The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Wilderness Wednesday: Early Spring Foraging with the Herbal Prepper

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

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You've just joined the Prepper Broadcasting Network, where we promote self-reliance and independence. The views and opinions expressed are strictly those of the host or their guests. Visit us in the interactive chat room at PreparBroadcasting.com. Good evening, everyone, and welcome back to Herbal Prepper Live, where we discuss herbal and natural medicine for emergency preparedness, because your health deserves a plan B. I'm your host Kat, the herbal prepper. My goal is to help you and your family be better prepared for life's emergencies, especially when there are no doctors or pharmacies available. Before I kick off tonight's show, however, I need to satisfy the legal department here with a few quick disclaimers. I am not a doctor. I do not prescribe or practice medicine. I do not diagnose, treat, or claim to cure any disease or illness. If you need medical advice to treatment, please seek out a licensed physician. All listeners, are strongly encouraged to learn and research the safety and efficacy of herbal remedies for themselves

and to develop their own opinions. The topics discussed are hypothetical and provided for informational purposes only, use at your own risk and with a heavy dose of common sense. With that said, herbal prepper live is one herbalist's opinion on alternatives to modern medicine during a total collapse of our way of life. In this hypothetical scenario, there are no doctors, no EMTs, no hospitals and no pharmacies. Professional medical help is simply not an option. If you or your loved ones need health care, the buck stops with you.

So I ask you, if we were faced with the end of the world as we know it tomorrow, such as an economic collapse, an EMP, or other attack on our electrical grid, civil unrest, martial law, the suspension of the Constitution, the zombie apocalypse itself, could you care for your and your loved ones' health care needs?

If you answered no and you'd like to change that, please keep listening because this show is for you. All right. Welcome everyone back to another episode of herbal prepper live where we talk about herbal medicine, prepping, and everywhere in between. And our show airs live every Sunday evening at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific here on prepperbroadcasting.com. And today is Sunday, March 11th, 2018. For those who are listening live, you can join the chat room here on prepperbroadcasting.com. Pop your questions in there or your comments. There's always a conversation going on there.

So please check that out. Or, better yet, you can take advantage of this being a live broadcast and call into the show. The phone number to do so is 347-202028. Again, that number is 347-202-2-2-8. Again, that number is 347202028. If you call in, please remember to dial one when you hear the greeting so that we know that you are waiting on the line. And tonight's topic is early spring foraging and wild crafting. I know I've been away for a couple of weeks.

There's a little family matter that kept me occupied, and it's kind of impeded a few things. but this is still a good topic for this time here. Depending where you are in the U.S., some of these plants may be available right now. Some of them, it might be a few more weeks here. I know that we're expecting snow coming in Monday night to Tuesday, so yay for more snow coming, I guess. We're getting most of our winter dumped sort of within like a few weeks. Anyway, before we get started, there's a couple of things that I want to mention.

Normally I do a little housekeeping thing first and get through some of the business. But I wanted to kind of highlight something that took place in one of my courses, weekly online meetings, and it was just mentioned again in the chat room here, not mentioning names, everyone keeps their private. and all of that. But one of my students in one of my courses has been working with an individual as part of the course that's their clinical portion of a course. And the person has made so much improvement in these past few months. It's really incredible.

We went from having really high blood pressures on all kinds of medications, had lots of pain, very, you know, trouble sleeping, is someone who could not work because of the pain that it's been so bad. And, you know, within these few months here, he's gone from being unable to work, he just started a brand new job. And in the chat room it was mentioned that, you know, he's doing great at his first week at his new job, and he was 30 minutes early every day. And, you know, I mean, that it's really amazing what just adding a few herbs to this individual's, you know, daily routine was able to do for him.

You know, he's got, I mean, going from being unable to work because you're in so much pain, you can't sleep and, you know, you're on, you know, a flu of maintenance medications. and now he's got it under control, not just under control, because obviously he was on all these maintenance meds and he was still in pain, the situation is not really being managed well. There's no quality of life there. And, you know, what this student was able to do for him was, you know, I mean, it's huge.

You know, he's on his way to getting his life back. So, you know, I mean, it's humbling and it's amazing and I wanted to pass that along. So anyway, when people say, oh, herbs don't work, it's like you have no idea what you're talking about. They do, but you do have to know what you're doing with herbs. You do have to have, you know, be able to pick the right ones and be able to follow through with a client.

