A Winter's Worth Of Wort

In Vermont, people spend much of the summer preparing for winter.  They garden obsessively, and then they can, freeze, dry, pickle and jell the harvest.  They scour the countryside for sources of well-cured hay for their goats, horses, donkeys, llamas and sheep (people who have cows usually grow their own hay).  And they chop, split and stack wood into piles that are viewed with as much admiration as the rows of canned beans, tomatoes and apple sauce in the pantry.

I do a little of all the above, though now that my goats are gone my hay hunt is limited to what I use for mulch and chicken bedding.  But these activities only address the body's needs, for warmth and nourishment.  This year, I wanted to address the needs of the mind and heart as well.

Even when the vegetables are canned and the freezer is full and the wood is stacked, Vermonters shudder slightly at the thought of  winter:  the long dark evenings and the sporadic isolation that the weather imposes on even the hardiest souls.  At one time or another, between November and March, most of us complain of winter blues, cabin fever, seasonal affective disorder and generalized Weltschmerz.

Saint John's Wort  has long been revered in Europe as a remedy against moderate depression, PMS, insomnia, SAD, OCD, and a number of other ills .  I've always liked it that this plant, with its supposedly cheering effects, looks so cheerful, from its bright yellow flowers to its blood-red sap.

I like it so much that this year I went slightly overboard.  I filled a couple of big trash bags with flowers and leaves and macerated them for a month in two half-gallon jars filled with the cheapest vodka I could find.  Yesterday I gave them a final shake, strained the contents through cheese cloth, and decanted the wild-looking red tincture--the mere sight of which made me feel instantly energized--into bottles:

I threw the extremely alcoholic vegetable detritus into the chicken house and waited around to see what the hens would do.  They sniffed it and turned away in disgust, but the stuff will make terrific compost anyway.

With more than I could possibly use of the potent tincture at hand, I feel well armed against winter--practically looking forward to it, in fact.  I can see myself now, dispensing largesse from the top of our hill, squirting dropperfuls of the red panacea onto the tongues of melancholy friends...

(To those of you who are knowledgeable about herbs:  do not be disturbed by those bottles in the sunny window.  I  put them there just for picture-taking purposes.  I have since stowed them safely in a darker place.)

Saint John's Wort

Went to the front field this morning, to pick Saint John's Wort.

Herbalists believe that if a plant grows abundantly in your proximity, it's because you are in need of its properties.  If this is true the Wort, which is supposed to have anti-depressant and calming powers, is accurately reading my mind.

This is my least favorite season, and the fact that each year the heat and humidity grow worse ratchets my awareness of climate change up to obsessive levels.  Holed up in the house with the windows closed and the shades down to keep out the heat, I creep wanly in the gloom like some cave creature, pondering disaster scenarios.

Hence the Wort.

Sent to me by the midsummer deities, and perhaps by the Baptist as well, its Van Gogh yellow starts to work on me right away.  I snip off the tops of branches, trying to calculate how much I'll need to make enough tincture to last me through the year.  The plants are so abundant this summer that I could cheer up entire nations of depressives.

Later today I will buy a bottle of cheap vodka.  Then I will strip the Wort stems, chop up the flowers and leaves, put them in a jar and pour in enough vodka to cover them.  I will give the jar a good shake and watch the vodka turn blood red.  This ability to "bleed," plus its habit of blooming around the feast of Saint John, in midsummer, is what gave the Wort its name.

If you're wondering what blood has to do with John the Baptist, here's a Biblical episode worthy of cable TV:  John had condemned Herod Antipas, who was divorced, for marrying Herodias, who was also divorced and had a daughter, Salome, by her former husband.

Herodias felt threatened by the Baptist, and plotted to get rid of him.  For Herod's birthday she had Salome dance for him, dressed in the famous seven veils.  Herod was so overcome that he offered to give Salome anything she wanted.  Her mother told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

Here she is, painted by Lukas Cranach, having changed out of the seven veils into street clothes. The dark red of her headdress and of the Baptist's severed neck is exactly the shade of red that the Wort exudes when you crush it.