Making Use Of A Good Walking Stick

I am all about being able to manufacture items that we need in the field. Crafting. The ability to do so, in my mind anyway, is the blood that pumps through the woodcrafting – bushcrafting –wildcrafting veins and arteries. 

The ability to do so … the skills to do so … do not pop out of a hand cranked box like a Jack-In-The-Box to lend a hand on an unscheduled day when we are suddenly surprised and shocked by the proverbial sky falling on us. It takes time to learn skills. It takes devotion to task to develop skills to the point that our skills will stand by us. Rain or shine … on a simple weekend outing or in a genuine crisis situation … we have what we need in our skills tool box to engage the situation.

There is an adage floated around in this community that goes “the more you know … the less you need.”

There is a lot of truth contained in those eight words. There is, at the same time, also some dangerously thin ice laid down by the Bushcraft Bravado of more than a few folks that I’ve heard insist that the 10-C’s, or, worse yet, the 5-C’s are all you need in a physical kit in order to survive as long as you know what you are doing.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Personally, I want the ice beneath my feet to be as thick as I can possibly make it. I want a few aces tucked up my sleeve … whether I’m out for a pleasant weekend or discover myself in a genuine survival situation. Why go unprepared to begin with?

One of the things that I’ve emphasized, both in classes and conversations with individuals, is the very first tool … the very first survival tool to manufacture in a woodland crisis situation is a good stout walking stick. A good stick serves multiple purposes. A good stick is a tool that serves us well.

Helping us negotiate rough terrain, assisting us in water crossings, harassing thick vegetation to disclose vipers waiting for unsuspecting victims, whopping said poisonous snakes as the first step in making a meal of them, and assisting us in making shelter are a few useful purposes.

A good stout walking stick can be sharpened, fire hardened on one end, and used as a spear for both hunting and personal protection.

It can also be tapered on one end to receive a nice little gig for frogs, fish, and snakes.

This little gig is one of those aces.

The first thing I did with the ones we carry in our kits was to throw the little threaded screw and nut in the trash. Who carries a small drill bit and drill in their kit? Not me. Rather than using the provided fastener to attach the gig, I added a piece of tarred bank line to ours to lash the gig onto a shaft.

Once the end of the stick has been tapered for the gig to fit, cut a groove into the stick a half inch or so above the gig. Taper the side of the groove away from the gig and leave the side closest to the gig a sharp ninety-degree angle. The lashing, once securely tied, will not slip past the groove and leave you watching dinner taking off with your gig.

The points on these little gigs are sharp.

To carry it safely in our kits I made masks for them out of stiff plastic … I think I cut them out of a coffee can … then wrapped them with duct tape. The lashing holds the mask securely on the gig while it rides in our kits.

Added Note:

A good green stick delivers a lot more whop to a snake with less chance of breaking than a dry stick.

Foraging Series - Natural Bug Dope Update

Tomorrow will be a week since I simmered that pot of Beautyberry and Wax Myrtle leaves in olive oil.

The concoction had hardly cooled off before I applied it and went down into our mosquito infested bottom.

I was really hopeful about this infusion considering how well the fresh leaves work at repelling mosquitoes and all that I’ve read about the elements in Beautyberry effectively repelling ticks.

The infusion worked like a champ in that first experiment.

Saturday … four days after the initial effectiveness experiment … was again experiment day to determine how long an application is good for.

I applied the infusion mid-morning and went about my business, most of which was either inside or close to the porch. Toward late afternoon I took a stroll down into the mosquito infested bottom. In less than a minute I had mosquitoes doing their blood sucking.

I figured maybe the hours had worn away its effectiveness so I reapplied a light amount equal to what I had used in the first experiment. The light application did not faze the mosquitoes. I made a heavy application. The heavy application was no deterrent against the diving blood suckers.

The “normal” Non-DEET repellent that I use is Repel. It does a good job where mosquitoes are concerned and the label insists that an application lasts for six hours. The primary ingredient is thirty percent Lemon Eucalyptus. I find their six hour claim to be pretty accurate. My problem with it is that I think the stuff stinks. It’s so strong smelling that it offends my nose and it causes a little hot sting that lasts for quite a while after application. 

DO NOT, whatever you do, get Repel on your lips and lick your lips! You will taste Lemon Eucalyptus for days afterward. Experience. Not theory.