And, I mean, there's more to it than just looking at, let's say, a Facebook meme, you know, that claims that, you know, cinnamon does, you know, 20,000 different things. It takes a little bit more effort than that. But it's actually really easy to learn how to work with herbs. So let me get back to some of these announcements real quick and then we'll get into tonight's topic.

I just couldn't let that go without mentioning that because they had such a huge change. I mean, the guy is now getting, you know, he's getting out of a group housing situation, moving into, you know, his own place, got a job again. I mean, that's someone getting their life back or they didn't have before, and it's just, it's really only been a couple of months,

so that's huge, and I can't let that go without acknowledging that. All right, so before we get started, let's get the business out of the way. If you are listening over a blog talk, do come on over and join us here at prepperbroadcasting.com, join the chat room here. For those who may be new, I have two books available that you need to have in your Prepper Library. Prepper's natural medicine is a crash course in herbalism, bring herbal skills, 50 different herbs, plus herbal formulas are both acute and chronic condition.

My second book, Prepping for a Pandemic, is loaded with critical information that you need in order to survive a deadly infectious disease erupting in your area. Both of my books are available in the Prepper Broadcasting Bookshop. They are available everywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all of that. If you're lucky enough to have a local bookstore, please go there and order from them because they need your support, and if they don't have it, they can order it to either one of those books. And just a teaser for next week, March 18th. We're going to be taught, well, starting a conversation about Linesy.

This is huge. This is such a huge, big topic. There's literally no way I'm going to be able to cover it all in an hour. I'm just letting you know that right now. I don't know whether I'm going to do like two or three episodes all online right away or I might stagger them. I'm still working out some of the show notes on that because it's such a big topic. Yeah, Lyme disease, it's all over the U.S. It's not just, you know, oh, this little problem that we've got up here in New England,

but we're sort of at, you know, ground zero here in the northeast when it comes to Lyme. disease. So it's no longer a local or regional thing. It's everywhere and there's a lot that herbal medicine can offer when it comes to Lyme disease and we're at least going to start talking about that next week, especially since, you know, people are already pulling ticks off of them this year. They're already kicking, they're already going. So, Yeah, I have absolutely zero use for ticks. I know that everything is supposed to have a function. You know, everything that's, you know, alive here has some type of a function.

Other than to, you know, spread disease, I don't know what a ticks function is. So, you know, it's, I'd be more than happy without them. I'm just in the chat room here. W-S-P-R. I bought the first book before Christmas have started reading it. It's good so far. Thank you so much. I'm glad you enjoy it. If you've got any questions about it, you know how to find me, and I will do my best to answer any questions about it.

All right, so with all that out of the way, why don't we take a quick break here. We're going to let the station pay some bills, and when we get back, we're going to talk about some plants that are early medicinals, as well as early edibles here in the spring. and we're going to wrap up the talk about these plants with one of these herbs that is very much associated with herbal treatment of Lyme disease. So that'll kind of go really nicely into next week's show online. So, all right, we will be right back. The Trading Post in the Woods is a team of disaster response and survival experts

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Share our simple survival products and learn the lessons we've learned in the aftermath of disasters. Be prepared for the unthinkable. Don't be the victim. Visit tradingpost in thewoods.com. That's trading post in the woods.com. If you're off the grid by choice or by disaster, you need a green of 8 of G-Mag portable power cell. This amazing salt water or biofuel activated device makes power anytime, anywhere, in any weather, day or night. Simply add a little bit of salt and water or urine to the unit, and it instantly makes electricity.

GMA will recharge 6 AA batteries in about 4 hours repeatedly. It has an indefinite shelf light and will recharge an unlimited number of batteries. Get yours at greenovative.com, and when you need it, you'll be glad you did. All right. So we are back, and just as a reminder, we are talking tonight about early spring foraging and wild crafting. And basically that means foraging is when a term of these and go out to look for wild edibles. And wild crafting is a term that's used when we go out to talk. We go out to look for wild medicinal.

