A4C Prepper Dan： Spruce Tip Tea Vlog14
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
153.40134
Summary
There's still something you can harvest in your forest that you'll find highly beneficial, high in vitamin C, antioxidant, and good to fight colds and flus and that is the spruce tip. Nice and bright green coming out the tips of your spruce and I'm going to show you how to harvest it and how you can use it, and how to even store it for long term use.
Transcript
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hi and welcome to another edition of Prepper Dan well spring is two-thirds of the way down here but
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there's still something you can harvest in your forest that you'll find highly beneficial high
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in vitamin C antioxidant good to fight colds and flus and that is the spruce tip nice and bright
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green coming out the tips of your spruce and I'm going to show you how to harvest it and how you
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can use it and how you can even store it for long-term use nice refreshing drink for the summer
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so let's get down to business here next to our small little spruce trees and I'll show you how
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you can harvest it the first thing you'll want to do is you'll notice on the tips of these spruce
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trees here the new growth from this year is nice and light and very very soft compared to the
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prickliness of the growth from last year and it bends very easily and we had some really good
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growth this year on some some of these lower ones here the the tips are still coming out so there's
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good time to harvest these and these harvest very easily what I simply do I get myself a little bowl
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here and I simply just pick the tips off and they come off very easily keep in mind that these will
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be a little bit sticky so by the time you're done your hands will be sticky but just washes off with
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soap and water and it doesn't take any time at all to really harvest like a bowl full like I have here
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and actually harvest you know two or three little bunches at a time and they're quite soft
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and in essence this is what they look like they're nice and soft and they stay together nicely
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now you may be wondering how do you tell the difference between a spruce tree a fir tree which
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is your typical Christmas tree or pine tree well a spruce tree when you pick one of the more mature
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needles off on the side it's square so you can actually roll it between your fingers a fir tree
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I'll show you that in a moment the needles are flat so you can't roll it and a pine tree I'll show you
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that in a few moments too you'll either have a red pine or a white pine and that'll have long needles
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in clusters of two or five so that's the difference now you can use there's different types of
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spruce tree as well we've got white spruce black spruce and red spruce here and these are a white
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spruce here but you can actually it doesn't matter if you mix up the tips and that it may give you a
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bit of a nicer flavor the other thing too is you'll notice on some of these because they're still emerging
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this is the end of May here where I am on the east coast there's a little paper cup on top of these
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and all you got to do is just give them a shake paper cups are gone
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so here's an example of a red pine here or yeah this is a red pine the red pine needles are very long
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they are nice and soft we do have white pine here as well I happen to have a big pile of red pine logs here
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that I have for projects that I use on my sawmill but the red pine will grow in clumps of two needles
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and the white pine will grow in a clump of five needles and you can make a pine tea as well
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and maybe I'll do another video on that at some other time so keep in mind also that with the
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spruce tea you can make a tea any time of year with these by using the branches also here's just
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a young tree and all of the the the needles are actually fairly fairly smooth on this one
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but they'll be more bitter and I'm going to talk about the benefits of all that when we go inside
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and I show you how to process all that so yeah this is a good harvest a good growth here so far this year
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and you're not actually harming the tree by just taking taking off a few I take it from the the not
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from the tops but I take it from the just the ends of the leaves here so you'll notice some of them
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are very tight still these are perfect for harvesting and then some of them like on this
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one here they're starting to fan out a little bit these are good too they'll have a nice lemony
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taste to them all right now for this batch I've got about three cups of water in this pot
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and I'm going to add I've got two cups of these spruce tips that I'm adding in here and
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um I'm going to add I'm going to add a whole lemon to this I just slice it kind of thin
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and I'm just going to pour or not pour but just kind of put the lemons right on the top like this
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so it looks just kind of like that and then I'm going to put this on a burner here
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the simmer and uh you'll see when it's done the whole top of the um you're just going to see
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liquid on top and everything else will have settled right down
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all right to preserve these long term what I like to do is I make ice cubes out of them
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and I save them now these don't freeze like typical water they're a little bit gelatinous
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and then I'll tell you when I when I make my my mixture in my pot there
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you can drink it just as is or you can sweeten it a little bit now this particular mixture that I've
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got in here I have some demerara sugar which is cane sugar that I had from Florida and I used about a
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cup of it for um about I'm going to say at least twice that and I tell you it's sweetened it just
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enough this time I'm going to try maybe three or four tablespoons of honey to sweeten that but
