An array of Field Apothecary items. (Photo credit: Sharokh Mirzai)

Throughout the world, folk traditions coexisted with the professional study of herbalism. The practice of going into the garden or woods and getting a bit of something to cure whatever ails you continues, but in this country that knowledge has largely faded from the collective memory. Dana and Michael Eudy of Field Apothecary want to bring this particular field of medicine “back to the field.”

Dana and Michael Eudy on their farm in Germantown, NY.

Whether the loss of an herbal healing tradition is a casualty of the Atomic Age or due to the sweetening and blanding of the American diet, the Eudys are actively engaged in resuscitating it here in the Hudson Valley. “There are written references, of course, but there isn’t really a widespread oral tradition. We’re hoping to bring back and hold on to that knowledge,” says Dana.

My daughter and I visited them on their three-acre “pharm” in quaint Germantown, NY, where the couple is growing about 60 varieties of herbs and using them in health-promoting as well as culinary preparations. We sat down to steaming cups of “tulsi” or holy basil tea (made in a French press), and discussed the pair’s philosophy of using plant-based medicines. Thousands of years of trial and error have led to several great herbal traditions, which are accompanied by texts, like the Hindu Ayurveda, listing hundreds of herbs and remedies. Before the advent of modern scientific method, European apothecaries dispensed herbal tinctures and elixirs to physicians and patients. We have those apothecaries toiling away with their mortars and pestles to thank for many of the medicines provided by pharmacists today. In this country, Native Americans added to the European’s store of knowledge, showing the colonists how to use plants such as echinacea and goldenseal and even discovering uses for species brought over accidentally from Europe, like mullein.

Snakes intertwined, from the engravings created of Albertus Seba’s collections in the late 17th & early 18th century. Seba was an apothecary and naturalist whose immense & renowned Wunderkammer was purchased by Peter the Great after his death in 1736. (Source: Tumblr)

But how are the Eudys managing to keep focused with such a vast store of knowledge, covering thousands of herbs and just as many years of study? Michael explains that at Field Apothecary they concentrate on naturally-occurring plants of the region—nettles, St. Johns wort, mullein, mugwort, chicory, yarrow among them—that are either indigenous or naturalized in the area, as well as plants from the Chinese or Indian pharmacopia that grow easily here. “Nothing too difficult or obscure—we want the plants to be accessible to people,” Michael says.

Michael and Dana suggest that our bodies are more attuned to ingesting healthful components in their whole natural  “package” and will therefore more readily absorb the nutrients. While we’ve been ingesting plants for millennia, the concept of taking medicine and supplements in concentrated pill form has only been with us several decades.

“Nothing too difficult or obscure—we want the plants to be accessible to people.” — Dana and Michael Eudy

We now know that many of the most beneficial phytonutrients in plants have a bitter taste, and Michael says that recent studies have also shown something that Chinese herbalists have known for centuries: it is also important to actually taste bitterness. “When you take a pill its void of any sensory experience. But when we taste bitterness on our tongue something happens physiologically—it sends a message to the brain, which sends messages throughout the body, mainly the pancreas and liver. The salivary glands are stimulated, which is the first form of digestion.” In this way the experience of taste helps pave the way for the medicine to do its work.

Rather than a wholesale rejection of the medical establishment, Michael and Dana see what they do as part of a “healthcare pyramid.” They believe that learning about preventive remedies and how to treat some basic ailments at home will ease an overburdened healthcare system. “When you start holding back just a little bit, your confidence builds really quickly. You don’t feel like this is your only choice—you don’t need to go straight to the top of that pyramid right away.”

Sage is one of the many herbs and botanicals grown at Field Apothecary.

The fact that they are part of a trend that sees itself not as combative, but in partnership with conventional medicine has advantages for doctors and their patients as well. “Our very first class that we did here, ten people came and three of them were doctors!” Dana admits to feeling a bit intimidated, but found that the doctors were there to learn from her. “They want to know more about natural remedies now because their patients—especially those with children—are asking about it.” Natural medicine is recovering from its snake-oil reputation and gaining credibility again.