Why there isn't one term for both, I don't know, but you'll find that a lot of, of primitive skills people and survivalists. They talk about forging. They're going out to look for, you know, something to eat. And when we talk about wild crafting among herbalists, we're looking for our wild medicinals. Either way, we're going out and we're looking for wild plants. And springtime, you know, this is, you know,

everything's coming to life. You know, there are plants that are popping up through the snow. And, you know, this was in the days prior to refrigeration, a very welcome site to start seeing the green life come back. If we think about food storage, if we think about being able to, you know, have food all year long without relying upon these systems of, you know, corporate farms and the shipping food all over the plan, and getting food from these giant warehouses out to grocery stores. And by the time we get it, I mean, stuff picked early before they're ripe and then shipped. And by the time it gets there, they've got to put plants through various processes. Either they throw wax on them.

Sometimes they gas them to force them to rip in or make them look ripe when they're really not. They put paraffin over them. I already mentioned the wax thing. but there's a number of processes that food goes through in order to look good at the grocery store. You know, meat gets all sorts of red dye injected into it. If you've ever, like, seen meat that has not had the red dye injected into it, you can spot that stuff from the mile away. It's like this weird kind of, like the meat looks just way too bright.

Like, natural meat doesn't look like that. It's just, it's ridiculous. I don't really, I don't know. But anyway, if we think about detaching ourselves from that type of unsustainable system, and if you think about all the different ways that a system like that can fail, everything from contaminating the food to, you know, just the delivery simply being stopped anywhere along the process, it's, you know, whether that's, let's say, oh,

What was that? That computer virus that went around that stopped a number of companies, including their shipping giant, Merck. You know, we could certainly see ransomware and other types of cyber attacks affect, oh, let's say something like, oh, shipping for any of these large farms, bringing food to these warehouses. Any of that could happen.

And so we could also see like a trucker's strike, and good luck getting food from all over that way. So, you know, our food system is not sustainable. So if we start thinking about how could we sustain ourselves long term, obviously we've got lots of different ways that we can do this. We can, of course, buy lots of food and stock up on it, and the shelf stable stuff. But a lot of us, you know, we grow our own

and that forms at least some significant portion of our intake, our storage, and what have you. Now, when it comes to these wild plants, these are plants that, they're quite special. One, they're more vigorous than, like, if you were to grow the same plant in your yard you were to get seeds and grow them yourself, you're going to find that the tendency is that their wild cousins are stronger. So stronger medicines are made from these wilder plants. The flavors that they have are stronger. And the other thing to keep in mind is that when you're out looking for these wild plants,

The other thing that I think that makes them quite special is that you didn't have to do anything for them to appear. There's no labor involved except to go out and harvest them. You didn't have to plant them ahead of time. You didn't have to plan for that. You do have to have some idea of where to find them though. And if you can locate them, let's say, at other times of the year, because sometimes if you're harvesting them in early spring with plants very young.

You may not, they may not be as easily recognizable as they are later on in the season, but maybe they're a little less desirable later on in the season. What is going on in that chat room talking about nut cases at Wally World? You know what? I can't even get into a Walmart discussion because they are, those people are, those Walmartians are, they are a species all unto themselves as they, you know, go shopping their Walmart with their pajamas on and such. I can't quite, you know, I don't want to go down that road. But you never know what you're going to see in the chat room here.

Anyway, yes, other things from the chat room, a plant that has grown locally is definitely better suited to the area. And, you know, that's absolutely true. These wild plants, you know, they're volunteers, though. They're growing there without you having to do anything. So I think that's pretty special to me. Anyway, some of the plants that you're going to find right now would fall under the category of bidders. And that's kind of important, actually.

If you think about it, you know, earlier generation, they would have, what would they have for food over the winter? You know, they would, they'd have lots of meats, maybe, you know, some type of preserved meat, so either preserving them in salt or with smoke or with sugar or something, they're dried meat, unless they're being stored on the animal itself. But there's a lot of heavy foods, a lot of fat, which, of course, is fine for the winter. That's no big deal. You've got lots of root vegetables, lots of starchy vegetables, which,

as long as you know, as long as you don't have, let's say, diabetes or some issue with blood sugar, all those starchy vegetables are perfect for wintertime. That's fine. And so we've got, you know, our potatoes and our sweet potatoes and carrots and all those that we have over the winter. We used to also preserve food not just through canning, but through fermentation. And that's where we get, you know, things like kvass and sauerkraut. and all of that. But by this time, you know, this time of year,

