Doc Weed's Doin's

Back

2011-01-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that I have been away for over a year. Not good. I'll try to do better.

However, I just finished reading Michael J. Fox's book "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future" , in which he said that your life can be going along smoothly and you hit a patch of ice on the road, spin off, and everything changes. That is a description of my last year and a half, and I wanted to reflect on it.

A year and a half ago, I was blissfully conducting workshops and giving lectures to awaken American's to their wild food heritage and growing Dandy Blend (the business) very successfully.

Having reached the age of 70, I was struggling with a lot of arthritis in the knees, and doing some water therapy. All of a sudden my left hip went out, and my left leg went numb. As months went by, I graduated from one walker to a more sophisticated one, had to give up therapy because I could no longer get there, and was told by my ostepath that it was just the hip going out-- I'd have to replace it. Going up and down stairs was next to impossible, so we arranged to build a one level house near our children who were working the Dandy Blend business with us, and moved. (that is making a long story really, really short).

In July 2010, my wife retired. We went on Medicare and supplements, and I changed doctors. I had an MRI; it showed a textbook example of spinal stenosis. So I scheduled a lamenectomy and spinal fusion for L 3, 4 and 5 for December.

We moved in November, they operated in December. It is now January and I am back home from 4 weeks of undergoing therapy in a nursing home, and am progressing nicely, hopefully to a time when I can go back to doing lectures and workshops. Meanwhile, the kids are running the Dandy Blend business, and have taken over the tasks that kept me from what I most enjoy doing. So when I AM well enough, I won't be tied down and can get back on the road with the motor home and travel.

One thing the last few years has demonstrated to me has been an example of Fox's reflection that the limitations that come upon us are really a gift, not an impediment. When we first are restricted, we fight it, not wanting to admit that we can't do what we always have done. However, when it is clear we will no longer be able to live life according to the old status quo,and resign ourselves to it, we ask "what are we left with-- what capabilities do we still have", and find that we still have our voices, and can still teach. I realized that the time has now come to teach others in our family and others interested in doing what I do HOW I do it. We become mentors, passing down what we've learned to those on their way up.

And so that is the way it is. The family is now ready to take over the family business, and I am very proud of them.

We have a new website at www.dandyblend.com , and I will have a blog in there where I can share Dandy Blend things with you. This blog will stay open to share insights I get on life that I might want to incorporate into articles or books sometime in the future. Be well.

Raising children Amish-Style

2009-04-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

On our Forage Ahead listserv this past week, we have had a number of people question the advisability of exposing children under the age of 18 in foraging for wild plants. Typical of these is the one below:

"While I acknowledge that there is a certain small percentage of kids who are "responsible" and competent enough to make life-changing decisions (and, in a pinch, a lot of them/us must/have to), my bet is that kids make way more "bad" decisions than adults. The way you express this point sure put me in mind of my girl-child who, as an exasperated tween-ager, declared, "kids should rule the world, not adults!". I also bet that, in hunter/gatherer societies, gathering wild food was a multi-generational activity relying heavily on the expertice and guidance of the older members."

My original response to this :

"I have three kids: Karin and Kevin each knew and could be predictably expected to bring home the right stuff for at least 25 wild edibles by the time they were 4 and a half or 5 years old. Kori, who came along 16 years later, knew at least that many by the time she was 5 and was leading field walks to point out edibles to adults by the time she was 7. In Kaiserslauten, W. Germany, foraging is part of the kindergarten curriculum, and the kids go about harvesting lunch for themselves many times out of the year (personal testimonial from one of my graduate students who grew up in Kaiserslauten). Throughout Europe, children learn by participating with their parents on foraging outings (personal experience in France, Germany and Italy), from around the time they are old enough to walk.

The best way to teach plant taxonomy is to teach it to kids under the age of 6. It sticks for a lifetime!!"

Kat Morgenstern agreed:

I totally second what Peter says - learning by doing is the best way to teach kids about plants. I grew up in West Berlin, right in the city, yet learned to forage by time I was 5. My greatest vacation pleasures were my foraging jaunts in Scandinavia, picking wild strawberries, blue berries, raspberries and more, and also learning about poisonous plants. I can attest to what Peter said about the kindergarten education in Germany. Although I did not learn anything that useful at school or kindergarten, I now have a second home in the south of Germany and there they have so called Waldkindergarten' --basically Kindergartens that entirely take place outdoors, in the woods. Of course kids that are exposed to the elements like that will know the woodlands like the bottom of their foraging bag by the time they are old enough to go to school."

Kat Morgenstern, Sacred Earth Educational Forum and Networking Resource for Ethnobotany and Ecotravelhttp://www.sacredearth.com

Many of the posts responding to the original premise--that kids shouldn't be left alone to forage till they are 18 or so-- I am pleased to say, commented along the lines of Kat and testified to their and their children's positive experiences of foraging as young people. Intriguingly, several are from those, like Kat, raised or living in Europe, where the capabilities of young children is much more highly respected than seems to be the case here in the US. I don't know where we have gone wrong, but in my humble opinion, the problem with kids in the US is parents who don't respect what they are able to do, and, hence, don't talk to them and work with them as if they were little adults.