Getting over the fear of quackery is only part of the task for Dana and Michael. They are also combating the somewhat fusty reputation of modern herbalism, that of an older generation. When Michael and Dana looked at what was available on the market, they were put off by packaging and presentation that was geared to an audience they didn’t identify with. “We are our target audience. We’re young. We are parents. Field Apothecary looks a little bit hipper because that’s what would have made us get into this a lot earlier.”

A fresher visual look is matched by a more open approach to using the healthful herbs in new ways, including as cocktail ingredients, which a recent customer playfully described as “sneaky medicine.” “It’s about introducing the idea of herbs to people where they might not expect it,” says Dana, “then they can go from there.” For the recent Olanafest (a prestigious celebration of food, art and farming at the 250-acre integrated estate of Hudson River School Painter Frederic Edwin Church) Dana and Michael were asked to design a cocktail using as inspiration the surrounding orchards, meadows and woodlands of the historic site.

Local mixologists and chefs are beginning to take notice as well. “We’re always experimenting with ways to get [the herbs] into food.” Their current line-up of products includes infused oils and salts—even soda kits. Plans for a food truck selling their products and serving foods showcasing fresh herbs are in the works.

The “pharm” at Field Apothecary.

Outside, the air rich with the earthy scent of herbs basking in the late summer sun, we strolled through the rows as Dana named the plants and encouraged us to touch and smell them. For me, she filled a bag with clippings of lemon balm, shiso, mint and three types of holy basil. “Our goal is just to get people to walk through the gate—to get them into the garden,” she said.  “One or two things might catch their interest, but then they’ll discover a lot of things on their own. There’s a whole discovery that takes place.” After an afternoon of sipping tea, wandering the grounds and imbibing in Field Apothecary’s heavenly aromas, we couldn’t help but feel infused with herbs ourselves. And while there isn’t an actual gate (Dana and Michael have a open policy with their animal neighbors), I detected a distinct bounce in my step on my way out of the garden.

Check out all of our Field Apothecary products on our Wellness and Kitchen channels.

Anti-Anxie-Tea Tin	Burnout Resistance	Sage Salt

Lisa Kelsey is a Dutchess County, NY-based art director. Her radio shows “Stirring the Pot” on home cooking, and “Spice: The Final Frontier” on herbs and spices, can be heard on Pawling Public radio. paulingpublicradio.org

Preston Schlebusch is the collaboration of Lisa Preston and Nils Schlebusch who started recording the world through travel photography nearly 16 years ago. Lisa is American born but raised in Mexico and Nils is Franco-German with a dash of Estonian but raised in Spain. So the two are latin at heart!   From their first adventure to Cuba to start their career to their latest trip to Vancouver for a ski story their main joy is stoking the fire of their curiosity for the culture and people they meet on their travels.  Nils loves adventure, Lisa sometimes stresses about weather but they both feel blessed to have chosen a job that gives them the opportunity to look for the beauty in the world.

Backyard chicken keeping (an extension of the “eat local” urban farming movement to raise livestock or grow your own food to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions) is on the rise, according to Worldwatch Institute, an organization devoted to global sustainability.

In many ways, the chicken has become the mascot of the locavore movement. It’s not the first time the proud poultry has been the standard-bearer for a social shift. In 1928, the Republican National Committee’s advertisement supporting Herbert Hoover’s presidential campaign touted its track record that had “reduced hours and increased earning capacity, silenced discontent and put the proverbial ‘chicken in every pot.’”

1948 stamps commemorating the Centennial of the American Poultry Industry.

But why chickens? BackYard Chickens, one of the go-to online resources for chicken-ry, conducted an informal poll of its subscribers about the various reasons why they have chickens in their back yards.

Perhaps not surprisingly, 92 percent of respondents said it was for the eggs. The second-most popular answer, with 72 percent, was that they were kept for pets (making the 26 percent who said they kept chickens for food seem positively barbaric).  All those answers sound, well, really good. Low carbon footprint. Healthy. Sustainable. Fewer bugs. Natural fertilizer. Why doesn’t everyone have a chicken in their backyard?

