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The Best Online Classes for Learning Traditional Skills – Bread Making, Fresh-Milled Flour, Homemade Cheese, Herbal Medicine, Canning, Preserving, Gardening, and More…

Traditional Skills That Are Making a Comeback

If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time, you know that I love the classes at Homesteading Family. I’ve learned so much from them – bread making, sourdough, homemade cheese, canning. Their classes on herbal medicine, preserving, and permaculture are a great starting point if you are wanting to learn more about traditional homemade skills. The skills that our grandparents knew are becoming less commonly known, if not forgotten altogether, but they are so much more important to our daily lives as grocery prices soar and uncertainty looms around the corner. Consider these Homesteading Family Classes as a way to take back some of your independence and the skills we have lost.

Read to the end for a special coupon code! Take advantage of this discount code just for Maggie Lane subscribers!

Traditional Food Preparation Skills

1. The Art of Homemade Bread

This course covers yeast and sourdough. It is broken down step-by-step so that anyone can do it. If you’ve tried to make bread before and failed, this course is for you. By the end you’ll know just what to do to achieve the perfect loaf every time. What’s the secret? Knowing how to read the dough. The course gives you benchmarks at each step to know when your dough is ready for the next step.

2. Homemade Dairy Masterclass

Think you can’t make use of this class because you don’t have a cow? Think again. You can make all the recipes in this course using store-bought milk. Every recipe I’ve made have been made with milk from the store. The course starts out simple and builds your skills so that you can make the simplest fresh cheese all the way up to mozzarella or hard cheeses like cheddar and parmesan. No special equipment needed. You can use the things you already have in your own kitchen.

3. Baking with Home-Milled Flour

Want to learn the ins-and-outs of milling your own flour at home. This mini-course is a great companion to the Art of Homemade Bread class and gives you even more tips on using fresh-milled flour at home.

Food Preservation Techniques

4. The Abundant Pantry Canning Masterclass

Learn how to safely water bath and pressure can in this masterclass. This comprehensive course gives you step by step instructions in over 70 lessons. You’ll get all your questions answered and learn to can with confidence. This class will remove all the doubt in eating your home-canned food.

5. Preserving Eggs & Wild Milk!

If you have your own animals, these two classes will help you know what to do with all those eggs from your chickens and milk from your cow rather than give them to the neighbors. Learn to preserve your eggs like they are fresh for over a year, and find out how to use the good bacteria naturally present in your raw milk to your advantage.

Medicinal Herb & Garden Skills

6. The Herbal Medicine Cabinet

Discover how to grow, harvest, and prepare your own herbal remedies. This beginner course is just what you need if you’ve been wanting to learn how to make your own teas, tinctures, gylcerites, syrups, herbal vinegars, oxymels, and steams, but don’t know where to start.

7. Permaculture

Learn how to work with nature in this introductory course to growing a productive and sustainable garden. Gain the basic skills you need to maximize your food production and provide your family with good home-grown food.

Household & Kitchen Resources

8. Handmade Home

This course is part of Homesteading Family’s Homestead Kitchen Membership. It covers soap making and making your own herbal oil and salves.

9. Home Management

Gain tips on managing a busy home, homeschool, and homestead. From tips to streamline breakfast to managing your time and finding joy in your day, let this course guide you to peaceful productivity.

10. In the Homestead Kitchen Magazine

This digital and print magazine is a beautiful addition to your coffee table and a valuable resource to your kitchen. The kitchen is truly the hub of the home. Whether your homestead is acres of land or a tiny balcony garden, you can make use of these tips and recipes in any kitchen. Take your cooking from scratch skills up a notch. This will soon become your favorite cookbook!

Want access to all these classes and more?

Homesteading Family offers a monthly or annual membership to their Homestead Kitchen Community. Membership offers you all these classes plus access to members-only content and challenges.

Whether you’re seeking greater self-sufficiency, trying to balance the budget, or simply wanting to experience the joy of making things at home, these online courses offer guidance and experience that makes traditional skills accessible to anyone.

Special BONUS for Maggie Lane readers!

