How to make a chickweed tincture.

It only takes two ingredients...

You don’t have to be a homesteader to make a chickweed tincture - or have tinctures of strange and different herbs hidden in dark cabinets. Don’t worry, if you’ve never made one before, for they will multiply with time, in jars of all shapes and sizes.

But, it does help to live on the land, or be very close to it, to find a patch of chickweed at its freshest and finest. For chickweed is one thing that is guaranteed never to be found alongside the fruits and vegetables at your local grocery store. Of course, there are exceptions, like when we found chunky stems of delicious purslane at a small Asian green grocer in Paris for a very notable price, but that was an exceptional find!

Sadly, purslane doesn’t grow in our yard or garden here in Romania. It’s too far north, too cold, too wet and too clayey for it to thrive.

Still, we like to focus on what we do have, and at this time of early spring (just as the cherries are blooming) the herb to forage is chickweed.