there's really only so much pickled foods that, you know, you can stand. You know, the sourcrow's getting low anyway. Some of those pickled beefs are getting low. Other pickled vegetables, you know, as well. And to go along with your dried meats and, you know, maybe some mashed up potatoes or whatever else. And so by the end of that, eating a very heavy winter diet, if you're eating with the seasons, that kind of a thing,

then by the end of that, your body will be very happy for these bitter greens, these bitter greens, because what they do is they stimulate the digestive process, and they trigger salivation and the digestion, and the digestion begins in the mouth. And so you'll get that taste of bitter and preserve a potato, make vodka true. Absolutely. That is a great way to save potatoes for long-term storage, as well as for making your herbal tinctures.

Absolutely. Make that vodka. So anyway, these bitter greens will help stimulate the digestive. which has been, you know, you've been throwing these heavy foods at it all winter. Now we need to kind of lighten up that load. We need to help out that liver and get it started again. So that's what traditionally people have bitters for. And that's what the spring detox thing, you know, came from the origins of it

where the, you know, the change in diet to be bitter. So the number one bitter that most people are going to think of would be dand the lions. And we all, I think, I don't really have to go through a big description of what a dandelion looks like. I think everyone is familiar with what a dandelion looks like. But you've got these really spiky leaves and, you know, you've got these, you know, bright yellow flowers on them. I think everyone's familiar with dandelions. It's a nice big puff of a yellow flower on top. And the roots go so deep.

And these roots, they spread. It's the roots that you're looking for early in the spring. But you don't want to take all of your dandelions. Hopefully you live somewhere where they haven't decided to kill all dandelions everywhere with Roundup. The dandelions are not such a bad thing. If so, you may have to find, like, you know, a section of your yard somewhere that you can actually, you know, reserve for your dandelions and let them grow there, plant them. I know it seems, you know, crazy to some people, why would you ever plant

dandelions? I know that all of my neighbors are, I mean, they roll their eyes, you know, and they look at my backyard because my backyard is loaded with vandalions, and I'm thrilled for that. But you have to, you have to dig deep for these roots, and you don't want to dig up all of them, because obviously if you dig up the root, that one's not going to grow again. Of course, it shoots off all kinds of other roots from that. So it's very difficult to get all of the root out. So you may end up with one growing there again. But if you will, they have these little devices that you can just like step on

and it goes all the way down. It's like a little cylinder thing and it pulls everything up, including the dandelion root. So if you're going to be foraging for dandelion roots or any of these roots, those little gizmos are very handy to have. But leaves some because after that, right now, all the energy is in the root of the plant. That's where all the growth is happening right now. Once the leaves start to grow, the energy of the plant is now moving up from the root and going into the leaves,

and that's where the medicine is going to be found. So these bitter greens that come up through these dandelion leaves, especially these early ones, you can use those right in salad. They are quite bitter, but you can put them in a salad. As the season goes on, though, I know there's some people like, oh, I don't want to use dandelion leaves past, you know, early spring because they get too bitter. I cook them. I mean, I make them just like I would spinach or kale or any of those other dark greens.

And, you know, I chop them up and I put them in there with some nice salty bacon. And there's something really nice about those really bitter, bitter greens with that salty, bacon, it's just, it works really well. And that bitter flavor, it triggers the digestive process. It triggers the release of vial to help break down fats. It helps your digestive system work more efficiently. So you can certainly continue to eat those leaves throughout the season. They're going to get bigger and so on and they're going to get more bitter.

But I just use the earlier ones for salads and the more. bitter ones that come later and I cook with those. And the other thing, of course, that you can do is you can get those dandelion flowers. And you can do a couple of things. You can either make jelly from them, as I mentioned in the chat room, you can make jelly. You can also make dandelion wine from that. So if you're into wine making, it's always a lovely thing to add. Now, there's a lot of different uses for dandelion.

