Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Hemlock, Tsuga

[00:00:00] Hey y'all, welcome to this week's show. Hope everybody has enjoyed their January. As I always say, this is the time of year to learn to do things that we'll use outdoors when the time comes. Unless you're fortunate enough to be able to go out hunting and trapping and all the things I love to do this winter that I can't do because I'm away from hunting.

[00:00:22] I cannot wait to get back up to my house in the mountains and not only get to work on it, but get out there for opening...well we don't really have an opening day of trout season, but they close it for a little when they restock the streams. And there's going to have to be a lot of restocking taking place after that hurricane. As I said a couple of months ago, I think most of the trout in Avery County is washed down into McDowell and Burke.

[00:00:51] And I mean, there's would have to be some pretty strong trout to keep all that water from pushing them on downstream. So, very much looking forward to taking my 10 car ride out to those little areas that a lot of tourists don't get to, you know, where you don't have to fight for room to cast a fly line. If you haven't, if you've never looked at it in car, be sure to check that out.

[00:01:14] It's a Japanese style of fly fishing, which is actually more like using a cane pole with a short fly line on it. It's just really cool. It's a telescopic rod. So it literally this long, I don't even know, it's a very long rod, maybe 12 feet or something,

[00:01:31] but it collapses down to 18 inches, maybe two feet. So you can put in your backpack and you just take a minimal kit with you and you find a place that's open to fishing and hike up the creek and there's find a place where there's no one around. And you can actually just really enjoy being out there and it's pretty strong rod to a good stout line. And you can catch, you know, if you're not in the mountains, you don't have access to trout. Don't think you can't do Tinkara.

[00:02:00] You can use it for bass fishing. Seriously, get a couple of poppers, some small poppers and kind of pop them along through the lily pads on a pond or a lake. I guess you could probably put a wire leader on it. And if you wanted to try to tackle something like a gar or pike, that may be a little too big for that rod though, actually.

[00:02:22] Now they do, they do have heavy Tinkara rods. So if you are in an area where you have pike and gar, you could get a very heavy Tinkara rod and you'd be just fine. But I love taking it out going after like a bluegill and bream and perch and such as that. Well, I've never tried it for perch, but bluegill and bream, red ear, pumpkin seed. We get a lot of those in the eastern parts of the state and freshwater.

[00:02:50] And yeah, I mean, probably be good for spots and croaker and such as that. I mean, I wouldn't try to use a rod like that for, well, anything bigger than a sea trout, you know, speckled trout, weak fish. Yeah, that'd be fine. They don't, yeah, I mean, they're often targeted with fly rods. In fact, I've got a, one that I have dedicated solely to saltwater fly fishing. What is it, a number seven weight? I mean, it's pretty stout. And yeah, I think it's seven.

[00:03:19] And I put, I think an eight weight line on there and I've got my leaders and everything. And I mean, that's great. You get into that brackish water where you never know what you're going to catch. And I mean, you catch a drum or something and you can, man, that will, that's going to give you a real challenge on a fly rod. Trust me. I've caught it. Well, I have encountered some very large fish that would drag you up and down surf fishing like big black drums and such.

[00:03:48] And what was it? A mackerel one time about knocking me off my feet. That thing hit my line so fast. But that was my, with my big surf rods. You don't try to fly fish on, you know, surf fishing. Anywhere where the wind is, you know, that heavy, you're not going to get any, you're not even going to be able to cast. I mean, just forget about it. But yeah, I have a couple of big surf rods.

[00:04:10] What they call a Hatteras Heaver, where you can just launch a line out there like, you know, 150, 200 yards if you're really good. I'm not that good. But I do usually get around maybe 100 yards or so, get out beyond the breakers, you know, big heavy sinker on there, maybe a fish finder rig or a double rig. And get ready because, man, when those, I mean, when they hit, they hit. And, I mean, they, you set that hook and they will sometimes just knock you off your feet.

