Until just a few years ago, I was among the many, many people who were interested in natural medicine but didn’t know much about it. I had to do an online search for “how to make a tincture” when I decided to start my natural medicine journey. I hope this video helps someone, and at the very least makes people feel empowered to just start! It’s really not that hard, and it can be a very beneficial skill.

Let me back up a little bit – maybe 100 years or so. My Great Grandma Riggs, who died long before I was born, was apparently a local herbalist. My mom hadn’t really told me much about her “Ma Riggs” except that she would go out every morning and sweep the dirt path that led to the house in eastern Tennessee that she shared with my mom’s parents, Lochiel & Eddy, and their children, Rose, Ken, and Wayne. That house had three rooms, total, with no running water and of course no electricity. My mom left the farm in 1948 to study at Berea College, and her mother passed away after a difficult illness only three years later. Mom and Dad married in 1952 and Mom formed a very strong bond with my paternal grandmother as well as Dad’s extended family. She never really went “home” again, even though she was incredibly supportive of her younger brothers and stayed in touch with several favorite cousins. So, I was amazed when in 2023 I was telling Mom about my homeopathy studies and she said, “oh, you come by that honestly. Ma Riggs made medicines for folks back home.” Mom was suffering from dementia by then, and couldn’t remember much more than the fact that herbs were grown, medicines were made, and Ma Riggs knew all about it. How I wish I had known sooner, or that Mom’s Tennessee community was still around, or that any notes or recipes remained!

A few summers ago while I was mowing, I had a vision of six raised bed gardens on one of our hillsides, with medicinal herbs growing in them and people walking among them, weeding, harvesting, and learning from someone – not me – who was instructing them in how to grow and use medicinal herbs. Thanks to some helpful friends, those six raised beds are now built and filled with compost and topsoil, and I’m waiting for God to send the instructor out here! In the meantime, I have planted a few herbs myself, for cooking and medicine, and made some infused oils and tinctures. And I use them often – much more often than I originally thought I would. I use the oregano oil and rosemary tincture in a homemade hair health spray that I now swear by. I often put a dropper of chamomile tincture in my mom’s teapot to help ease her restlessness and irritability toward the end of her life. I have a homemade wound disinfectant spray made with calendula tincture and filtered water, which every family member carries around in their car. The “kids” used it last weekend to soothe a sunburn they got at a music festival. And now, as you can see from this video, I have yarrow tincture, which will be useful to stop bleeding.

I can’t think of any better way to live, honestly. I plant seeds, let nature help me grow them, and then I harvest the relevant parts of the plant, stuff them into a jar, fill the jar with moonshine or vodka, and let it sit for several weeks. I pay once for the seeds and the alcohol, and I have absolutely pure medicine that lasts for years. I haven’t bought medicine at a drugstore or mainstream pharmacy since 2019, thanks to my garden and my knowledge of homeopathy. If that sounds interesting to you, let me know!

I would love to share more information about homeopathy with you. Please click “subscribe” below to join my homeopathy email list, and consider taking one of my classes! If you would like to schedule an individual consultation about a health problem you’re experiencing, just send me an email and we’ll get the process started.

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