Enter your email below to get the Homesteading Family coupon code.

Click here for your FREE Coupon Code for Homesteading Family!

View Homesteading Family classes here.

Not ready to sign up for full class? These FREE trainings might be just what you need.

FREE Dairy Training – click the link to sign up.

FREE Canning Training – click the link to sign up.

FREE Bread Making Class – click the link to sign up.

FREE Herbal Medicine Training – click the link to sign up.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

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DIY Rose Oil ~ Make this oil from your own Rose 🥀Petals!

What do you make with your flowers? 🥀

This is infused Rose oil is one my favorite things to make. I use it on my face and hands daily. 🥀

🥀 I harvest my rose petals, air dry them inside a pretty tea towel until crunchy, and store them in a clear glass jar in a dark cabinet where I can check back often to watch for condensation (a sign that they aren’t fully dry).

When I need to make more Rose oil I simply put some of my dried petals in a jar, cover them with my favorite oil (I use olive, but almond is lovely, or you can use any oil you would cook with that is liquid at room temperature), and then I sit the jar in a sunny window to add some gentle warmth. 

When I need more Rose 🥀 oil, I strain the petals and pour some into a 2 ounce spray bottle for easy application. 

Hint: You wouldn’t think it, but the 2 ounce travel bottles from Walmart work best. Then I can take my oil with me on the go. I have a bottle in my bag right now actually. 😊

Once strained, I store extra oil in glass jelly jars labeled with masking tape with the name and date. 

🥀 Who would have thought that something so lovely and useable would come out of such a simple flower? 

When my hands get dry this time of year I just take some out and squirt some into my palm. It sprays out in a nice, neat stream. Because Rose 🥀 Family plants are all astringent, Rose oil not only moisturizes, but tones my skin. And it smells as good as your Roses 🥀 do in your garden in the summer. There’s nothing like the aroma of Roses to lift your spirits when winter days are dreary.

It’s the simple ways you use your plants that make them that much more special. 🥀

Subscribe or follow on Facebook to learn how to recognize and use the plants that grow around you. 

Visit our sister site, http://www.botanyinanhour.com, to learn more about your botany basics, plant recognition, and how to put your knowledge to use so that you can garden better, forage safely, harvest more, preserve easily, heal locally, and teach your kids plant skills for life.

#botanyinanhour #botany 

#flowerfamilies #roses #roseoil #rosefamiky #gardenbetter #foragesafely #harvestmore #preserveeasily #heallocally 

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Exciting News! I’ve launched a new website! Easy, quick, and stress-free plant identification at Botany in an Hour!

Botany in an Hour is where YOU become the plant ID expert!

If you’ve followed me for a while, many of you know that I love plants and I love teaching! So, teaching Botany for our local homeschool group has been one of my greatest joys.

I’m so excited to announce that I’ve taken my in-person plant ID workshops and turned it into an online class. My new website will allow me to just just teach students local to me plant identification, but now I can teach you all the plants too! My method is quick and it’s easy. In just one hour I can teach you what you need to know in order to identify over 40,000 plants by sight. Think I’m joking? I’m not. I teach this every summer to groups of homeschool students and their parents. I love this, because even my Pre-K students can do this! I can take a four-year-old, tell them what to look for, turn them loose in a garden, and they can find the plants and identify them accurately every time! Hop on over to Botany in an Hour and check it out!

At the very least take advantage of my free download – The Best Botany Resources, to find out which books are the best for learning plant identification quickly and easily and at the same time, you’ll get a special coupon code for the launch of my new course! I hope I’ll see you in Botany Class!

Get your Free Download here!

What people are saying about Botany in an Hour!

“This is way more fun than learning from a book.” ~ Sal Y.

“I highly recommend this class. It was a great way to learn about the amazing world of botany!
My son said, “I never knew Botany could be so much fun!”.” ~ Lisa VH

“My family loved this class! The children and I learned so much – we love going on
nature walks and try to identify and classify the plants and trees.” ~ Giovanna D.

Check out the Basic Course! Learn to recognize over 40,000 plants!