[00:04:40] And that is so much fun. I love it. I love it. I love it. I don't have a boat for deep sea fishing. So, that's like, really, that's my chance to go after a shark or something, you know, bigger than I normally would in my little mountain streams, which I miss so much. But I have occupied my time very well. As I say, this is the time of year to build skills. And one of the things, you know, I do is basket weaving. And I've been, you know, I'm down in the sand hills in North Carolina in Moore County. And there's pine trees everywhere.

[00:05:07] So, I went out and gathered a bunch of good fresh pine straw and I made a few pine needle baskets. That's a really good skill to learn. And the one I just completed, almost complete, I should say, it's an herb basket. And I made it sort of like an oblong deep basket, you know, almost like a tote bag kind of in shape. And put a long strap on it so it will hang around my neck and it will be almost like a messenger bag, you know. And it turned out really pretty. I might have to make some of these for sale.

[00:05:37] So, I've got probably a couple more days work to do. Just a little ornamentation. Just kind of dress it up a little bit. But it looks great. And it's very sturdy, very durable. Someone on Twitter said that pine needles were just too brittle to use for anything. I'm like, no way, man. I mean, you get a coil of pine needles and you start stitching those things together. They're basically like leather. I mean, it's amazing. It's that, you know, it's that fascist principle of a bundle of sticks is harder to break than one stick.

[00:06:06] Yeah, it turned out really well. Maybe my next week's show, I can put a link or something in the show notes so you can see a picture of it. Maybe it'll inspire you to learn the craft. It takes a long time. It's tedious. It's probably two months to do this herb basket. Yeah, I mean, I could have taken a lot of shortcuts. I could have done bigger coils. I could have done a different stitching pattern. Probably knocked it out in one month. And it would have turned out just as nice. And I'll probably do that when I do something to sell. But, you know, this was an experiment for me.

[00:06:34] I'd never done a basket like this before. One you would actually wear with a strap. And it's going to take a lot of abuse and have to carry some pretty heavy equipment. You know, for an herb basket, you're not going to carry anything heavier than a knife and whatever herbs you harvest. Maybe a few pounds of mushrooms. But I've seen old trap baskets and such made out of pine needles. Where someone would be going into the woods with, you know, 100 pounds of traps and chains and bait on their back.

[00:07:04] And so, yeah, I mean, it really can be quite substantial. So, anyway, let's go ahead and get into the herb for the week. And it is Suga. T-S-U-G-A. Never heard of that? Well, you've probably heard of hemlock. That's the common name. And there are five varieties of Suga or hemlock that have been found useful in herbal medicine. Including Suga canadensis. It's Canadian hemlock. Carolina hemlock. Western hemlock. Chinese hemlock. And Mountain hemlock.

[00:07:33] Two varieties native to my region. We have Eastern hemlock, which is also Suga canadensis. And Suga Carolina, which is Carolina hemlock, of course. Now, before I go any further, do not confuse the tree that is hemlock, which is a nice evergreen tree, with Poison hemlock, which is a plant in the Apiaceae family that looks almost identical to wild carrot. Remember, if you're going out to harvest wild carrot, you want to be very sure of your identity.

[00:08:04] You want to look for the hairs on the stem. You want to look for that little purple flower in the center of a wild carrot. They're plentiful in my region, so I deal with them a lot. I don't have that much trouble telling the two apart. But probably the worst mistake, one of the three worst mistakes you could make as a beginning forager would be to pick poison hemlock instead of wild carrot because you will be dead. It will kill you stone cold dead.

[00:08:30] That's what they used to use to execute people in ancient Greece. You're probably aware of the story of Socrates drinking the hemlock. Other plants, of course, water hemlock, same family. Learn to identify that one as well. Wolfsbane, aconite would be very dangerous. Falsehellebore, that's often mistaken for wild skunk cabbage.

[00:09:00] Lily of the valley can easily be mistaken for ramps. There are several, and that could really mess you up real bad. So always know your poisonous plants. I think it's more important to learn the poisonous plants first, even before you learn the wild edibles. Learn to identify the ones that are poisonous. And I do the same with mushrooms, and that's just sort of my rule of thumb. I don't think you can go too wrong. With a good field guide, and these days you can get a good plant ID app on your phone, I use both.

