Ethical Food: killing our own meat

The set-up for this day was a big home-made killing-table, complete with a restraining-cone and sink on one end, a bunch of buckets and bowls for the parts, the hose, some newly-sharpened knives, and a borrowed camp-stove on which to scald our birds before plucking. Our first chicken-butchering day: It was a day we were afraid of, but we were committed.

Our son cleaning up after butchering his first bird.

Thirteen years ago I wrote a blog post called Wild Food: Killing Our Own Meat, which went on to become by far the most popular thing I've ever written, mostly because people are shocked and awed by the idea that we killed and ate slugs with our children. At the time we had a pair of ducks, were eating duck eggs, and thought we might end up getting ducklings which we'd raise for meat as well. But a mink killed our ducks, putting an end to all those plans. It's been a long road of parenting and growing since then, but this year we finally got back on the trail toward raising our own ethical meat.

I've been told before that no meat is ethical, but for my partner and I, the question of food seems so much more complex, so I'll explain a little, here. Please know that this is my and my partner's personal perspective, and we understand that the world is vast and varied. You are entitled to your own opinion, and we respect the choices of those who travel other paths. We hate the industrial farming industry - both the vegetable-based production and the animal-based production. Nearly all of it is deeply unethical, causing irreparable harm not only directly to animals who are involved, but to the environment, through mono-culture, exploitation of land and resources, and through physical and chemical destruction of the land. The world is a vast ecosystem of ecosystems, each with many interdependent communities within it, and each community made of many interdependent species of plants, animals, insects, microorganisms and fungi. Every single part - no matter how small - is vital to the health of the whole. Many people have been alarmed to discover that palm oil, which is frequently used in vegan products, usually involves the destruction of endangered orangutan habitat, and even outright killing of orangutans and other species. Enter "sustainable palm oil". And more products using coconut oil... but wait. Coconut oil has recently been linked to even greater destruction than palm oil! And that's just the oil and processed-foods dilemma. Most of the meals my family eats are vegan, as well as gluten- and soy-free, due to our auto-immune issues. So we eat a lot of almonds, (almond flour, almond milk, etc.). Almonds aren't vegan either, due to the massive impact that large-scale almond-farming has on the bees who are transported across the continent to fertilize the almond-groves of the west coast. Further, the impact that the large-scale mono-culture of almonds has on water-systems, forests, and the ecosystems that would otherwise have thrived there is colossal. What is an ethical eater to do?!

For us, the answer is growing our own food. In our climate, and on the 1/4 acre of land we can use, we are slowly figuring out the most efficient ways to produce food for our family. We know we can't meet all our needs, but we're having some success with peas (dried for winter soups), cauliflower, potatoes (about 1/3 of the number we eat each year), kale, (a few) tomatoes, and now chickens.

Remember those adorable chicks we welcomed just four months ago? This week we slaughtered the first four of our chickens. It was the first time I had killed any animal for meat (though I've had experience with many compassionate killings of injured and sick animals, in the past), and the first time my partner and son had butchered an animal at all. Our daughter bravely caught and handed over the roosters we killed that day, but chose to stay away from the place we butchered them, because we gave both kids the choice to join or not, since nobody should ever be coerced to commit such a traumatizing act as killing, plucking, or gutting an animal.

Bringing each bird to the back driveway (so they'd be far away from the rest of the flock who we didn't want to traumatize) was very, very sad, and a difficult thing to overcome, for our psyches. Me cutting those birds' throats was excruciating. We wholeheartedly believe that we, as animals, eat most ethically when we accept that in order for us to live, something must die, but we would like to make that process the least harmful possible for the ecosystem of our world. Part of that is accepting that eating meat is painful, so that we don't do it wantonly. 

It's important to us that if we're going to eat meat, the animals have happy, healthy lives, and we think we've achieved that in our chickens. Then, we try to maximize the nutrition from each life we've taken. After processing these four birds, I was actually quite pleased to discover that we'll get the protein component of four family meals out of each of them. Here's the breakdown of how we're using these birds:

Directly from what we processed on slaughtering day:

• 1 cup of livers into the freezer (1x liver pate = 1 fancy family meal, later)
• 2 jars of feet, neck and gizzard broth made and canned (2x family soup meals, later)
• 1 family meal of gizzard and neck-meat poutine (with chicken gravy)
  

Then we put the four birds into the fridge to loosen up (from rigor mortis), and two days later I prepared them: I roasted two of the four, then picked, boiled and dehydrated the meat, made bone broth of the bones, and froze the roasted skin. I froze the two remaining birds whole, which will be feasts, later on, each providing an additional meal of bone broth soup. We ate four roasted wings for our dinner that night, which was delicious, and the perfect amount of meat for our family of four. Meal tally from second day of processing:

• 2 family feasts of a whole roast bird
• 5 bone broth soups with bits of meat
  
• 2 chickens roasted and dehydrated (4 meals, later)
• bag of 5 portions of chicken skin (to add to stir-fries and other meals)
  
• 1 family meal of wings, on the day I roasted them
  

My partner's birthday dinner:
Homegrown beans & broccoli with chicken poutine
from the first animal he ever butchered, himself.

Total: 16 meals plus chicken skin.

I can't say I'm enormously proud that we enjoyed eating the meat of the birds we had held in our arms, but I was relieved. I wasn't sure we could do it, and we managed. We fed ourselves.

And I learned something huge about myself in this process. I've always been repulsed and horrified by gore and violence in movies, which seemed incongruous with the fact that I spent my childhood helping with trimming and gutting rabbits, chickens and pigs on my family's hobby farm. Why do those movies upset me so much? In killing my own home-raised chickens, I discovered why: It's compassion. In movies, killing is done for show. Blood theatre. It's needlessly violent, needlessly cruel, and increasingly, it's gratuitous. On an ethical farm, killing is done carefully, and at great cost to the killer. The reason my parents raised meat birds and meat rabbits was also out of a desire for ethical meat, and ethical farming - whether for vegetables or meat - requires a close connection with our food; a deep emotional journey into the lives and greater ecosystem of all the plants, fruit and animals we intend to consume. It requires sorrow, and compassion, and an overcoming of that sorrow when we accept that we need to kill to eat. We choose death in order to survive, and we never do so wantonly, or for some kind of theatre.

