M Ljin

Parsnip likes to grow in grass! They are excellent for turning lawns into gardens.

Could it be your garden soils are too fungal? Do you till them?

I notice they like to grow in paths. In this part of the world, those unaware of their virtues call them “poison parsnip” because of the blisters produced by getting the sap of the flowering stalks onto one’s skin on a sunny day. It makes me wonder if they are protectors of excessively compact earth 1. by loosening it through their roots: 2. by tillage of voles, humans, etc. looking to eat them; and 3. by deterring animals from going too often through a single path.

In the end I have no idea what they’re telling you, though!

Quarter note, eighth, eighth, quarter.
Three clicks of the metronome.

Yes—the “one” of “one-and” falls on the metronome click, and the “and” falls halfway between that and the next click. Does that make sense?

I’ve heard however that in some traditions, the “and” is actually later and more like two-thirds in, called “swing notes”. This is especially the case in jazz. Just to confuse things further.

Acorns are treated like pig food or worse which is very sad. They are healthy, filling, and delicious, but I’ve been told they taste like nothing. Some people like them a little undercooked for the astringency, interestingly. I don’t think silly family dynamics can be underestimated.

my recent acorn post

Jason Tuller wrote:I'm not so concerned about growing food.  If I put my mind...and back...to work I could grow plenty of food in my backyard to cover a food cost increase.  My concern is that my family won't eat what I grow.  i realize that starvation is a good motivator, but is there somewhere in here that talks about cooking what we can grow in a way that is palatable to picky eaters?  Or a way to slowly move from processed food to more natural food without having the crew revolt.

These threads might be interesting to you:

Plants that are money in the bank, food in the ground

How do you cook your weeds?


I’ve found that family will eat wild greens happily if they’re well prepared, but if you ask them if they want dandelion or nettle or garlic mustard or parsnip, they will be very slow to admit it. Even dogs like my cooked greens!

I think anything people think of as a “noxious weed” tends to be a bit hard to sell, at least at first. People seem to have a lot of preexisting aversion.

Dame’s rocket and milkweed have come to be “officially vegetables” so to speak because they are good, and relate to “ordinary” vegetables in a meaningful way. Milkweed is said to be like asparagus but a bit better, and the same with dame’s rocket and broccoli. Sunchokes are also very well loved. Ramps and fiddleheads have already been long appreciated.

Rhubarb also is a crowd favorite.

Well, they are very cracked, but aside from that it went well.

That’s fine—these were practice pieces anyway.

To prevent future cracking I’ll probably split it over wood, not stone.

I might get some usable pieces anyway, however.

Snaggy is right, but that is a beautiful box!!

I found today that while flame birch is wavy back-and-forth up the tree, it doesn’t appear to be as wavy in-and-out (radially?), which makes sense, as the tree doesn’t look wavy from the outside (unless there are lots of knots). So I am working on trying to cut it up somewhat along the growth rings with an old-mower-blade-turned-froe. It is a very hard wood, though!

And then there’s that the best time to plant a garden, or a tree, is twenty years ago. Rarely does one get rewards the very first year. You are growing an ecosystem between you and the plants and the soil; it takes you time to learn the rhythm of the land. I find that my garden gets a little better every year, and eventually it adds up. Rhubarb grows a bit, grows a bit, gets divided, grows a bit more. Nettle patch grows, grows a bit, grows a bit more, now it’s time to divide! Hostas…pokeweed…seeds get a bit better adapted to the land every year, and you stop trying to plant seeds where they won’t grow, saving a lot of effort and some money. (I didn’t buy one seed this year. I’m serious.)

Peach trees are growing happily and vigorously. No flowers yet. Same with mulberries. I’d love to have more mulberries if just for the beautiful bark fibers! Bur-gambel oaks are five inches taller than last spring. My earthworks are soaking more water into the ground, and I need to make more—I can see more areas that would be excellent with ponds. (The parsnips grow twice as big under the swales!) I don’t need to rush at making all my swales at once or renting out expensive machinery. Every year, a little more, and every year, I learn more. Lovage is still hanging in; lots of garlic from last fall, which is one of the best adapted crops. I have a lovely potato variety I started from seed that’s very productive and tasty. It took three years to reach full sized tubers!

The yam is hanging in, getting bigger every year and making more yamberries. I planted six—two came up and one survived to yamhood. That one made dozens of yamberries last fall—we’ll see if any come up any time soon.

Even with annuals it’s a process to get into the right rhythm and understand their requirements and life cycles. I don’t grow very many, but squash like a bit of shade, which the packets likely won’t tell you. So does the kale—grown in the full sun, both may become ridden with pests. I didn’t learn that from an internet search. Nor did I learn from an internet search that the local sawdust is useless for most kinds of mushrooms, except wine caps. And so on and so forth ad nauseam.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

M Ljin wrote:I can guess what I’ll be doing…talking all my townspeople’s ears off about how tasty acorns and nettles and wild parsnip and dandelions are even though no one is listening.

Hm! The townies are already massively conditioned to buy subscriptions for access to anything. They have cash but need access to country foods. This could be a business opportunity! ;-)

My “downtown” is a cluster of thirty-odd houses, a church, and a few public buildings surrounded by forests, meadows, and fields. The rest of the town is scattered on farms, up in the woods, and along the roads. I don’t know if access is an issue per se; I think it’s more of an attitude that only wild deer, cavemen, medieval peasants, and the insane eat those sorts of things. (I therefore fall firmly into the latter category.)

There are people who like to forage too, though far more gardeners and maybe a similar or slightly lesser number of hunters. In general though, it seems as if people prefer and value “being angry at the bad guys” and would rather blame someone else for their misfortune rather than do the (often easy and pleasant) work of being resilient and “settle for less” like the medieval peasants.

I’ll reiterate my acorn processing method:

1.Harvest and dry the acorns

2. Crack and set shells aside (good for mulch)

3. Bring a large pot of boiling water w/ acorns to a boil, leave heat off & wait 12-24hrs, pour off liquid (may contain fat, so maybe scrape it off if there’s enough?) and then repeat until they taste good. Typically takes a week give or take depending on how frequently it’s changed/boiled.

Sam Thayer sets it on top of a woodstove, which would be good too. Unfortunately there is no such sophisticated wood heat in this house.

This particular method (hot leaching of whole or halved acorns) tends to be used wherever oaks of the red oak group are numerous, and I consider it the method I know of for red oak acorns. I haven’t gotten anything edible from any other method. I tried cold leaching a meal ground from the acorns, but the grinding was more effort and it seemed like the fat in them prevented the tannins from leaving in that case. Even then it seems like more of the fat may be lost.

However, red oaks are amazing in so many ways. The acorns are up to 30% or so fat, for one! Which is one of the hardest nutrients to get from plant foods. Oaks in the white oak group (with rounded tips to their lobes) do not have much fat in them. The acorns also feel very healthy to me. It may seem comically simplistic to say they make you strong like an oak, but it feels that way. Red-oak acorns are some of the largest and least prone to predation, and they tend to be overwhelmingly abundant in the right places. They can also be stored live over the winter, and foraged/cooked and eaten in spring as they sprout. (I haven’t gotten to any this spring—they may be too far along by now.)

Something occurred to me.

If prices rise 10x due to oil prices,

And you farm without oil using natural fertilizers,

And you grow your own food for yourself too,

Doesn’t that mean you would potentially get around 5x as much for your efforts compared to before? (Assuming your price is 2x the average conventional produce)

I can see plenty of people who could not only survive but possibly thrive from this.