So let’s see what I can do with the three ounces left in that spray bottle that I carry around.

It’s kind of funny how this curiosity thing works. Even way down here at the layman level. One thing will always lead to another thing. It’s like an itch that you just have to scratch even when you know it will make the itch worse.

I poured the three ounces of Repel into the three quarters of a pint of olive oil that I infused with the Beautyberry and Wax Myrtle, shook it up good, applied it, then wore the diluted Repel down into the bottom.

Mosquitoes, in its diluted state, would not land. I’m not sure yet if it will still go the six-hour claim. What I do know is that it doesn’t offend my nose. Diluted, the way it is in the olive oil mix, I notice no hot sting.

I’m not done experimenting with Beautyberry. The experiment, however, will be a little more complicated than heating a little olive oil and keeping the leaves stirred.

Foraging Series - Wildcrafting Natural Insect Repellent

The idea came to me Tuesday. I was up at Somewhere In The Woods, USA employing a few leaves to ward off a mosquito attack. So I acted on the idea yesterday and spent some time out for a woods walk.

Part of the walk was for the sheer pleasure of being out there. Seeing that Fox Squirrel was a treat. It was hanging around near a few remaining Long Leaf Pines on the family property.

Part of the walk was a resource gathering mission. I needed some appropriately sized saplings to construct a bucksaw. I also needed to procure some leaves for a little stovetop project.

The idea?

I’ve been using fresh picked Wax Myrtle and Beautyberry leaves to keep the mosquitoes at bay for years. It doesn’t take a lot of leaves. A few crumpled leaves rubbed on exposed skin does wonders where mosquitoes are concerned. So why not experiment with infusing the mosquito repellent elements in oil?

Experiment.

That’s the operative word.

How much of what and how long to simmer it on a low heat?

The gallon cast iron pot was over half full of Beautyberry leaves that I had torn to pieces. It wasn’t a loose and fluffy half. It was more of a dense and packed half. The Wax Myrtle leaves brought it to around three quarters. I simply stripped them from the branches into the pot.

I used a pint of extra virgin olive oil.

Once the oil was hotter than it needed to be I cut the heat back to just enough to keep a slight simmer going and kept it stirred with an oak stick that I cut for the stirring purpose. I didn’t want to use any of our “normal” utensils during the course of the experiment. Wax Myrtle leaves can be used as seasoning like Bay leaves. I’ve read several sources that say Beautyberry berries are edible when ripe but never anything about the leaves being edible. So a little caution was necessary with the cooking utensils.

How long?

Less than an hour. The batch simmered on a low heat for around forty-five minutes.

I poured the works through a colander into a stainless bowl. (Kitchen stuff but I think it will wash.) Once the oil that would drain on its own had drained, I wrapped the leaves in a cloth and squeezed the heck out of it. Hand squeezing netted an additional one half cup of infused oil. The end result amounted to three quarters of that pint returned to the bottle.

Using the old cast iron added some rust to the mix. I placed a piece of cotton towel in the funnel and strained it good. That got the worst of it and the rust did not appear to cause any brown discoloration in the finished product. The finished product took on a lot of the green leaf color.

There were two things I was interested in knowing.

First … would this oil infused with Beautyberry and Wax Myrtle repel the nasty biting boogers.

Second … would I experience any dermatological problems by applying this wildcrafted concoction to my skin.

The second question first.

The only places that I felt anything was on the top of my head and the tops of my feet … skin that is more often than not either covered with a hat or stuffed in socks and footgear. The backs of my hands, face, and ears felt nothing strange. I could tell that something was on my head and the tops of my feet.

Yes.

I know.

There’s a lot of cleared runway up there for mosquitoes to use as a landing strip.

What I felt was far less uncomfortable than the sensation caused me by the Eucalyptus that is the main ingredient of Repel. There is, in fact, hardly any smell to the Beautyberry – Wax Myrtle mixture. No loud fragrance like that imparted by concoctions created by mosquito repelling natural essential oils. The lack of fragrance is a really good thing when considering its application during archery season.

Three hours after application there was no obvious dermatological reaction anywhere it was applied.

Now for how effective.