You can certainly you can use this as a digestive aid. You can also use this for, oh, as a diuretic. Dandelion root is known as a diuretic, so if you do have something where some situation going on where you're retaining fluid, you've got excess fluid, dandelion root is one of those really excellent herbal diuretics because there's nutrition with it, And if you're consuming this, you know, it's not just that you are taking a diuretic,

but you're also getting some of the nutrients that you would lose through urination. Because if you've ever taken a diuretic and you've gone through that process and you've found yourself with an electrolyte imbalance, if you use dandelion instead, that doesn't happen because it's replacing those missing minerals. So, oh, that's another great option mentioned in the chat room is that dandelion flowers can be used to make critters and you can put them in pancakes. So dandelions, and they're just such a happy-looking flower. I don't understand why people hate them so much. But I look at them and there's medicine and there's food and they should be everywhere.

I mean, they are not native to the U.S. Our, you know, our first settlers from Europe brought them with them because they were that. important so and yes also that was the final thing that I wanted to mention also mentioned in the chat room is that you get the roots and if you roast then is a they they can make a fairly decent coffee substitute it's not going to taste like coffee so don't think oh if I roast and the lion roots they're gonna taste like coffee it doesn't taste like coffee but it has some similar is some similarities to coffee and that it's bitter and it's

earthy and if you're the only thing is it's actually far more friendly to your liver and your body than coffee is. So you can also mix dandelion roots with roasted chicory roots. That's another bitter. That's another plant that you should be on the lookout for. And you know when you mix these two, I mean a lot of people will recognize the flavor of roasted chicory because it's in a lot of coffee blends, especially around New Orleans. They have a lot of chicory in their coffee blends, but if you mix the two dandelion root and chickory roots,

you do get a very similar kind of an earthy, bitter beverage, and once you add some kind of a fat to it, some, you know, cream or whatever, then you get that mouth feel, because coffee does have a certain mouth feel that, you know, just a hot cup of tea is not going to emulate. I like to add some milky oat tops to that because it kind of gives it a little bit of that mouth feel as well, and it doesn't really add a flavor to it.

So the other thing you could add to that, although this has nothing to do with spring foraging, but since we're talking about chandelion coffee substitutes, if you add a little chaga in there, then certainly that also has another earthy, deep, rich, kind of flavor going on. Not necessarily so much bitter, but Chavez got an interesting flavor. It's kind of reminiscent of coffee, kind of reminiscent of vanilla.

Oh, I mentioned chicory root, Highlander. That's what I was just talking about, where I said there's a lot of that, a lot of shickory root in coffee blends from around New Orleans. So when you get roasted shickory root and roasted dandelion root together, there is sort of a very coffee-like thing there going on.

But if you are someone who needs their coffee fix in the morning, this isn't going to give you the caffeine, though. But if you're looking for that, if you're looking for something that's a little more friendly to the body and actually has some nutrients and is going to be strengthening to your body overall, You may wish to transition off of it. There are a number of different commercial varieties you can get on Amazon or your local natural food store or whatever, but I usually just make my own.

All right, but dandelions, they're coming out. You say you're going to want to use some portion of your dandelions for getting the dandelion root for either tinctures or dandelion roots. for making a coffee substitute. You're going to want to leave some of them to grow so that you can collect the leaves so that you can add those to salads and then later on that you're going to cook with and those are excellent for digestion.

And anytime you add dandelion to things, we're looking at digestive issues and we're looking at health of the urinary tract, we're looking at herbal diuretics, that kind of a thing. So something else to go along with that is Burdock. And Burdock, you may not recognize it until you actually see the big burrs on them, which come later on in the year, anywhere from June to October. You're going to see Burdock has these purple flowers that come on the very,

there are these spiky flowers that come on the end of this very prickly ball of, well, it's birds. You know, I mean, they're not comfortable to the touch, and they will stick to everything. But once you've seen them, then remember where that is because they're going to be growing right now. The leaves, those, they're large, they're wavy, they are heart shape. And they're going to be green on top.