“The biggest advantage to keeping your own chickens is that you get to control what goes in to the egg,” says Greg Anderson, program manager of Just Foods’ City Farms initiative. Just Food is the New York-based sustainable food organization committed to connecting communities and local farms with the resources they need to make fresh, locally grown food accessible to all New Yorkers. In addition to invertebrate foods like fruits and vegetables delivered via CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) programs, Just Food is also in the non-profit chicken business.

A volunteer for Just Food NYC with chickens at the Brook Park Coop in the Bronx. Image credit: Lily Kesselman.

Commercially bought chickens are typically loaded down with chicken feed that contains animal byproducts and antibiotics to keep the animals marginally healthy enough to lay large quantities of eggs. With your own chickens, Anderson says, seeing is believing.

“We get to see the chicken, so we know how healthy that chicken is, and we can work to improve the health of the chicken when necessary,” he says. “We don’t have to use antibiotics or steroids or anything because we’re feeding them fresh foods and giving them a complete diet.”

Plus, you know you’re getting fresher eggs than store-bought, which are usually already two to four weeks old by the time they get to store shelves, Anderson says.

Luckily, there are plenty of excellent sources online to help get you started if you’re interested in talking, er, chicken.

The Chicken Whisperer (also known as Andy Schneider) is a nationally known expert on chickens. His “Backyard Poultry with the Chicken Whisperer” program on blogtalkradio is worth a listen if only for the theme song, not to mention the actual content, which covers everything from chicken diseases like bumblefoot to general care and upkeep.

A Silver Laced Wyandotte, a heritage breed chicken. Image credit: Moosicorn Ranch.

For the official word, the American Poultry Association is a good place to start. The APA recognizes more than 460 varieties of chickens (at least the ones that qualify for poultry shows and awards), with exotic names that belie the simple pleasure of a barnyard bird. Names like Barred Rocks (also known as Plymouth Rock, an original American breed) and Araucanas to dark-shelled layers like Barnevelder, Empordanesa, Pendesenca or Welsummers.

There are chickens known as Sex-Links, which are bred so that males and females are different colors from chickhood. This is apparently quite helpful, since no one wants to go home with handful of innocent-looking yellow chicks and in a few weeks realize that they’ll have attitude instead of eggs.

Most chicken-lovers agree that the majority of home farmers rely on a mixed-breed mutt known as an Easter Egger. Also known as Rainbow Layers, these chickens have a blue-egg gene that means the colors of their shells span the color spectrum from blues and greens to pinks and blush.

At left, a Rhode Island Red hen (Image credit: Garrett Heath), at right a black sex link rooster (image credit: Jessica Denet).

For the first-time chicken-keeper, the most important thing to consider is why you want to keep chickens. That should spur what kind of bird you get, as the multitudes of breeds all serve different purposes. Heritage breeds, whose lineage date back prior to the mid 20^th century and are subject to strict APA guidelines, are truly gorgeous, but they aren’t necessarily bred for egg production. You may get one egg a day from a Rhode Island Red or a Leghorn (the most popular commercially used breed), but just one every other day from an “antique” bird.

The Chicken Chick gives great tips about care and specific issues like “Drop in Egg Production: Causes & Solutions” and “5 Tips to Prepare for Chicken Illness, Injury & End of Life Decisions.”

Eggs from heritage breed chickens in a multitude of colors. Image credit: Steven L. Johnson.

At some point, every chicken will stop laying eggs and become a pet… or dinner. While regulations vary depending on the area, in New York City, a backyard chicken must be slaughtered on premises. Yes, that’s right. Either the owner or someone else brought on to the property must do the deed because city policy doesn’t allow for transport of a kept bird to a slaughterhouse.

Gulp.

For Just Foods’ Greg Anderson, it’s part of the circle of life.

“We understand that the animal is something to give us life, so we have to respect that and treat the animal as well as we can during its entire lifetime,” he says, which includes a humane death.