I sat down in the bottom on a chair for about twenty minutes. The only place a mosquito would land was on skin that did not have the leaf-dope applied to it. I walked down into the thick and stood there. In less than a minute the boogers were swarming me. I tried to get a picture of them landing on my pants and swarming around my feet but I don’t think they show up in the picture.

Mosquitoes simply would not land where the leaf-dope was applied.

I need to do a little more experimenting with this leaf dope.

I’m curious to know the duration of its effectiveness. I’m also curious to know its effectiveness against ticks. The duration thing will be pretty easy to determine. The part about repelling ticks? I’ll be able to determine this over time. So, for the course of this summer and through hunting season, this wildcrafted natural repellent will be the only insect repellent I use.

Foraging Series - Huckleberry Leaf Tea

Blueberries.

I suppose there are people that don’t like blueberries. I’ve not met any of them.

I do know that a lot people will not buy them at the markets and stores. Not when a tiny pack of the things costs three or four bucks. That’s a price that we’ll not spring for. Our alternative to buying them is to grow our own blueberries. Edible landscaping. Something that looks good in the landscaping and is good for something other than eye-candy.

We have several bushes that are a cultivated variety and one that is some type of huckleberry. Of the two, where taste is concerned, I’ll take the huckleberry as a first pick. The berries are smaller than the cultivated blueberries. The leaves are also smaller.

The other noticeable difference is that the huckleberry bush isn’t affected by the fungus that causes spotting on the leaves of the cultivated varieties. Considering that our cultivated varieties have the fungal problem this late in the season, we are using the unaffected huckleberry leaves. Also, huckleberries grow wild and lend themselves well to foraging.

The berries are not only tasty.

These things are a powerhouse full of health attributes.

It is more than worth the time it takes to do some research on the blueberry/huckleberry subject. Not only on the berries. As healthy and tasty as the berries are … the leaves play the trump card and win the powerhouse game.

Here’s a few interesting facts about blueberry leaves. 

·         Contain 30 times more free radical absorbency than the berries.

·         Lowers plasma triglycerides that lead to high cholesterol and heart disease.

·        Lowers blood sugar.

·        Improves memory.

·        Improves eyesight.

This is an extremely short list. 

The long list is more than I care to include in a short blog.

The dried huckleberry leaves are on the left. The leaves on the right? Those are the subject of another foraging blog.

Study. Do the research. Glean the knowledge and make it your own.

Owning knowledge … like owning skills … is where the rubber meets the road. These are two areas where taking short-cuts is not the desirable route to take.

A tea can be made from the green leaves.

We don’t recommend using green leaves. The product is terribly bitter and requires A LOT of sweetener to mask the bitterness. The taste of the green-leaf tea, even with a load of sweetener, is still way below par.

Drying the leaves is an easy proposition and the dried leaves make a tea that is far superior to a tea made from the green leaves.

Forget using the dehydrator in the house.

Place a batch of picked leaves in a vehicle sitting in the sun. Voobah. What you have is a solar dehydrator that will do the job that needs doing. Don’t worry about spreading the leaves out thinly. Stir and fluff them a couple or three times to insure even drying.

A batch, in my truck here this time of year, is done in an afternoon plus a day. There’s no way a kitchen dehydrator can match the output of a vehicular solar dehydrator.

The dried leaves make a very doable tea that still has a noticeable slight bitterness. The leaves can be steeped like any other tea. They also do good as sun tea made in a mason jar on a sunny day.

The bitterness isn’t a bad thing. It is, in fact, a healthy thing. The slight bitterness is easily masked with a little spearmint and a touch of honey.

Foraging Series - Dandelion

I think of the Coastal Plain, at least this Lower South part of it, as a micro-region.

It’s kind of an odd climate zone with hot humid summers and mild winters … winters that more resemble late fall and early spring in northern climates. June to September tend to be brutal. October to May is the reason the retired snowbirds migrate South for the winter then beat a trail back North in the Spring. I recall only twice in my 62 years of life that it has gotten cold enough for long enough for the ground to freeze.

We are on the tail end of the long season here for cool weather loving wild edibles. A number of them are still hanging on in shaded areas. Out in the open, where the sun is warming the earth, most of them are gone or winding down in a fast state of decline.

Dandelion is one of them.

