How Much of Each Natural Remedy Should You Make?

In this member video, I want to build on everything we recently covered in my Natural Remedy Marathon and talk about an important part of stocking our Healing Pantry that we don’t always think about until someone in the family starts feeling under the weather.

These conversational vodcasts are available to the Kitchen Pioneers who have joined my YouTube membership community—The Traditional Foods Kitchen Academy.

How Much of Each Natural Remedy Should We Have on Hand?

It’s one thing to know how to make herbal teas, syrups, tinctures, oils, salves, and other traditional remedies. But as Modern Pioneers, we also want to think ahead. If cold and flu season arrives or someone in the household simply needs a comforting remedy, we don’t want to discover that we only have enough ingredients to make one small batch when we really needed two or three.

So today, let’s talk about preparing our natural remedies before we need them, deciding how much to make based on the size of our household, and perhaps even keeping a little extra on hand to share with a friend or neighbor.

Disclaimer

I am not a doctor or medical professional. If you are not feeling well, please seek professional medical attention and medicine. And if you are thinking of supplementing your treatment with home remedies, be sure to talk to your medical professional about them. It’s important that you get the medicine and treatments you need to get back to good health.

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Start With What You Already Know

One of the easiest ways to decide how many natural remedies to prepare is to look back at your own experience.

Think about last fall and winter:

• Did everyone in your household come down with a cold at the same time?
• Did you go through elderberry syrup faster than you expected?
• Did you make cup after cup of herbal tea?
• Did we treat lots of scrapes and bruises?
• Was there a particular remedy that everyone reached for again and again?
• Or did you prepare something that was hardly used at all?

Those experiences give us valuable information.

Preparedness doesn’t mean making enormous quantities of everything. Instead, we can use what we’ve learned from previous years to stock our Healing Pantry wisely.

If one jar of a particular remedy lasted your family all season last year, you may only need one again this year. But if you found yourself making batch after batch, that tells you it might be worthwhile to prepare more ahead of time.

Consider the Size of Your Household

The next thing to consider is simply how many people you may be caring for. A single person will obviously have different needs than a household of two, four, or six.

If you’re preparing something that stores well, think about approximately how much one person might reasonably use and then multiply that amount by the number of people in your household who may use that particular remedy.

You don’t need an exact mathematical formula. We’re simply trying to develop a sensible estimate. For example, if you know from past experience that your household tends to go through several batches of a favorite herbal preparation during the winter months, prepare accordingly.

On the other hand, if you live alone, you certainly don’t need to make family-sized quantities of every remedy. That’s one of the beauties of making things homemade. We can customize everything to our own needs.

Prepare Ingredients as Well as Finished Remedies

Remember that preparing ahead doesn’t always mean making every remedy in advance. Sometimes the best preparedness is simply making sure you have all the ingredients you need:

• Keep your favorite dried herbs stocked.
• Make sure you have honey or another appropriate sweetener for herbal syrups.
• Have oils and beeswax available if you make herbal oils and salves.
• Keep the proper bottles, jars, tins, strainers, funnels, and other supplies ready to go.

When your Healing Pantry is well stocked, you can prepare many remedies quite quickly when the need arises. This is especially helpful for preparations that are best made fresh.

Other remedies—particularly those that store well—may be perfect candidates for making ahead.

Check Your Herbal Medicine Cabinet

Once you’ve stocked your Healing Pantry, take a little inventory of what I like to call your Herbal Medicine Cabinet.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be one physical cabinet. Some remedies may be stored in your pantry. Others may need refrigeration. Still others might be kept in a cool, dark area of your home.

What matters is knowing:

• What you have
• Where it is
• How much you have
• When you made it
• When it should be replaced

Labeling everything clearly can be especially helpful.

If you prepared something last year and you’re unsure how old it is, now is the perfect time to inspect it and decide whether it should be replaced. And while you’re at it, check your supply of dried herbs too. Make sure they still look, smell, and, in the case of edible herbs, taste fresh and vibrant.

Make the Remedies Your Family Actually Uses

One mistake we can easily make when stocking any type of pantry is preparing what we think we should have instead of what our family actually uses.

The same applies to natural remedies. You don’t need twenty different preparations simply because they sound interesting. Begin with your tried-and-true favorites.

• Maybe your family loves elderberry syrup.
• Perhaps you regularly make herbal teas.
• Maybe you keep fire cider on hand.
• Or perhaps simple herbal salves are among the most-used preparations in your home.

Start there. Over time, you can expand your Herbal Medicine Cabinet as you learn more and discover which traditional remedies work best for your household.

Think in Terms of a Season

I also like to think about natural remedy preparedness seasonally. As we approach fall and winter, we may find ourselves making different preparations than we would during spring and summer.

So rather than asking, “How much do I need forever?”

Ask, “What would I like to have on hand for the next few months?”

That makes the whole process much more manageable. We can prepare a modest supply, use what we have, take notes about what worked well, and adjust our quantities the following year. That’s how traditional household knowledge develops—little by little, season after season.

And Maybe Make a Little Extra

Here’s another thought I especially wanted to share with my Kitchen Pioneers: If your budget and supplies allow, consider preparing a little more than your household needs.

Not an enormous amount. Maybe just half again as much. If you normally prepare two jars of something for yourself, perhaps make a third.

Why? Because at some point, a friend, neighbor, or family member may be under the weather and appreciate a little homemade comfort.

There is something very special about being able to say, “I have an extra jar. Let me bring it over to you.”

Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers often cared for their communities in exactly this way. They shared:

• Soup
• Herbs
• Preserves
• Remedies

A well-stocked pantry didn’t only serve the household where it lived. Sometimes it quietly served the neighborhood too. And I think that is a beautiful tradition for us to continue.

Use My Natural Remedy Marathon as Your Guide

If you haven’t watched my recent Natural Remedy Marathon, it’s a wonderful companion to this member video. In the marathon, I bring together many of my most popular natural remedy videos, including how to make:

• Herbal teas
• Herbal syrups
• Herbal tinctures
• Herbal oils and salves
• Herbal poultices
• Medicinal herbal soups
• And more

You’ll also learn more about stocking your Healing Pantry and creating an Herbal Medicine Cabinet.

You can watch the marathon from beginning to end or jump to the particular remedies that interest you most. Then come back to this member video and ask yourself, “Which of these do I want to have ready for my household this year?“

Keep a Simple Natural Remedy Inventory

You may even want to keep a section dedicated to your natural remedy inventory in your Kitchen Journal where you write down what you prepare each year.

For each remedy you could note:

• Remedy Name: __________
• Amount Made: ______
• Number of People in Household: ______
• Amount Used During the Season: ______
• Make More or Less Next Year? ______
• Other Notes: ______

Do the same for your favorite tinctures, teas, salves, oils, and other preparations. After a few seasons, you’ll have your own personalized guide showing exactly what works for your family. And that is far more useful than any one-size-fits-all list.

Preparedness Brings Peace of Mind

As we talk about preparedness during National Preparedness Month in September, remember that preparedness is not about fear. It’s about peace of mind.

When our pantry is stocked, our freezer has nourishing food tucked away, and our Healing Pantry contains the herbs and ingredients we regularly use, we know that if someone wakes up with a scratchy throat or simply needs a little extra comfort, we’re not starting from scratch.

• We already have the supplies.
• We already know what to make.
• And quite often, we may already have the remedy prepared.

That’s one more wonderful way we can use traditional wisdom in our modern kitchens.

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