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Gain Some Skills – FREE Homestead Anywhere Crash Course, January 1-6

Homestead Anywhere Crash Course!

Homesteading Family is hosting their first ever crash course Jan 6-10, 2025!

Live in town, a suburban lot, apartment in NYC perhaps? No problem. Learn how to homestead where ever you are. Anything produced on a homestead has to come through the kitchen, so add these old-fashioned life skills to your tool belt! You won’t regret it!

This free, virtual event will be a mix of live and recorded content, with lots of prizes. Consider joining if learning some old-fashioned skills is on your radar. Replays will be available if you can’t attend live.

Homesteading Family has been integral in my learning cheesemaking, bread making, and canning. Remember, registration is FREE! Hope many of you can take advantage of it.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

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FINALLY! After 10 years – a chore method that really works!

We’ve tried just about everything when it comes to chore methods and routines – schedules, white boards, rewards, allowance. We’ve never found anything that worked. It would fall apart somewhere.

I’ve typically focused our chore list on the essential tasks that need to get done to keep the house going – dishes, laundry, and basic cleaning. But it seems no matter how organized I am and even if we got a good start to chores in the summer, either the kids wouldn’t be able to keep up once school started, or I wouldn’t be able to keep up with who had done their chores and who hadn’t. Or if they did do their chores, I would loose track with paying them their allowance, and they would get discouraged. Or we’d have something extra in the week and something essential wouldn’t get done. But I had to figure out something. I can’t do it all myself and chores and home responsibilities are good for kids.

So this year, I pulled a classic classroom management technique out of my back pocket. It’s so simple it’s almost embarrassing that I haven’t done it before. It’s so easy. There are no schedules and I don’t have to keep up with any allowance.

Easiest Chore Method EVER!

I had these little colored mason jar shot glasses sitting in the back of the cabinet. I assigned each kid a color and each time they do chore they get to put a little gold toy pirate coin in. Whenever the jar gets full, or the kid asks for their allowance, I count up the coins and give them the money they earned. Each child has a different monetary amount assigned to each coin based on their age and the difficulty of the chores they do.

But, what about the chores you might ask? How do they know what to do each day? Well, that’s the genius part of it. I’m not making any schedules. Each morning when we get up, I simply look around and see what needs to be done that day the most and assign each kid a task. If they do their task, they put a coin in their cup. Keeping it to one job per kid keeps it simple and the kids don’t forget what they are supposed to do or feel overwhelmed with multiple tasks. I don’t have to keep track of what I owe them, and the most essential tasks get done.

Not having a set schedule also means that if we have something unusual that week like an extra activity or company coming to visit, any extra cleaning or prep for guests isn’t a problem because that just becomes their task for the day. So far, this is the best method we’ve tried. I like it better, and the kids like it better. But most importantly, the chores are getting done and that is the key.

Need a different chore method?

Carolyn Thomas with Homesteading Family has a very thorough Home Management Class. She used a method where each child has an area of the house that they are responsible for. If my method isn’t your jam, check out her class. It might be just for you.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

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Meal Planning – Strategies for stress-free, healthy, home cooked meals – no complicated apps or planners needed!

Made from scratch, home cooked meals are the ideal goal of many a homemaker. If you have a garden and can add fresh, homegrown food to that, all the better! But the slog of deciding what to make every day can be overwhelming. Some days it’s just decision overload. When your days are filled with school, housework, cooking, kids’ activities, volunteer work, and life, sometimes something’s gotta give.

I can honestly say, that I don’t think I would have survived the last year if I hadn’t been faithful to plan out my meals each week. My diet has become more and more limited in the last year, so that coupled with our increasingly busy schedule, weekly meal planning has saved my sanity.

I’ll be right upfront with you though and say that I hate it. I never used to plan meals more than a day or two in advance. I’d look in the fridge and freezer, see what we had and throw something together. But before we moved last year, I realized that I wasn’t going to survive the weeks leading up to moving day if I didn’t plant out my meals. I knew I would have just been too distracted to keep food on the table, and with all our food allergies and restrictions, convenience meals or eating out wasn’t an option for us.