I always look forward to their appearance when cool weather sets in. Most people think of them as a bane and don’t want them growing in their yards. Seeing that first yellow Dandelion bloom is always a welcome sight for me … a little added sunshine in the landscape on a cool day.

I’ve only, until lately, appreciated them as colorful winter wildflowers though I’ve known for what seems forever that they are edible. They are also used medicinally. The more I read about Dandelions the more I appreciate them. One source refers to them as The Official Remedy for Disorders.

A vast gulf lies between knowing something and experiencing something. Knowledge is always a good thing. Experience is always a better thing. Retirement, and staying close to the house while Shirli recovers from this knee replacement surgery, gives me some long anticipated time to move some things from the knowledge department to the experience department.

I think the thing that has, until yesterday, discouraged me from trying Dandelions is the amount of information and personal testimonies about them being SO bitter.

It was time to deal with the issue.

We’ve not had any rain in a while and it was tough digging with the ground as dry and hard as it is. I got as much of the root as I could with a little improvised digging tool … a small combination pry bar and nail puller. It makes a pretty good digging tool and works great for hoeing around tiny seedlings in the garden. The tops, though growing in a partially shaded spot, were showing their late season age.

I separated the tops from the roots after giving them a good initial washing. Old stems, and anything that was obviously not fit for the pot, were pulled and tossed in the cleaning up and separating process before giving the greens a couple of good rinses. Before putting the greens into the pot I chopped them into inch sized pieces.

After twenty minutes of cook time the greens were tender enough to eat.

Good deal. Time for a taste test.

To say they were bitter would be an understatement. Imagine the bitterest heirloom turnip greens. Something like the 7-Top that the Old Timers used to grow. Multiply times ten. Maybe times twenty.

Water change. Bring to a boil. Cook another ten minutes.

They were still too bitter to attempt serving up with supper.

I grew up on bitter tasting turnip greens. A bowl of turnip greens and a hunk of corn bread were quite often supper for us. When I tried introducing my young children to them they wouldn’t have any part of them insisting they didn’t like the bitter. So I made an adjustment by adding a little sugar to the pot when I was cooking them. That did the trick and my children grew up eating turnip greens.

The little mess of Dandelion greens was already cooked so there was no going back to start over with them. I put them, instead, in a microwavable dish, sprinkled them with a couple teaspoons of sugar, a sprinkle of salt, added a nice dollop of butter, and gave them a few rounds of the carrousel.

That doctoring changed them from something you had to force yourself to eat into something that was purely a culinary pleasure. Shirli and I both enjoyed them and will, most definitely, be doing Dandelion greens frequently when they begin to emerge after cool weather returns.

What about the roots?

There’s a lot of impressive information about the health benefits of drinking Dandelion root tea.

I gave the roots a good scrubbing with a brush and sliced enough fresh root to make a cup of tea.

How did it taste?

It tasted like Dandelion root.

The bitterness? This aspect that is considered to have a number of health benefits? It’s not nearly as bitter as the greens. It’s doable as is. A little honey, according to our taste, would make it better.

Wild Edibles Series - Careful and Slow

I do not have a stat counter in view on this blog. I’ve done that on some of my other blogs over the years but gave up the practice of doing that.

There are enough statistics on the Blogger page that I use to publish with. I do not need the information for personal gratification. It does help, though, with sensing the pulse of things. It helps with seeing interest levels.

I do, very much, appreciate you as a reader. And I do, very much, appreciate your sharing these pages with your friends and groups. That you read and share is very encouraging. Thank you for the encouragement.

In monitoring the stats, it seems pretty apparent that there is quite a bit of interest in this wild edibles topic.

Personally, I think the interest is a good thing.

The world found immediately outside the doors of our homes … the world found farther out in the fields and in the woods … the world found along the streams, creeks, and rivers … is a very interesting world. That world, one so largely lost to a modernity confined within the zones of convenience and creature comfort, is more than interesting. It is an amazing interconnected world full of both educational and entertaining experiences if we will only seek the experiences.

Research is an important and integral aspect of learning … regardless the subject matter … and especially important where wild edibles are concerned. My understanding is that only something like four percent of wild plants are edible. Four out of every one hundred. That means ninety-six of every one hundred are not. That’s a lot of not and a lot of the not will either make you very sick or kill you.

This not business makes the subject of wild edibles sound scary.