The bottom is going to have, it's going to be more whitish in color, and they can get very large. The leaves can get very large. So if you see these leaves, and you can also look up pictures of burdock leaves. And you can recognize if I that, but the real telltale sign comes later in the year with those big birds. And if you, like I said, if you can't recognize them now, oh, wait, there's a question. What kinds of things only come out and are usable this time of year? Well, some of the things I'm talking about today, they're only going to come out. They're either only going to come out this time of year or there are parts of the plant that you use at this time of year

and then different parts of the plant you use at different times of the year and so on and so forth. But some of these really early first plants like dandelion, burdock, we're going to talk about metal, Japanese knotweed, violet. These are things that are chickweed. These are things that come up really early in the year. So, all right, about burdock. This is, this herb has so many uses. Again, this is a nutrient-dense herb. You're using the roots here.

It's often used for liver support, but also for the health of the skin, health of the hair. If you have, oh, should I put this, issues with sweating. this can help to regulate that because it's anything to do with the liver in the skin, and liver's skin and hair, I would say. And it was often used, the traditional use of burdock is as like a cleanser, like in order to assist the body to detox, which is sort of a big theme in the spring. So let's see here. where you can find this along riverbanks, wet areas like that.

You can also find it along roadside or let's say you've got a parking lot that's been, like if you go to the very edges of the parking lot, like wherever a parking lot like kind of turns over into sort of like a wild overgrown area, you'd be very surprised at all the different areas that you can find in a long road spot. of a parking lot. Try to go a foot or two in, you know, get away from where cars may have been because, you know, you don't want those chemicals

in your herbs and stuff. But if you drive over to these remote parts of parking lots where they meet up with sort of wild, overgrown areas, you'll find all sorts of things from, like, Burdock, you'll find horsetail, you'll find mugwort, you'll find... Red raspberries, you'll find, oh, I'm trying to think of the name of it now.

Jewelweed, which, of course, if you find jewelweed, then there's probably some poison iv kicking around there somewhere. But tons of, oh, I've found tons of St. John's Whart and Mullen all along the edges of parking lots. And these are usually the real far away spots where nobody parks because nobody wants to walk that far. So in general, you're probably okay with that. So Burdock, this is a time of year that you're going to want to be looking for that. So if you have river banks or Brooks, you might find these along those banks.

If you find roadsides or the edges of the parking lot, if you find, if you're going to be looking lot, you can also just look in vacant lots. Like, unfortunately, there are still quite a few homes that you can tell nobody's occupied them for a while. Nobody's been taking care of the lawn. You see areas like that, then definitely go check them out. You'll find them. And anywhere there's been like disturbed ground, you'll find a lot of medicinal weeds growing

growing in disturbed ground. There's some of the first plants that come in. But, yeah, Burdock is one of those, and it grows everywhere, like around the country. So you shouldn't have too much difficulty finding that. But again, you're going to want the first-year route. Those would be the ones that you're looking for. Then, I mean, you can cook them just like you would. A potato.

You peel them. and you can cook them. It's actually very common in Japanese cooking. If you can't find these and do you want to try eating, if you want to try testing them out in your kitchen, you can go to various Asian markets and it shouldn't be too difficult to find Burdock there. But you should, if you, if you have any state parks nearby, it shouldn't be too difficult. I'd be a little you know, find out what their policies are when it comes to harvesting plants and be a little discreet

about it, but again, you can plant these in your garden too, so that way you have your own sort of stash of them, but keep in mind that the stuff that you grow in your yard generally is not going to be as potent or as strong as

as its wild cousins. All right, so let me see, the next one that I want, to mention here is stinging metal and this is one of those plants that is going to be popping up this time of year and singing metal oh this this plant is loaded with so many minerals vitamins and minerals that when it comes to superfoods from these far-flung places all around the world It's like you don't need any of that.

You just find some metal. And the nettle roots, the nettle leaves, and the nettle seeds all have different uses. You can use the stems to make cordage if you're into that. And you can use the leaves to make everything from soup to pesto. The only thing is that you either have to cook the leaves or you have to dry the leaves, of the two because you don't want to have, they're called stinging metals for a reason. And if you don't handle them carefully, either with gloves or, you know, you have to sort of lift the leaves very carefully when you go to pick them.

If you don't, then you're probably going to get some, which if I need to, before we go any further into this here, let me, let's take a quick break and then I'll come back and we'll talk more about metal. All right, we'll be right back. It shouldn't be all about outdoor survival. Think prospering outdoors. Prospering outdoors is more than just getting by. Prospering outdoors is about having the quality gear or supplies you want when you need it. From camping and hunting supplies to prepping and survival kits, you'll find it all at prosperingoutdoors.com. You don't have to search for that hard-to-find item. With over 35 categories to choose from, prospering outdoors has it or will find it.