Every single bite of chicken that we eat this year will taste of sorrow, compassion, and deep, deep gratitude.

Wild Food Spotlight 7: Spring Greens

This is the seventh (and final) in a series of foraging-related articles I'm writing for our local bulletin. Re-posted from the Artisan Office Bulletin.

~  ~  ~

western bitter cress

Spring is here! The ice has broken up the soil and the rain is soaking it, and now it's a rich nursery for fresh spring greens.Wild greens are one of the easiest foods to forage during this time of year, and it's possible to create quite a variety of wild salads from around our community.

Where to harvest: Wild greens, growing mostly in clearings and along roads and trails as they like to do, are very susceptible to contamination from boots and our local bounty of dog poop. I like to harvest from areas that are either remote (like bluffs, deep forest clearings, etc.) or from yards that are relatively clean. Vertical surfaces like rocks and moss-covered logs are also a little safer. Just inspect the area you're harvesting from and be cautious.

How to harvest: We are now a culture of excess. But the wilderness doesn't work that way. Harvesting wild greens should be a frugal endeavour: just take enough to satisfy your need, and make sure you leave plenty to grow. In fact, if you try to leave enough of the youngest leaves on any single plant, that plant will hopefully continue to produce for you.

field mustard (rape seed)

What to harvest: The best way to become familiar with wild greens is to spend a lot of time exploring wild areas. Go out at least once a week and try to identify things. A good guide book that focuses on our specific area can be very helpful, as well. And when you're feeling comfortable, start eating! These are some of the easier local wild greens to spot and identify:

Mustards are very common here - especially Western Bitter Cress and Penny Cress. These begin as a radial of delicate-looking leaves, and eventually send up a stalk of flowers which, as they finish blooming, become conspicuous seed pods along the stalk. I used to think that the seeds would be wonderful, being in the mustard family, but alas they have nearly no flavour at all. The leaves, however, and to some extent the flowers, are delicious. I like them best in salads or chopped up with cream cheese and cucumber in sandwiches.

Next you should try Siberian Miner's Lettuce. Yum! Being a purslane, its stems and leaves are fleshy and juicy, and really very satisfying as a salad. The pink and white flowers are also edible, so it's easy to snip quite a bit in a hurry.

siberian miner's lettuce

Another delicious treat is sheep sorrel, which grows all over, especially in pastures, open bluffs, and ditches. It's sour and slightly fleshy, like the larger garden sorrels we grow, but being so much smaller you'll have to gather more of it to build your salad.

Blossoms: flowering currant, salmonberry blossoms, oregon grape blossoms, and dandelions are wonderful salad additions. In the case of salmonberries, pinch only a couple of petals from each blossom, to ensure that the pollinators still find it so you can have berries, later. Dandelions are not only wonderful in salad, but also make a great addition to baked goods like scones, biscuits, and bread. Just pick a basketful of dandelion blossoms, then pull out the petals and fill a clean bowl. Then mix them into the flour for your recipe. Experiment with how many petals to use - it will likely be more than you expect!

I began this foraging series last year at the end of maple blossom season, so I think it's just great to end the series with another maple food: Cotyledons!

oregon grape blossoms

Cotyledons are the pair of embryonic leaves that first appear out of a seed. Think of bean sprouts. Those are cotyledons, too. The second set of leaves to appear on a bean seedling are much tougher and differently-shaped than those first little round leaves, and not something you'd generally eat. But the sprouts are tender and delicious. And the same goes for maple sprouts!


These are some of the earliest and most bountiful spring greens we have here. Just head out in the early spring and look under or near maple trees. You'll likely find hundreds or thousands of them speckling the forest floor. Snip them off near the ground, collect them up and enjoy them fresh as a salad or tossed into a stir-fry.

sheep sorrel

This will be my last bulletin article for now. I've enjoyed sharing some of the island's natural treasures with my community, and will continue to do so in the workshops I lead through wildart.ca. Thank you, Margaret, for the opportunity, and I hope we'll all find time to enjoy our wilderness.

Wild Food Spotlight 6: Licorice Fern

This is the sixth in a series of foraging-related articles I'm writing for our local bulletin.
Re-posted from the Artisan Office Bulletin.

~  ~  ~

 

The ice is retreating from the shores of our lakes; the sky pelts us with droplets instead of crystalline flakes. And as we creep out into the nascent spring, recovering from the viruses of winter, the skin of the maple trees is coming back to life, as well. The many things that make their home in and on this fertile skin, long withered from the summer's drought and winter's frigid wind, are soaking up the rains and growing, again.

If you look up on almost any bigleaf maple around here, you'll discover haphazard forests of ferns, growing from the moss, there. These are licorice ferns. Find some you can reach, dig your fingers into the soft moss, and feel along the root until you find the end. You can feel where the root is hard and dry, and where the newer growth begins, all smooth and round and fresh. Break off a couple of inches or so of this newer root – it will be enough for a snack or a couple of cups of tea – but be sure not to rip off the moss. This moss is part of our rich ecosystem, and benefits both the tree and the many things that live on it. If you leave most of the fern growing in the moss, you can come back again to harvest later.

Sometimes you can find licorice ferns growing on mossy bluffs or logs, as well. They're still fine to eat, and easy to identify. It's OK to take a fern frond once in a while, too, especially if this is your first time harvesting and you want to examine it!

Now look at the fern. You'll notice it has a stem, leaflets, and spores like other ferns do, but the leaflets are fully attached to the stem. If you compare it to a sword fern frond, you'll see that each sword fern leaflet is attached by a tiny point of a stem. Not so with the licorice fern! Another obvious difference between the two is the taste and smell of the root. It's called licorice fern for a reason, and no other fern in our area has a root that smells like that of licorice fern.

So what to do with this tasty root now? Actually, tasty is a matter of opinion. I've seen more than one person spit it out in disgust. But licorice is not for everyone, and some of us love it. Also, the bitter taste it has when freshly picked pretty much disappears when it's brewed into tea.

Tea is probably the easiest and most effective way to use licorice fern. If you like it you can harvest a lot of it in the early- to mid-spring, chop it up and simply dry it in a basket or sieve on your counter. Keep the dried roots in a jar and use it like you would any other tea. If you want your harvest to go further, crush the dried roots before steeping to help release the oils.

