Rio Rose

As an avid student of the natural world who also forages a significant part of their diet from the wild, early on it became clear to me that the degree of my education and success had everything to do with the level of my focus and attention. That might sound obvious, but to consciously marry one’s brain to one’s eyes is much harder than it might sound, especially in today’s world of endless curated distractions.

An example that I live every year: I am looking for morel mushrooms in promising habitat at the proper time. My basket slowly fills as I seek and find what I know to be there, among the duff and eager spring greenery.

All too often, in this act of looking with attention for a very specific thing, I will keep my hunting eyes turned on - directed to alert me to any soft-edged pinecones, in this case - but my mind will inevitably start to wander. I replay conversations had in my recent past and imagine the clever responses that eluded me, I compose shopping lists, I make plans for what comes next. And I find mushrooms, too, and have a nice time. But I will not find nearly as many, not even close. And it will be a sort of half experience.

Nowadays, when I notice my mind wandering away from my eyes while engaging in active looking, I gently bring it back, and I ask myself, not, ’Where are the morels (or whatever else I might be searching for) ’, but, ‘What is right here, right now?’

With an open and focused mind I use my eyes like the exquisite tools they are. And all too often, along with greater bounty, I will find things unlooked for that could have easily passed me by had I been in that half on, half off, state. My capacity to learn is enhanced, as is my capacity to find. Mindful meditation in practice.

Catie George, you sound to me like a shopping ninja! I also dislike shopping intensely but have not developed such efficiency forward strategies. I try to avoid it all together and shop in the woods or garden, but I still need to enter so-called civilized spaces occasionally for things I can't get the hard way, like milk and eggs, quality fats, nuts, citrus, coffee, salt, spices.

I have only two firm rules regarding grocery shopping: lists are a must, the more the merrier (they actually need to be on hand to be effective). And, whatever I do, I don't shop hungry!!! That last one is key. The things I buy when I let my rumbling tummy drive the bus are never the things I need, or even want. Shopping with friends?!!! The horror!

Meal planning for us happens in the morning over coffee. I often wish I were better at making big meals with leftovers to feed us for days, but barring the colder months when soups and stews abound, we tend to make meals from scratch daily. It takes up a lot of our time, but we also drive great pleasure from eating like royalty when bean counters might call us paupers. There are many kinds of affluence.

We were in a similar situation last year. A substantial root cellar is very much in our plans, but greater priorities abound as we build out our homestead and we found ourselves needing a fairly quick, affordable and achievable way to store a bumper crop of potatoes. It may have even been here on Permies that I learned of trash can root cellars, and decided to try it. It works amazingly well for our climate (4b) and as an interim root veggie storage spot.

Nothing trashy about it - essentially you bury a steel trash can to its top (purchased new for the purpose in our case) in the coolest area you've got and line it with a base layer of rocks (to manage moisture) and then layer with straw and your veggies to the top, packed close but not touching. Some folks drill holes in the can for ventilation but our climate is so wet in the fall that we decided on small holes at the top only. We built an open sided framework over it with a roof on top to keep off the snow and make getting potatoes in winter easier.

We finished the last potato in April and they were all as perfect as the day I put them in back in September, minus a couple of fingering potatoes that went soft. Really impressed that such a low-tech solution worked so well, and gave us a bit of breathing room to build a proper root cellar later on. Good luck with your new spot!

I second stinging nettle! It abounds on my property and along the local creeks, and so I have never actually cultivated it due to how prolific - and prickly - it is. I rely on it heavily for nutrition in the winter, and harvest many pounds to blanch and freeze. I tend to remove it from my garden areas, since it does so well on its own. But this year, life conspired to change that.

My wild nettle patches have been hit by some sort of pest and are greatly stressed - I was devastated to find the majority of plants yellowed and stunted.  Meanwhile my feral property patches have thinned markedly due to beaver intrusion in the creek bottom and a resulting change to the overall moisture level.

For the first time in many years, there does not seem to be enough nettle, and desperation began to creep in as I imagined a winter without that gorgeous green to lean on.

But wait - there is a small patch in the garden near the house, in an unwieldy spot. It has been existing and continuing to establish a bit more as each year I give it a stay of execution, my fondness for the plant itself leading me to plant other, easier spots first. “Next year my dear”,  I whisper, “you’ll have to go.”

Well this year, that nettle patch is the healthiest one I’ve seen in this county, and it is ten steps outside my door. The close proximity means I can visit this patch every couple of days as a cut and come again crop. My time is not spent traveling to forage spots, and my gas tank remains full. And my freezer is slowly filling….unexpected, delightful, and a reminder that the things you allow, encourage and even cultivate in your world don’t have to be the things that make sense to everyone else.

Sounds to me like someone in the rodentia family....chipmunks and squirrels both love to make piles of harvests that get left about in odd places for us to find. When strawberries are in season we have found them like that, both ripe and unripe, (though never the two together!) and the ripe ones always have a bite or two out of them. In childhood we lived in a piñon forest and the chipmunks were forever getting inside the house and stashing the pine nuts in any dark crevice - If I was keen for a nutty snack back then, it was always a good idea to search the shoe closet - the heels of shoes would be filled to the brim. I tend to think of these tree ninjas, as I call them - as 'save it for later' creatures, and I have read that squirrels are responsible for the planting of many delicious plants and trees in the wild, as they stash things away all year and then inevitably forget the location of some of their buried caches. I can absolutely relate!

Once I started down the path of medicinal herbs, it became evident that just about every plant underneath my feet or winking at me from garden or field has a medicinal use; some of the more potent medicines can even be considered poison - whether or not is all in the dose. Talk about overwhelming!

I would say that the most important herbal medicinal ally is the one (or ten) in front of you right now!

Just now it is early spring in my neck of the woods, winter’s frozen grasp showing first cracks, and my body is craving minerals, vitamins and green things.

Dandelion is there for me: roots, leaves, crowns. Highly medicinal, it is also especially delicious in early spring. If you have never tasted the crowns simply roasted in salt and good fat, well - you have a real treat in store, for both taste buds and health. When I add dandelion to my spring routine, it feels like I’ve been walking the desert for miles, dying of thirst, but have at last found water. I cannot get enough.

Stinging Nettle is there for me: tender young plants bursting with health supporting nutrients. My body laps it up the same as dandelion. I pick, blanch and freeze many pounds, and eat it anytime I feel run down.  Later when it grows taller (but before it flowers) I harvest the leaves and dry them for tea. The immature seeds are truly a wonder. I hear the roots are too, but I can't bring myself to kill my beloveds, prolific as they are.

Burdock Root - I have found this to be a wonderful tonic in springtime, especially. It is known as a lymphatic system and blood purifying aid. A pain to dig up perhaps, but those roots mine deeply for the good stuff - I had a health event last spring (sudden onset extreme joint pain and inflammation) from a tick bite - burdock was heavily influential in my recovery - I kept a pot on the stove and drank daily. When I went back in for blood tests ten days after the event, my markers in all categories were better than they had been, not just before the event, but in years.

Cottonwood bud is there for me. Before the leaves come the buds, with the loveliest scent and heavy-hitting pain and inflammation help. I have also found it to be a potent preservative: salves that contain it do not seem to go bad, while the same salve without it will have rancid notes to the oil orders of magnitude earlier.

Meteorological spring arrived to our woods with a total lunar eclipse, and on a clear night no less: that is a rarity here this time of year. What better way to celebrate than a feast?

Our Feral Spring Feast:

Venison we hunted and processed together from the mountain that graces our bedroom window.
Nettles we harvested from the creekside that same deer drank from.
Morels that come up in the fir forest right beside the creek.
Onions and garlic and herbs we grew, right here.
Sourdough made from fresh milled grains that had their roots in earth a few miles down the road.