[00:09:27] I rarely carry my phone, so I shouldn't say I use both. I can use both, and sometimes cross-referencing online, just to be sure, is a good backup. I would definitely recommend it. If you live in an area with good cell coverage, which, of course, in the mountains where I live, I get like little to no cell coverage. I actually, to make a phone call on my cell phone, I have to go out on my front porch and lean over and get at an angle that's at an elevation, and I might get like two bars. That's about it.

[00:09:56] I literally have to go to town to make a cell phone call, which is pretty ridiculous, so it's not even worth bothering with, obviously. In the house, I've got Wi-Fi, so that's no big deal. But if I actually have to make an actual phone call as opposed to just sending a text or something, I pretty much have to go to town. Now, Hemlock canadensis, the Thompsonian system of medicine. I think I've discussed the Thompsonians before.

[00:10:20] They were really the leading school of herbal medicine in the late 1800s through about the 1920s, so just say mid-1900s to 1920 or so. And they were really rivaling Western medicine. They were allopathic medicine, the kind of medicine you get from a doctor. And so the doctors' guilds and medical associations went after them and put them out of business, closed their schools, and there was a lot of controversy around that.

[00:10:51] But they wrote, Dr. Thompson himself actually wrote, the inner bark of Hemlock canadensis. He says, this is the common henlock tree that grows in all parts of New England. I believe he was from New Hampshire or Vermont, so very New England-based. The best medicine is to peel the bark from young trees and preserve only the inner bark. Try it carefully, pound it, grind it into a powder.

[00:11:18] A tea made by boiling water with this bark is a good medicine for canker and many other complaints. The first of my using Hemlock as a medicine was in 1814. Being in want of something for canker, I tried it by chewing and found an answer and made use of it to good advantage. That's one of the reasons the Thompsonian school is so good. There was a lot of trial and error. They used the, it wasn't just like, you know, I read about this herb in a book and I'm going to recommend it.

[00:11:47] Thompsonians were really big on using the herbs themselves. And there was a lot of experimentation and they discovered, of course, a lot of toxic plants, but also a lot of very, very useful plants. So since then, I've made constant use of it and always found it very good medicine, both for canker and complaints of the bowels and stomach. A tea made of this bark is very good and may be used freely.

[00:12:10] It is good to give in an emetic and may be used for a drink in all cases of sickness, especially when going through a course of medicine and steaming. He said it was used as a medic in one of his formulas, formula number two. I think that had lobelia in it, which would have been more the emetic. I don't know that hemlock is necessarily that emetic on its own in normal doses.

[00:12:35] So this is maybe used in drinks, in all cases of sickness, and especially when going through a course of medicine and steaming. I think I just said that. But this with bayberry bark and the lily root forms my formula number three, or what has been commonly called a coffee. It was, you know, at that time, we're talking about what did he say, 1814. You've just gotten through the War of 1812 and the British had cut off the ports. People couldn't get coffee.

[00:13:04] There was a time of a lot of coffee substitutes. So that's kind of what he's talking about there. He says the bowels made into a T, the B-O-U-G-H, bowels, balls, however you pronounce that, made into a T are very good for gravel and other obstructions of the urinary passage and for rheumatism. And Plants for a Future in Modern Use says the Carolina hemlock. The bark is astringent, diuretic, and diaphoretic.

[00:13:35] That means, diaphoretic means help breaks a fever and diuretic means helps you get rid of excess fluids. A T made from the inner bark or twigs is helpful in the treatment of kidney or bladder problems and also makes a good enema for treating diarrhea. It can be used as a gargle or mouthwash for mouth and throat problems and externally to wash sores and ulcers. A pulse of the bark has been used to treat itchy armpits. Isn't that interesting? Now, I've had this happen to me once or twice. Never could figure out what happened.

[00:14:05] Must have been some kind of allergic reaction. Maybe it's been some kind of toxicity in something that I ate or drank or who knows what. But I woke up one morning and my armpits were swollen and itchy. I mean, like, flared up, like, almost like hives but not bumpy. Just like these big red blotches in both armpits. It was extremely uncomfortable. And didn't, you know, I had no idea what had happened.

