After having two weeks in a row of still runs and scrubbing baked bread dough for hours, this week was a welcome break from distillation. It gave Laura and I the time to plan and reconsider our Week 9 Workshop with the Practice of Organic Farming program, as we were both worried about how we still have not produced any lemon balm essential oil. Because of this, I took the extra time this week to look into a potential alternative for our final distillation project for the quarter, looking into the benefits of comfrey essential oil as recommended by classmate, Sarah Dyer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the internal use of comfrey continues to be debated heavily by herbalists due to certain components that are potentially toxic to the liver, there’s no denying the external benefits of this plant as a healer of the body’s connective tissues. Whether used for tiny scratches and minor burns or more serious sprains and even broken bones, many studies and herbalists have reported the amazing healing abilities of this plant. Why is this so? Comfrey is a cell proliferant, meaning it increases the growth of cells and therefore increases the healing ability of the body. Many believe this is due to the chemical, allantoin, which is a known cell proliferant found within comfrey, but studies have shown that it’s most likely a variety of chemicals within the plant that contribute to its miraculous healing abilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Outside of being a cell proliferant, great success has been found in using comfrey for inflammation and swelling. Freezing the blended-up comfrey root with a bit of water and applying this to burns or using a comfrey bath for an enraged wasp sting have both had wonderful healing results by herbalists. If we were to create an essential oil out of comfrey, I would most be interested in using it in a salve for minor skin wounds and burns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because of how abundant comfrey currently is around campus and the farm, and also how impossible it is to get rid of, I think it might be a good plant to consider for our final essential oil run. Our supply of lemon balm is growing thin which was always a worry at the back of my mind, but now that we are fully aware of the amount of plant material it requires to produce any oil at all, I am almost positive that we will not get any oil from our final run if we stick with using lemon balm. I think comfrey would be a wonderful alternative and would allow us to further experiment in making salves as well, which we just learned how to do through the Medicine of Community and Place program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: de la Foret, Rosalee. “Benefits of Comfrey.” HerbalRemediesAdvice.org, https:\/\/www.herbalremediesadvice.org\/benefits-of-comfrey.html<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After having two weeks in a row of still runs and scrubbing baked bread dough for hours, this week was a welcome break from distillation. It gave Laura and I the time to plan and reconsider our Week 9 Workshop with the Practice of Organic Farming program, as we were both worried about how we … Continue reading Week 8: A Much Needed Break<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/taste-portfolio-sp22-dewitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}