Posts Tagged ‘Pendulous Sedge’

More Pendulous Segde

August 10, 2008

We keep finding lots of Pendulous Sedge whilst out walking, something I wouldn’t of originally noticed I now see everywhere we walk, particularly keeping an eye out where it is slightly damp area. Amazing how once you are aware of something, how you easily come to recognise it.

Anyway today we collected just over 1 and a half pounds of it, to go with the other half a pound we collected the other day which we have been drying in the greenhouse. The sun has done a lovely job in there and we have found that it is a great place for drying out the herbs as well. We have just been laying it in bowls to dry out nothing complicated, and it has done really well, even in what has been wet and slightly muggy weather for some of the time.

We are about to go out and pick the Lemon Balm from the garden, the healing properties of it are meant to be fantastic, but I haven’t had a good chance to read up on that yet, as I have been pursuing light far more. The healing power of light is amazing, and I can’t stress enough how we should be getting out of our boxes far more in the day and getting it on our skins.

Light and the UV in it, is vital for helping the body to make Vitamin D, which is needed for the absorption of calcium, and other minerals that the body needs to help it keep our bones strong, healthy, and keep rebuilding. It is no wonder that so many of us are getting a softening of our bones, when all we do is work in boxes all day, with filters on the windows of the offices, to prevent the rays coming through. Also so many of us just walk out of our houses in the morning, get straight into our cars, which in some cases have a filter on their windows, wear sunglasses, or contact lenses which block out the full spectrum of light, then into our working box, sit at our desks all day and even eat lunch at our desks, go home, and never see any real sunlight. It is all starting to make so much sense why so many of us are ill, not healing, depressed, and suffering from SAD, and I have changed so much of my lifestyle due to learning all this, but I like most people still have to work whilst making the transition.

It is an overall lack of light many of us are suffering from, and when we are ill, this lack of light keeps us from healing quickly. I read about the research which had shown how the UV in sunlight helps to sterilise wounds, but when wounds were covered over, they tended to end up with bacteria in them. This research was done back in 1877 and yet today we are told how unsafe the sun is continually and how we need to keep out of it, when its healing powers can be amazing.

Before penicillin there used to be clinics set up to purely work with using sunlight for healing, people were introduced to the sun really carefully over a period of time, taking care not to burn them. Auguste Rollier was a Doctor who opened such a sun clinic, all this was an accepted form of healing until medications came along. They healed many illnesses with these light therapies.

It is mainly people who rarely become exposed to sunlight who suffer problems the most from it, not people who are out in it all the time. If we are to absorb the calcium that we eat, then we need sunlight on our bodies, but daily we stop this from happening, and the less sunlight we have the less absorption we have.

Getting out in the sunlight has other beneficial affects as well, not only will it help to reduce your blood pressure, help to reduce your cholesterol, by just getting out in your lunch hours at work it will help your stress levels!

Pendulous Sedge

July 27, 2008

We have half a pound of Pendulous Sedge seeds which we picked last night. Funnily enough garden centres sell them as ornamental grasses, which grow in damp and dark places, and we collected them for free on the woodland just where we live. They are the most beautiful grass, very elegant, and they edge one of the pathways we use, and we spent about half an hour collecting it., after watching it mature for weeks, keeping ours eyes open for the right time, and to be honest it was so quick, and fun.

Today we have just separated the husk from the seed, and now we are drying in out in our greenhouse, once dry we plan on making some form of biscuit, like an oat cake with it. We could make it into a form of flour but that is possibly for next time! We separated it by pouring the seeds through the air into another bowl, and the seed drops with the husk blowing away, well that was the idea, and we are both now covered in brown husks! R has realised that he can use this for his week in the woods that he is planning, he is hoping to live from a high percentage of wildfoods whilst doing it, and this is something which is probably going to be highly beneficial to them to be collecting to eat.

We love our wild crafted foods, they have so much more integrity about them, and we are finding the whole process to be so fulfilling. Although only a small percentage of our food is home grown and collected it is slowly growing as our knowledge of what is and isn’t edible grows.

Later on we are going to collect apples, the woodland we live near has a multitude of apple trees and they are bursting with apples which no one picks anymore. Not sure if people don’t know about them, or they are not bothered about them, but then that leaves all the more for us.