Well, it is a little scary. Especially at the beginning of a wild edible journey. It is not something that one should go about without doing a lot of homework on the subject. Even then, after doing the homework, sampling various carefully identified wild edibles should be done in small amounts. It would also probably be best to be schooled by a wild edibles instructor. Most of us do not have a credible wild edibles instructor close by.

I did not when I started sampling wild edibles several years ago and still do not.

I asked the one person locally that I thought would know. He didn’t. So I made up my mind to just do it even if it meant going it alone. Study on my own. Learn on my own. Do some experimental dining on my own.

The encouraging thing, where the scary is concerned, is that it is only once in about every twenty years, or so I have recently read, that a forager dies from making a mistake. The mistake, usually, involves mushrooms. Me? I stay away from wild mushrooms. One reason is that so many of them will kill you. Another reason is that it takes more energy to digest them than they give back in return.

I think one operative word is CAREFUL. Be careful.

Be sure you have made a positive identification before you sample.

Use a good wild edibles guide and consult the internet library.

This is part of the research thing. There are some great websites on wild edible and medicinal plants. I’m not going to make a recommended list. I think the digging and looking is part of the challenge as part of the research. It is a meaningful and enjoyable part of the journey. A lot of knowledge is garnered on a specific subject. A lot of knowledge is garnered on parallel subjects. A lot of knowledge is garnered on unrelated subjects. Research is a win-win-win deal that taking shortcuts robs product from. Seems like shortcuts and fast-tracks are where it’s at with life in general these days. I not so sure they are the cat’s meow.

Besides, I’m not a copy and paste parrot parroting information … even if the information is good information. I, rather, see myself as just one person on an interesting journey of discovery, learning what I can, and sharing some of these experiences and discoveries as I go along.

As for a wild edibles guide, what we use is a Peterson Field Guide. Why Peterson? It’s the one we have. Where these printed guides are concerned, I’m not so sure that there is a layman’s guide that is exhaustive. A guide that focuses on a geographic region presents way more than enough offerings to begin.

Another operative word is SLOW. Go slow.

CAREFUL and SLOW are a good combination. 

I always encourage this combination in anything woodcraft-bushcraft-survivalcraft related. Careful and slow can save us some skin. It can save us a lot more than something that can be fixed with a Band-Aid fished out of our kit. Careful and slow will definitely allow us to see, hear, and experience more of the natural surroundings around us.

Going slow … learning to identify and utilize one plant a month … over the course of a year amounts to a dozen wild plants in your storeroom of knowledge and practical experience. It’s a lot better to have a safe dozen committed to memory and sight recognition than to have a notebook full that you aren’t honestly personally familiar with. Make a dozen the initial goal and then go on from there.

Follow these familiar few through their growing season … whether they are cool weather lovers or hot weather lovers. Become familiar with when they first appear and when they go dormant if they are annuals. Become familiar with the changes in their appearances over the course of their growth habit. It gets to be kind of an intimate thing … sort of a love affair with nature. It has for me anyway.

And here’s something else that’s as old fashioned as using a Card-Catalog and understanding the Dewey Decimal System.

Journal what you are doing.

Take notes, put it down on paper, and include photographs. Even an old dinosaur like me is computer savvy enough to load pictures from my iPhone to the computer and create files. As busy as most of us are these days, as hectic as life can be at times, it’s a chore to remember things if we don’t make a special effort at it.

Foraging Series - Kudzu

It was one of those good ideas that turned out to be a not so good idea.

Kudzu was brought to this country from Japan. The good idea, at least my understanding of it, was to use it as a means to control erosion in erosion susceptible areas. It turns out that Kudzu loves it here … loves the climate so much that Kudzu has laid claim to its new home and is taking over.

The good idea turned out to be an environmental disaster of sorts. Controlling it is more than a challenge.

I was asked the question a few years ago by a man. 

His friend had some property that was being taken over by Kudzu.

How can he get that stuff under control?

I told him that it would take a while.

The first step was to build a fence around his property. The second was to go out to the sale barn and buy a bunch of goats to turn loose inside the fence. Let the goats eat all the above ground vegetation. Once the above ground vegetation has been taken care of by the goats, take the goats back to the sale barn and sell them as the third step in the process. Use the proceeds from the sale of the goats to buy a bunch of pigs to turn loose inside the fence to root out and eat the Kudzu roots. The last step is to return the pigs to the sale barn and use the proceeds from their sale to buy a couple of goats to keep inside the fence to keep the encroaching Kudzu nipped back as it makes its way across the fence at a growing rate of a foot a day during its peak growing season.