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At lumathee.com, we offer a variety of tripacs for preppers, survivalists, and adventurers that are great for backpacks in bugout bags. We're just a keep around the house. For example, one of our tripacs includes an antibiotic herbal tea, an herbal tea for pain, and an immune booster herbal tea. Luma tea is a must for every prepper and household. See all our teas and what Luma tea can. can do for you. Visit us at lumethe.com. All right, so we're back and let me just wrap up what I was saying about metal. You have to be a little careful when you pick them because you don't want to get stung by them

unless, of course, you have arthritis and actually being stung by metal or the legitimate arthritis treatment back in the Middle Ages because it actually will, it does hurt when you get stung and they will cause a little wealth. But after that, you'll find that the arthritis pain has diminished significantly. But anyway, you can eat the leaves once they're cooked or once they're dried. The younger leaves are, you know, favored more so. But don't forget to come back to this plant. Don't take all of it.

Don't, you know, don't pick everything. Leave some because you want some to go to seed because you also want. want to come back later on and collect the seeds. But where you'll find these, they're going to, they tend to be, they come back in the exact same spot every single year. They're very, if you find them once, they'll be able to find them again. And they do very well in the woods. They do very well in sort of partially shaded areas.

So definitely check out your walk. trail definitely you know look for like along the edges of Brooks along the edges of rivers and while and along the edges of walking trails out in the woods they they like that sort of partially shaded area and they go these little white flowers too but you want to kind of get them before that so be on the lookout for nettles you're they have sort of very they have tapered leaves they're kind of hard shape but not quite, they're a little too long for me to just say they're heart shaped.

They've got a little piece along the edges of the leaves, very green, and let's see, they, other distinguishing features. I think they have the little tiny hairs all along the plant, so along the stalk underneath the leaves there, you're going to find these little, these little, little singing little hairs. So be on the lookout for those. Cook them, dry them.

That neutralizes the sting that they have. You can use this for all sorts of things. Again, from meeting a diuretic, it is very helpful for things like eczema, arthritis, and it is a major source of chlorophyll, which if you really need this, You know, it, how should I put this delicately? Yeah, forget delicately.

Chlorophyll acts like an internal deodorizer. So if you've got someone who has really strong body odor, see if you can't get them to take something that's loaded with chlorophyll, like metal. So metal tea, metal soup, metal, anything, just about, but it's a good substitute for things like spinach or kale. So that is popping up right about now in some areas. And let's see chickweed is another one that you should start to see very, very soon.

It's got very little small white flowers. And this is a tiny little plant. It's got very, like, I should I put this, I mean like a half an inch tall to, you know, a couple inches, Maybe it's often found in lawns that you can find in fields. You can find it, many, many areas, whether the soil is rich or whether it's poor. Chickweed is kind of everywhere. The flowers are very daisy-like. So if you see these flowers that are really close to the ground and they look like a daisy, chances are probably chickweed.

some of the other things to, I mean, they're a little bit more like, how should I put it? The stems have a very thin, white sort of a hair that grows through them and you should be able to recognize this

fairly quickly and easily. It is something that It's very hearty. It grows in a bunch of different places every single year. It's loaded with vitamins and minerals. So you can add these to salads, add them to soups, add them with stews. You know, if you find it, certainly go out there and collect that. Violets are another one.

I shouldn't have to describe too, too much about violets. Yes, Highlander, there was a bad breath remedy, the chlorophyll, I assume that Violets are another one that are going to be there early, and I think most people recognize them as a heart-shaped leaf, and you either will see like the deep, violet, bluish, color flowers, or you'll find the sweet ones, which are sort of the white with the little purple spots on them. Those are the sweet violets. And certainly you can, you can use these for all sorts of things.

You can use the leaves in skin care. They're edible. Use the early ones, though. After a while, they're not so good for edible purposes. They can also be used to, as a thickener. So let's say if you are someone who cannot put wheat in something in order to thicken it up, like into a soup to thicken it up, like, you know, you make a roux and then you like you make a sauce from there, you can add violets and violet leaves to a soup that way.

