My Mothers' Cures
• 45 recipes from a Pavee cultural herbalist — balms, salves, serums, restorative infusions, vinegars, and oxymels, made the way my family has always made them
• Every herb taught all the way down: the compounds she carries, what they do in your body, and the plain-language version right behind the science
• A hardcover made for the kitchen counter — exact weights, one quart jar, and a method you can follow the first time
361 pages – 45 full recipes, more than 50 herbs explained in depth, and the method behind every one
Every book comes with my Herbal Supplier Resource Guide — where I buy my herbs and supplies, and how to tell the good from the bad. It's a $25 PDF, and it's yours free landing in your inbox right after checkout.
At a Glance:
Forty-five recipes from my family’s kitchen, written down the way they were shown to me. I am a Pavee cultural herbalist, and this is the medicine I grew up around — made at the table, handed from one set of hands to the next, and now in mine for more than twenty years. The book moves through four kinds of preparation: infused oils and serums for skin, hair, and sore places; balms and salves for everything from bruises to cramps to cold sores; restorative infusions, the mineral-rich herbal brews my family lived on; and vinegars and oxymels, the old sour-and-sweet medicines for coughs, immunity, hormones, and nerves. A full how-to opens each chapter, so you learn the method once and then carry it through every recipe after.
What I love most about this book, though, is that it teaches the herbs, not just the recipes. More than 50 plants are explained properly — the compounds each one carries, what she does once she’s in your body, and then a plain-language version right behind the science for when you just want to know what’s in your jar. Alongside every formula is a piece of my family’s story: who taught it to me, and when it mattered. The measurements are exact, the steps are numbered, and nothing in here needs special equipment beyond a scale, a jar, and maybe a pot. By the end, you won’t just have my formulas. You’ll know enough to make your own.
Every chapter starts with a how-to, so before you ever touch a recipe, you’ll know how to infuse an oil, set a salve, steep a proper infusion, or build a vinegar or oxymel from scratch — the same way I learned, by doing it with my hands in the kitchen.
Serums & Oils
• Toothache Oil
• Earache Oil
• Breast Massage Oil
• Roots & Stems Rutting Oil
• Sweet Rosemary Hair Serum
• Wild Burdock Face Serum
• Citrus Pine Face Serum
• High Pines Blemish Serum
• Elder Rose Face Serum
• Wild Rose Coffee Bean Face Serum
Balms & Salves
• Elder Bruise Balm
• Black Drawing Salve
• Bare Skin Itch Balm
• Honeyed Pine Salve
• Cayenne Pain Salve
• Moon Blood Cramp Salve
• Sands & Pines Drying Balm
• Bare Lip Balm
• Cold Sore Balm
• Under Eye Balm
• Deep Slumber Balm
Restorative Infusions
• Nettle
• Oat Straw
• Linden Bloom
• Plantain
• Hawthorn
• Kale
• Mallow Root
• Chamomile
• Self-Heal
• Goldenrod
• Lemon Balm
• Dead Nettle
• Yarrow
• Elder Bloom
Vinegars & Oxymels
• Dandelion & Oregon Grape Berry Vinegar
• Thyme, Mullein & Onion Vinegar
• Cleavers & Goldenrod Vinegar
• Spruce Tip & Juniper Berry Vinegar
• Wood Betony & Milky Oats Vinegar
• Red Clover, Vitex, Pine Pollen & Chamomile Oxymel
• Elder Bloom & Astragalus Oxymel
• Hawthorn & Bilberry Oxymel
• Chamomile & Fennel Oxymel
• Skullcap & Lemon Balm Oxymel
Both, and I’m not hedging when I say that. Herbalism has a bad habit of making itself sound harder than it is — that’s gatekeeping, not expertise. So if you have never made anything past a cup of tea, you can open this book and make a salve tonight. Weights in grams, one jar, numbered steps, and a how-to at the front of every chapter so the method is in your hands before the first recipe. No, seriously, it’s that straightforward.
If you’ve been at this for years, you already know how to follow a recipe — what most books never give you is the why. That’s where this one goes. More than 50 herbs taught all the way down: what she carries, what it does once it’s in your body, and why these particular plants were put in a jar together. Once you understand that, you stop needing my recipes and start building your own. That’s what I want for you, anyhow — it’s how it was handed to me.
Most herbal books come at you from one of two directions: a stack of recipes with no explanation, or a reference so dense it’s hard to know where to start. I wanted to write the one that sits in the middle, because that’s where most of us actually live. Every recipe in here tells you what the herb is doing in your body — the compounds, the mechanism, the real science — and then, in the same breath, says it again in plain language so it sticks. You get the whole picture, and you don’t need any background to follow it. Just curiosity.
