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Dear Herbs Class Participant,

German, French, British Isles and eastern American Indian herb usages serve as the bases for “herbs at Augusta.” Each additional group settling the area brought their “tamed” herbs along, too. The Greeks, the Africans, the Italians, the Lebanese, the Serbo-Croatians, the Hungarians all added to the store of native plants and those brought over by earlier settlers. (Most of those “weeds” in your yard and garden came over as “herbs”).  Each group had favorite plants for nearly every modern-day thing we use—flea powders and wormers, hair conditioners and clothing dyes, mattress stuffing and pot scrubbers, salads and cooked greens, blood purifiers and antibiotics, throat lozenges and cough syrup—virtually ad infinitum. 

Some herb usages are essentially worldwide.... peppermint and spearmint for queasy stomachs, for example. But these two mints also have other uses that vary from group to group around the world and from neighbor to neighbor within groups. When we look at the traditional uses of the herbs we find at Augusta we note some uniformity and a lot of diversity. Some plants have common names that are similar from language to language; other plants have common names that seem to change from one hollow to the next.  Some common names serve for many plants— “yellow root” may refer to goldenseal, goldthread, several different docks, etc. You will probably bring your own names for many of the herbs we’ll see.  “Horse nettle” may be “bull nettle” where you live or it may be “tread-lightly”, “barefoot agony” or any of twenty other names.

The state of West Virginia has a floral (and faunal) diversity not surpassed outside of tropical rain forests.  We don’t have time in a week (or fifty weeks) to cram in all the botanical and nomenclatural information you would need to identify every plant found here, but we will look at the identifying characteristics of the more common genera as we come across the plants.  We’ll see more than 300 plant species—some as isolated specimens, some by the field-full. Many will be old friends by the end of the week. As we walk around, “What’s this?”, “What’s that?” and “What’s it used for?” are the common questions.  I don’t know everything, so sometimes my answer will be, “We’ll look it up.”  I have more than 300 books on identification and usage.         

You may be interested only in medicinal uses; someone else may be interested only in culinary uses; another in growing for market; another in potpourris.  We hop, skip and jump around on usages as we encounter the plants. This bothers some people!! “Why can’t we do medicinal one day, cosmetics one day...?” they say. I would probably cry if we talked only about the medicinal uses of dandelion and never got back to it on another day!         

We have several things going on at once. We start collecting on Monday, and continue, usually through lunch on Friday. Plants dry all week for teas and potpourris. Solutions soak for dyes, liqueurs, syrups, cleaning supplies, and salves. Each day we try to package up something in its final form for you to take home.  You will learn basic preparation techniques which you can enlarge upon at home.  Many people do no dyeing and a few people choose not to take liqueurs home.  That’s fine; I then get to buy the teetotallers’ share of the liqueur! The materials fee will be around $55, and I will take a check for this (which I will even promise not to cash until you get your next paycheck is deposited). If we make many extras, I will need to collect some extra money. If you want to do some dyeing, please give me a call or send a postcard for some suggestions on pre-workshop preparation (304) 636-5505;  Rt. 1, Box 3, Kerens, WV  26276.

We’ll have one lunch and one dinner at my house.  These meals will include wild foods as well as those from the garden (with selected ingredients from Kroger).  We’ll also have herb tea every day and an herbal snack.

If it rains a lot, we spend more time indoors and I lug in bags full of garden herbs for us to talk about (we definitely can’t make horehound cough drops when it rains! A gooey mess!) As soon as it quits raining, we walk around on the sidewalks on the woodsy campus.  Some years it doesn’t rain much and we can take in river valley, mountain top and many, many habitats in between. Be thinking about whether you would like to invest an entire day in a trip to Dolly Sods.  This is a local mountain top with cranberries, blueberries, mountain ash, camassia, bracken fern, fireweed, cotton grass, bleeding heart, etc.  and a spectacular view, when it’s clear.                 

If you have a garden at home, you might like to take some of our common wild plants to transplant. If you’re accustomed to buying blueberry leaves, loosestrife, mint, and other herbs for teas, you might want to dry extra to take home (even health-food-store herbs have nearly all been fumigated with poisonous chemicals).  Come prepared to take home some harvest from your work. If you can, bring the non-optional container items on the list below. You can buy baggies, etc.  here. We will try to have a supply of spare jars and bottles in case you are flying in. In the past, participants have taped samples of plants in notebooks, drawn them, photographed them, and simply looked at them.  Suit yourself.

This will be my thirtieth summer of herbs at Augusta. I’ve had my own garden since I was three. There weren’t any herbs in the first few; now there are well over 300 herbs in the garden and yard. But, as I said, I don’t know everything, by a long shot!  You’ll know things that the rest of us don’t know, whether you’re a pro or a beginner. So come ready to share—that’s mostly what Augusta is about...sharing.

PLEASE BRING (* = optional):      

Paper towels

Baggies 

A mug or tea cup

Notebook and pen or pencils 

Empty glass containers of several sizes:

• Six 16 oz. glass bottles (juice or vinegar bottles work well).

• Four 4 oz. glass jars (such as facial cream, pimiento, olive, or artichoke heart jars).

• Several small glass containers (old lip balm jars, salve jars, etc.). For neat old ones, check out flea markets, antique shops, yard sales.

*A couple of favorite herb books, especially if they are offbeat.

*A cushion (only if you want a comfortable seat when we’re indoors)

*Apron (only if you care about staying neat and clean)

*Flowers that you have pressed or dried, to contribute to the final floral potpourri.  Or bring some fresh flowers!

*Natural fibers for dyeing: wool, silk, cotton, linen or sisal; wool crewel yarn is good if this is something you are going to buy. Any amount— a few yards for samples to 6 giant skeins for a sweater. Anyone interested in dyeing must let me know via phone or mail no later than June 22, otherwise we won’t be able to do it.

*10 or more 3"x5" or 4"x 6" rectangles cut from gallon milk jugs, for dyeing samples

*Scissors, knife, trowel, plant press, vasculum, hand lens, & binoculars 

Good sense of humor 

Good appetite 

Good sense of curiosity 

Good comfortable shoes and clothes for walking, a hat and whatever  sun protection you use.                 

For background reading... anything on herbs, but none is necessary.  If you like a touch of mysticism thrown in with physical and cultural anthropology and a long saga, you might start on Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children: The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Valley of the Horses. Lots of herbs!  Any of Euell Gibbons’ books makes good reading. If you like mysteries, try Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series, about a murder-solving 12th century herbalist monk, and Susan Wittig Alberts’ series with lawyer-turned-herbalist, China Bayles.

See you soon

Marion Harless
(304) 636-5505
Rt. 1, Box 3
Kerens, WV  26276