Kudzu, bane that it is, also has some blessing in it.

Whether out of necessity or as a personal foraging interest, Kudzu offers itself as a wild edible.

The older leaves are extremely tough.

The younger and lighter colored leaves, as well as the tender stem ends, are the better parts to harvest to use. Even the younger leaves have a tough texture that requires a longer cooking time to tender them up. They also have a smell to them that seems a little odd in the kitchen.

The blooms are especially fragrant.

Blooming Kudzu is one of my favorite summertime smells. 

There are a few folks that go out and pick Kudzu blossoms to make Kudzu jelly. 

I believe I’ll let them do that on their own. I’m not interested in wading through the Kudzu jungles that create shady and protective habitat for the types of vipers that inhabit our climatological region.

Kudzu roots are also edible and packed with complex carbohydrates. I’ll be digging some this winter to scratch another item off the experimental archaeology list.

Oriental natural medicine uses Kudzu root for treating some issues.

It is, to be such a bane, quite an interesting bane.

How does it taste?

About like it smells while it is cooking.

I think it smells and tastes like Kudzu.

There is nothing in our taste reference catalog that is remotely close to Kudzu.

Once the leaves had been boiled a good while, around a half hour, I browned some garlic in a generous measure of butter then salted and sautéed the greens in the skillet.

They still needed something.

Pepper sauce.

Generous splash.

Kudzu is definitely doable.

I think though, from a matter of personal taste perspective, this is a wild edible that will be tucked away for use in a just in case scenario.

Foraging Series - Dock

I stopped at the Colony Nature Park as I came from town.

It could be a really nice place if whoever is responsible for it would invest a little effort. 

It is, as it is, at least an attempt to preserve a small piece of this area so that generations to come have a natural spot to enjoy nature. Even though it is surrounded by subdivisions. Oh well, progress is progress. Most folks around here seem to appreciate the progress.

The large open area of what they are calling a park was a dense field of goldenrod in bloom last fall when some responsible individual went in there with a tractor and mower. They mowed it down to nothing. All the pretty yellow and everything else that was growing was chopped to pieces. I hated to see the place mown. A big open field of goldenrod is pleasing to the eye and has a sweet smell. They could have waited another couple of weeks. The color would have been gone then.

I was curious to see what weeds were growing along the drainage ditch that runs through the middle of the open field. This ditch, by the way, is the beginning of Cowpen Creek that eventually empties into Fish River. I throw this in as a little geography lesson since understanding the geography of an area is an important aspect of self-reliance.

A lot. Not only a lot goldenrod. A lot of other weeds too.

It’s a curious thing once you start studying on weeds as edible plants. You find yourself looking for them. You find yourself paying attention to their various stages of growth.

One of the things you discover is that you don’t have to go far off to find them. They are all around us everywhere we go. Weeds, a good many of them edible, are growing right outside the doors of our homes. We’ve got plenty of them here at our place. I probably should knock some of them back but I’ve grown to look at weeds through a different set of lenses.

There was quite a lot of dock growing in that open area. I’ve known about dock as a wild edible for a long time now … one of those items on my mental list of if I need it things. Dining on some has been on my to-do list this spring.

Some of the dock at the park had gone to seed and the seed heads were turning brown. Once the seeds are dried they can be ground and used as flour. The seed heads growing on the dock in our garden area will be ground and sampled once they have dried.

There was also quite a lot of young dock plants growing.

I thought to myself … What the heck. I’m the only weed eater walking around out here. … so I reached down and pulled the tops off of a nice young dock plant.

There’s no way that one handful of wild greens was going to hurt the weed population. Besides, in all the years I’ve been driving by there, I am the only person I’ve ever seen walking around down in that bottom. Most would probably think I was doing the park a favor by pulling weeds. If they had any idea what I was going to do with it, they would probably think I was a good candidate for the State Hospital.

That there are mature plants and young plants growing at the same time this time of year is something of an indicator that dock offers fresh pickings of greens from the late fall/early winter when they first appear until late spring/early summer when they’ve run their course and gone to seed. This long growing season makes it a viable, abundant, and readily available food source.