Now, I’ve said that I hate meal planning, (anyone else 🙋🏻‍♀️), and I do. When I come home from church on Sunday night tired and ready to crash, the last thing I want to do is sit down and think about a week’s worth of meals. But I make myself do it because I know that I won’t make it through the week if I don’t.

Here’s my method. It’s simple and it doesn’t require any complicated apps or planners.

Weekly Meal Planning for those with food allergies:

So, what’s my secret?

It’s nothing earth shattering. I simply use the notepad on my phone.

I keep this weekly breakdown at the top of my phone (photo above). Each week, I highlight and copy it and paste it underneath and fill it in to plan the upcoming week’s meals. So my current week is always at the top with the last week’s meals moving down the app in reverse date order.

Because of our food restrictions, our breakfasts are pretty standard so we stick to our regular routine on those, so I don’t plan each breakfast out separately, but you could easily add in a line for breakfasts if you wanted to do that. (Just in case you’re wondering, our breakfasts consist of large batches of waffles, biscuits, or sourdough bread made once or twice per week with sausages, eggs, or a nut butter for protein based on who can eat what.)

Sample Meal Plan:

Here’s a sample of my meal plan for this week:

Meal Planning Method:

Here’s my what I do…

I fill in what meal is planned for each day and if any modifications need to be made for anyone who has dietary restrictions. In italics I make note of anything that needs to be thawed the day before, or any prep that I might need to do in advance. Then at the top, I write anything I might need to buy at the grocery store that week in order to have everything on hand for the meals that I have planned. Then we print it out and put it in the fridge and write in names of anyone else that may be helping with prep or doing part of the meal. For example, last night my husband grilled, so his name was written in for that on Saturday night and my daughter was written in making roasted potatoes so I got the night off from cooking. Yay!

Why this works:

This method works for me because it saves me during the week. I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to figure out what we are going to eat at the last minute. And because it’s on my phone, I can easily make changes if I see a meal won’t work for some reason, or if I need to look up what I was supposed and to shop for when I find myself at the grocery store.

Make a Meal Rotation!

Recently though, we’ve taken it one step further. To give me my Sunday nights back from working out the meal plan details, my husband suggested creating a two week rotation of our favorite meals that we just repeat over and over again. This works well for us as most of our evening activities are on an every other week rotation so we can usually slot in the same meals over again pretty easily. To keep it from getting boring, every other week when we have a free Friday night, we make a Wild Card Friday where each kid gets to take a turn picking a meal of their choice to mix it up a bit and work in some of the meals that might take a little more time and effort to prepare.

Why should I meal plan?

Is meal planning work? Yes! But it makes the work of getting through your busy week that much easier. Give it a try. The relief of having the pressure of deciding what to make every day removed is immense for me. Your plan will look different from mine based on your family’s tastes, food restrictions, and schedule, but I hope that you’ll give it a try.

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Dead Flowers = SEEDS! Seed saving made simple!

Summer has or is coming to a close in most parts of the country. As the flowers fade and die they make something wonderful! Seeds!

Seeds are amazing! Even though many flowers have run their course by this time of year, fall is my favorite time to teach my homeschool Botany class. One of the first things I teach them is that Dead Flowers = SEEDS!

There is a certain wonder about picking an apparently dead flower head, crushing it open with your fingers and watching all the seeds fall out. Imagine the amount of life contained in that little handful of seeds.

Have you ever thought about that? Imagine if you were given one cherry tomato seed. You plant it, it germinates, grows, thrives, and produces fruit. How many tomatoes would that one plant make in a growing season? Let’s say it makes 100 cherry tomatoes. How many seeds are in each of those tomatoes? Even if it is only ten, that is 1,000 seeds from that one little seed that we started with. Imagine the number of seeds that could be produced if all those seeds were planted, and compound that over the seasons and years and the yield is incalculable.

I really enjoy saving seeds. I saved the seeds from a HUGE zucchini that we grew this year (plate on the left, bottom). The plate on the right has the seeds of an organic butternut squash that we bought from Misfits Market. And the brown seeds at the top of the plate on the left are some morning glory seed pods that I snipped off of my morning glory plant this evening on a whim. I’ll let them dry out and then scatter them in a new spot where I have some trellises set up.

