Wine making is usually a spring through autumn activity. Most berries and fruits we make our wines from come to be ripe between those times. One of the extremely few berries that we wait until the Winter Solstice to make is highbush cranberry. Highbush cranberry wine is one of the easiest to get right. In fact if you did nothing more than crush the berries in water and let them sit for two weeks before you strained them you could make a fair wine without even adding any yeast. The berries will produce their own yeast in a pinch.
Highbush cranberry berries are pretty bitter when they first ripen, but leave them on the bush for several freezes and they sweeten to a great wine making or even jelly making berry. I try to start mine right around, if not on, the Winter Solstice or Yule. By spring the berries are fermenting within their own skins and if you watch early returning robins eat them before the worms come out, you will get to see very hammered robins. lol
But this plant has another name, a secret identity if you will. Many of the old timers called it cramp bark because of the wonderful pain relieving power that comes from the inner bark of the plant. This bark is best harvested as the sap is rising up through the bark in the spring, usually before the leaves reach full size.
To describe the bush can be hard, because some people call it a small tree while other call it a large bush. Either way it is a smooth and upright shrub, usually five to twelve feet high. It leaves are often described as maple shaped, with three lobes each with a prominent vein. The flowers are white and form a drooping umbel shape. The fruit, which stays on the tree all winter (unless a hungry animal, bird, or human consumes them) and very importantly, hang DOWN from the branch in the umbel shape. It is easiest to find in open woodlands, but the fuller the sun they are in, the more fruit they will produce. I have them scattered through an old orchard I bought a few years ago, but I mainly harvest the berries from a smaller stand of them along a fence row just because they get more sun.
The berries and the bark both have the same medicinal qualities but the berries have very little of it, while the bark has a great deal of it. There are two ways of harvesting the bark. One is where you take a vertical rectangle of bark out the main stalk, making sure not to cut all the way around the stalk, girdling the bush and killing it. Carefully peal the bark out of the rectangle and immediately peal off the outer bark. The longer you wait to peal off the outer bark, the harder it can get. Dry the inner bark for two weeks and store in a dark, dry place. Or you can cut branches off the bush, right next to where they branch from the bush. From there make one slit up the side of the cut branch and peal the whole branch. With the branch method you will get more bark, but you will need to work fast to get the outer bark peeled away before it get too tough to do it. Then, like above, dry the inner bark for two weeks and store in a dark place.
Cramp bark can be used by mixing with mints to help soothe an upset and cramping stomach. It can be used with charcoal to help a person recover from food poisoning. Combine it with motherwort and willow bark and it can be used to help ease menstrual cramping. Drinking a strong tea of it with many glasses of water can help relax muscles that tend to cramp at night. Wintergreen and cramp bark tea can help ease the aches of over worked muscles. Basically what it does is relax muscles without making a person drowsy. If you do want it to help you sleep through the night a good recipe is:
2 oz Cramp Bark
1 oz each of Skull Cap and Skunk Cabbage
1/2 oz each cloves and ginger
Bruise or coarsely chop these and add to a pint of at least 80 proof vodka. Let sit for a month in a dark place. Strain out the plant material and you have a relaxing tincture. 10 to 50 drops of this into 8 oz of water before you go to bed will help you get a good night sleep. Try the smaller dose first working your way to the larger dose it the smaller one doesn't work.
Highbush cranberry wine and jelly and cramp bark as a medicinal. This plant is an important part of my life, if only to be out gathering the berries on the Winter Solstice and reminding myself that even in the coldest, most silent time of the year, life still goes on.
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