Licorice fern tea has some well-known medicinal properties. It's used to calm a sore throat and cough, to relieve gas and to aid recovery from chest infections.

Most importantly, I feel like licorice fern is a reminder of our integrated ecosystem. All over this island you can find maples, and most of them carry a garden of moss and licorice ferns. This garden is home to a host of other species, and every time we see it we can remember how complex our world is, how important each member of our community is to the well-being of us all, and how we depend upon each other for life.

 

Wild Food Spotlight 5: Rose Hips

This is the fifth in a series of foraging-related articles I'm writing for our local bulletin.
Re-posted from the Artisan Office Bulletin.

~  ~  ~

Here we are enjoying a rare white December. Some community events have had to be cancelled due to the slippery roads, while others have carried on despite the hazards, and we've trouped out in our boots and snow gear to join our friends and loved ones in celebrating. What a joy to see the sun hit the solid crystalline snow like a crash of diamonds; to see drooping snowmen ornamenting so many driveways. I saw a large white Mike Wazowski in the meadow! Before the big melt began this week, the sides of streams and edges of bluffs were adorned with the most intricate icicles; children's faces were pink from eating them, and from all the frolicking that happens when we're given the gift of snow.

So who really thinks about foraging while skating on the lake? Well... you might. Or especially while trudging through the rained-on snow we've got right now. After all... the snow is beginning to crush like snow-cone ice and you'd need a tasty syrup to flavour that. Mmmm... syrup. What about winter berries? Most of them aren't particularly edible – some are even poisonous. But rose hips - those are a gift from the winter to your health. And your snow-cone, should you desire one.

If you cut into a rose hip, you'll find they're mostly seeds, which frankly are hardly useful and very scratchy. It's the thin layer of meat just under the skin that we're after, whether for jam, jellies, or syrup. Rose hips are best harvested after the first frost, which further develops their sugars and renders that outer layer of meat soft and pulpy. In the interior I used to squeeze this pulpy jam out and eat it straight off the bush. However, in our area they won't develop enough sugar to balance out the sour taste of their extremely high ascorbic acid (vitamin C) content.

Rose hips actually have such a high vitamin C content that they have been used by many cultures as a winter immune booster, and to prevent scurvy. Of course, heating does greatly diminish the vitamin C content, but thankfully rose hips seem to retain more than many other fruits. In war-time Britain, vitamin C was in short supply due to lack of imports, and people ate a lot of rose hip preserves. In a study conducted in 1942, the British Medical Journal found rose hip syrup to contain equal to more than twice as much vitamin C as other foods such as blackcurrant jam, fresh and tinned orange juice, and tomato juice (1). One final note about vitamin C: It's important to cook rose hip preserves in non-aluminum pans, as aluminum also destroys vitamin C.

Now back to those snow-cones. I'm writing this as the syrup is cooling in the kitchen, and my kids are eager for taste-testing. But you can't pour hot syrup over snow, so they'll just have to keep waiting!

Harvesting rose hips is simple: Nothing more than twisting off the hips until you have a bowlful. Choose rose hips that are plentiful and bright red. They'll darken after freezing, and the skin of some will split open, revealing a bright red or orange paste underneath. You don't want the hips that are becoming black or brown, and those that are still pale and hard are better for making tea.

Tea: Just chop up a tiny handful of rose hips and steep in hot water until it's as strong as you like it!

Syrup: cut the rose hips in half, and dump them into a non-aluminum saucepan. Add enough water to fully cover them all, plus an extra centimetre or so; an inch higher if you've filled a medium-sized pan.

Bring to a boil, and after a couple of minutes of boiling, mash with a fork or potato masher until the concoction begins to resemble tomato soup.






When you don't see many chunks of pulp floating around anymore, and it's quite thick and creamy, strain it through a sieve or jelly bag into a ceramic bowl.

Pour the strained juice back into the saucepan (make sure no seeds remain on the sides of the pan), and bring to a boil again. Add sugar or honey to taste. Turn the heat down just enough so that it keeps boiling, and cook until it's thick enough to stick to the back of a spoon (or as thick as you like!)

Snow Cones: Let it cool, and pour it over a clean cup of this nice slushy ice we have. You can store whatever you don't consume right away in the fridge (or outside in a sealed container!) for a couple of weeks. I dare you try and make it last that long – it's also excellent on pancakes, drizzled over trifle, cakes, or even mixed with sparkling water for a special drink.

Happy winter!


(1) http://www.bmj.com/content/1/4243/559

.

Wild Food Spotlight 4: Burdock

This is the third in a series of foraging-related articles I'm writing for our local bulletin.
Re-posted from the Artisan Office Bulletin: http://artisanoffice.com/bulletin/

~  ~  ~ 

It's pretty soggy out these days. What remains of our wild and cultivated leafy greens is mostly melting away in a grey-brown sludge, battered by fallen branches and covered by the remains of other plants. But underneath the nearly-frosty ground, the roots are at their prime; ready for eating, canning, roasting, drying and steeping.

Similar to other members of the Aster family such as Canada thistle, dandelion, artichoke and chicory, burdock root contains plenty of the dietary fibre, inulin. Among other benefits, inulin supports the growth of beneficial bacteria in the intestines(1). As a diuretic, starchy root vegetable, and source of inulin, burdock is used by many populations both medicinally and as food.(2)

Identifying burdock: The easiest way to identify burdock is to find burs. If you walk near the edge of the trails or roadsides around here, you probably already know where to find them, unless you've already carried them all away on your sleeves and boot-laces. They're those brown prickly velcro-like seed-heads that cling to their old brown stems at about knee-height, this time of year. (Yes, Velcro was indeed invented when Swiss engineer George de Mestral was inspired by similarly clingy burdock burs!(3))

 

 

This large plant is conspicuous in summer, with its broad, slightly-fuzzy, heart-shaped leaves, and magenta thistle flowers or green (and later brown) burs all over its tall stems. However at this time of year it's beginning to look rather sorry. The year-old burdock plants (those that haven't yet flowered) will generally look like a handful of yellowing limp leaves, radiating out from the centre. That's where you'll find the root. In older plants that have already flowered, the root will be at the base of those long brown stalks of burs.

Note: Do not confuse burdock with foxglove (medicinal in small amounts but can cause heart-failure), which has a very different scent and diamond-shaped, but similarly large and fuzzy leaves. If you're new to burdock harvesting, take a guidebook and make sure you're harvesting from the correct plant.

Harvesting and cooking: The best roots for eating come from those plants that haven't yet flowered. The older roots are inferior, and better dug in spring. You can dig the roots up any time of year, but mid- to late-autumn is when they're best, after a summer of good growth, and before they freeze. 

Dig down very deep, pulling out the whole root, which can be very long. Give the roots a scrub, and then peel them. I find a potato peeler works quite well. Now you can chop them up or sliver them and cook them as you would parsnips or other such roots: add to soups, sauté, ferment (as in kimchi) or stir-fry with other vegetables. My husband wants me to point out that they can be rather bitter and maybe not best as the main component of a dish.

Fresh burdock roots don't keep very well, and lose some of their health benefits as they're stored in the fridge, so you may prefer to harvest them fresh rather than store them.

Tea or Coffee: One of the most delicious uses of burdock that I know of is as a tea or coffee substitute. You can cut your peeled burdock into very small pieces and dry it, then store it in a jar until needed for steeping. There are three basic ways of steeping burdock root for a hot drink:

Raw infusion: Simply steep the raw dried roots. This is very weak and 'leafy', and frankly not very enjoyable!

Roasted and steeped as tea: either over a stove or in an oven, slowly heat the dry burdock root pieces until they are brown (but not black!). Then steep as you would regular tea. The result is a rich and earthy-flavoured transparent brown infusion that tastes lovely on its own or with a bit of milk or sugar, if that is how you like your tea.

Ground and filtered as coffee: Take the roasted dried burdock and grind it in a coffee mill. Use it in a drip-filter or French press, and you'll have a heavier, heartier drink, with a slightly more bitter flavour than if it's just infused.

Happy autumn! May your days be filled with harvesting adventures, and your evenings with delicious wild foods and warm drinks.

(1) http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-1048-inulin.aspx?activeingredientid=1048&activeingredientname=inulin

(2) http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/burdock

(3) http://www.velcro.com/about-us/history

Wild Food Spotlight 3: Plantain

This is the third in a series of foraging-related articles I'm writing for our local bulletin.
Re-posted from the Artisan Office Bulletin: http://artisanoffice.com/bulletin/

~  ~  ~ 

This past May, my daughter had a big fall, goring her knee on a rotten branch. She endured not only a week of emergency room IV for the ensuing infection, but then three months of the wound slowly expelling all the remaining bits of rotten wood. Plantain to the rescue! Yes – seriously! What the salt water soaks didn't pull out, we got out with plantain poultices. Grab a leaf, chew it up, and place it on the (closed) wound. You can even use one of the flat leaves as a bandage to hold it in place (tied with string).

Not to be confused with plantain bananas, the small green inconspicuous plants of the Plantago family are exceedingly common. Find them along the edges of roads, meadows, lawns, paths, and playgrounds. Most common around here are P. major (broad-leaved plantain) and P. lanceolata (narrow-leaved plantain or ribwort). Maybe when you were a child you learned to pluck a broad-leaved plantain and find the veins sticking out where you tore it off. Maybe you discovered that if you pulled those veins you could make the leaf curl up. Apparently some people have used these tough fibres as thread! When I was a little girl, my mother and I sometimes made the long gruelling climb from our home in Bowen Bay up towards Adams Rd. And along the way we saw ribwort, although we didn't know it at the time. We called them the Crowned Princes and Princesses of Denmark, because of their flowers' beautiful crown-like flower-heads. Oh the adventures those crowned princes and princesses have had over the two generations this game has persisted! Plantain is a wonderful entertainment system for kids on otherwise boring walks.

But it's also a food and a valuable medicine. Modern science is slowly beginning to study and confirm what folk medicine has taught for centuries. In her review, Anne Berit Samuelsen states that “P. major contains biologically active compounds such as polysaccharides, lipids, caffeic acid derivatives, flavonoids, iridoid glycosides and terpenoids. Alkaloids and some organic acids have also been detected. A range of biological activities has been found from plant extracts including wound healing activity, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antioxidant, weak antibiotic, immuno modulating and antiulcerogenic activity.” (1) In my own life, I often use broad-leaved plantain as a wound or sting poultice. It's handily available in the wilderness, where stings, nettle burns, and other small injuries often happen, and makes a huge difference to such inflammations when chewed up and applied directly. Ribwort is also valuable, both for the gut-cleaning (bulking) properties of its seeds (psyllium), as well as for its leaves' value in treating coughs and uterine complaints. As an anticatarrhal and expectorant, ribwort tea is an excellent cough remedy. (2)

Food is maybe the least exciting thing about plantain, since it's basically a plain-tasting leaf that gets tough very early in its life. But if you get stoked about the prospect of eating food out of your lawn or healing and nourishing your body naturally, plantain is definitely for you. As with so many wild greens, the young leaves are great in salads, or braised as they grow tougher. They're also delicious in green smoothies – especially with the knowledge of all those nutrients you're consuming! And if you are eating a grain-free diet, you may already buy the mucilaginous psyllium as a binder for coconut flour confections, or perhaps you use it simply as a dietary fibre. Either way, find it growing atop a humble plantain. Commercial psyllium seed actually comes from P. afra, ovata, or indica, but seeds of ribwort also have mucilaginous properties. Find some ribwort blossoms that have fully gone to seed, rub the seeds out into a small bowl, blow off most of the separated husks (some remaining is fine) and add a bit of water. After a while you'll see the mucilage forming around the seeds. The mucilage is, of course, the same colour as the water, so it is only apparent in that the seeds sit increasingly distant from each other in the water, held separated by their growing coating of mucilage. When there's enough of it you can feel its gooeyness.

