Herbs For Your Health

Well, Spring is inching ever closer and with that comes planting season. I have already ordered my vegetable seeds and thanks to my generous neighbor, I have two flats of heirloom tomato plants sitting on my dining room table that have started. I will soon be ordering some fruit plants too. Thanks to Amy, I have learned about this family home industry, and am planning to get a few fruit plants from them. After that, I am seriously going to take a look at purchasing some herb seeds. Not only will this be an asset to my meal preparations, but what I'm mostly interested in, is using them to create healing medicines for my family. My husband and I have been talking about how important we feel it is to be as self-sufficient as possible. Particularly as we see the world becoming more and more unstable all the time.

In our family, we try avoid pharmaceutical drugs as far as possible, as we believe that God gave us every herb bearing seed, not only for our food, but for our healing as well. My thoughts are: Why use synthetic drugs that can cause life-threatening side effects when God has provided plants that are perfectly healthful and natural? ... drugs are extremely costly and they don't work for the cure, but rather to mask symptoms instead.

So that said, this year we are on a quest to learn all that we can about herbs and their medicinal properties. I found a small Herb course on-line, offered by Cheri at Sweet Hollow Farm. Part of Cheri's testimony is that they were a homeschooling, Christian family, dwelling in the City. One day the Lord spoke to her heart and showed her that they were too reliant on others for everything in their life. She saw that she needed to rely more on God for their sustenance and so, they left the city behind for country life and have been there for nine years now. Through her journey, she has learned much and is now offering to pass on that knowledge to others. I plan on taking advantage of it. :)

I would love to hear from any of you who have made this a way of life. I would really like to learn how to make tinctures, salves, balms and any other type of natural healing methods, using herbs.

I found a website some time back that sells herbs in bulk. Many of you may know it. It's called: Bulk Herb Store It's owned and operated by Shoshanna Pearl, the daughter of Michael & Debi Pearl. While at the Bulk Herb Store, I saw several books that can be purchased to help us on our quest for Herbal knowledge. I was particularly interested in the book: "The How-to Herb Book". I didn't really want to pay what the Bulk Herb Store was asking, so hunted around the web for a lower price. I found one. It's at: More Than Alive. I often will purchase books used, from Amazon, but even there, the price was higher.

Please let me know if you have this book. I'm interested to know how you like it and if it's been useful in your home.