It'll thicken it up a little bit. You can certainly eat the flowers raw in salads. They have a number of different uses. You can make poultices out of violets, and you can use these. They're supposed to get rid of headaches. I'm going to tell you right now, I haven't had any success getting rid of a headache with a violet poultice, but it's one of those uses that people have said. Maybe it's just me, so I'll pass that along, but I haven't had any success with that.

For boils, so I like serious skin eruptions like that. You know, it's not just a pimple, it's not just a little bit of acne. It's a real big inflamed boil. You can use poultice of violence for that. They are supposed to help with kidney problems if you make tea out of it. And also as a remedy for colds and cough. So if you wanted to use those fresh for a cold or a cough, because, you know, flu season is still kind of lingering for a little bit longer,

you may catch them. Otherwise, you know, harvest the leaves now, and you're going to have to dry them and then save them for next year. So even though you may not consume them right now, this will be the time of year to collect them, and then, you know, you can save them for later. The roots, not so much. You don't use the roots too too much. So let me see here.

Anything else I want to mention about. Violets, they are, again, just for a dry hacking cough, very good for bronchitis and whooping cough. And, you know, you can certainly mix them with something like marshmallow or licorice or slippery elm or something like that. makes a really, really good remedy for severe cough. Good for skin abrasions, eczema, that kind of thing. It's anti-inflammatory, so it goes into a lot of skin care. Let's see here. I want to wrap up real quick because we're just about out of time.

With a plant, we're going to talk more about it next time. but we're going to end off tonight talking about Japanese not weed because it's going to tie into next week's show online and Japanese not weed is generally not welcome because it's an invasive. We don't like invasive plants. you know, they're not, you know, they can displace local plants and that's all well and good. However, they are, you would want to find your Japanese knotwood now here in the spring and collect your plant material and then you can make tinctures from the roots. You can eat the leaves, but when you made the tincture from the roots, you, but when you made the tincture from the roots,

This is one of those key plants when it comes to herbal lime treatments. So let me see. What am I looking at here in the chat room? You forgot one thing. Not so great source. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously they are. I mean, if you've got nuts that are ready to be picked now at this point of the year, then fine, you know, grab them.

But let me see. What else here? I mean, at different parts of the country, you're going to have different plants available too. So I'm trying to reach most areas here. But Japanese not weed. And I want to make sure that this is not confused, which is Japanese barberries.

So we've got these two invasive plants here. Japanese barberries often use as an ornamental, and it does have benefits. and fours, it can be used as medicine. Japanese barberry does contain berberine. It can be used for making herbal antibiotic things and so on. But Japanese barberry also provides territory. It provides the environment that takes really, really love.

And there was a study done showing that when you remove the Japanese barberry from the area, number of ticks, the tick population drops significantly. So we can get our berberine from other plants. And, you know, I mean, I don't want to wage war on a specific plant, but I think Lyme is probably a bit more serious than that. And anyway, so Japanese barberry is not Japanese, not weed. They're two different plants entirely. But if this would be the time that you want to, yeah, Japanese not weed will grow right through the pavement, just like dandelions.

These are these really vigorous roots. They don't care. There's a meme that I just posted it on a Facebook page, I think, yesterday, where it's got like a rose on top of the thing. Oh, the pH in my soil is off, I'm going to die. and then right underneath there was a dandelion that was like, yeah, concrete, and it's like growing right up through the concrete. So these are very, these are very tenacious, very strong plants. But anyway, you can certainly can eat the leaves,

and you can get the roots this time of year. All the medicine and the energy of the plant is down there in the roots. So we're going to talk more about that later, but you can certainly add it to your cooking. That's another way that you can add your herbal medicine in there. But all right, you have about three minutes. So we are at the end of the show. Remember next week we're starting a conversation about Lyme. Probably going to go more than one show, just warning you ahead of that, you know, ahead of time.

But if you like what you've heard tonight, please do connect with me by following me on Facebook, Twitter, G-plus, Pinterest, and don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Please check out eroprepper.com. Sign up for my newsletter. Check out all the available courses there. Thank you, everyone, for spending your time with me. I hope you got something out of this. This has been Kat, Irval Prepper with Orvo Prepper Live, and we will see you again next week.

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