[00:14:31] Immediately put on cord-aid, you know, took some Benadryl. And it, you know, kind of calmed down enough for me to not have to hold my arms up all the time. Lasted about three days. It's happened once that badly. And then once again, I think, yeah, maybe two years after that. A year to two years after that. And it may have been right around the time of ragweed season. Sometimes ragweed will cause me to get a rash on my face.

[00:15:01] But I never had that happen before with the armpits. Anyway, it said poultice of the bark. Use to treat itchy armpits. The powdered bark can be put into shoes for tender or sweaty feet or for foot odor. And that may sound like a, you know, pretty mild thing. But if you are in the woods and you're hiking, sore feet are a big problem.

[00:15:29] And most, you know, backpackers, people that hike long distances do take a foot powder with them. Talcum powder, gold bond or something. So this would be a good natural alternative if you had to be on your feet for quite a while. An infusion of the stem tips has been used to treat kidney problems. A decoction of the roots has been used as a birthing aid and to help expel afterbirth. The roots have been chewed in order to treat diarrhea.

[00:15:56] And interestingly, they also list it as an edible plant. And you might think, how in the world am I going to eat a hemlock tree? Well, the inner bark, raw or dried, grounded to a powder, and then used as a thickener in soups or mixed with cereals and can be used with making bread. The leaves and twigs yield spruce oil, which is used commercially to flavor chewing gum. Like, I think, spearmint gum. Or, yeah, I think it's the one that uses spruce oil. Used in soft drinks.

[00:16:26] Certain root beers have spruce oil in them. Ice creams. An herbal tea made from the young shoots. The young shoot tips. Sorry. These tips are also an ingredient in spruce beer. Spruce beer. And spruce beer is, I may even have a recipe for it here. No, I don't have it on this book. Our ancestors, when they came to this country, there was not a lot of barley to make the beer they were used to in England and parts of Europe.

[00:16:55] So they began to use corn. Corn does not make a great beer. Most of them began figuring out how to use crab apples and blackberries to make, you know, ciders and wines and all that. But at the same time, root beers were becoming popular. Sarsaparilla was very popular in early colonial America and after that. Sarsaparilla, of course, was an export, I mean, an import from, I think, well, it was from South America. America, maybe Peru.

[00:17:25] I can't remember exactly which country, but very closely related to several plants in America, including most, if not all, of the briars. Green briars. I mean, smilex species. And the aurelius. So they were making their own root beers out of that. They were also making root beers out of sassafras roots and all this. This is a predecessor to our modern, you know, what, Barks or A&W root beer that is made from all artificial flavors.

[00:17:53] And has nothing in it but sugar and a little caramel color and such as that. Not very good for you. Real root beers are quite good, but they also learn to make beers from certain branches and twigs. I mean, the shoots of especially your evergreens. And I've given instructions before on how I made a wine from pine needles. They would use spruce.

[00:18:19] And spruce is very good because it also had, it's not merely a nice beverage to drink, but it has some additional benefits. Birch twigs were often used. And it's essentially just making a very strong tea and then dissolving as much sugar as you can into it and putting in a little yeast and letting it ferment. So that was very popular. And a lot was written in early America about how wonderful spruce beer was.

[00:18:47] They really preferred it to beer made from corn. And really, you can't blame them. Corn is great for making whiskey. It's awful for making beer. A little corn sugar is no big deal if you're adding it to other ingredients. But corn on its own, not so good. But so Botany in a Day says that Suga is astringent, diuretic, and diaphoretic. Diuretic here means it helps reduce or prevent diarrhea and diaphoretic against her fevers.

[00:19:15] A tea of the bark for twigs is used for a sore mouth or throat and for kidney and bladder problems. Externally, it is used as a wash for sores. The inner bark was reportedly used by Native Americans for food in the springtime. And finally, the physician's desk reference for herbal medicine. This is the book your doctor should have on his shelf if he wants to check to see if any herbs you're taking contraindicate with any medicines he's going to give you.