There is an art and a science to seed saving. Plants will make seeds whether you do anything or not. The only question is whether you want to control where and when they germinate.

If you have several varieties of the same plant, the seed saving can also be an experiment as often you can end up with seeds that are not true to type, meaning that they may look different from the parent plant. There is nothing wrong with this. It happens in nature. Personally, I quite enjoy what surprises come from cross pollination, but if you have multiple varieties of the same species in your garden, and you want you keep your seeds true to the parent plant, you should either buy your seeds fresh every year from a reputable supplier, or take steps to prevent the cross pollination.

If you want to learn more about the world of seed saving, I recommend Seed to Seed. It’s a great book and will tell you more than you probably ever wanted to know about the ins and outs of seed saving. But, this book isn’t really necessary. Remember all you really need to know is what I teach my elementary Botany class. Dead Flowers = SEEDS! Start exploring the dead flowers that you find in your garden. It’s a fascinating adventure.

If you do decide to save some seeds, be sure to keep them cool and dry, and label the package with the seed and the collection date. Trust me you won’t remember what they are in the spring when you go to plant them. I like to use these little paper seed packs. They are inexpensive and are a great way to organize your seeds, and if you have an abundance, these little seed packs make a great gift that you can share with friends.

Morning glory seed pods (top) and zucchini seeds from one of my garden zucchini.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

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Herbal Portrait: Orange Peel

Do you throw these in the garbage? Most people do. You might want to reconsider especially if you buy organic oranges.

Why should you save your orange peel?

Because they are the best herbal remedy for heavy, wet congestion. Need to dry up that drippy nose, drainage, wet sinuses, croupy cough? Try a tea or infused oil add with orange peel.

How do I preserve and store my orange peel?

I must lay mine out on plate covered with a paper towel to keep the dust off. Mix around once a day to prevent mold. Throw out any moldy pieces. In a week or so they should be dry and you can store them in a baggie or glass jar. Just keep them in a dry place with low humidity.

Best tea for seasonal allergy attacks:

Here’s my recipe for making a tea to combat seasonal allergies and allergic reactions.

In a quart size jar combine the following:

3 tsp black tea

4 tsp nettle leaf

2-3 large pieces of organic orange peel

Cover with just boiled water. Put the lid on the jar and let it sit until cold. Strain out the herbs into a clean jar and store in the fridge. Drink as needed.

Just after adding the hot water.
See how dark the tea is once it has steeped and cooled.

Another good companion to this remedy is tea or an infused oil made with Wild Cherry Bark which is a histamine regulator (Matthew Wood) and can help calm down allergic reactions. Follow my steps for making your own infused oil here.

100 Herb Monographs:

Expand your herbal research with Farmhouse Teas Herbal Monographs. Their set of nearly 100 monographs is just excellent! You get free access to them in their Herbal Studio. They are beautiful and very thorough.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

Air Drying Calendula Blossoms
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Air Drying Calendula Blossoms

Calendula is one of the few plants in the Aster family that we use as my son has a allergy to ragweed which makes him sensitive to many of the plants in that same plant family.

I’ve grown Calendula for years and thought I’d share how I air dry them without a dehydrator. It is often recommended that you dry calendula with a dehydrator since the centers are so thick and resinous that they can be hard to air dry, and if not completely dry, they can mold in storage.

Why this method of air drying Calendula works. Two reasons:

  1. Good air flow.
  2. Long drying time.

Because my calendula is grown in containers, I usually have small harvests, meaning I’m not harvesting basketfuls at a time. I might harvest 2-3 flower heads per day. This is certainly not enough to warrant pulling out the dehydrator in order to dry them.

So mine sit and wait for me, and as they wait, they dry.

Here’s what I do…

Each flower that I pick goes into a little linen bag. This is in fact a little bag for sprouting micro greens, but since I use a different method for that, I’ve never used that bag for sprouting so I turned it into my calendula drying bag. Now, let’s stop here. You don’t need a bag for this. Any airy, piece of fabric, linen, muslin, flannel, burlap, or scrap of cheesecloth that is large enough to lay the flowers on and fold over on top of them will do. The purpose of the fabric is to keep your flowers clean and free of dust while drying.

