The Magickal Healing Power of Making Chicken Stock

This has been an intense week at the Holler. As I wrote the other day, I lost several of my new batch of Freedom Rangers to a strange issue.

My dogs got their vaccinations and one of them had a difficult reaction. She cried and limped around and worried the heck out of us for a day and a half.

I discovered that my bank balance was WAY lower than I thought due to charges hitting at unexpected times and I had a late credit card payment due.

Matthew’s knee pain has got him using a cane.

My house looks like a Witchy shop, a library and a clothing store exploded in here (oh, wait…)

AND

We attended one of the best Samhain rituals I’ve ever been part of.

I played a great game of scream-as-loud-as-you-can-in-the-car with my 7 year old godson (seriously, it was GREAT!)

I made a very tasty batch of chicken stock (not from the ill birds, of course)

Rusted Root were in town and we got to see them in a 300-seat venue and dance our butts off.

My boy passed his EMT test, which opens up so many new opportunities for him.

Our friend and houseguest got an awesome job in his field.

Credit cards still work.

OH! And my fermented blackberry soda came out really, really good (though I need to perfect the carbonation part of the process) (more on this next week!)

Sometimes when things start going wrong, I feel like I’m entering what Starhawk calls in her book The Fifth Sacred Thing El Mundo Malo, The Bad World*. Everything seems ominous and like a precursor to major disaster. I judge myself for being a “bad witch”, like if I had my life together, these problems would disappear. And I do notice that things come in groups. If one thing begins to ‘go wrong’, then surely more things will.

All of this is just part and parcel of an aware life. On the Homestead, we deal with the illness and death of our creatures, which makes everything feel fraught with sombre meaning. In other places, it’s documents and meetings, contracts and office politics. Everybody has problems.

And blessings.

When I find myself falling into the Fear trap, I know that I have options. One of the best healing things I can do is to Make Something. This week making that stock was very helpful. I canned 12 dark and rich pints of goodness. Here’s how I did it…

What ya need:

A mess of chicken parts (I used feet, wings and necks, as well as the bones from a previous dinner)
A mess of vegetable scraps (I used beets, carrots, leeks, onion, garlic, a corn cob or two)

What ya do:

Put it all in a big pot with some salt and herbs (Marjoram? Thyme?)
Let it simmer for hours and hours.
If you get real busy, put it in a slow cooker and turn it on ‘low’. I kept mine going for about 24 hours before I could get back to it.
Strain it a few times through butter muslin in a colander.
Can in a pressure canner (Follow the instructions that come with your canner! Mine says 20 minutes at 10 pounds pressure.)

Do you have a sure-fire way to get back to El Mundo Bueno?

*…there was the Good Reality, or El Mundo Bueno, literally the Good World, and the Bad Reality, El Mundo Malo, and they were always vying with each other. In the Good Reality you have a mild headache; in the Bad Reality you have a fatal brain disease. In the Good Reality, you catch hold of the rail as your foot slips; in the Bad Reality, you miss, slide down the stairs, and break your neck…”