[00:19:40] It says the active agents are the tannin, hemlock tannin, and picaea tannols, tannins essentially. The drug has astringent, anti-inflammatory, diaphoretic, and diuretic properties. Under unproven uses, it says the bark is used for digestive disorders, diarrhea, diseases of the mouth and throat. And it was formally used to treat scurvy. And again, the young shoots have a lot of vitamin C in them.

[00:20:08] That's true of most, if not all, of our evergreen plants. So that would have been very, very useful in earlier times. So y'all will wrap it up there. I hope I've inspired you to check out pine needle baskets. Actually, yeah, I did take a couple pictures of the herb basket before I put the strap on. On Judson Carroll Woodcraft. It's judsoncarrollwoodcraft.substack.com. I think it's the full address. Anyway, the link's in the show notes.

[00:20:36] You can check out the work in progress. When I get the thing finished, I'll put a nice pick on there so you can see how it turned out. It's not really surprising to see how just strong and flexible pine needles really are. I mean, I've made baskets for putting fruit in or for like half bushel baskets. There were a lot of smaller baskets out of pine needles before. But to actually use it almost like a fabric has been a really interesting experiment.

[00:21:04] And I think I'm going to do more in this regard. I mean, just imagine if you were like lost in the woods or you had to suddenly leave home. If you had, you know, a couple bundles of twine or string with you, you could do big coils of pine straw and actually make yourself a blanket or like a B-skap style tent almost.

[00:21:28] I mean, you literally, if you had a couple of days just sitting there weaving pine needles, you could really use these in a survival situation. Of course, you'd want to keep any sparks away from them. That's for sure. But for insulating purposes, you know, you could make a poncho out of it. I'm, you know, I've been very pleasantly surprised to learn some new uses for something I've really been around and worked with since I was a kid. I mean, my family has a tradition of basket making.

[00:21:56] But the Lumbee Indians that I grew up in and around and near, somewhat related to in various ways in eastern North Carolina, where I spent about half my youth, they make pine needle baskets. So probably third grade, I got instruction in making pine needle baskets, you know, in school, which was pretty cool. You know, they had one of the basket makers from the tribe come in and teach us how to do it.

[00:22:20] And off and on, you know, throughout my life, I've made pine needle baskets or yucca fiber cordage. Those are good skills to have. For more rigid, sturdier baskets, I guess you would say, there's so many things. There's kudzu. There's wisteria is one of the best. There's Virginia creeper. There's honeysuckle. So many things you can make baskets out of.

[00:22:47] There are various barks, the inner barks of many trees make wonderful baskets. And it's, you know, it's a nice thing to do in the winter. And I'm going to get a ton of use out of this herb basket. I think that's going to be really cool, actually. And I actually have something in mind that may be a little crazy. I think I'll hold off to announce that. I think another wearable bit of pine needle apparel may be in my future. We'll see how that turns out.

[00:23:14] I think you'll get a kick out of, if nothing else, I may look like a fool. But, you know, hey, I don't have a problem with that. I've looked foolish in many ways and many times in my life. And hopefully will continue to do so throughout my life. Because that means I'm taking risks and I'm having a good time, right? You know, I'm not, I'm growing as opposed to stagnating or whatever. You know, mixed metaphor there. But anyway, y'all have a great week. And I'll talk to you next time.

[00:23:44] The information in this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The U.S. government does not recognize the practice of herbal medicine. And there is no governing body regulating herbalists. Therefore, I'm really just a guy who studies herbs. I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true. I can tell you what herbs have been traditionally used for.

[00:24:12] I can tell you my own experience and if I believe an herb has helped me. I cannot nor would I tell you to do the same. If you use an herb anyone recommends, you are treating yourself. You take full responsibility for your health. Humans are individuals and no two are identical. What works for me may not work for you. You may have an allergy, a sensitivity, an underlying condition that no one else even shares and you don't even know about. Be careful with your health.

[00:24:38] By continuing to listen to my podcast or read my blog, you agree to be responsible for yourself, do your own research, make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever.