Distilling

 The art of distillation goes back quite some time… hundreds of years. I use a hand-crafted copper distiller.

If you can imagine walking through a rose garden in full bloom or a forest of eucalyptus or peeling an orange, those beautiful scents that you inhale are similar to what it is like to distill as the "essential oil" is the essence of that plant. It is a beautiful thing to work with plants in this way. The resulting distillate is the full make-up of the plant, rather than just the essential oil, you get the fullness of the plant that you are distilling, all of it’s properties.

A few of the plants that I have distilled in the past for different purposes have been thyme, eucalyptus, rose geranium, lemon verbena, and Echinacea. Each one delicious and healing in it’s own way.

Just the other day I went for a walk and cut some fresh branches from a eucalyptus tree as you use the leaves and twigs. I went home and distilled. The result was a beautiful eucalyptus hydrosol. There are over 300 varieties of eucalyptus trees. I distilled Eucalyptus leucoxylon,    the one with the red blossoms. The following is a good resource for the various uses of eucalyptus. 

I like to use it as a house spray, for steam inhalation, to add to a footbath, creams or to washing. 

 If you are interested in distilling please let me know and we can stay in touch.

christy@ooooby.com

Written by: Christy Martin