But let's get down to business. Everybody needs some inspiration to try plantain, so I recommend starting with this lovely green plantain smoothie: Pick a bunch of youngish plantain leaves (either broad-leaved or ribwort will do), wash them, check for unwanted bits, and stuff them in your blender. Cover them with ice cold water (and a few ice cubes if your blender can handle it!), and add some fresh lemon juice. Blend until the leaves are fully macerated and suspended in the water. If you want it sweet (like lemonade!) then blend in a little honey, to taste. If you want it creamy, blend in an avocado or some nut-milk. Enjoy!

(1) Anne Berit Samuelsen: The traditional uses, chemical constituents and biological activities of Plantago major L. A review. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Volume 71, Issue 1, Pages 1-21

(2) Chloe Sobejko: Materia Medica. https://herbalmateriamedica.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/plantago-lanceolata/

Wild Food Spotlight 2 – Rubus!

This is the second in a series of foraging-related articles I'm writing for our local bulletin.
Re-posted from the Artisan Office Bulletin: http://artisanoffice.com/bulletin/

~  ~  ~

Thimbleberries

How many times have blackberries scraped big bloody tears from your leg as you simply attempted to access the beach? Or the salmonberries taken over your garden and you spent day after day cutting them down and then digging out their stubborn, tough roots, only to find them growing back again a couple of months later? How many times have you planted delightful raspberry canes and found them soon interspersed with those godforsaken-spiny-blackberries-whose-fruit-is-inferior-and-nobody-seems-to-know-the-name-of?! Ha ha! Me too. But I love these Rubus anyway.

The Rubus genus is well-represented both in our gardens and in our island wilderness. We commonly grow raspberry, boysenberry, and wineberry in our gardens, but in the wild here we also find an abundance of red and yellow salmonberries, black raspberries, thimbleberries, and various blackberries: Trailing, Himalayan, and Evergreen (that horridly vicious spiky-looking one).

All of these are known for their heavenly berries, especially when ripened and warmed by the sun and picked during a hike through the woods. But did you know that you can use other parts of the plants as well? The leaves of red raspberries are well known for their use in teas as a uterine tonic, and black raspberry and young blackberry leaves can be picked, dried, and used the same way. Wear gloves, though – their thorns grow under the leaves as well.

And then there are the shoots. Every spring for hundreds if not thousands of years, the fresh shoots of salmonberry, blackberry, and thimbleberry have been harvested young and tender, often eaten fresh, steamed, pickled, or stir-fried. It’s June, and we’re a bit past this stage of their growth by now, but if you do find any soft flexible cane shoots extending up off the older canes or out of the ground nearby, you can pull your hand along them until they snap off like asparagus. When you’re ready to eat them, peel off the skin and prepare them any way you enjoy asparagus. It’s certainly very different, but totally delicious. And each species (even each colour of salmonberry bush) has a different flavour!

Finally berries.

Salmonberries – first of the wild rubus to ripen, they grow unstoppably all over the place, here – especially in wet meadows and roadsides. Those with exclusively green shoots grow yellow/orange berries, and those with red shoots grow red berries which darken to nearly black as they ripen. Salmonberries taste a little brighter, and with less of a rich flavour than other Rubus berries, although the red ones are sweeter than the yellow. Salmonberries seem to develop the most juicy flavour when they’ve plumped up in wet weather and sunshine, but then they’re so watery that they don’t work well in pies. They’re also a little too seedy for baking, since they lose so much water in the process that you’re left with mostly seeds. Also watch out if you’re picking after a few days of rain showers; they tend to lose their flavour, or even get mouldy inside.

Blackberries – sweet, rich, earthy, and a little bit terrifying, if you’ve ever been caught among them. And also the best for baking, which is why you may have been caught there in the first place, heading towards the middle of the brutal thicket, trying to fill a five-gallon bucket for pies. They seem to retain a lot of their juice and flavour when baked or frozen. For fresh eating, I prefer the trailing blackberries, which are smaller and less abundant than the huge invasive species, but which taste sweeter and more precious. Like little diamonds compared to big quartz crystals. One thing to watch out for, these days, is the increasing population of D. suzukii larvae (that’s Drosophila, not David, though you might be forgiven for any confusion…). You may not notice the tiny fruit fly larvae as you pick the berries and shove handfuls into your mouth, but if you freeze them on a tray you might discover many little frozen white larvae protruding from between the drupelets of the fruits. It’s OK. Insect-eating is growing in popularity. Just eat them anyway! They’re the last of the Rubus to ripen in our area, and you’ll want to store them all up for winter.

Black Raspberries – these are far less common here, but if you find them they’re absolutely delectable. So try to! The plants look a little like raspberries, more fragile than Himalayan blackberries, and with smaller leaves and stems than salmonberries. The berries themselves are much darker in colour than cultivated raspberries, but have the same dull waxy coating, so can reflect almost purple in some light. The taste is fantastic, and you’ll likely not find enough to satisfy, so just eat them all fresh and quickly, before they’re gone.

Thimbleberries – ripe around this time of year, tall and green and leggy; home to gall wasps and bane of my garden, and I know people complain about their lack of juice and consequent seediness. They don’t even ripen all at once, forcing us to graze very very slowly… just a few every day. But to me they are worth it all for the flavour. They’re almost shockingly sweet, with both the earthiness of blackberries and the tartness of raspberries. I allow them to grow behind my bean trellis, poking their multi-coloured berries through at the sunshine. By the time the beans grow there, I have eaten them all anyway.

Happy summer, neighbours! I hope you enjoy the bounty of Rubus, this year.

Wild Food Spotlight: Maple Blossoms

As published in the Bowen Bulletin, April 27, 2016:

Last year for the Earth Day Bulletin issue I began a series called “Earth Day Every Day”, where I explored the island and talked about my discoveries. That year has come full circle, and it's time for this series to evolve, too. I'd like to share some foraging delights with you! So, every couple of months for the next year, I'll explore a seasonal wild food opportunity that we can easily find here on Bowen.

One of the most iconic and bountiful plants we have here is the bigleaf maple. As you walk through the springtime coniferous forest you can see a maple a long way off, as it's brilliant leaves catch and hold the sunlight – chartreuse against the deeper greens of hemlock, cedar, fir and spruce. Even its bulky-looking trunk and often sprawling limbs seem to burst with vivid colour: In early- to mid-spring the moss that covers them is a vibrant rich green, punctuated only with the deep grey-brown and white of the bark, and sometimes with haphazard fields of licorice fern.