I trimmed the stem ends from the bunch of greens, sliced the bunch into pieces, gave it a good rinse in the sink, then potted it up on the stove to boil just like any other cooked greens.

It smelled like spinach as it cooked.

I let it cook at a low roll for around fifteen minutes, changed the water, and let it go another five minutes or so before draining it. The older the leaves the more bitter they are. Cook them longer and change the water a couple or three times while cooking.

I sampled it.

Shirli sampled it.

Both of us thought it tasted like spinach.

We like spinach.

Both of us thought a little salt and butter would make it sing.

And sing it did!

Foraging Series - Ignorance Is Not Bliss

I was having a conversation with a man, step-dad to a 10-year-old boy, a year or so ago.

The conversation was about prepping and personal preparedness. Seems like I have quite a lot of conversations with people on this topic. Most of these conversations, anymore, are not self-generated. I’ve pretty well decided, for a number of reasons, that it’s generally best to not broach the subject with most people.

I’m not sure how the conversation got started or who started it. It didn’t last long though. The thing that quickly prompted me to leave the topic alone and move on to something else in the flow of words was this remark …

“I’m teaching ***** all that he needs to know on how to survive if things get really bad. All he has to do is eat grass.”

His remark didn’t even justify a response on my part. It was, in my own mental process, just a thought that was left unspoken.

“Well, ok then. If ignorance was bliss, this one would be a whole blister.”

No.

I’m not roasting the guy.

I’m just saying.

There are three problems with grass as a food source for humans.

1.     Though native grasses are non-toxic, we are not ruminants or other animals designed for eating grass and cannot digest grass with our human digestive systems.

2.     Grasses have a silica content that will, over time, grind away and ruin our human teeth.

3.     There are imported non-native grasses now growing here that are toxic.

Decades of prepping … we were preppers before the term came into vogue … has taught us a lot about preparedness and self-reliance. A number of conclusions have been arrived at. One of the most important ones concluded is that the vast bulk of what is taught as prepping and preparedness relies on diverse and sundry goods that are purchased and stocked “just in case” the need arises to use them. All of these goods, given a long enough crisis duration, will eventually run out.

Three weeks … three months … three years of preps? Regardless the amount stored, time (or other factors) will use it up. Then what?

It was this realization, and the obvious answer to the imposing question, that prompted me several years ago to begin working on being able to identify and utilize the wild edibles that are common in this geographic area that we call home. This wild edible, and wild medicinal, journey of discovery is an ongoing one.

The knowledge of these wild edibles … coupled with the tools and skills to hunt, trap, and fish … adds a lot of valuable weight to the keep your fanny alive basket. This business regarding wild edibles is, however, a lot more than just adding to the keeping your fanny alive basket.

A large part of it has to do with the personal challenges and rewards that come with the educational process … going through and growing with the arch of the learning curve. It’s about personal experience. It’s about becoming familiar with one’s personal surrounding environment. It’s about understanding and appreciating the seasonal nuances and offerings provided by the natural environment that surrounds us.

There is a huge personal transition that takes place in this educational process where the natural environment honestly begins to mean something to us … something that is constantly regenerating itself to support us … something to be respected as an ally … something that needs our personal efforts to know, respect, and protect it.

Sure.

I’ll admit that the prior two paragraphs are a bit heavy on the philosophical side. It’s something I’ll admit but can’t apologize for. Self-reliance as a lifestyle is a philosophical thing. It is a philosophical thing that ultimately involves a romance relationship with nature.

Our diet, in order to maintain human health, depends upon ingesting a wide range of elements that provide us with the nutrients we need … carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, and vitamins. Remove any of these elements, particularly in some type of long-term scenario, and our physical health becomes compromised.

The many Nations of native inhabitants did not have access to the studies and data of modern nutritionists. What they did have was the knowledge handed down to them from their ancestors … from the Grandfathers and Grandmothers. These Nations fared quite well health wise before Europeans arrived. They lived self-reliantly by the fruits of the land. They knew what plants to harvest for food. They knew what plants to harvest for medicine.

The woods are still here.

The plants are still here.

Interest?

Some are interested.

Interest is a good thing if it leads to exploration and experience.