Chemical free Easter egg dye and organic tinctures

It is finally gonna happen! Winter is going to allow spring in the door. Temperatures in the high 60's to low 70's this week. We might be able to get our potatoes in by Good Friday after all! And, the snow around the chicken coop is almost gone. I see baby chicks in our future this weekend. Probably 8 to 10 layers and 20 meat birds to start.

While reading in Mother Earth News this week, we came across a neat idea for the upcoming holiday. Chemical free Easter egg dyes. And we thought it would be a great idea to share this week. Why do this? Egg shells are porous, and what ever you put on them will leech in to the egg itself, so why not go natural? And what would be more fun than making the dye with the kids as well as coloring the eggs! We will include some of the dye recipes at the bottom of the blog. Now mind you, these are just some of the things you can do. You can also use several roots seeds, and flowers to make different colors, (like blood root) however, since most of those are still buried in snow and the leaves are not up, so we can locate them, we will have to gather them this year and try them next year and report back to you.

Some of Ed's all organic tinctures are now ready. He has made clove and mustard this week, and will have oregano, pepper, cinnamon and rosemary by the end of the week. These will be used for health reasons as well as in food recipes. Why tinctures do you ask? Well, the main reason why you make them is that you can concentrate all the goodness from the plant, root, seed or flower and they will last for a minimum of 10 years if it is done properly. And, they are great for you and can cure certain ailments. For example. Take clove. Did you know that clove has the highest concentration of antioxidants of anything you can take. Let's do a comparison. Most people think that acai berries and goji berries are the highest antioxidant things you can eat. And, although they are good, the pale in comparison to clove, cinnamon, rosemary and oregano. The units of measurement for antioxidants are called ORAC's. (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity). Goji berries have 25,300 units, acai berries have 102,700 units or ORAC. Now compare this to clove which has 314,446 units of ORAC! Now, concentrate that in a tincture, and you are over 1,000,000 units of ORAC. Talk about health benefits!! Sumac is the second highest and cinnamon is third in ORAC value. Followed closely by oregano and rosemary. With all that being said, do not go out and eat a pound of clove a day. For one, your mouth will go numb, and second, it is best to get your antioxidants from more than one source every day. So, a combination of high ORAC value foods should be in your diet on a regular basis.

Our web site will contain the health benefits of all the tinctures Ed is making and they will all be for sale. In fact they are now. So if anyone is interested, feel free to leave a post, or email us. We will respond to any and all questions and inquires. Tune in Wednesday to hear about an awesome experience we had with Earthbound farms. They are one of the organic vegetable growers you find in most grocery stores. We were very impressed by them. And as usual, our weekly post next Sunday. We hope everyone has a great week!

Ed and Amy

Recipes for Natural Dyes for Easter Eggs
RED
2 cups beets, grated
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 cups water
Substitute: strong Red Zinger tea, or chopped fresh or frozen cranberries
YELLOW TO GOLD
3 large handfuls of yellow/brown onionskins
1 tbsp white vinegar
3 cups water
Substitute: strong chamomile tea, or 2 to 3 tbsp ground turmeric
BLUE
1 pound frozen blueberries, crushed
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 cups water
Substitute: red cabbage leaves, coarsely chopped, create lavender
OTHER COLORS
Mix combinations of the primary dyes (in separate cups) to make secondary colors: red and yellow for orange, yellow and blue for green, and blue and red for violet. The proportion of one color to the other determines the shade.
Follow the recipes to make the dyes, using individual stainless steel, glass or enamel saucepans for each color. Combine the ingredients and boil each color mixture separately for 15 minutes before dyeing eggs. The vinegar acts as a fixative — without it, the dyes won’t stick to the eggs.
• Before dyeing, hard boil white eggs and let them cool.
• For uniform color, strain each dye mixture through cheesecloth or a fine strainer.
• For a mottled, tie-dyed or spotty effect, leave all the ingredients in the pans.
• Use crayons to make designs — circles, geometrics, your name — on the egg; the crayoned part will not take up any dye. White crayons work especially well.
• The longer the eggs remain in the dye, the deeper the color.
• For special effects, dip half the egg in one color, the other half in another.