Look out to the ends of those sprawling branches, reaching umbrella-like over your head, and if you're there at the right moment you'll see it's blossoms. Maples' blooming times vary according to their geographic location, elevation, and situation in the forest. Although as I write this most of our local maples have finished blooming for the year, if you explore a bit you're likely to find a few still going strong.

A maple blossom cluster is referred to as a raceme, due to the fact that many flowers hang off a central axis (or stem) at approximately equal lengths and distances. The flowers develop first at the point closest to the branch, and successively out to the end of the raceme. Therefore, if you pick a raceme at the height of its development and sample it at various points along the stem, you'll notice that it has various different flavours. (Note: Maples are as delicious to insects as they are to humans! Before you eat it, check the blossom for flies, aphids, ants, etc. and knock them off.) Now start tasting. Any closed or barely-open flowers near the end will have a bitter, astringent taste, due to the oxalic acid which they and many other fresh wild greens contain. Further along, both the stem and the blossoms lose this sharp flavour, and have a much more pleasant, mild taste. The flowers that are in their prime even have a slight sweetness, and this is absolutely delicious in salads! Further up, and nearer the branch, the stem becomes progressively tougher, and the flowers less flavourful. Eventually, where the two pistils in the flowers have turned brown, the flowers will taste very bland, and by the time the whole flower begins shrinking, it's more like dried leaves – not worth eating!

So now that you've familiarized yourself with all the different flavours of the maple blossom... what to do with it? Some people stir-fry them. I've heard of people battering and deep-frying them, too, but I prefer to taste them in all their glory: quiche, rice-wraps or salad!

For a quiche, simply prepare a good savoury butter crust, steam some maple blossoms until they're wilted, and fill the crust with a mixture of the blossoms and some other sweet or mild vegetable such as fennel, mild celery, or spinach. Mix up some eggs, milk, and a bit of sea salt, and pour it over. Cheese is always an option, but I find it overpowers the maple blossoms in this case and prefer to leave it out. Bake and enjoy!

Wraps are as diverse as they are easy. Whether you use pitas, tortillas, nori or rice paper, fill it with some sweet rice, maple blossoms, and a dressing you love. It can be quick and dirty or absolutely elegant, depending on your desire and presentation.

My favourite for last: Salad! Take out the most delicious section of the racemes, and fill your salad bowl half-full of these – flowers, stem, and all. I break the stem into sections approximately one inch long. Now make up the rest of the salad with whatever mild greens you like. Butter lettuce works well, but so do many other seasonal wild plants such as salmonberry or dandelion petals, bitter-cress, or miner's lettuce. If you grow kale year-round in your garden, it may blossom at the same time as local maples, and kale flowers are also a delicious and beautiful addition. I like to make a dressing of grape seed oil, maple syrup, and lemon juice, as well as sometimes a little salt or wholegrain mustard, depending on the ingredients in my salad. Experiment to year heart's delight, and enjoy! I hope you love maple blossoms as much as I do.

May Cakes Recipe!

Rhiannon mixing petals and flours.

One of our many varied May Day traditions is to bake with dandelion petals. This year we made dandelion buns and dandelion pancakes. Both of them were experimental, so I have no recipes for them. I do, however, have this recipe for Dandelion May Cakes, which is usually our maypole-dancing treat.

Dandelion May Cakes (gluten/dairy/nut/corn-free)
Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Harvest a basket of fully-opened large dandelion blossoms. Before they begin to close up (as soon as they are picked), carefully pull the petals from the blossoms, making sure to remove the bottom of the petals, where the flavour is. Discard the greens and continue collecting the petals until you have enough for your needs.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Put butter or baking paper a baking sheet, and set aside.

Combine in a bowl:

• 1 cup sweet white sorghum flour
• ½ cup tapioca flour
• 1 cup (slightly packed) dandelion petals
• 1 ½ tsp cream of tartar
• ¾ tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
• ¼ tsp sea salt
• 4tbsp unrefined sugar

This work this mixture with your hands until petals are fully coated in the flours, and no more large clumps remain.

Cut into the flour mixture until it resembles course meal:

• 4tbsp non-dairy butter or cream from the top of separated coconut milk

Mix up in measuring cup or small bowl:

• ½ cup rice milk or the watery part of the coconut milk
• 1 large egg

... and then pour over the flour mixture, mixing until dough forms large curds

Mix in:

• 1/3 cup currants

On baking sheet pat dough to a circle, 3/4” thick. Cut into 8 wedges, to represent the 8 solar festivals (and by extensions, the seasons, and the turning of the year). Brush top with

• 1 egg-white

Bake until just barely browned, and done, inside.

Our May Cakes Tradition:

Using a burnt stick from the Beltane fire, the children also scratch a charcoal X (rune: gyfu) into the bottom of one of the cakes, and the person who draws this lucky cake becomes the May King/Queen for the following year, is crowned with flowers. When the newly-crowned king/queen jumps over the fire, s/he symbolizes the turning of the year, and bountiful crops.

This year things were a little different; Tal was away, and I wasn't inspired to make May Day happen. So, being the resourceful person that she is, Rhiannon created May Day when he was home again! We had wild salad as usual, at a campfire dinner, followed by a very dark little maypole dance on a 1x2 with plastic wrapping ribbons tied onto it! Fabulous! Even without the traditional cakes, the colourful ribbons, etc. the real celebration is in love shared, and of course there was plenty of that!!

Wild Greens Season!

Nettle-picking at Bowen's biggest nettle area.

Of course there isn't really a "wild food season", because there are wild foods available all year round. But this is definitely the season to be out picking wild greens, and scoping out the health and whereabouts of those plants we'd like to use, later in the year.

I've been running Wild Food Walks this spring, as usual. They seem to get more popular every year. Recently we also went harvesting with my brother, Adrian... hence some photos.

There are many many wild spring greens we can eat, but I would have to say the top 10 -- those plants I take time to pick by the basketful -- are the following:

• nettles
• maple blossoms
• cattail shoots
• salmonberry shoots
• siberian miner's lettuce
• sheep sorrel
• bitter cress (mustard)
• dandelion petals
• flowering currant blossoms
• narrow-leaved plantain

Then of course there are also the wild teas available right now: douglas fir tip, pine needles, sequoia, and licorice root. Also a good time to harvest these en masse, dry them, and save them for teas throughout the year. (Burdock root, while excellent for tea/coffee, should have been harvested a month or so ago.)
 