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just let me show you like you know how usually with ice cubes they just snap right out
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these just kind of they're they're a little bit sticky because um you know these uh these coniferous
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trees um they are sticky you know it's like uh well it's like a pine tar almost but it's not pine but
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obviously it's spruce I remember my grandfather you know growing up he used to carry his knife
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like I grew up in Quebec and we used to have a cabin up and way up in northern Quebec and he
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always used to walk around with a knife and every time you'd see some um some spruce gums coming out
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of the tree he used to break the piece off and just throw it in his mouth anyhow so this is what these
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ice cubes look like and you can preserve this year round what I do is in a bottle of water like this
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I take one of these put it in there fill it with water and you can put other ice cubes in there too
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but it flavors it ever so nicely and it's so refreshing and I'm going to talk to you about
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the health benefits of um of these um these trees here and the I'm going to talk to you about the
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nutrients of spruce tips in just a moment the other thing you can do is once this mixture is
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steeped you can actually just make a tea some people add a little bit of lemon to it or you can
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add a little bit of sugar or you can put some honey and just drink it as is you can make a big pot of
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it just coming to a nice rolling boil right now but the other thing I can suggest to is um in my
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freezer sometimes in one of our freezers when we have space I'm going to turn this down a little bit
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here um when we have space I take some older bottles that we've had this had liquid honey in it
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but uh it's a really thick bottle or even uh orange juice and I fill them uh about seven eighths of the
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way full of water never fill it up full because you know water expands as it uh as it freezes
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and any spare space in my freezer I put this is like a giant ice cube and it helps keep the freezer cold
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if the power ever goes out I've got already made ice packs in there but once this mixture is cooled down
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and it's um it's it's strained and I'll show you how I strain it here once this is done uh you could
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you know fill this up three quarters or seven eighths of the way full and then throw it in your
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freezer and then throughout the year as you need it you can strain it have it as a warm tea or again
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mix a portion of it it'll be highly concentrated but uh you can make a nice drink with it it's refreshing
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and again you'll get all of the health nutrients with it
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okay this is simmered for about 30 minutes and so now we're going to use just a fine mesh sieve
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this nice brew it smells so nice in here right now it almost smells like christmas
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you can see the nice color of it it's like a really nice yellowish tinge
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and we're going to let this cool and I'm going to go ahead and make more ice cubes out of this one
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rather than make a tea it's too hot today for a tea
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but again you can put this in a one of those bottles once it's cool put it in the freezer
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and save it for later and seeing as though there's all kinds of this outside if you don't
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have property where you can harvest this along the road
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do make sure that it's you're not harvesting in an area where there's been pesticide sprayed
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that wouldn't be good for you but there certainly is a lot of this in nature
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all right so let's explore some of the benefits
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so while this is still warm I'm actually going to sweeten this with some honey
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and I've got some raw unpasteurized honey here I'm going to put
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I keep this in the fridge so it's a little bit hard
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maybe I'll start with two and see see what it tastes like
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all right this one just a little overpowered by the lemon
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I used a whole lemon with the batch I did before
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that was at least twice maybe even three times this amount
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so but anyhow that'll turn out okay it'll be a little more on the lemony side
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so good batch overall just a little bit of a different flavor
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and I did put a little bit of black spruce tips in here as well
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besides the white spruce so that may have just altered the flavor just a little bit
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but that's good little alteration in flavor is not a bad thing
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so spruce tip tea is good for a lot of different remedies
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and as I said you can find different ways to preserve it long term
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it's used as a natural remedy for various health issues such as colds coughs and fatigue
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so what are the benefits of spruce tip tea well it's rich in vitamin c
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it also has antiseptic properties which can help soothe sore throats
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it's also has it also has anti-inflammatory properties
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which can help reduce inflammation and alleviate symptoms of colds and flu
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which can help protect the body from damage caused by free radicals
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now I've heard it said and been reading up on this
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that women who were pregnant should probably avoid drinking spruce
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I'm having a hard time saying that really quickly
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alright that only took a few minutes to prepare
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probably take me longer to clean up after all that
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but I hope you enjoyed this informational little tidbit
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and do something constructive while you're at it
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and enjoy a little bit of goodness and freshness