Goodbye Blogspot, hello to Holt Wood Herbs

Hurrah! We finally have moved so that the blog continues at the new website here and all of the past blog posts can be found at the new site. We hope you will visit the new website at www.holtwoodherbs.com for everything to do with Holt Wood, herbal medicine, Herbaid, Medicinal Forest Garden Trust and more, including online orders for herbal body care items made with ingredients grown in Devon, UK. You can also sign up at the website to receive future updates. Thanks to everyone for your patience.

Virginian Witch Hazel in flower at Holt Wood

New web site for Holt Wood Herbs

New web site for Holt Wood Herbs
Sometime in August 2016 we will be transferring this blog at herbaid.blogspot.com over to our new much-improved website at www.holtwoodherbs.com, so please retune if you are seeing this message. Do let us know at info@holtwoodherbs.com if you experience any difficulties in following the new blog. (But do bear with us as we get to grips with web design there, it may need a few tweaks!!)

Publishing progress

New book!

New book cover image

One of the reasons that our medical herbalist, Anne, has been so short of time to spend at Holt Wood is her involvement in recent years in preparing a book for publication.  The book is based on Anne's research into seventeenth-century household medicine and draws on original household recipes, accounts and letters. At last, the book is nearly ready and is called Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England. Although not specifically about 'herbs', there are chapters in the book which consider recipe ingredients and medicinal preparations as well as detailed views of 'self-help' activities in the seventeenth century. The book will be published by Bloomsbury Academic later in 2016. More details on the book can be found at the Bloomsbury  web site.

Meanwhile...

Back at Holt Wood, we are gearing up for an Open Day, 1–4 pm on Saturday 21st May 2016. The open day session in the afternoon provides an opportunity to find out why we started the project and how things are progressing. 

Our draft programme

1300: Welcome and introductions

1315: Background to Holt Wood Medicinal Tree and Shrub Project

1345: Walkabout to see trees and shrubs

1515: Harvesting medicinal barks and examples of herbal medicines

1600: End

View across the valley from Holt Wood

The afternoon is suitable for people of all ages and experience. If you would like to come then get in touch to book your free place and we can send travel directions. For background information on Holt Wood see the website.

Updating the Holt Wood website

We are aware that the web site needs updating for Holt Wood. This will be a huge learning process! It is an opportunity to bring together news about Holt Wood and an online shop for some of the produce as well as links to permaculture and other projects. So, hopefully, we will be working on this in the next few months and then announce any updates. 

Witch hazel just beginning to open leaves

Birch for all

We have been trying out ways to collect Birch (Betula alba) sap. We used a carved oak peg in birch-tapping kits available for £10 including postage from Touch-Wood.

You can see the whole process in a YouTube clip link from the Touch-Wood website. As the sap is rising in the Birch tree, a hole is drilled slanting upwards with a 16 mm bit, then the oak peg with a hole is knocked in and allows the sap to drip into a bottle. A hole is drilled in the bottle enabling it to rest on the peg (or it could be tied onto the tree). There are lots of uses for the sap from boiling down to syrup (which takes a while) to making wine.

Our efforts to collect Birch sap have been a bit undermined this year because we have not been able to travel back and forth to Holt Wood as often as we would like - the sap collects quickly and can attract flies if not harvested promptly. We have discovered that wine or sherry bottle corks can be readily reused as stoppers once the bottle and peg are removed. 

For an alternative way to collect Birch sap see the example on the Natural Bushcraft website. And for some really super products from Birch trees see the website of Priestlands Birch in Somerset where you can obtain a birch sap tonic or birch tar soap.

There are other ways to use Birch. If you can collect enough Birch bark in a tin it is possible to distil birch tar oil in a fire, collecting it through a small hole into another tin, it is dark and antiseptic. Our focus at the moment is on collecting Birch buds so that they can be infused in oil for making lip balm and ointment. Trying this out in recent years, we have found that the oils last a good length of time, probably testament to the strongly antiseptic and antifungal properties of the Birch in terms of its essential oil.

Fun with willows

We have been clearing a lengthy ride, making it wide enough to plant some additional fruit and useful  trees. Most recently we have been enjoying the fluffy white buds of Salix daphnoides, so much so that we have ordered some additional ornamental willows for future harvesting, including more kinds of willow catkins and curly stems.

An excellent source of willow cuttings is at World of Willow in Dorset - they post by return. While sorting out additional space for planting we have been experimenting with charcoal-making. Magically we have transformed a tin of cuttings into thin charcoal sticks that are ideal for drawing - perfect for artists. These will be boxed up and taken along to the annual Seed Share event organised by Sustainable Crediton.  This will be on Saturday 20th February 2016 at the Old Town Hall in Crediton.

It is such fun to use charcoal for drawing and we will ensure we have some paper and smaller pieces of charcoal for kids to play with as budding artists!

Wild visitors

Wildlife galore

Surprised we were to visit the wood last weekend and find a deer lurking. Apparently roe deer can squeeze through gaps less than a foot wide. So we think it must have got in under the fence somewhere and we will have to do some clearance along the fence this autumn to spot the gaps. We left the small gate open to the meadow while we strimmed and mowed, and hope that it made a good escape. Meanwhile, our pond has brought plenty of insects and, before leaving in the later afternoon, we were treated to a visit by dozens of swallows swooping around.

Invasive plants

We have a single Buddleja davidii bush which is often dotted with butterflies. (However, this invasive plant is not to be recommended if it shades out other plants which provide food for caterpillars.) We saw fritillaries which feed on brambles and thistles, lay eggs in oak and other crevices, the caterpillar feeds on dog violets the following spring. Also visiting were the red admiral and peacock butterflies - their caterpillars feed on stinging nettles. Our beautiful ginkgo trees have been doing well, except that they have much competition from the bracken - the picture shows how high the bracken can get before we stamp on it!

Preparing for the Green Fair

Preparations continue for a stall at the Exeter Green Fair on 5th September 2015. Find us on the Cathedral Green with items for sale in aid of the Medicinal Forest Garden Trust. These include bottled distilled Witch Hazel, young Ginkgo and Witch Hazel trees, plus beautiful cards and prints, and information about local medical herbalists plus other herbal products.

We went down to the woods today

Insect hotels

Children visiting Holt Wood last weekend had a great time using household waste plastic bottles, cardboard, string and plant material to make different kinds of structures attractive to insects such as lacewings, solitary bees and others. We searched around for plants with hollow stalks that could be used. Once you get the idea then the variations are endless. And each child also had to think about where their particular insect hotel would be best sited. These structures may not all last for long but they were good fun to make, and will encourage us to make more. 

Our thanks to David Domoney's Complete Guide to Making Your Own Insect Hotels, available at http://www.daviddomoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/David-Domoneys-Complete-Guide-to-Making-Your-Own-Insect-Hotels.pdf

Bracken control

Bracken composting was something mentioned last time as a way to deal with this invasive plant. Provided we do not harvest bracken fronds with spores (later summer) we should be able to make some decent compost. But, it is not that easy to locate details of how best to compost bracken. 

As an experiment I have trampled and cut down a swathe of bracken to bag up the fronds, minus the stalks, like leaf mould. An awful lot of bracken fronds can be stuffed into one plastic sack, tied at the top with string. Hopefully, in a year or so, we will have some useful crumbly stuff to mix with compost for potting. Meanwhile the stalks can be chopped up and put in the compost heap. This could be a good way to use a really annoying plant!