Fresh plump maple blossoms -- chop them up and eat them as a salad with a sweet vinaigrette (or plain!)

Stinging nettles -- picked with gloved hands, nettles are wonderful dried for tea, or made into pesto, lasagna, or any other delight you can imagine with a spinach-like vegetable. We freeze as many as we can for later use.

Unschooling and Adaptability

Or...

Why We're Not Preppers: The Apocalypse is Already Here!

Organisms adapt. The world is an organism. It's changing right now. It has already changed. And by the time you finish reading this post there will be colossal changes again, some physical, some philisophical, and many of them changes in thought-patterns that will evoke their own colossal social changes, before too long. And we're adapting all the time. That's why we're not preppers. We're not waiting and planning for some apocalypse; we're finding ways to adapt to the changes that are already happening. Some of our family's choices to live more closely with the land seem to some like survivalist prepping, but really they are permanent lifestyle choices. I'm not storing food to get my family by until life as I know it returns; I'm learning to live in a way that I feel will be sustainable in the future. Because life as I know it has already changed past the point of no return. And... I like this change!! I find the challenge compelling, and the new ideas adventurous!

Yes, I store food, but that isn't survivalist preparedness, either! I have a pantry, I freeze or otherwise store any surplus produce in the summer, and I buy in bulk and keep buckets of grains and lentils, etc. -- not because I think it's all going to disappear anytime soon, but because it's MUCH more affordable, this way, and healthier: I like to eat whole grains, knowing that much of the nutrient quality is lost when they're rolled, ground, or otherwise broken and stored in shops, so I buy them whole and roll them myself, with the exception of some of my flours, which I keep frozen. That's a health choice, not a survivalist choice. Making choices for financial and health reasons is the definition of adapting to our changing world.

Big Changes: When I was in elementary school, the school got computers. One single family I knew had both a microwave and a computer. They were amazing. Now most people I know carry at least one much more powerful device everywhere they go, are connected to the Internet at all times, and have probably more such devices at home. This change has made us all aware of ourselves and our world in a very different way than was possible, before. But it's also caused (in my opinion) a whole lot of navel-gazing, and dependence on corporations and products we don't understand. Our global social structures are changing drastically, but we are losing connection to the physical world, too. Some people tell me that we're sentient beings, naturally evolving to a more sentient existence, where physical bodies and manifestations are no longer important. Well that sounds just lovely, but we're still living in physical bodies, our thoughts are still transmitted by neurons (which, the last time I checked, are living cells), even the thoughts themselves are waves; electrical impulses which affect everything around them... and quite frankly it's just much more rewarding to acknowledge this and live as part of our ecosystem instead of despite it.

What We're Doing to Adapt: 

Wild Food: I seek out, encourage, harvest and consume wild food. I also take people on wild food tours, introducing them to delicious things and vile things, poisonous plants and medicinals, ferns, vascular plants and trees and blossoms and fruits and roots... things that we can put in our mouths and taste, and others just to know about! Some of the things I show them are definitely starvation foods. But we are privileged suburbanites, pretending for a while that we could get by if we had to, while in fact none of these foods would sustain us. I bitterly suggest that if the shit really hit the fan, apocalyptically-speaking, we might kill each other over the need to fill our bellies with nutrition-poor foods, because that is what our bodies have now evolved to require. These wild foods - these handfuls of nutrient-rich greens and browns and yellows - are too much for our bodies to handle... and too little. But in getting to know the foods that surround us; in tasting the plants we might otherwise jog past, trample on, or mistake for "another prickly shrub", we integrate ourselves with our own ecosystem. We acknowledge the importance of our footsteps, and of the things we consume. We learn to appreciate and respect the soul of the earth that feeds us. And this connection is invaluable because it enriches and connects every other aspect of our lives.


Energy Efficiencies: We'd love to go off-grid, but can't afford it at this time, so we're skimping as much as possible on energy. We heat with wood. I haven't used my dryer in a year, now. It will benefit us financially, but also I'm not pouring cash into a corporation I don't align with, morally, and most importantly, I'm learning to value my resources. People think we're "living green", but in fact I think by urban/suburban standards, we're a green failure. Our carbon footprint, if you take into account our ancient Pathfinder vehicle, our wood heating, our barely-insulated home, the fact that my husband commutes to work, etc. etc. etc. is not compensated for by our garden, LED lightbulbs, and buying in bulk. Still... we keep on trying, and I do long for the day when energy-efficient living is not just a reality for the most financially-endowed.

Unschooling: Ah! Here it is! The reason this post belongs on this blog. Unschooling truly IS the big deal around here. Politically, it's a statement that WE CAN. We are raising happy, healthy, sociable and educated individuals, without the trappings (and yes I mean TRAPpings) of our government's chosen life-plan-system. The world is changing! And where education is concerned, it's headed back out of the doldrums! There was a time when putting children into big institutions was a new thing; when men looked at communist theories of working-class-creation and brought them into reality for North Americans. But that time is ending, now. People are waking up, and oh my goodness are we happy to be among the early ones! Unschooling is like wild food: you have to be partly into it for the adventure, because forging a new path is never without its challenges. But the rewards are enormous.

Unschooling is a redefinition of learning. It's life-learning. Learning about life, and learning throughout life. It's the open door to adaptability. We don't need an impending apocalypse to recognise the need to adapt. Evolution is all about adaptability, and humans have been evolving crazy-fast, lately. Unschooling gives us the tools and flexibility to move with the big changes, and adapt.

Wild Food for (F)unschool

Only three families, this week, but we went foraging in the meadow and surrounding woods & marsh for wild food. On the menu this week were licorice fern root, salmonberry shoots and petals, dandelion blossoms and young leaves, new cedar and fir needles for tea... We looked for maple blossoms, but none were low enough to reach. Then we got distracted with holding some baby and adult snakes.

Wild food is rather behind, with all the chilly weather, this year. We'll try again in a couple of weeks and see what else we can gather.

