I’ve been making nettle tea today. Do you think I’ve got enough nettles to keep me going? Only question is how do I keep those cows off them…

The visit to the nettle patch is always fraught with danger.

Do I walk round the outside of the house, through the field gate and back across the field – have to navigate the cowpat minefield.

Do I step over the fence – my little legs are just not quite long enough. Maybe 1cm too short. It’s a rough fence…….

Do I climb the fence – some muppet decided to cover this side of the fence with wire netting to keep the dog from escaping. This means that I have no natural footholds.

Do I jump the fence – would be the best option but that barbed wire is uncomfortably close. The jump requires a sudden stop on landing. Unfortunately I am no gymnast and I’m the type of person who tends to generate a lot of forward momentum….

The last nettle hunt resulted in a number of injuries. An initial attempt to step over the fence was painfully abandoned midway. Then an attempt to climb resulted in a couple of cuts to my shin and knee. Finally a jump did as expected generate significant forward momentum. The barbed wire was approaching far too fast. A rather panicky pirouette did avoid the barbed stuff, unfortunately the momentum took me headfirst into the nettle patch. I was scratching for days….

So I was undertaking my risk assessment for the adventure when Son asked what I was doing. After explaining the problem and the various options. He gave me one of those looks, shrugged and walked off.

“Dad why don’t you just lean over the fence and pick the nettles that you can reach safely…”

Suddenly tea making is so much safer….

61 thoughts on “Tea”

  1. That’s so not fair. I don’t know what happened, but I lost the comment I was typing. Nevertheless, I shall try again.

    You do know that of all the posts in my in box the word “tea” would immediately draw me to this post, right? Tea works wonders. So your first post had to wait along with everyone else’s posts.

    I was worth it. I was quite amused. However, I don’t know much about nettle tea, so you will have to tell me more. What are the benefits, and why the hankerin’? It must be some pretty good stuff to go to all that trouble. I mean pirouettes…that’s a fancy manoeuvre.

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    1. Hi. Sorry yes thought if you with this title. Nutrients. Reduce inflammation. Helps with hay fever, lowers blood pressure, controls blood sugar, good for the urinary tract. Tastes a bit different. Over here many shops sell nettle tea bags now. On,y ever done two pirouettes. One was to avoid the bard wire and one was to avoid falling off a cliff face. They don’t come naturally to me. 😀

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      1. Wow, that’s quite a list of benefits. Yikes, avoiding falling off a cliff face is definitely a good reason to do a pirouette. 😮 I’m glad that worked! 😬

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  6. Let’s go back into the past a bit, Gary. Once you’ve garnered all the nettles you can get reaching through or over the fence, build the Yorky’s answer to a bridge over a river, otherwise known as a stile. I mean, you guys invented them, why not use them?

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  11. What a lovely patch of nettles. However you decide to get them make sure you get enough for the whole year at one time so you don’t have to do a repeat performance. 🙂 You can dry and store them an make tea throughout the year.

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  12. Stinging nettles…I’ve had a few unpleasant encounters with them but I read that they are good for all sorts of things. The article I saw says it makes a delicious tea…can you confirm? I somehow can’t imagine it.

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  14. I have never had nettle tea though I have heard of it. Seeing all the benefits makes me want to give it a try. I have never, to my knowledge, seen nettles though I’m not really sure what to look for. I do have a book on wild plants and weeds. Should look it up sometime. I wouldn’t want to pick the wrong thing and poison myself. 🙂 Not much benefit in that. Try not to get nettled when you pick your nettle.

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  15. Great idea! I was thinking about reaching with some sort of grabber on a pole, but if you can reach them with your hand, all the better. We’ve got nettles on our property, but I haven’t used them. They’re stinging nettles so we have to handle them with care – although they make good soup.

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