WildCraftedoils
  • Home
  • Essential Oils
    • Albida Blue
    • Australian Native Mint
    • Black Box Oil
    • Common Fringe Myrtle
    • Lemon
    • Neroli
    • Old Man Weed
    • Orange
    • Petit Grain
    • Red Gum Oil
    • Sandalwood- Victorian
    • Balms
    • Neka Oil
    • Sinus Oil
    • Headache Soother
    • Hydrosols
  • Experiences
    • Distilling Essential Oils Workshops
    • Accommodation
  • News
  • Store
  • Contact
  • Wanambe

Thuja Occidentalis.

5/1/2019

0 Comments

 
Steam distilling thuja today. A gift from a gardener who was pulling out the tree. 20 kg in the column another 20 tomorrow.
The conifer has delightful Grey blue fruits that Emerge from the growing tips.
60 ml of high quality essential oil and 20 litres of fresh hydrosol.


Picture
Picture
The Copper Alembic. She works so well on spring days when the winds change and the clouds roll by.
0 Comments

Magnificent unheard of essential oil - Albida Blue

10/11/2018

1 Comment

 
Eucalyptus Albida is often used in floristry for its colourful leaves. Bronze,coppers,oranges and hints of blues.when my neighbours asked me to distill the leaves to see what we get, I was happy to try and what has resulted is the most gentle of Eucalyptus oils with a magical, mystical, mythical blue colour.
Now most essential oils that are blue have chamazulene in them and as it turns out so has this. It may be that this is a perfect reaction to the copper alembic still but who cares? Certainly not I and my neighbors are over the moon.




This magnificent essential oil is unheard of. As with many Australia n plants very little research has been done on their essential oil properties.









1 Comment

Black Box and Orange Oils

6/4/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Eucalyptus Largiflorens is not a well known Australian Eucalyptus oil but to us here living on the Murray River it is well known, and we call it Black Box. Im not sure how these trees got the name Box? There are many Box Eucalypts on the farm; Yellow Box, Gray Box and essential oil can be made from them all.

Black Box is a slow growing, long living tree that grows on the riverbed plains. The essential oil is sweeter and more gentle than the river redgum and is extracted from the long grey green leaves.

The current batch that I am making is from the flowering Black Box. Winter is flowering times for box trees. The bees are a buzz as we pick the leaves and the winters chill makes for a wonderful harvest.


The rains are coming and we so need them. 

Citrus Aurantium or the bitter seville orange has come to an end of season and I put a few hundred through the still to make the most delightful essential oil.

Orange oil is commonly pressed and is often a by product of juicing, but here at Wild Crafted we put the whole orange in the water and hydrodistill the fruit. The oil is different from the cold pressed versions and we love the joyful happy essential oil that arrives. 

​Debate on whether to cut up the citrus and to open the cell membranes is worth mentioning. The photo at the bottom shows clearly that even though the fruit was not cut up, the cell membranes that hold the essential oil in the fruit were completely obliterated by the hydro distillation.

So here we are ready for winter with our Black Box oil to fend off the winter greeblies and our distilled orange oil to make life that little bit more joyous.
​








Picture
2 Comments

Summer Oils

2/17/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
I am so excited about next Saturday The 24th Feb.

A brilliant end of summer distillation class is in the making. What to distill? Old Man Weed (Centipede Cunninhamii) or Redgum (Eucalyptus Camaldulensis).

Our big copper alembic still will fire into action and we will put the hand harvested plants in the column and delight in the company waiting for the essential oil to be produced.

The guests are gathering their goodies and I am shining the copper.
See you there.

If anyone is interested in learning about distilling plants for essential oils and floral waters just hop onto Airbnb Experiences and find Distilling Australian Essential Oils.

​Hope to see you here sometime. 








0 Comments

Sweet Orange Leaf Petitgrain

11/1/2017

1 Comment

 
The spring blossoming of the orange trees was out of kilter this year. Where I normally harvest over 350 kilos of flowers this season gave us only 60kilos. It may have been the severe winter frosts or it may be other more insipid factors related to climate change, who knows? Certainly not I.


So it was a delight to move over to harvesting the leaves of the orange trees and to create the most delightful and happy, bright and sharp sweet orange leaf petitgrain.

Friends have arrived for the harvest and have adapted to the change of plan readily. Cath and Ricardo have been methodical in their harvest techniques and so far have over 40 kilos of leaf for the still.

We are in the middle of the distilling days with an aim for at least 100ml. So far we have produced 6o ml.

Now this may sound like a piddly amount to those not in the know. But here on the farm we are happy with the ratio of 2% per kilo of leaf. This is a far cry from the 0.9% obtained from the flowers of the citrus tree.