The full circle-ness of this meal makes me really happy. It is a meal that represents untold hours, days, even weeks of hard labor: scouting, hunting, foraging, processing, cooking. It is a meal that represents our ability to feed ourselves from the bounty that surrounds us. It is a meal that represents sustenance in uncertain times.  It was consumed in mere moments, but is not a small thing.

Can you hear us howling hello to the awakening world? I hope so.

I have always had a very sensitive sniffer, and as a child I caused no small amount of distress to my parents by refusing to eat foods that were deemed ‘off’.  I can still hear my dad’s anxious groan as he watched me perform the act of olfactory judgement that would doom another hard won meal.

Fast forward to today, about eight years into a pretty intense fermentation journey. These days I cackle with delight at recipes like those found in Pascal Baudar’s book Wildcrafted Fermentation. Fermented forest floor? Oh heck yes, let me at it!

The child whose brow crinkled in consternation at the slightest whiff of moldy or funky notes, is blown away by the things I will happily put in my mouth today. For every new flavor that has a galaxy of wonder exploding on my tongue, there are others that have me wondering, ‘Am I going to regret this later???’

Mold and I have become very close. I am extremely sensitive to moldy notes and can taste it even when it is not visible or others can’t. In my experimenting I’ve ingested plenty. Staggeringly, I am still here. I have regretted very few of my tastings, and those were all mild gastro distress, nothing earth shattering.

Here’s my personal stance on moldy food, no science or data to back it up, just my own experience:

I don’t mess around with colored molds. Pink, blue, black - nope.  I toss those items.

White or grey molds though, I am happy to remove the layer and eat what’s underneath. If the flavor is unaffected I don’t give it another thought.

I feel your pain, it is a sister to mine. The sort of community available to me in my own area feels similarly closed off, and I’m an odd duck who doesn’t swim so happily with the main flock, it seems. Isolation and loneliness is a real and devastating threat to health and wellbeing, for all of us.

For myself, once I realized that even the sorts of people I want to share a cuppa with aren’t a dime a dozen here, (as much a reflection of me as anything) it became more about really inhabiting and embracing who I am, what I want, what I like and what is truly important to me - what turns me on, what lights me up -  and looking around locally for activities where other odd ducks like me, might like to paddle.

For me it’s woodsy pursuits like hiking groups, plant or mushroom ID forays, gardening and weaving, maybe a yoga or a writing class, or a seed swap at the local library. It’s rare, but every now and again I find a gem whose sparkle reflects off of my own, and ever so slowly, I grow my group of people. Is there anyone in your community doing things that inspires you? Look for them, and don’t be silent when you find them. It’s a likely bet your people are as starved for connection as you are.

If you are like me and tend to isolate when you are unhappy, I’d urge you (and me, I’d urge us!) to think of one person you love or even like and reach out - a letter, a text, an email, a call. When I was feeling so alone in my own spot and no takers in the community at large, I started a correspondence with some long lost friends and family members, which brought back to life a mouldering thread of connection.

Even posting here is a great way to drop a stone into the void - I am feeling the ripples right here in my pond!  I recently read a book called “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans - all about a woman who navigated the later chapters of her isolated-in-person life by corresponding, with everyone: authors who wrote books that moved her (or didn’t), companies that make products she took issue with (or loved), customer service reps, her family members, and on. Not everyone wrote back, and not all correspondence was lovely, but in the end you look out over a life rich with communication, connection and meaning - instead of its lack.

Define and ask for what you want most, (be specific) then sing it loud: birds of your feather will hear you only if you do. Reach out to me any time, if you’d like a pen pal. I’ll close with one of my favorite poems:

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Somehow, the knowledge that a Jade plant is blooming on the Isle of Skye, really does feel like an important piece of breaking world news.

I’ve seen many jade plants in this life, but never a jade bloom. And just now I find myself with wonder blossoming in my mind about them: apparently they are annual bloomers in their natural habitats (dry and sunny South Africa, so very far from Skye) but rarely as houseplants. May we all get what we need to flower in this life, wherever we are planted.