Things To Do - Produce

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Buy fresh produce, flowers and herbs at the Sandhills Farmers’ Market on Chapel Hill Road. Learn about old home remedies that you can still use – turpentine, poke salad and pine top tea.

Long ago – and still today – some of our residents use locally-grown plants to heal wounds, reduce fevers and clean their systems.

Here are a couple of recipes from Healing From The Land, by Ammie Jenkins. No, we can’t say for sure these really work, but just reading about old home remedies is pretty interesting!

Jenkins writes, “‘Poke salad’, also known as ‘poke weed (Phytolacca americana),’ was the most common of several purgatives. Annual or semi-annual cleansing of the body’s systems was believed to help promote overall good health and strengthen the body against potential sickness.”

In writing her book, she interviewed many local folks who routinely subscribe to herbal medicine. Floyd Jones told her, “Poke salad is a … poison and when you pick it you’ve got to know how to …you wash it, put it on the stove and cook it…you wash it three times and get all the poison out.”

One of Many Poke Salad Recipes

1. You wash it. Put it on the stove and boil it about 30-40 minutes.
2. Then, you put it in the sink and wash it again… you squeeze it out tight.
3. You put some more water on the stove.
4. You wash it three times and you get practically all the poison out.
5. The last time you wash it, that’s when you take it and cut your onions up into it and put your seasonings in it and you cook it and you eat it.

Pine Top Tea

1. Pick fresh green needles from a pine tree, preferably a long leaf pine.
2. Rinse needles.
3. Add needles to boiling water. Depending on your ailment, add other ingredients here.
4. When fully steeped, pour off and drink.