Megre Cedar Production
Our cedar workshop was established in 1999.
By the way, the first product that was released was not oil, but a cedar cone for planting with instructions, packed in a box.
Then we began to recreate the ancient technology for making cedar oil, which Anastasia's grandfather spoke about in Vladimir Megre's books.
This is now a small family production, where much is made by hand, where local villagers work, and the work goes on in cozy, calm atmosphere. Megre's cedar house is located in Siberia, in a Taiga village, from which the nearest town is more than 100 kilometers away.
HOW HANDMADE OIL IS MADE
Handmade oil is about family values. Each bottle of the oil is prepared by one family, from sorting through the cones to bottling the finished oil and imprinting branded sealing wax. All processes are done manually.
They extract a nut from a cone using a wooden crusher, just as they did a 100 years ago. Then they calibrate, sift out the petals of the cone, separate the nut from other fractions and pass it through a wooden mill with stone millstones, where the shell cracks and cleans the kernel. Nuts are separated from the shell by hand, sorted out by the whole family, and then sent to an oak press, where the head of the family presses the oil.
All equipment that is used is made according to old drawings. It is important that during the manufacturing process, neither the core nor the finished oil touches metal, so all the equipment is made of wood, and only glassware is used.
The bottles are also filled with oil and packed by hand, right down to the last label. This is how the cedar energy is carefully preserved step by step.
MANUAL OVERHAUL NUT
This is one of the most important production steps. The moment when the core lost its shell and became vulnerable, receptive both physically and energetically.
Now the technologies are so advanced that it is very easy to sort out the core, choose unusable nuts. To do this, use photo scanners, laser equipment. But we do not do this on purpose, we sort through the kernel manually. Our main task is to preserve the valuable properties of cedar and produce oil with maximum healing power, so the attitude towards the kernel should be especially careful.
We have a cozy atmosphere here, village women gather at a large table, and, as in ancient times, with songs or sincere conversations, they separate the kernel from the shell, remove spoiled nuts.
This is the secret of purity of taste.
we sort through the kernel manually
HANDMADE SOAP
On the second floor of the Cedar House, there is a small soap-making workshop, where our soap maker Sergey has been preparing cedar soap for many years.
We use water from a local taiga river, herbs collected and harvested by hand in local meadows and in the taiga, and, of course, raw-pressed butter and other cedar ingredients from our production.
Soap is prepared in a cold way, that is, it does not heat up to high temperatures, this allows us to preserve the natural benefits of herbs, cedar, white clay, essential oils.
The soap is prepared in small batches, and when it is ready, it stands here. The hardening process can take up to 3 months, but it cannot be accelerated artificially, so you will always go into the workshop and see how one or another batch reaches.
NATURAL TOOTHPASTE
About 10 years ago, Sergei Megre set a goal of creating cedar pastes from natural ingredients.
Experts said that this does not happen, toothpastes are a product of the chemical industry. It didn’t work right away, but in the end, absolutely natural toothpaste was created. They differ from the usual ones - they do not foam, they have a more delicate texture and a concentrated natural taste.
All our pastes are made from different cedar ingredients - cedar cake, resin, raw oil, ground cedar shells. They became a real hit, so much so that they had to be patented.
Now, the whole process of production of cedar pastes is here, in the Cedar House.
COLLECTION OF CONES IN THE TRADITIONS OF THE ANCESTORS
In 2006, we got our own taiga, 127 hectares, entrusted to us by the state on a long-term lease. Since then, we have been taking care of part of the taiga, protecting it from bugs and other pests, protecting from hunters and fires. It is here that we collect the cone, resin, and branches for oil and other products.
It is important to collect the cones carefully. According to tradition, the cedar must give its fruits itself - when it begins to drop cones on the ground, then it can be harvested. We do it this way. The collection is carried out by local residents, often by whole families, together with children and the elderly. In the taiga, there are secret family plots where one family has been collecting for years, and relations with the taiga are such that some cedars even have names.
We never get the cones beating a tree with iron studs, as they do on an industrial scale, this greatly reduces the health of the trees, and the cones are still unripe. Therefore, during the season they return to the taiga several times, as the nuts ripen.
The cone cannot be processed, boiled, scalded with boiling water, heated on fire. All this was invented to speed up the process of obtaining nuts and avoid mold and other spoilage. But in this case, the pine nut loses all useful properties.
The cone that just fell is covered in resin and has a bluish-purple thus, it will take about 3 more months to ripe. All this time, it actively breathes and absorbs everything that is around, so once again it should not be transported and stored in conditions close to natural.
HOUSE FOR CONES
In 2017, we built the House for the Cones. Before realizing this idea, Sergei Megre collected knowledge for many years about how the cone was stored in the old days, how the energy of cedar was preserved so that the oil and all other products from cedar would carry the healing properties inherent in nature.
Previously, in Siberia, the cone was stored in attics or barns, high from the ground, so that the cone was well ventilated. The best option is if the barn is made of cedarwood, then the fruits remain in their native environment. We made it. It is stored in special bags made of coarse linen.
If the cone is allowed to mature for about 3 months, then the nuts absorb the resin from the cone, reveal their maximum benefit and taste, and the oil turns out to be as saturated as possible.
A whole cedar cone can lie for 3-5 years and not lose its nutritional value, while shelled nuts begin to deteriorate after 3 months. Therefore, the nut must be stored in a cone, unshelled, and the cone should be peeled as needed in order to immediately prepare the oil.
Now rarely anyone do this, but you can make healing oil only from such nuts.