In other words from 1 kilo of leaf we can get 2ml of petitgrain oil whereas from 1 kilo of flowers we can get 0.9ml of neroli oil.

Petitgrain can be used in so many ways for general health and well being. From assisting dry skin,and oily hair to helping ease palpitations, indigestion, helps insomnia and mental fatigue and helps improve muscle tone. Isnt this marvelous from a leaf?

We have produced 15 litres of hydrosol and of course this is a loving bonus and the extra gift we recieve when distilling for essential oils. In the bath a cupful is sublime, frozen in ice cubes it is divine in a gin and tonic,spritzed onto the body it acts as a deodorant, nerve tonic and general feel good water.

After a shower give yourself a light spritz of petitgrain hydrosol to brighten your senses. 

Thanks Ann for reminding me to write this.

​




Picture
1 Comment

fragrant blossoms and floods

10/31/2016

0 Comments

 

Life on the Murray River is always full of change and challenge.

Just as the orange blossoms were ready for harvesting, the full moon and the Murray River flooding collided in our landscape.

Wet, windy weather and the flood waters peaking at the levy banks led to a rush of activity. Moving from harvest to home to farm and flowers. 

But as we all know, these things pass and we are now distilling the orange blossoms.



Over 250 kilos of blossoms harvested, picked by hand and the trees gently tapped with digging sticks, the flowers fall onto the large cloths that we place under each tree. 

So far we have 140 litres of sumptous floral waters and 120 ml of neroli essential oil. 

This sounds like not a lot. True it isnt. But when we harvest one of the most precious essential oils on the planet it takes patience, time, skill and a happy frame of mind to entice the essence of the blossom into the bottle.

Each flower is hand picked, and then sorted so that there are no leaves, sticks, twigs, bugs or  beetles. Then the blossoms are placed in  the still. The making of steam takes hours.

The blossom are saturated with the steam and the molecules of oil attach to the steam. From here the steam travels into a condenser that cools the steam back into water. The oils float on top and are seperated. 

A big job but Oh so worth it.  For 14 days now we have been distilling the blossoms. Each day picking 20 - 30 kilos, sorting, and making oil. Smelling the neroli oil day in and day out certainly makes me feel relaxed.

The blossom season is nearly over until next Spring when the orange blossoms flower once again. 

Picture








​Happy flowers make happy essential oils.

0 Comments

Winter on the Murray

5/18/2016

0 Comments

 

July on the Murray River saw glorious rains for the first time since who knows when. The turtles came out to lay eggs, the rivers were topped up and the little plant known as Old Man Weed (Centipede Cunninhamii) perked up and stands taller on the edges of the water. Nearly time to harvest the plant and put it through the Alembic Still.

Old Man Weed is famous for its healing properties. Since the beginning, the Australian Aboriginal people used the plant for skin disorders. They boiled the plant with water and washed themselves and drank the tea. Later as the white man learnt of the plant it was used as snuff and became  known as sneezeweed.

Today science has verified that the plant contains essential oils that indeed do assist skin complaints. I have used it for many years in my balm recipe and have found it really helps the symptoms of many dry skin disorders, the floral waters are more aligned to moist skin problems.

Winter in the Riverlands of Australia are glorious. The mighty River Redgums glisten, the Wattle trees burst ito bright yellow song, wild mushrooms pop out of the earth and the Old Man Weed loves the rain. 





​

0 Comments

October 19th, 2015

10/20/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
115kilos of orange blossom flowers hand picked over 4 days.Thanks to the mammoth effort from friends and family.186ml of neroli was the result. Sweet, earthy and soporific. 
0 Comments

Wild Craftyness

9/1/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
The making of essential oils takes a lot of technical skill, talent, patience and plant knowledge. 
Harvesting plants from the wild for medicinal use with great ethical purpose is a grounding occupation. At Wild Crafted Oils we love all the elements that nature provides.
1 Comment

Divas steam in Torrumbarry.

8/30/2015

0 Comments

 
Drove 7 hours to deliver the Eucalyptus Dives to the hand crafted copper still. She is in and about to release her character. 
Picture
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Tuesday Browell

    Founder of Wild Crafted Oils.

    Archives

    May 2019
    October 2018
    June 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2016
    May 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • Essential Oils
    • Albida Blue
    • Australian Native Mint
    • Black Box Oil
    • Common Fringe Myrtle
    • Lemon
    • Neroli
    • Old Man Weed
    • Orange
    • Petit Grain
    • Red Gum Oil
    • Sandalwood- Victorian
    • Balms
    • Neka Oil
    • Sinus Oil
    • Headache Soother
    • Hydrosols
  • Experiences
    • Distilling Essential Oils Workshops
    • Accommodation
  • News
  • Store
  • Contact
  • Wanambe