 

...and we went home with flowers in our hair...

(which appeared there while climbing around in a wild plum)

Wild Food: Miner's Lettuce, Fiddleheads and Cattail Shoots

First a couple of photos of our earthwalk (Tali's and my weekly trek out to pick up Rhiannon from preschool). We noted that the skunk cabbage, now at the tail-end of it's bloom, is shooting its leaves up -- look how tall!


And Tal became one with the moss, growing a green beard in his glory...



Wild Green Omelet
OK -- not totally wild; the eggs were farmed and the milk was store-bought... but we rejoiced, anyway! As you may have read on our other blog, our ducks recently started laying! What better reason for an omelet?!
We just gathered what we found on the way home from preschool, today, which happened to be the following:

• Siberian Miner's Lettuce leaves and buds -- this is just before they bloom, so the leaves are still rich, dark and juicy. They have a very distinct taste, somewhat similar to spinach (and many of the same vitamins as spinach, I believe). One of our May Day traditions is to pick a heap (with lots of flowers) and eat a big salad of it for Beltane dinner.
• Lady Fern Fiddleheads -- just in time! They're nearly all open! We just take a few at a time; something in my vague memory tells me that fiddleheads are not healthy if eaten in large quantities, so we don't. I'm really going to have to research that one!
• Cattail Shoots -- yummy, soft and starchy, they're also really beautiful in cross-section! They're just beginning here in the pond. We also harvested some roots to make cattail flour but then, as wild-fooding with kids goes... we lost them somewhere between the pond and home. Oops.

Stir-fried the fiddleheads and chopped cattail shoots a little, then added miners lettuce, and duck-eggs with a bit of milk and a dash of salt. Duck eggs are much more viscous than chicken eggs; they make a much denser omelet. But yum!

Recent Wild Foods

After 3 weeks of pneumonia (I'm almost better, now, thank you!), various graphic design projects and other adventures occurring (yes, we have a stove again, now, but now we have no hot water, the water-heaters can only be sold to tradespeople, but local tradespeople are too busy and do not answer telephone calls...etc...etc...), I've been having a bit of trouble finding time to post. Life, however, and therefore unschooling, continues despite my silence. So tonight I'll at least try to update on some of the most successful wild foods.

First a wee note on un-successful wild foods, though. Please remember that just because I post about our roaring successes, doesn't mean this Wild Food adventure is always easy. We've had plenty of failures. For the past couple of months we've been waiting to harvest some seaweeds, thinking they'd be perfect winter-fare... except that all the low tides have been at night (this has changed, now; and today we had our first 2008 tidepool adventure). We also tried tapping broadleaf maple, to discover that although they're reportedly bountiful, not a drop is flowing. (Did we miss it or is it yet to come? We've been watching the dry jugs for nearly a month, now.) Then there are always those days where we set out for some particular thing and either find it tastes putrid, is nearly impossible to harvest, or is simply non-existent. And then, if the universe smiles upon us and we find something tasty, we have to hope that everyone is still interested in the adventure: "Mama! I just want to climb trees, instead, today!" Heh. Still, when it works it works, and then the hurdles are forgotten in the joy of feeding ourselves from the wild.

Seaweeds
Today we went to the beach at low tide, explored the tidepools, and harvested a few goodies for dinner: Not on the menu, but fun to investigate were urchins, sun stars, sunflower stars, sea stars of various types, snails, shellfish, barnacles and crabs of various types, buffleheads, geese, and mallards... and rocks to climb on!

Saccharina sessilis or Laminaria saccharina (Sugar Kelp)
The kids felt accomplished after because it was easy to harvest, and plentiful. We cooked some with our rice for dinner, and it was (to me) like eating an ocean cloud. It made the rice so fluffy and tasty; I am drying the rest and plan to harvest it quite often, now that we know where to find it in large quantities. There is really no comparison, though, between fresh (albeit probably rather polluted) seaweed and dried. Yes we washed and soaked it well, thereby probably ridding it of it's toxins and nutrients...

Red Gracilaria (sea moss)
Apparently this is an aphrodisiac in the Caribbean; we think maybe it's a human-repellent -- it smells horrid. I ended up composting it; hopefully the garden will enjoy it more than we would.

Green Gracilaria
It doesn't smell bad, but since I wanted to look it up before eating it, I dried it instead of trying it fresh. I still haven't found any information on the green varieties, though I assume it's edible, based on the fact that the red variety is widely consumed.

Ulva (Sea Lettuce)
Our old standby! Taliesin thinks it tastes boring, but as long as it's mixed in with something tasty he doesn't mind it. We mixed it in with our rice and laminaria. We've not found it very plentiful anywhere on Bowen (yet), so there was none left over for drying.

How long can we keep our dried seaweed?Dr. Ryan Drum of OceanVegetables.com says that "In proper storage, most totally-dried sea vegetables stay nutritionally and medicinally secure indefinitely. The minerals do not degrade; the phycocolloids slowly fragment over years; the pigments slowly fade, especially the chlorophylls; fats slowly become rancid; proteins fragment slowly to polypeptides and amino acids."

Dandelions
We've been harvesting the young leaves for salads and as a cooked green in Nasi-Goreng (one of our favourite family meals), recently. My personal favourite is a salad made with 80% dandelion greens, 19% diced tomatoes, 1% chives from the garden, and a blended dressing of grapeseed oil, (lots of) grated fresh ginger, a couple of minced green onions, balsamic vinaigre, and honey. Yum.

I think we're going to have to harvest and store some of the young greens. They get rather bitter after the plant blooms, and ours are all showing fat buds in the centre of the leaves. Of course, then there are also the petals to eat, the blossoms to fry and eat with syrup... but still... I'd love to have some dried or frozen leaves to add to future meals.

Nettles
My family's tradition has been to eat nettles for Easter. (Sometimes my parents wonder aloud at how I became so "earthy" and "nature-loving"... is it beginning to become apparent, yet? Thank you, Mum and Pappa!)

So this Easter my Mum asked if we could all do a little "Wild Food Day" together to get the easter nettles from the edge of the property.

We did! Honestly, I've never loved nettles very much other than for tea (so hairy!), but my Mum cooked them with some onions and really they were very delicious, that way!