Amanda's Herbal Apothecary, Batch 1

I received two gallons of grape seed oil and a brand spanking new oil press in the mail this week (the press would have arrived on the same day but it was delivered to my parents neighbor), so I have begun the process of processing.

I have been gathering Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) all summer from my mom's, bosses and friends yards so I had plenty to start a batch of oils macerating. I decided after my last batch of oils that I should powder the herbs first. This was a much more involved, loud and hazardous prospect than I would have believed before. At school we only did small individual sized batches, but i was planning on filling a half gallon jar with herbs and oil! We used half of a garbage bag full of whole leaves of comfrey, it took two different blenders to get the leaf down to powder and I don't know how many small batches that was; at least ten. The blender was way noisier than I anticipated (my poor parents were trying to watch TV in the next room) and the powder that came off each batch was sort of noxious, we finally got smart about three batches of blending in and grabbed some face masks. And still after all this only managd to fill the jar a thrid of the way through! Whew~

We decided we'd had enough and poured 1200 ml of the emerald green oil over the lovely garden green powder, shook it up to make sure all the particles were covered, and then we left in a hurry because that was hard work!

I think I may ordered the rest of the herbs in powdered form, it's not that much more expensive to have them do it for me and my time is somewhat precious. It took a good hour for one third of a half gallon jar of powdered herb and I am just not sure i want to deal with that every time!

Picture to come, I forgot my camera ;)