If you’re really interested in chickens, one of the easiest ways to get started is via BackYard Chicken’s primer on going from the chicken to the egg. Or, visit one of Just Foods’ monthly chicken workshops.

“Keeping your own chickens, you know your chickens are not only healthy physically, but they’re also emotionally healthy,” Anderson says. “It’s the interacting with our food that’s the biggest plus.”

Use these products from Hudson Made when preparing your next delicious egg-based meal:

Flour Sifter	Flap Jack	The Trio

Laura Grimmer is a professional cook and sommelier who lives to eat, drink and provide sustenance. She came late to the culinary world, selling her PR firm and enrolling at the French Culinary Institute because of a borderline fixation on master chef Jacques Pépin. She left cooking school a classically trained chef with a deeply seated appreciation for tradition in the kitchen. www.perfectpairnyc.com

We (I) tend to think of honey as the most important product from the beehive. But beeswax, that “other” gold, turns out to be just as valuable. Without it, we wouldn’t have honey at all, and the world wouldn’t be nearly as sweet.

I spoke with farmer and bee expert, Meg Paska, to find out why we can find beeswax in so many household products. In the middle of her daily chores on the farm, she explained, a little breathlessly, that beeswax firms up soft soaps to make them tougher on working hands and makes soap and other products last longer. It’s also an effective wax you can use to seal up a chipped corner on a desk or even on a cutting board and is also found in some furniture polish like Daddy Van’s.

Meg Paska inspects a beekeeping frame. Image courtesy of Meg Paska.

Meg has had a lot of experience with bees and makes her own honey and beeswax products. “I grew up in Baltimore and I had always been a gardener, that’s how I got started with bees. I started noticing that I hadn’t really seen honeybees around as much as I remembered seeing them, and I knew a bee would have to visit if I wanted my zucchini to grow better. So I took a course and decided to jump in.”

Inside the Hive

From what Meg tells me, beeswax serves as the foundation for everything that goes on inside the hive. It’s how honeycombs are made and it’s how the bee brood grows up (they live there until they’re strong enough to emerge). Beeswax is like the brick foundation for a building. It creates storage cells (for pollen). It’s basically a vault for honey. And it’s rare! A hive with a hundred pounds of honey only carries about a pound and a half of wax. Only honeybees between 10- and 12-days-old can make the wax.

“Female worker honeybees only have the ability to produce the substance for the span of about a week,” Meg says. “The wax is secreted in sheets from glands on the underside of the abdomen and molded with the bee’s mandibles to take on the hexagonal cell shape we all recognize.”

As the wax comes in contact with air, it hardens. The worker bee then chews the secreted scales, which makes them turn opaque.

Scraping to open up the honeycomb. Image credit: Sigfrid Lundberg.

“The slight difference in color from one beeswax to another usually has to do with how much that wax has been used, and the landscape. Beeswax gets its yellow color from pollen. A bee that collected pollen from a field of dandelions, for example, may create a very bright yellow wax because they will have the pollen all over them. Others will use the wax as a spot to store brood before filling the comb with honey. The type of wax that’s had a lot of use will appear to have a darker, browner patina.” It’s not a bad thing, it just tends to be a little harder and flakier, but still strong.

Surprisingly, there are no “grades” of beeswax to distinguish between higher and lower quality waxes. “I don’t know any beekeepers who grade their wax,” Meg says. “But if you wanted a higher quality wax, it’s best to purchase from a treatment-free facility, one that doesn’t use fungicides or other chemicals that would permeate the wax. A commercial beekeeper that doesn’t specify is probably a lower quality.”

There’s been talk, recently, about this “treatment” problem among beekeepers. Honeybees have been disappearing for decades, and recent speculation has been about pesticides. When honeybees bring back pollen containing pesticide, it permeates the honey and makes the bee more susceptible to parasites and death. Beekeepers are also facing colony collapse issues, where bees just don’t return to their hives as well as mite infestations. All the more reason to appreciate the artisan qualities of beeswax products.

Beeswax candles, available here from Hudson Made.

