Back to Eden Natural Health and Wellness

🌿 YELLOW DOCK: THERE’S TREASURE UNDER THAT “WEED”!

Sometimes the most valuable plants are the ones growing right under our feet.

Recently, while working with my brother near Orrick, Missouri, I came across a beautiful stand of healthy yellow dock. Fortunately, I almost always have a spade shovel with me, so I brought home a nice harvest of roots!

And harvesting yellow dock root is no small job. In good soil, those taproots can reach a foot or more into the ground, and they have a frustrating habit of snapping off before you get the whole thing out.
There’s also a reason I’m digging them now. As perennial plants prepare for winter, they move resources underground to help fuel the next year’s growth. That makes late fall, along with early spring before vigorous new growth begins, a traditional time for herbalists to harvest roots.

So why go to all that trouble?

Yellow dock root has a long history in herbal medicine as an alterative, or “blood cleanser.” That doesn’t mean it literally scrubs toxins from your blood. Traditionally, the term refers to herbs used to support the body’s own processes of elimination, particularly through the liver, bile, digestive system and bowels.

Yellow dock is also surprisingly mineral-rich. Analyses of the root have found iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium and zinc, with especially noteworthy amounts of iron and calcium. That doesn’t mean yellow dock is a treatment for mineral deficiencies, but it certainly helps explain why herbalists have long valued this humble root as a nourishing tonic.
Traditionally, yellow dock root has been used to:

🌿 Support healthy liver and gallbladder function
🌿 Encourage healthy bile flow
🌿 Support digestion and regular elimination
🌿 Serve as an alterative or traditional “blood-cleansing” herb
🌿 Provide a natural source of valuable minerals

At Back to Eden, yellow dock root is one of the herbs we put into every batch of our Fire C***r, and some of this fresh harvest will be dehydrated and ground for use in other preparations, including a liver-and-gut-support herbal tea blend we’re developing.

It’s amazing what God has provided for us in plants that most people simply walk past as weeds.

Sometimes you just have to know what you’re looking at...and carry a good shovel! 🌿😊

🌿 YOU’VE PROBABLY DRIVEN PAST THIS PLANT A THOUSAND TIMES…

Those beautiful, upright clusters of deep red berries you see growing along roadsides and field edges? That’s sumac — and there is a whole lot more to this native plant than meets the eye!

Yesterday, Jen and I spent some time foraging on a large acreage near El Dorado Springs and came across a beautiful patch of staghorn sumac. Naturally, we couldn’t pass it up! We harvested as much as we could carry and brought it home to process.

So what’s so interesting about sumac?

For generations, people have used the red fruit of sumac both as food and in traditional herbal preparations. One of its simplest uses is making a refreshing drink sometimes called “sumac-ade.” The fruit is steeped in water, producing a pleasantly tart, almost lemonade-like drink.

Traditionally, various preparations of sumac have also been used for sore throats, digestive complaints, respiratory complaints and wound care. Modern research has found another interesting reason this plant has attracted attention: sumac fruit contains an impressive assortment of plant compounds, including polyphenols, flavonoids, tannins and anthocyanins, and extracts of the fruit have demonstrated antioxidant activity in laboratory research.
And that wonderfully tart flavor? That comes naturally from the fruit’s organic acids (malic and citric acid) and tannins. No lemons required!

One question people often have is: “Wait… isn’t sumac poisonous?”

The sumac with these upright red berry clusters is not poison sumac. Poison sumac is a different plant that typically grows in wet, swampy areas and produces loose clusters of pale whitish berries. As always with wild plants, positive identification is essential before harvesting anything.

So what are we doing with ours?

We rinsed every cluster by hand, spread them on trays, and slowly dried them overnight. This morning we separated the little fruits from their woody stems, leaving us with the enormous bowlful you see in the pictures. Our next step is to gently process and sift them, separating out the hard seeds and keeping as much of that beautiful tart red fruit material as possible.

