This is about a week late but as many are now aware, Spring began in earnest just a handful of days ago. Like many peoples, we saw fit to celebrate this as a return of the Sun and resurrection of life.
We hunted Easter-eggs and Luna is in love with her new bunny (not a real rabbit). It’s interesting the endurance of the symbols associated with Easter and Springtime: Easter-eggs, Easter bunny, even the name Easter. East and Easter share the same root and derive from Germanic associations with dawn. Eggs and rabbits are beautifully perfect symbols of fertility, of the continuation of life; of life “springing” anew each year
We also finished planting the wild seeds we’d saved for our re-wilding project, which you can read about here.
Another activity we did was to just go be outside and to look for all the different signs of things changing. We found a plethora of wild flowers just beginning to shoot up, we picked wild onions, fresh lettuce and dandelions and we also found more bright, red, juicy eleagnus berries than we could carry. At the end, we brought all these things home with us and with the last of the doves, some acorn and mesquite bread and a tiny bit of grape jam left over from last Summer, we had a feast to say goodbye to Winter and to say hello again to Spring.
Perhaps the most enduring tradition of this time of year is Hope. I have hope for the projects we want to finish this year, I have hope for us, but in general (and most of all) I have hope for the Future.
We are endeavoring to determine if the theories we have been espousing of late can indeed hold true under the cold scrutiny of reality. We have saved seeds from several wild species of edible plants which over the past year we harvested from our native habitat. Our supposition is that, being undomesticated, these species are most excellently adapted to this local environment and as such can be easily propagated throughout it. This quality in and of itself is not insignificant as agriculture today is becoming increasingly expensive in terms of resource usage and destructive in terms of effects on native habitats.
However, in addition to not requiring the addition of extraneous resources to be viable, these species posses a multitude of minerals and nutrients which, over millennia, have been bred out of domesticated species and which, we have learned, are vital to human health. It is the intersection of these two qualities which makes the utilization and proliferation of these foods so appealing to us. Rates of diabetes, obesity and malnutrition and food insecurity are rising across the globe, and often go hand in hand with each other. At the same time, we are losing more and more of our natural habitats in our efforts to alleviate these same problems. Spreading these wild species and the knowledge to use them can effectively alleviate both sides of this problem and restore integrity to our natural environment. Its is this symbiotic relationship, between people and their native habitat, which we are truly seeking to restore and ennoble.
We have selected, for the purposes of our experiment, seeds from the American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana), passion flower vine (Passiflora incarnata), wax mallow (Malvaviscus arboreus), sunflower (Helianthus spp.) and additionally, cuttings from prickly pear cacti (Opuntia spp.) for planting on our property. There are already blackberry and grape vines growing on our property and we shall monitor them as well. Additionally, we are also considering planting a pecan and/or mesquite tree. All of these species are native, extremely nutritious, and potentially capable of producing a significant output of fruits and other edible plant matter.
Intuitively, the biggest factor to our success may be the time it takes for each species to become well enough established to be able to provide a useful harvest, so we are giving ourselves a limit of three growing seasons maximum in order to asses how productive our efforts have been. Some species may be more industrious than others, so findings after one growing season may still be significant.
In addition to ascertaining the potential usefulness to humans of propagating wild species of edible plants in our environment, we shall also be cataloging any increases in populations of wildlife species on our property as a result. The positive correlation of which would be the greatest endorsement of our proposition. We shall, however, be documenting, fastidiously, the entire process we go through and any set backs or issues which confront us, so as to fully legitimize the results we are presented with.
For anyone interested in trying this on their own (which we would greatly encourage), there are several programs at the state and national level which can provide additional information.
This will be something which we update frequently, so stay tuned.
Well, that’s it folks! Game-set-match. I think I can speak for Lacie as well when I say that the past five days have been remarkably easier than most people would have imagined.
The key, again, I really believe has been cultivating a rhythm with our environment; not even just what’s out there, but when it’s there too. I don’t say this to mystify anyone, creating this connection is as natural for us as loving your mother, quite the opposite; I want to inspire people by demonstrating just how basic and simple this can be.
At the same time, it’s deeply rewarding. My wife said it best at the end of the third day, I think: “It didn’t cost us a dime!” Everything we’ve enjoyed came straight from the habitat we are intrinsically a part of, just as intrinsically in fact as the food we’ve been eating. But it’s not just free food, it’s better food!