Little can compare to the warm honey-like scent of a burning beeswax candle but the process of creating wax is biologically expensive for bees. For humans, on the other hand, procuring beeswax from a hive is not very labor intensive at all. This is how it works: When you extract honey, the cappings that you slice off represent your major wax harvest for the year. You’ll probably get one or two pounds of wax for every 100 pounds of honey that you harvest. This wax can be cleaned and melted down for all kinds of uses. You basically just let gravity drain honey from the cappings, then place them in a pail of water and wash them. Then you remelt, rewash, and let it harden. There are dozens of places in the New York/Hudson Valley area offering classes on organic beekeeping where you can learn all about this. You can find out more about seasonal class offerings at the HoneybeeLives Apiary in the Hudson Valley or at Brooklyn Grange urban organic farm.

Nucs (nuclear colonies) on the rooftop apiary of Brooklyn Grange. Image courtesy of Meg Paska.

Beeswax candles never smoke or sputter and also produce a brilliant flame. It can also be found in soaps and bath products. Its protective and antibacterial properties, long-lasting qualities and delicate, natural scent make it a useful soap for the kitchen. Hudson Made is developing its own blend of beeswax scullery soap just for this purpose, which will be available this fall.

If you’re not convinced of beeswax’s value yet, take note that the U.S. imports as much beeswax as we produce, placing a continuous and increasing demand on this intriguing natural product. Whether you enjoy the warm glow of a beeswax candle in your home or a pungently preserved aged cheese sealed in beeswax, remember the work bees have done to create this resource. It might not take the sting out, but it’s a sure sign that we should let bees be.

Can’t get enough beeswax? Check out these products from Hudson Made.

Pair of Natural Beeswax Candles	Bee by Rose-Lynn Fisher	Grey Atwood’s Jaundice Bitters Beeswax Candle

Cass Daubenspeck is a culture and lifestyle writer based in Brooklyn. She lives for good coffee, good whiskey, and a rainy Sunday morning. She interviews people about their weekend routines at sundayroutine.com. Twitter: @missprotestalot

Two winters ago a friend was passing through New York on her way from Quebec and brought me a big can of maple syrup from the airport’s gift shop. Without a stack of pancakes in sight, I punctured the top of the can and drizzled it on a bit of yogurt and was overcome by its rich amber color, sweet depth of flavor and silky consistency. It was the first time I ever had real maple syrup.

Growing up in the rural foothills of North Carolina, far removed from the northeast (farther still from the cultural influences of the maple sugaring industry), I had been perfectly content in my ignorance to dress my pancakes with caramel-colored high fructose corn syrup poured from the flip-top kerchiefs of plastic plantation-era mammies.

So began my affaire de coeur with real maple syrup. Since the yearly sap harvest is drawing to a close, now seems like the perfect time to enjoy the fruits of all that labor while celebrating the history and versatility of this uniquely North American provision.

The Sugaring Process

The sugaring process (rendering sap into syrup) is labor-intensive to say the least. It all happens during a four- to six-week window during the sunny days of late winter known as Maple Sugaring Season. It is during this time that the season’s supply of maple syrup is harvested from the red, black and sugar maple trees of the greater Hudson Valley, New England and eastern Canada.

When daytime temperatures rise above 40 degrees but still fall to below freezing at night it creates a pressure fluctuation that forces sap up from the maple trees’ roots. Because such specific conditions are necessary to create that pressure, each sugaring season is unique in length and yield. There are only twenty or so prime sapping days between mid-February through early April. When the sap does flow freely, rousing the trees from winter dormancy and preparing them for spring’s reawakening, the trees are tapped and the collected sap is then boiled down into syrup.

Native Americans figured out this process long before the arrival of Europeans in the new world. An Iroquois legend tells about the clever wife of Chief Woksis and the accidental discovery of maple syrup.