And nothing needs to go to waste. Even the berry-covered stems and leftovers are headed to our chickens to investigate and enjoy. 😊

The part we keep will eventually find its way into some of our Back to Eden herbal tea blends, where sumac can contribute its bright, pleasantly tart flavor along with all of that fascinating plant chemistry.

This is one of our favorite things about learning to forage. Sometimes what looks like just another plant growing beside the road turns out to have a history stretching back generations.

God has placed an extraordinary pharmacy and pantry all around us. Sometimes we just have to learn how to recognize it. 🌿

Back to Eden Natural Health & Wellness

Sometimes Your Body Needs a Reboot

Right now, I’m on day three of a green juice fast.

For three days, I’ve eaten no solid food. When I’m genuinely hungry, I drink fresh green juice. When I’m not hungry, I don’t. And honestly? My energy has been great. After the first 24 hours, I even slept better than I normally do.

Sometimes we simply need to give our bodies a break.

Think about how much work your digestive system does every single day. Meal after meal, snack after snack, it is constantly digesting, absorbing, processing and eliminating. A short juice fast gives that system a chance to rest while continuing to flood the body with nutrients from fresh, living foods.

Our juice is simple:

🥬 Kale
🥒 Cucumber
🌿 Celery
🥕 Carrots
🍏 Granny Smith apples
🍋 Lemon
🫚 Fresh ginger

We run everything through our juicer, and because some of the fine pulp makes it into the finished juice, ours retains some of the plant fiber as well.

For us, the idea is a reboot.

Stop the constant intake of solid food for a little while. Give the digestive tract a break. Give the body some breathing room. Continue supplying vitamins, minerals and all those wonderful plant compounds, but simplify the workload.

You don't have to start with anything extreme, either. A two- or three-day juice fast can be an approachable way to experience it. Some people choose to go considerably longer.

If you've never watched the documentary Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, we highly recommend it. Joe Cross began the film overweight, sick and dependent on medications. He undertook a 60-day fresh juice fast while being medically monitored, and the transformation documented along the way is remarkable. The film also follows Phil Staples as he undertakes his own extended juice journey.

It is one of those documentaries that can completely change the way you think about food and what the human body is capable of when we change what we're giving it.

One other thing to know: the beginning of a fast doesn't feel identical for everyone. Some people experience headaches, fatigue, digestive changes or other temporary symptoms as their normal eating patterns change. Others, like I've experienced this time, may actually notice surprisingly good energy.

I'm wrapping up my own three-day fast now, and it has been a good reminder of something we believe strongly at Back to Eden:

Sometimes health isn't about adding one more thing. Sometimes it's about taking things away for a little while and giving the body room to do what it was designed to do. 🌿

If you've never considered a juice fast, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead is a great place to start learning about the idea. You can watch it here https://youtu.be/R15FezDA6t8?is=jaOb3ov5tITCnRo0

Back to Eden Natural Health & Wellness 🌱

Ten gallons of fire c***r!
Cold and flu season is coming, and ours is already brewing.

Today, we packed ten one-gallon jars full of fresh fruits, roots, herbs, peppers, and spices, then covered all of that goodness with raw, unfiltered apple c***r vinegar with the mother. If you've never heard of fire c***r before, you might be wondering: What in the world is it and why would I want it?

Fire c***r is a traditional herbal tonic people have kept on hand for generations, especially in the colder months, as a way to support the body and its natural defenses. It's bold, warming, invigorating, and packed with plants that each bring something different to the table. And that's one of the things we love about it. Every layer going into those jars has a job. Garlic, onions, horseradish, ginger, cayenne, and jalapeños bring the heat and pungency traditionally associated with warming the body, supporting circulation, and opening up the sinuses. Ginger and turmeric bring powerful plant compounds valued for their antioxidant properties and their ability to support a healthy inflammatory response. Rosemary and oregano are wonderfully aromatic herbs, loaded with protective plant compounds, and long used in colder weather months. Echinacea is one of the best-known traditional herbs for immune support, particularly when you feel something beginning to come on. Burdock and yellow dock are deeply rooted in traditional herbalism, where they've long been valued for nutritive and digestive supporting properties. Oranges and lemons brighten everything, and cinnamon, cloves, star anise, peppercorns, bay leaf, add another layer of beneficial plant compounds, warmth, aroma, and flavor. And all of it is submerged in raw apple c***r vinegar where it will stay for at least six weeks while the vinegar extracts flavor and plant constituents.

