Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Laurie Ann Powell <laurie@powellclan.com>]

Pete said, "I want to nominate one native plant I ran into while doing some 
milkthistle (another fine plant - just too much of it) removal the other day - coyote 
mint."

I want to nominate you to do the research :) Distillation methods are easy to 
find  - google, foxfire books, etc.
It's a lot of work, but may be worth the effort. The best way to do the research is to do some tincturing, then smell, and see what happens. Put it on a boo-boo and see what happens. Put it on pain and see what happens.  The first 7800 years of human history, that's what folks did. As far as I've been able to find out, there are no deaths attributable to essential oils.  Detox headaches sometimes. 

In France and England a lot of research has been done on essential oils but almost NOTHING in the US - hence, very little on native plants here. There are reams of paperwork from the war between France, who does research using oils "neat" (and being careful to allow no toxins) and England, which doesn't distinguish between adulterated and pure oils and therefore says they can be "dangerous".  

One reason that the Young company gets a lot of heat is that they refuse to do business with 
farms and companies selling inferior product, and this is a pioneer field (in the US) at the 
therapeutic level.  Hard to put "lavender essence" in the realm of "potentially 
hazardous biochemicals" but there you are.  I make shampoo with olive oil and lavender 
essence and I'm practicing medicine without FDA approval. Ha!

We use all the oils neat - even occasionally getting them in our eyes. Some 
of them sting or burn for a minute or two.  That's a side effect I can live 
with. Even the cheap stuff may be mildly nauseating but hardly fatal.

I'll be happy to give the coyote mint a spin when you are done!

Laurie Ann