Tiny harvest. These Calendula blossoms have been drying for a few weeks.

Next I lay this little bag on top of my hutch where the air is warm. I usually lay it in the bowl of my old fashioned kitchen scale which lives up here, but anywhere high and warm that is open to the air will do. On top of the fridge would work quite nicely. (Do not place anything inside an upper cupboard though. There would not be enough air flow in there.)

As I pick new flowers, I add them to the bag. Each time I take it down to add more I shuffle them around to ensure they are all getting moved around so that all the parts dry well.

New flowers added to the bag.

When I have new blooms to pick, I add the new flowers to the bag and it goes back up on the hutch. Sometime in the fall when they are all good and dry, I’ll take them down, ensure that they are all dry and can be crushed, and I’ll store them in a glass jar until I need them to make more infused oil or Calendula salve. They wait quite happily for me, and by the time I’m ready to use them in winter, they are dry and ready to use. In fact, most years, they just sit there until I remember to take them down sometime in December.

Growing, harvesting, and drying herbs doesn’t have to be a fussy process. Find a method that works and feels easy to you and go with it. What’s stopping you?

Want to turn your Calendula flowers into an infused oil. Check out my step by step process for making a home as herbal infused oil. These steps are written to make Plantain oil, but the process is the same for making an infused oil with any plant.

And once you have a homemade infused oil, you’re only one step away from making your own salve. You might want to check out my Healing Salve which is made with Calendula. (See the little dried up Calendula flowers laying there?) 😊

And if you really want to wrap your head around making all your own infused oils and slaves, let Carolyn with Homesteading Family hold your hand through the process. She recently came out with a Herbal Oils class that is quite nice which covers the basics of making culinary oils, infused medicinal oils, and using essential oils for your own handmade salves, balms, lip balms, and more. You can get access to it as part of their Homestead Kitchen Membership.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

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DIY Herbal Infused Plantain Oil

Look at that color!!! Have you ever seen a prettier dark green. Did you know that the deepness of color, indicates the potency of the oil. The deeper the color, the more potent the oil.

Note: This recipe is written for plantain but this method can be used with any plant. You could make rose, mullein, borage, Hawthorne, calendula…. The sky is the limit.

Anyone have this little plant in their back yard?

Plantain (Plantago major) is one of the most common “weeds” found in lawns. Many homeowners spend thousands of dollars every year trying to get rid of this little weed. It is a tough one to eradicate since it forms in low-growing rosettes. The fact that it hugs the ground means lawn mowers often pass right over it without doing any damage.

The other trait of plantain that makes it difficult to get rid of are all these little seed stalks that it sends up in the late summer to early fall. The seeds spread easily which means new little clusters will always pop up.

The fact that this little plant is so common and determined to survive means that it has a whole host of medicinal properties. So go find a lawn that you know is not sprayed with any weed killers, pick some leaves, and let’s make a batch of plantain oil.

Plantain leaves can be gathered any time of year when the plant is growing. The leaves will be most potent when gathered before the plant goes to seed. (Note: Do not harvest the seeds. They contain contraindications for some health conditions.)

Let’s make some oil!

Infused Plantain Oil Recipe:

  1. Gather your leaves. Choose whole, unblemished leaves if possible. Do not pull up the whole plant. Pinch from the bottom of the leaf stalk to pick each leaf individually. This will ensure more harvests later in the season.
  2. Fill a bowl with cool water to rinse the leaves of any dirt or bugs. I actually like to use my salad spinner for this step. The mesh basket makes it easy to wash, drain, and dry. See step #3 below.
  3. The next step is to let the leaves dry and wilt. They don’t have to dry completely, but the drier they are, the longer the shelf life of your oil will be. Using the mesh liner from your salad spinner by removing the strainer from the outer bowl so that the leaves can get good air flow works well for me. I like to fluff them up occasionally as I walk past them on the kitchen counter to keep them moving to ensure they dry evenly. Or if you don’t have a salad spinner, a pasta colander with larger holes will work as well. You can also lay the leaves out on a tea towel on top of a cookie cooling rack to air dry and wilt. Now, here, you could choose to let them air dry completely for winter storage in a glass jar, or you can wilt for 2-3 days or until dry before moving on to making your infused oil. A dehydrator could also be used in low heat if you don’t want to wait for them to air dry.
  4. When sufficiently wilted or dried, take your leaves and roughly tear or crush them into a glass jar. Fill the jar half full with plant material.
  5. Cover the plant material with olive oil or any oil of your choice that you have in your kitchen.
  6. Put a lid on your jar and loosely tighten.
  7. Set a clean dish rag or cloth in the bottom of a sauce pan that is half full of water. (Note: the dish rag prevents the glass from being too close to the heating element which could cause it to break.)
  8. Set the jar in the sauce pan on top of the dish cloth.
  9. Turn on the heat to medium high. (Set a timer for 10-15 minutes so you don’t forget your oil.)
  10. Watch the oil, as soon as the water starts simmering, turn the heat off. We don’t want to cook the plant material. Just infuse it with a little warmth.
  11. Let the jar sit until it is cold.
  12. Strain your oil using a handheld mesh strainer (often the dollar store or grocery store will have these) into a clean, completely dry, glass jar.
  13. Label your jar with the name of the oil and date. Masking tape and a sharpie works well for this. I keep a masking tape dispenser like this on my kitchen counter specifically for labeling things.

And you did it! You made your own Plantain oil! Well done!

And now that you have the skill of making an infused oil under your belt, you can do it with any medicinal herb. Be creative. Some of my favorite plants to make oil with are mullein, rose, calendula, Pansy, violet, echinacea, pine, wild cherry, and yarrow. I use my infused oils every day.

Want to see a photo log of these steps? Scroll to the bottom of the page.

Infused Oil FAQ Section:

What is infused plantain oil good for?

Plantain is an excellent remedy for any type of bite, sting, or skin irritation. It is especially useful for anything that needs pulling or drawing out. It is a mild astringent and good for any skin or issue with any angry or inflamed membranes.

How long will my infused oil last?

Homemade infused oils are good indefinitely if made with dry plant material, and if stored in a cool, dry location. If fresh or wilted plant material is used, extra steps will need to be taken to ensure that your oil doesn’t mold.

What are the signs of moisture in my oil?

Condensation or cloudiness on the inside of the jar after straining is an indication of moisture. This is easy to remedy. Simply take the lid off of your jar and cover with a paper towel or coffee filter and secure with a rubber band. Let the jar sit until the oil is clear and all the moisture has evaporated. Then you can replace the lid and store in a cool, dry place.

Do you see the cloudiness in this jar of oil?
Same jar of oil as above after 2-3 days sitting with a paper towel cover to allow the oil to evaporate. Can you see how much more clear the oil has become?

How do I know if my oil is moldy?

When an infused oil grows mold, it often does not grow on the surface like what we are used to seeing on food in our fridge. It grows down inside the oil and looks like dark fuzzy spots floating in the bottom of your jar. For this reason, I like to store my oils in clear, glass jars so that I can easily see if anything begins to grow or look amiss. An off smelling oil would be another indicator. However, be sure that you smell your oils right after making them to be sure that you know the scent of that plant. Not every plant has a pleasant smell, and you don’t want to throw out a perfectly good batch of oil simply because you aren’t familiar with the scent of that particular plant. So train your nose to know what your oil smells like right after you make it.

How to know if my oil has gone bad?

Visible mold on the surface, dark spots growing in the bottom of the jar, or rancid or putrid smells are signs that your oil has spoiled and should be discarded.

Can I use this same method to make an infused oil with a different plant?

Yes! This method can be used to make an infused oil with any medicinal plant. Keep in mind that infused oils dried plant material will have the longest shelf life.

Do you feel confident to make your own infused oil now? I hope so. Enjoy your creations. Using my oils through the year and especially during the winter is one of my favorite things.

