Slippery Elm Bark Powder

Slippery elm powder is fine and pale tan, closer to a baking flour than a typical herbal powder, with a faint sweetish, woody smell. Stir it into warm water and it thickens almost immediately into a smooth, mucilaginous gruel — that texture is the reason herbalists still reach for this bark before almost anything else. The inner bark was a staple of Indigenous communities across eastern North America long before European settlers arrived, used as both food and medicine, and early colonists adopted much the same gruel to see them through lean winters. It is long valued for soothing an irritated throat and settling a digestive tract on edge. Slippery elm is slow-growing, and the species was hit hard by both overharvesting and Dutch elm disease through the last century, so sourcing matters a great deal here. Ours comes from the inner bark of trees managed specifically for sustainable harvest in the Appalachians, stripped without killing the tree, then milled fine for a powder that mixes without any grit. Stir a teaspoon into warm water or apple sauce, once or twice a day. An old, plain remedy, closer to food than medicine, for a stomach or throat that needs something gentle to hold onto.