What we’ve been eating, if we were able to purchase it at a farmer’s market or upscale grocery, would’ve been way out of our reach, not just because it would be considered exotic (the word irony doesn’t quite cover this….) but also because it’s all natural, organic and healthy.
And sustainable. No fertilizer, no water, no work necessary.
People have a right to know this.
Back-to-Mother Earth, Texas style
Today we had mesquite porridge (oatmeal?) with wild grapes, which is becoming my favorite thing for breakfast, acorn “brownies” with pecans (which is now Lacie’s favorite and bona fide delicacy if there ever was one), cattail soup and finally, slow-cooked venison ribs.
Bam. There you have it. Anyone that says hunter-gatherers enjoy a “…Short, nasty, brutish existence” has no idea what they’re talking about.
Today has been a very easy day. With so much left over from previous days, we haven’t had to do any cooking. All I did today was crack some more pecans, which fascinates the moon munchkin.
We did eat some mashed up cattail roots that I’d made up yesterday for Luna, but Mama really wanted us to try them first….
Mashed cattail roots with seasoning added
I pulled out some ribs for tomorrow; being our last day, I thought we should do it in style. My biggest hope is that this week turns out to be so easy that we just keep on it, in one form or another….
So today was a very hectic day with my wife starting school this evening and I wanted to help her make sure she was going to enjoy it as much as she could.
She did. We also had an amazing roast with cattails to eat today along with more wonderful sweet bread (I call it sweet bread because I don’t know what else to call it, nut bread just doesn’t fit; it kinda has the course consistency of a cookie….)
Roast venison with young cattail shoots
The amazing thing is, going into our fourth day, we actually have left overs! Left over roast, left over mesquite-meal (porridge?), left over bread, more fruit and greens…. All I’ll do today is maybe crack some nuts.
At this point I believe it is safe to say that we are killin’ it.
So for day two, we had a little more extravagant breakfast. Acorn/mesquite bread loaf with cherry jam and wild grapes, even had a fancy platter to eat it off of!
Grapes, wild cherries, and sweet bread
Dinner didn’t include salads this time around (Luna and I didn’t go out for some reason….) but we ate the rest of the pecans we cracked along with some flatbread for lunch. The rest of the back straps rounded dinner out pretty nicely nonetheless.
I gotta say, after being used to very rich, heavy foods, today was a little tough on both of us. Wild foods are much higher in nutrient content, but somewhat lower in terms of overall calories. Even the way we ate before this week still had us accustomed to being able to have more calorie-rich food. We had both felt the effects of this switch today, to the point where it could might even affect our mood. As soon as we sat down to dinner however, WHUP, instant switch. After that, we both felt fine the rest of the night.
Tomorrow, we’ll try a nice roast along with some more delicious nut-bread.
Our first day of our short little experiment is already over and we both feel extremely optimistic about our outlook.
This morning we both had mesquite porridge, which admittedly my wife found a little hard to endure owed to the flavor reminding her of peanut butter and jelly (???)
I think our dinner went over much better. During the day, the little moon-bug and I went to pick some fresh greens to mix with the biggest-wood sorrel-ever which we picked yesterday at the park. We topped it with roasted pecans we had picked in the Fall and fresh oregano from outside.
To go with this, we had thawed out two back straps from the deer.
Bon appetit!
All in all, an easy and great start to a fun week!
So, my wife and I have decided to try eating nothing but wild foods that we have gathered, or will gather over the course of the next several days.
We’ve agreed that our little experiment will last just five days; the length of the average middle-class American work-week. Truthfully, we’ve been adding wild foods to our diet for over a year now. However, subsisting on them completely, even for a few days, can be quite a change from what most people in our society are used to! And so I want to say just how proud am of my wife for taking this challenge on with me!
That said, the health benefits and the enjoyment of reconnecting with our environment and where our food ultimately comes from far outweighs any momentary shock at trying something new.
The most important thing, is knowing what we’ll eat before hand. We, or I rather, have spent a lot of the last year getting to know the foods our local habitat provides, and so a kind of rhythm has developed in my mind; “This time of year, that is growing, or that is available.” That rhythm is what’s important. It’s very organic, I mean, its extremely easy to pick up and build in your subconscious.
