make your own comfrey salve

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we had a very tragic incident with our chickens earlier this week. we woke up to four deaths and one injury the next morning. no clear signs of exactly what happened, but we are making sure to watch over our girls who are left with the utmost care, treating them to green scraps from the garden & egg shells for an extra boost. our one injured girl had a deep gash that we are treating with hydrogen peroxide and a homemade comfrey salve.

comfrey is a wonderful perennial herb that we use as a fertilizer and medicinal medicine. comfrey is a great topical medicinal herb that heals cuts and wounds quickly. mixed with a bit of olive oil and beeswax, this salve can be used for human and chicken friends alike. 

please do your research to correctly identify comfrey. it has large leaves & looks like the photo above. we have three plants of comfrey in our medicinal herb bed that are in their peak for harvesting. we harvested a basket of comfrey leaves the night before making the salve.

 we chopped up the comfrey leaves and placed them in the dehydrator. above is what the comfrey should look like when it is completely dry. our comfrey took about 12 hours to completely dry.

using our fingers, we crushed the comfrey leaves into tiny pieces. we also used comfrey root, which we purchased from the health food store. you will need a total of 1 oz. of dried comfrey leaves/root to make your salve. 

 after measuring the exact amount of dried herbs, we added the herbs to 1 cup of olive oil in a pot. we placed the lid on, turned the stove on low heat and allowed the olive oil to warm up slightly. once the olive oil was warm, we removed the lid and turned the temperature all the way down to the lowest setting. the temperature should be between 100 and 140 degrees F for 3 to 5 hours.

once you have allowed your salve to heat for 3 to 5 hours, place a coffee filter in a mesh strainer atop a cup. allow the mixture to strain until all of the liquid is separated from the dried bits of herbs. set aside the liquid.

measure 1 oz. of wax per 1 cup of oil. add beeswax and herbal oil infusion to your stainless steel pot and allow to heat until the beeswax is completely melted and fully mixed with your herbal oil infusion. remove the mixture from heat. pour the liquid salve into a glass jar. allow to cool and harden into a salve. add lid once salve is completely hardened.

store your comfrey salve in your apothecary cabinet for future uses! enjoy!

before i turn 25 on 4/11/2014, i plan to complete 25 projects.

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love,
natalie