 52,396

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Id: NmnphVwQiTM

Length: 26min 4sec (1564 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023