The other difference is where it comes from. I am a Pavee cultural herbalist, and these formulas were not developed for this book — they have been made by my people for hundreds and hundreds of years, passed hand to hand through an entire culture long before anyone thought to write them down. That kind of time does something to a recipe. The guesswork has been worn out of it. What’s left is what works, and that is what you’re holding: medicine that has been trusted on real bodies for generations, with the stories of the hands that carried it still attached.
April Graham is a Pavee cultural herbalist — an Irish Traveller raised in a family where herbal medicine was simply how you took care of people. She has spent more than twenty years teaching freely and selling herbal formulas, and the better part of that time teaching the how and why behind them: hundreds and hundreds of YouTube videos, an audience of hundreds of thousands who know her as She Is Of The Woods, and a homestead in rural northeastern Oregon where she grows or wildcrafts a good share of what goes into her jars.
The thing that runs through everything she makes is a simple belief: you are smart enough to do this!
Herbalism doesn’t need to be wrapped in mystery or kept behind a fake certification — it needs to be taught simply, well, and by someone who has practiced it her entire life. That is what her books are for. Real science, a living tradition, and the unwavering belief that the person reading is smart enough to do this too.
So you can see how it reads
I pulled seven pages straight out of the book and put them here. Open any of them and take your time learning about Nettle.
“I have a moral compass in me that will not, can not, hand you these things without ensuring you also understand the deep mechanics that go into every recipe my family, my culture, and I have made.” - April Graham
Words From My Elders
Words from the women who came before me.
“We were taught to keep quiet about who we are. She’s put her name on the cover and the cures inside and said ‘this is ours.’ I’m proud of her, and I didn’t know I’d feel that instead of fear.”
“We never got the why. You got told, just like April says, ‘put the berries in the jar’ and that was that. She’s written down the part we were never given, and that’s the real gift in this book.”
“I checked the drawing salve first, because that’s the one I’d know if she got it wrong. She didn’t. Right down to the Usnea. If that one’s right, the rest are right.”
Open to any page
Open any of the 45 recipes, and you’ll find the same thing waiting: a short word on what she does and who she’s for, the ingredients weighed out in grams so there’s no guessing, and steps you can follow with one hand on the jar.
Then I walk you through every herb in the formula - what she carries, what it does once in your body, and the plain-spoken version right behind the science, so you understand her instead of just trusting me.
I’ll tell you why these plants belong together, who should leave this one alone and why, and what to reach for when you can’t find something. By the time you’ve made one, you’ll know your way around all of them.
From the Thyme, Mullein & Onion Vinegar
"Thymol dissolves into the lipid membrane that holds a bacterial cell together and destabilizes it until it falls apart. In human speak: every bacterial cell is basically a wet paper bag holding its insides in. Thymol slides into the bag, soaks through the paper, and the bag falls apart. Whatever spills out is not a bug anymore."
Common Questions, Honest Answers.
This one does. My Mothers' Cures is the first recipe book I have ever published — 45 of them, across balms, salves, serums, restorative infusions, vinegars, and oxymels, each with exact weights in grams and numbered steps. And because I could not hand you a formula without the reasoning behind it, every herb in every recipe is explained: what she carries, what it does in your body, and why she belongs in that jar. If you have read my Common Ways or Common Herbs books, think of this as the place where all of that method and understanding finally gets put to work.
A few, and they are family. There are old photographs of the people these cures came from woven through the book, because they belong there. What you will not find are glossy photos of every herb and finished jar. Full-colour printing raises the price of a self-published book considerably, and I would rather this one stay within reach of as many people as possible. The instructions are written so you do not need a picture to follow them.
Yes, and it is the only way this one comes. My Mothers' Cures is a hardcover, printed and shipped to you, and there will be no ebook version. This is a book meant to sit open on the counter while you work, with oil on the pages and notes in the margins. That is not something a screen does well, so I made the choice to keep her in print only.
Then the method will feel familiar, and the formulas will not. These are not the recipes that get passed around online or printed in most herbal books — they are my family's, carried through a culture that kept them to itself for a very long time, and most of them have never been published anywhere. Even the ones built on herbs you know well pair them in ways you likely have not seen, for reasons the book takes the time to explain. If you have been making salves and infusions for years, this is less a refresher and more a different kitchen to learn from.
Every copy is printed to order and shipped straight from the printer, so it is made for you when you order rather than pulled off a shelf. Printing takes about 3 to 5 business days, a little longer during the holiday rush. From there, US orders usually arrive within a week or so of shipping, so plan on roughly two weeks door to door. International orders are welcome and can take up to four weeks to arrive depending on where you are. You will get a tracking number the moment it ships.