New year 2026

Happy new year to you!

Here we come with another cold and frosty or even snowy january.

Helpful herbs now has loose leaf herbal teas, ointments/ salves, honeycomb, beeswax and polish at Penicuik Storehouse.

Herbal tea, wild herb foraging, Iris reading, Herbal First aid, ointment/ salve making are some of the workshops which will be available this year at The Storehouse run by Chloe from Helpful herbs. She hopes for familiar people to return and new people to come a long.

Chloe is training as a Sports masseur with Origym. Massage sessions will be available in the future. It is turning out to be a more thorough training than it first appeared, therefore taking longer than expected. However anyone wanting to feel their muscles relax and mind turn off for a short while can keep an eye out for when appointments become available here.

Back to winter. The viruses abound. Jump to the natural. Honey and lemon, with local honey and unwaxed lemons, with lots of juice and slices soaked in a jug of water to get the aromatic benefits of the rind.

Use bee pollen for extra immunity and also speeding the healing process. It is wonderful. All the different flower pollens with their different summery flavours. yum.

Roslin bees honeycomb is at Penicuik Storehouse. This year there will be comb with pollen for those who would like it as it comes. You can buy extracted pollen too, but not from Helpful herbs, as yet. It could be the pollen that local honey has in it, that helps to desensitize hay fever sufferers to pollen. For a hayfever remedy I would try pollen, starting by eating an eight of a teaspoon a day. If you do not get hayfever from it, it will help to relax your immune response to annoying antigens such as pollen.

No one is thinking of preventing allergy to pollen just now, but do try eating it for winter protection.

Back to more things for the viruses, colds, coughs and flu.

Elderberry in glycerol with Echinacea tincture and a few drops of Propolis in a little water, or honey and lemon drink. Now that is delicious. And helps keep the infections at bay. It you get a fever, it tends to be sweaty, lots of thin mucus, but gone quite quickly without feeling tired afterwards.

However if the flu goes to your chest, or you are prone to this, then extra support can come from the herb Thyme. Use a teaspoon per cup, infused. Or Helpful herbs’ Thyme plus tea made stronger. Or the ease of a teaspoon of tincture in water using Helpful herbs’ Thyme plus tincture mix with Inula/ Elecampagne and Mullein which are antimicrobal and soothing respectively.

The old favourite to add to this is raw garlic. So good for disinfecting the lungs. If you can’t eat it, try wiping it on the soles of your feet.

If breathing is getting shallow or blocked, but not enough to call the doctor/ ambulance, roughly chopped up 2 or 3 onions, put them in a pillow case. Put them on your chest under a tight shirt to hold them in place for a few hours or overnight. If you have sensitive skin use oil or moisteriser on your chest first. It is likely to make your chest red, this is ok.

Chloe has been pruning apples trees and stewing local apples.

Chloe would love to provide an apple processing service. She could stew and freeze your apples, also dry some. It may cost a bit, but eating local apples all year feels so good.

Helpful herbs has been making a new batch of beeswax furniture polish.

It is made from linseed / flaxseed (Linum usitatissimum) and beeswax (Cera alba). It is suitable for chopping boards or any bare wood such as unvarnished or unpainted floors or wood cladding. It brings out the grain of the wood and feeds it with oil and leaves a water resistant layer. On exterior finishes it needs reapplying annually.

Linseed oil is feed to horses for Omega 3 fatty acids which make their coat shine. It is fine to use as a moisteriser on the hands. The oils and beeswax feed the skin too. It does have a strange smell but does dissapate quickly.

Many things are hibernating and dormant. Happy winter!