I look forward to harvesting nettle each year just as much as I want to put it off. It’s not the sting that deters me as much as the spot they grow. It’s such a magical spot that I assume a homeless person will find it and make an epic encampment.
I would if I were homeless—free, nutrient-dense food in a fairy tale landscape of spring water dancing through squishy moss. A small building comes pre-graffitied, and neighboring mountain bike trails weave through a lodgepole pine forest. It’s perfect, as long as you don’t mind sharing your home with plants that cause bodily harm & moths flying around your feet.
The north-facing slope could be an issue in the winter, but never mind now! All I see is free food, water, and pre-decorated shelter.
Now, I never want to invade someone’s home. But I especially don’t want to with a manner-less two-year-old who says “hi” for an uncomfortable 50 repetitions and “bye” after you’re in your car driving away.
Nevertheless, approaching the patch filled me with the love I felt when magic seemed real. Of course, I ran ahead of my wandering baby to ensure everything was clear. It could be springtime in my favor. After all, the snow just melted off. With a clear coast, I called my baby over. He skipped across moss-covered rocks, and I began to harvest.
This year’s nettle harvest felt like a fight—me versus gangly stinging plants and time. I decided to forego the long sleeves and take the strings for pleasure. Like walking into battle without armor, I slashed plants free from enslavement to the ground and turned them into beneficial, appreciated tea leaves.
At least, that’s how I felt it go down. I was rushing to avoid my son falling in and getting stung. Yes, he would be fine, but no, I didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening comforting an annoyed, angry two-year-old.
Ziggy might have walked out from the experience stung-less, but his shoes were soaked. And I carried the proudest shopping bag of my life with arms barring inflamed dots all over them. I don’t know why I thought I would look badass with stung forearms. But instead, I look like I contracted a debilitating disease. However, if (and when) my son gets stung in the future, I can sympathize.
For the next 24 hours, my arms burned and bothered me. I tried the red-neck fix first. I covered my arms in duct tape and peeled it off, hoping I would catch the lodged nettle hairs and remove them from my arms. When that failed, I applied aloe until the burning gave up and my arms returned to normal.
Disappointed that I didn’t gain any beneficial mutation, I hung my nettles up in clusters to dry so I could store the leaves for winter to make tea. Letting them dry in a dark room seems to help maintain their minty aroma. Unfortunately, some of us had to find that out the hard and disappointing way so that you could do it right the first time.
Beware when taking the bundles down. I assumed drying them would kill off any power to sting, but that’s not the case. After my batch had dried, I finished processing them by removing the leaves from the stems and crumbling the leaves. But the stems didn’t go down without a fight. They left me with a few parting wounds.
So the philosophical side of you might be asking, why go through all this torture? And I will answer with a bland, why not? It boasts of being more nutrient-dense than spinach. Pop-eye could have had bigger forearms with the iron packed in these leaves. Besides, their heart-shaped leaves have to signify it is good for the heart. That’s how science works, right?
But really, why does any of this matter when the pure and simple reason is that I enjoy the harvest and hate grocery shopping?