Grandma Tuckfield's Salve

“As a child, I remember my grandmother, Annie Lang Tuckfield making a batch of salve in a cast iron kettle on a wood burning kitchen stove at my home on Green Street in Salt Lake City Utah. The rosin smoked as it melted and filled the room with a pine aroma. The beeswax melted easily as it was blended in. The butter bubbled to a froth as it was added. She then poured the melted mixture into round tin containers. The labels were individually trimmed round and pasted on the covers. The label read:

OLD ENGLISH SALVE

For cuts burns boils

Ingrown nails and

Especially bed sores.

Fifty cents a tin.

"The recipe was brought over from the old country (England). It was used religiously by Etha Tuckfield Hansen all her life and supplied it to all her offspring. At that time, antibiotics were unknown and the salve proved effective in healing infected sores, due to cuts or broken burn blisters. I believe it was it was life saving in more than one instance. Truly the universal remedy for home use.

"Apply to a bandage over sore parts. Most recently I used it on my heels, cracked and painful from hiking in the dry highlands of Mexico.” From Earl Tuckfield Hansen (born 1924)

I now am passing on the legacy of my great grandmother of the healing salve. I make the original recipe, but add Pine essential oil because the only rosin I can obtain has had the original pine removed.

I also make available a “new” version. I added essential oils of Blue cypress, Blue Tansy, Tea Tree, and Pine. Instead of unsalted butter, I use the more modern ingredients of Shea butter, cocoa butter and jojoba oil. The oils add antiseptic & anti-inflammatory properties. I make it in small batches and it needs no preservatives because of the oils and the Rosin. I call it Outback Desert Salve.

Judy Hansen Nelson