My in-laws have a collection of wood and trash burning stoves around their house and this January my little lamb burned her hand when I wasn't in the room. Because she wasn't wailing and screaming about it my mother-in-law saw no cause for anyone to go get her some burn ointment.
This pin has been on my list for some time now and the burn made me wish I'd already made some of this. The information for this pin came from Crunchy Betty's blog post, "
Not Your Mother's Neosporin: Healving Salve for Minor Scrapes and Burns".
At the beginning of the post "Betty" mentions how you could steep your herbs for two to three weeks but that she didn't feel the herbs would really blend well with the solid coconut oil you will be using. I chose to use all the herbs she mentions and boil them together with double the oil. When it came time to strain the herbs I strained everything into one sterilized jar. Marked the top of the liquid. Marked the center of the liquid. Then I poured half of it out to continue on as she explains for the quick brew, but then I put as many of the strained herbs back into my container with my heated oil to see how that may work as far as long-term steeping to get maximum potency of the herbs.
It took me a while to get all of the necessary items to make this in stock around my house.
Pulling everything out is always good but for this I think you should do a little additional prepping. For instance put the herbs you are intending to use in a bowl or something so that you won't have to measure as you're already in progress.
The same really should be said for your bees wax.
While I prepped I also sterilized my containers.
Alright, you're ready to go now. Take your 1/2 c of coconut oil.
And your 1/2 c of grapeseed oil.
I don't own a proper one so I rigged one of my own by mostly filling a large pot with water.
And then placing a smaller pot inside of it. This creates your necessary double boiler. The smaller pot will be your working pot. Place your oils in there.
On low heat combine your oils with your herbs to infuse the oil with the healing goodness of your herbs.
I also was out of cheesecloth but I did have some undyed, fair trade, organic mesh that I failed at using to make re-usable produce bags. This worked as a great strainer after my 30 minutes of frequent stirring.
Strain your herbs into yet another sterilized container.
Wipe out your working pot, place the strained oil
back into the pot with your beeswax and heat until the wax has melted.
Once it melted I put everything into my half pint jar, mixed in the honey using the same teaspoon I used to measure it, and then used that teaspoon to put some of the mixture into two other containers.
Instead of standing and doing even more storing I put everything in the freezer. That would be frozen table scraps to compost in the back.
Ever year my in-laws have a yearly firework war. There's nothing green about this and depending upon what kind of person you are this doesn't even sound like fun. This past year was the first year we bothered to incorporate protective eye-ware - via mandate of my father-in-law. But things like this are the reason I don't think it's such a horrible thing that this made so much Neosporin.
I separated mine into one large container (that's a half-pint jar), and two 2-ounce tins (one for traveling for me and one for a friend.)
I waited the ten minutes and peeked at the "Neosporin" and it didn't seem ready yet so I chose to just get back to it when I felt like it. "Betty" warns against separating with the honey - it seems mine did anyway.
To fix this just reheat until your salve has liquified again.
Then stir, stir, stir, stir to get that honey mixed in better than it previously was.
Six weeks after all of this I made anot her batch using the healing herbs that had been steeping and shaken daily. Despite my best efforts I still ended up with a puddle of honey at the bottom.
