stinging nettles

Springtime Musings by Megan Haney of Marble Valley Farm in Kent, CT…

Stinging Nettles … as sure a sign of spring as a body could hope for

Stinging nettles are one of my all-time favorite spring foods.  I learned a long time ago from the writings of herbalist Susun Weed to harvest these puppies barehanded without getting badly stung.  I may get a little love nip here and there … of the sort that helps keep my arthritis at bay, says Susun …but nothing remotely fiery.  Ms. Weed’s mindset is, the more you embrace the plant rather than shield yourself from it (by wearing gloves), the more you will get out of it, and I rather agree with her.

For another, the dandelions, so far from being “out”, are almost on the way out.  Waaah.  Didn’t get to make dandelion wine this year.  Ray Bradbury, who alas just last summer left this world for that great Martian Chronicle in the Sky, long ago inspired me to try my hand at making wine from this most undeservedly maligned of weeds.  And I do love it.  Easier and better is dandelion coffee, which you can Try in the Comfort of Your Own Cuisinart by letting it (the Cuisinart) chop up some washed dandelion roots for you, then baking said chopped bits in your lowest oven “until done” (dried out and startin’ to smell good; might take half an hour or more).  You can store the dried bits in a glass Mason jar and, when you’re ready, boil them up for 5 or 15 minutes, a tablespoon or more to a serving (of boiling water).  I love to add milk and honey.  The resulting brew won’t be quite as strong as coffee, and has no caffeine, but for those who are familiar and friendly with other coffee “substitutes” (such as Roma or chicory), will strike a warm and stimulating chord.

Stinging Nettles up close and personal (how cool is that?)

But back to nettles for a moment … ‘cuz they’re just so frickin’ cool.  To elaborate on their anti-arthritic powers, it’s all on accounta the very thing that makes most people want to eradicate them even more badly than they want to eradicate their dandelions: the sting.

Which, upon closer examination, is a kind of one-two punch: the hairs on this nettle are composed of silica (read: shards of glass), and at the base of each hair (or tube of hollow silica) is a bulb which contains the stinging acid.  When you brush up against the hairs, it’s both the breaking of the glass needles, and the way in which they then inject you with the acid, that give you pain.

THAT IS … unless you reflect that the needles are all aligned in one direction.  If you approach the nettle mindfully, with the trajectory of your fingers with and not against the flow of the hairs’ alignment, you’ll get nary a sting.  You might almost call it Buddha Weed.

And when your attention lapses for just a wee bit and you end up with a little sting, reflect on the medicine therein: the acids consist of chemicals commonly find in our own bodies, including histamine and the neurotransmitters acetylcholine and serotonin.  Your body  responds with an antihistaminic reaction, which can help with hay fever, gout, and arthritis, among other conditions. I know a man in Wingdale who says he weaned himself of gout and diabetes medications by taking up a daily stinging nettle regimen.  Folks in several cultures flog themselves with bundles of stinging nettles while resting in their steam or sauna rooms, to enhance the therapeutic and cleansing effect.More basically: stinging nettles just plain taste great.  And, I find, elevate my mood distinctly

The Nettle Formerly Known as Sting (photo by Hank Shaw)

whenever I eat them.  Might go without saying, but just to be safe: you MUST cook them, if even briefly, to get the stings to lie down and wag their tails.  But once you’ve done that (by, say, blanching them for a couple of minutes), there’s all manners of things you can do with them.  One of my favorite ways to eat them is as stinging nettle pesto (a good recipe for which lies here).

One additional sweet t’ing about stinging nettles for me is that they have the potential to put Bridie Kelliher to mind.  Bridie was, back in the early ’90s, an Irish farmwoman in her late ’70s whom I had the good fortune to pause with, while biking through Ireland and stopping off to work at farms.  Bridie let me know upon my arrival that if I ever needed to wash my clothes, she had a machine and I could dry them “on the line outside.”  Day came when I finally took her up on that, and I had to go to Bridie, because in all my days there, I’d seen no trace of a line.  “Oh,” she cooed, “ya jus’ t’row them on the hedge in the front yarrud.”  I dutifully trotted out to said hedge, only to see that it was a shock of stinging nettles.

I went back to Bridie.  Surely I had misunderstood her.  But “no, child,”  I hadn’t.  I thought inwardly, “How barbaric” (hmm, quite literally).  Or words to that effect.  “She’s been living here all her life, and surrounded by family, and no one’s thought to put up a clothesline!  And merely to dry your clothes you have to risk a searing pain that stays with you for the better part of a day????  No WONder Ireland is still considered a Third World Country!”

But I stayed mum, rolled with it, and it wasn’t too too bad.  Then many years later, upon encountering Susun Weed’s take on it, I realized what wisdom lay there.  Bridie had awful arthritis, and her daily or weekly encounters with the hedge were certainly of the self-medicating sort.  It’s often that way … that there’s an intelligence in what an outsider will quickly judge as barbaric.