This time of year, we’ve already picked several bags of acorns, pecans, walnuts and mesquite beans from the Fall and we’ll use them to make flour and porridge, among other things. There is also an abundance of winter greens growing everywhere now that the rains have come and so we’ll add fresh salads with wilds nuts to our menu. We also still have some frozen fruit that we picked back in the Summer which will be great with any acorn or mesquite flatbread we make. There is also a full deer in our freezer, wild game playing a major part in the winter diet of all foragers.
The biggest wood-sorrel ever!
In all, we shouldn’t have any shortage of food, and our imagination can (hopefully) provide the variety and intrigue that American eaters are used to. We’ll take as many pictures of our meals as we can and post them here along with any updates so hopefully we might inspire other people too!
Wild foods are more sustainable, more nutritious and free. Restoring wild species of plants and animals can potentially provide much needed nutrition to millions with little or no cost while in turn restoring the natural environment.
Currently, 1 in 5 Americans experience food insecurity at least once a year and 1 in 3 American children is either overweight or obese. It has become a terrible paradox of our times that malnutrition and obesity often go hand in hand. While many people try to eat fresh or organic produce, these items remain too expensive or unavailable for many Americans.
Through the centuries, people have progressively bred domesticates for productivity or size or shelf-life. A consequence of that has been food that may be high in calories, but low in nutritional value. Edible species of wild plants and animals, however, are usually much more nutritious than the majority of their counter-parts that can be found in the supermarket. Spinach, considered a “superfood”, pales in comparison to the common dandelion which has around 8-10 times the available nutrients.
Wild edibles are free. There is no cost for the dandelions that grow in your yard or the grapes and passionfruit which hang in the park. More than that, they are free-ing. It may seem easy to us to walk into the grocery and pick up a small pack of fruit, but this is a mirage. Countless man-hours and resources go into sustaining this cornucopia, not to mention the labor everybody puts in just to able to afford access to it. Where on the other hand, picking and utilizing foods that grow around us naturally, consumes much less time and energy.
Wild species are also easier to propagate as they’re well adapted to their native environments. Many of these species are capable of thriving on marginal soils that most domestic species couldn’t tolerate, so the amount of physical labor required to care for these plants is marginal at most. They require little to no extraneous resources like fertilizer, pesticides or supplemental watering. They can be planted at our homes, in our yards or across city parks. There are already many programs which encourage the planting of native species in urban areas. For people who live in rural areas, at least here in Texas, you can get substantial tax relief by managing your property for wildlife.
Agriculture is the biggest cause of environmental destruction the world over. More so than urban sprawl or fossil fuel extraction or climate change. The majority of clearing in the rainforest is for beef production. Learning to make use of wild, or naturalized foods instead of domesticates, means benefiting from the landscape in its natural form, instead of it needing to be cultivated to be useful. Personally, I believe that this has led to what many people have tried to describe as a disconnect between humans and the rest of the natural world. Many of the edible species our ancestors ate even as recently as 50 to 100 years ago, are considered weeds or pests today. But despite our best efforts to eradicate these undesirables, they return for us year after year, in the hopes that we might again see them for what they really are.
Perhaps the greatest enticement, besides free supplemental nutrition, is an opportunity for community. Learning more about where your food comes from is an important lesson that most children miss out on. And when that food comes from your local environment, the act of eating it has the potential to allow you to be a part of something greater than yourself. That communion is what forms the basis for communities of people around the world. I’m not suggesting a return to the Stone Age, 7 billion humans can’t wholly subsist as hunter gatherers, but providing a way for people to supplement their diets with free, nutritious, sustainable food can benefit them in a number of ways; from improving nutrition to simply bringing people closer together and improving gender equality and social values. This could even have the additional benefit of helping to lower fertility rates in many places. Giving people an alternative means of subsistence means they may not need to rely on having as many children in order to prosper in an agricultural system, but improving social communities and promoting gender equality, gives them that choice.
Many people have suggested in recent years that we could improve our diets by eating different foods or by eating foods which more closely resemble their wild ancestors. The problem with that, and with the organic movement in general, is that these foods remain out of reach for those who need them most. Teaching people to utilize the wild foods which are growing free around them, not only benefits them, but it establishes a positively reinforcing relationship with their environment. These species are an intricate part of the ecosystems they are found in; animals depend on them, they cycle nutrients and provide other ecosystem services. Propagating them can help to restore natural habitats for wildlife and to generally improve the environmental quality of our homes. And the more that the environment benefits in this way, the more people see how benefiting their environment benefits them as well. This can form the basis of a positively reinforcing relationship; and over and over again, around and around.
A Natural Place 