But wait, cayenne and jalapeños, isn't this stuff crazy hot? Surprisingly, no. If you don't tolerate spicy foods well, don't count yourself out just yet. The finished c***r isn't like biting into a hot pepper. As all of these ingredients infuse together, the heat becomes part of a much more complex flavor, and when the extraction is finished, we'll strain it and blend the infused vinegar 60/40 with raw honey. That honey beautifully balances the acidity and heat, leaving a flavor that is sweet, tart, warming, and surprisingly easy to take. We actually have family members who can't tolerate spicy foods at all, but handle our finished fire c***r very well.

And six weeks from now, we're still not finished. Once we strain these jars, we're not throwing all those beautiful herbs, roots, fruits, and spices away. We'll dehydrate the strained botanicals, grind them, and turn them into our fire c***r tea. We've done this before and it makes a wonderful warming tea. We'll show you that whole process when the time comes. Around here, if something useful can be given another purpose, we'd rather use it than throw it away.

For now, these 10 beautiful gallons are going to sit, steep, and transform. And right about the time cold and flu season is settling in, our fire c***r will be ready.

If you'd like first dibs on this batch, let us know in the comments or send us a message. We're starting a list now. We made 10 gallons, but judging by how much interest we've already seen in our handmade products, we're not assuming that's too much.

Six weeks and counting!

Processing Yellow Dock and Burdock root harvested a few days ago in preparation for getting five gallons of fire c***r started for cold and flu season. I don't think anybody makes fire c***r with as many tried and true ingredients as Back to Eden does! Can you say "the kitchen sink"? :)

More posts to come as we get farther in to this project.

IT'S A BABY! 😁

I've been patiently watching this jar for quite a while, and tonight I finally saw what I've been waiting for. My baby SCOBY is becoming unmistakable!

This one has kind of a fun story. I bought a bottle of live kombucha from an Amish market and decided to see if I could use the culture still living in that kombucha to start my own. With some sweet black tea, a warm place to live, a little knowledge, and a LOT of patience...here we are.

Technically, that little translucent pancake forming across the top is called a pellicle. The SCOBY, the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, actually lives throughout the fermented tea. But most of us kombucha makers just call that funny-looking little creature a SCOBY. 😊

And this is one of the things we love about traditional fermented foods. They're alive.

The bacteria and yeast consume components of the sweetened tea and transform it, producing organic acids and other fermentation products and, depending on the finished kombucha, living microorganisms. That's why kombucha has become such a popular fermented drink for people looking to add more traditionally fermented foods to their diet.

Making it at home isn't terribly complicated either. Brew sweet tea, introduce a healthy culture and some mature kombucha, cover it so it can breathe while keeping unwanted visitors out, and wait. Taste and time do much of the rest. Once you've got a thriving culture, it can keep producing batch after batch.

The fourth picture shows one of my mature SCOBYs so you can see what this little baby may eventually become. And the last picture shows the considerably more appetizing end of the process: our peach kombucha after a second fermentation with real peaches. 😋

Nature has been fermenting things a lot longer than we've been putting probiotics into capsules. Sometimes getting Back to Eden really can be as simple as learning how to work with the tiny living things God already put here

Not to boast too much, but these are some beautiful pies! We have apple, peach, strawberry rhubarb, and Aunt Faye's chocolate. First come first serve, at the Nevada Farmer's market tomorrow (Saturday), 9am to noon. Come and get 'em!

Who likes strawberry rhubarb pie? We'll be bringing a few to the Farmer's Market on Saturday.