Photo Credit: Library of Congress

The story goes that Woksis left one morning on a hunting expedition, removing a tomahawk blade from the trunk of a tree where he’d flung it the day before. As the day progressed and the temperature rose, sap poured from the gash in the tree and into a vessel that happened to be sitting nearby. Later, the wife of the chief discovered the watery substance and decided to try boiling the evening’s meal in it in lieu of trekking further for water. Later that evening when Woksis returned from the hunt, he was enamored by the aroma of the rendering syrup from far away, and so began the tradition of maple sugaring.

Whether that happy accident actually took place we’ll never know. But we do know that French explorer Jacques Cartier observed Native Americans tapping maple trees in 1540 and there are written observations of the Native Americans’ sugaring process dating back to 1557. The earliest of these observations discuss how sap was held in a hollowed-out log of basswood and heated stones were used to evaporate the water.

The mechanics of the process have evolved immensely since those days but the basic tenets of production still hold true. Well into the 20th century sugar producers would punch a v-shaped gash into a maple tree, insert a wooden or metal spout and then hang a bucket to catch the sap.

Today this method has given way to more efficient and complex systems of plastic taps and tubing that carry sap from many trees to one central holding tank by relying on gravity.

Photo Credit: Cedervale Maple

After the sap is collected, its excess water must be boiled away. A gallon of syrup requires approximately 40 gallons of sap. Many syrup producers first use reverse-osmosis devices to remove the sap water without heat. This energy-efficient method enables approximately 75 percent of the water to be removed before any heat is introduced. Once the concentrate reaches about 66 percent sugar (as opposed to sap’s 2 percent), it is ready for filtering and bottling. (It can also be further processed into maple cream and maple candy — a favorite treat at your local farmer’s market.)

A Drizzle a Day…

Maple syrup is the definitive topping for flapjacks, french toast and waffles but it has a host of other uses in dishes both sweet and savory. One of my favorites is easy and delicious. I cut a butternut squash in half, hollow out the center where the seeds are, stick in some cloves and then pour maple syrup directly into the cavity. Roast it until the flesh is tender, take out the cloves and mash up the syrup-infused squash into a hearty and delectable side dish.

You can also substitute maple syrup for white sugar in many recipes. Because it has nutritionally significant amounts of manganese, zinc, calcium and potassium, maple syrup can make your next homemade dessert a little more healthy and guilt-free. Substitute ¾-cup of syrup for 1-cup sugar and reduce the liquid content of the recipe by three tablespoons for each cup used.

Hudson Made offers real maple syrup from Sugar Hill Farm in Pine Plains, NY. In addition to its annual maple production, the farm also produces responsibly raised Berkshire pork and Black Angus beef. Consider glazing your steak with maple syrup combined with a pinch of cayenne pepper for a sweet and spicy flavor combination. I’ve been known to drizzle it on popcorn. Or put a dash in my favorite cocktail. And on a rare occasion, I have been known to just take a swig, right from the bottle. Why not?

Click here to learn more about Sugar Hill Farm’s maple syrup.

Looking for the ultimate culinary gift set? Consider “The Flap Jack.”

Sloan Rollins is a freelance writer who contributes regularly to Hudson Made’s ecommerce site. His work has been seen in Time Out New York, and he is a music and theater critic for edgeonthenet.com. sloanrollins.com

We love Storm King for its historical and artistic importance but also for its sublime landscape and vantage points. Rent a bike while there or stroll through the many sculptures and installations for a completely unique Hudson Valley experience.

(more after the jump)

by flickr user dhyasama

by flickr user dhyasama

by flickr user mrsexsmith

While visiting, be sure to check out the Light & Landscape exhibition there, which will continue through November 11, with tours of the beehives that are a part of Peter Coffin’s “Untitled (Bees Making Honey)” piece held every Saturday. All works in the exhibition play on the use of natural light as their essential artistic material.

Storm King is open Wednesday-Sunday from 10am-5:30pm through November 11 then open the weekends of November 17-18 and 24-25.

If you make it up there this weekend, also check out the Pumpkin Festival going on in Beacon on Sunday the 14th. (www.cityofbeacon.org/features/annual-pumpkin-festival)

For more information, visit http://www.stormking.org/