Want to make your infused plantain oil into a salve?

Make this Healing Salve using your infused plantain oil. If you don’t have infused Calendula oil, just replace it with an extra part of plantain oil and you’ll be all set.

Healing Salve

Want to take a deeper dive into the world or herbal oils?

Consider the new Herbal Oils class by Homesteading Family. It covers making your own culinary oils, medicinal infused oils, as well as your own salves and body products using essential oils. It’s a great all-in-one course for beginners. You can get access through Homesteading Family’s Homestead Kitchen Membership.

Photo Log Step-by-Step of Making an Infused Plantain Oil:

Plantain (Plantago major) – freshly picked.
Washed in my salad spinner.
Air dried and wilted.
Completely dry and crispy. These can be stored for use later in a sealed glass jar, or you can move straight into making your infused oil.
Though not plantain here (this is torn violet leaf), the next step is to roughly tear your plant and place in your jar.
Cover the plant material with the oil of your choice.
Place the jar on a cloth in a sauce pan half full of water. Turn on the heat.
When the water starts to simmer, turn off the heat and let it sit until completely cool. Then you’re ready to strain and store.

Note: Some links on this page are affiliate links.

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“Cleaning and Scrubbing can wait till tomorrow…”

If you’ve followed my blog for any time, you’ll know that I sell an embroidery pattern for this poem on my blog. You can find it on the Baby page.

The image on that page actually gets the most hits of anything page on my blog. The photo there is of the embroidery that my mom made of this poem when my brothers and I were kids. She has it at her house and I have fond memories of seeing growing up.

Well, I’m so excited! My brother found me a vintage embroidery of this same pattern at a Thrift store in Kentucky. Of course, I told him to grab it. I picked it up on a visit to my parent’s house this summer. I just hung it in our Sunroom and it feels right at home above my bookcase. So happy to have a vintage one.

Love this poem? Be pick up your own pattern here:

Baby
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Herb Journal – How to keep track of all your Herbal Learning

Studying herbs. It’s a rabbit hole. You read, you reference, you study. Soon it all gets jumbled up in your head. How do keep it all straight.

My inexpensive, DIY solution was to use an old address book. It’s about 5×9” inches and perfect for this use, as who uses an address book for addresses anymore.

I used the alphabetized sections to record each herb and ailment in the lines where you would usually record peoples names and addresses. I take the herbs and ailments that I study, write them down in the section of the book with the letter associated when their name, and make notes about what I learn about them as I go. I don’t worry about alphabetizing my entries within each letter section. I just make sure that all the “A” herbs or health conditions are written on one of the pages of the “A” tab. I just looked and you can even still buy some old style address books. There are several spiral bound, pretty ones available on Amazon.

Another strategy that I use is that I highlight any family allergies to a particular herb in orange as a warning. I’ve told my husband, if I die, look in here to see what the kids are allergic to. We have some unusual plant allergies – yarrow, chamomile, chicory, clover, licorice.

I’ve found that it really helps to understand plants by their plant families in my studies of herbs due to all our allergies. That way if there is one herb that I know we respond to negatively, I can easily know what others I need to be careful of using medicinally because I know what plants are related to it.

Botany in a Day

Botany in a Day by Thomas J. Elpel is the best book out there for learning plants by plant family. It teaches you to recognize plants by their family characteristics which helps you not only in learning to identify the plants but also in knowing their medicinal characteristics which is often consistent across plant families. Both can be extremely useful if you are learning to forage for your own plant material. For more info on identifying your local plants, check out my favorite regional medicinal plant books. And if you live in an urban area like we did when we lived in NYC, read my review on my favorite book on urban foraging here.

If you REALLY want to get a jumpstart on your herbal research though, look into the Herbal Monographs offered by Farmhouse Teas in their Herbal Studio. It is such a great herbal resource. They have compiled a set of nearly 100 monographs on different herbs that are just excellent! You get free access to them in their Herbal Studio. In my opinion, these monographs are unparalleled and I wish I could buy them as a book! Check them out. They are beautiful and totally worth having as a resource.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.