For those of you, like the author of the original post at the top of this blog, who find it incredulous that children, treated with respect, given responsibilities around the house and yard from a young age, and talked to as you would talk to and respect an adult, will develop into responsible young people at a very young age, let me tell you a story.

Part of my academic research for the last 38 years has been as a participant-observer anthropologist among the Northern Ohio Amish settlement, becoming part of several families over the years, and involving my university students in their lives as part of their education. What I have been looking for, and documenting, has been the lessons we have to learn from their lifestyle.

It is important to know that the Amish, a conservative Christian sect that originated in Germanic regions of Europe in the 1500's and began coming to the US in the 1700's, live lives separate from mainstream society, largely by the same rules they followed several centuries ago in Europe. They have no electricity, drive buggies, have limited access to phones, plow their fields with horses, and dress in 1800's style clothing.

Each class I taught at Cleveland State University had a three day Amish field experience designed to introduce students to the Amish way of dealing with the issues that were the subject of the class.

One year, I had a group of over 20 students aged 18 to 25 at dinner that was prepared for us by an Amish family. After dinner, the family had a practice of involving my kids in parlor games that were common in families that had no TV and radio and had to entertain each other in more old fashioned ways. For one game, an 8-year-old Amish boy got up to lead the game. As he was explaining the rules, it was obvious that he was a very confident and competent young man. At one point, his mother questioned a particular rule, and he, respectfully,graciously, gently and kindly, suggested that the rule was correct, as she would see as the game got underway. He handled himself in communicating with my students, all of whom were much older than he was, with the confidence and the assuredness of an adult. The rules were correct, and the game went very smoothly, and was a lot of fun.

I was impressed. By that time, my 11 year old son was becoming a bit hard to handle and I was looking for ideas, and I thought I'd look more deeply into why little Raymond Fisher was so adult-like at the age of 8.

I learned that Amish kids get involved in the family business--whether it be farming, home management, gardening, bringing in wood, a woodworking shop, or whatever-- when they were old enough to do simple chores-- usually around the age of 3. Working together with siblings, uncles, father, mother, and maybe other relatives at various times, they mastered the job they were doing, and once they were capable of doing something more advanced, graduated to that, and so on, until by the time they were 8 or 9, they could run half the farm, or half the house, or whatever. It is common to see 6 and 7 years olds, often girls, out mowing lawns with push mowers, one pulling with a head band and the other pushing, or boys of 8 or 9 plowing a field with a two-horse hitch. (One of the great stories the Amish love to tell is about a father who took his 8 year-old boy out into the field to plow for the first time. He instructed him that, in order to plow straight furrows, aim the horses at something in the distance and plow toward it. Then when he gets there, turn around, aim at something at the other end, and repeat it. The father then went off to do other chores, and came back around noon to pick the boy up to go in to lunch. To his chagrin, there wasn't a straight furrow in the field. The father said "I thought I told you to aim at something in the distance and plow toward it. What happened?" " I did, dad, but the cow kept moving!")

Anyway, by treating their children as little adults, giving them adult responsibilities, praising them when they do well, helping them get better when they need more instruction, and even adopting good ideas made by the children about how to improve the work , the children grow up with a sense of self-importance, self confidence, and devotion to their family members that doesn't happen when kids are treated like children. Over the last 30+ years I have seen this over and over in the Amish families I know.

After learning the practice, I adapted it to the raising of my children, and in every case, the result was the same as what I had seen with my Amish friends. They are all adults now, and doing the same with their children. A grandson and granddaughter have been involved in the family business since they were "tweenagers" ---9 and 10 years old-- and their maturity and ability has carried over into their school work and sports activities as they have grown into their teens.

This is the greatest thing you can do with children, and teaching children to identify plants when they are young as many of the respondents to this thread have alluded to, is one of the best ways to get started. I have to admit that I got started doing it when Kevin was 3, and he learned the plants and has never forgotten them, However, as he got older and I got busier, I slacked off, and needed the Amish experience to remind me about the way to raise responsible children.

Good luck. Hope this is of some use to some of you.

How to Make Your Lifetime a Continuous Vacation

2008-11-24T02:47:00.000-08:00

Our career–our life’s work– should be something that we thoroughly enjoy, not just something we do to pay the bills and put food on the table. And that is what this story is about--how one man went about choosing work that he still wonders why people are willing to pay him well to do. Or, in other words, how he has made a almost continuous vacation out of his career.

We live today in interesting and scary times–times in which the majority of Americans have virtually disconnected themselves from the land around them and all of the valuable gifts it contains.

Today, when money runs out and people are hungry, they go to food pantries. If THEY are out, they have no idea where to turn. It is the rare person or family who will scavenge in the trash bins behind grocery stores, and even rarer those who know which of the plants they are walking over every day are edible, and will stoop down, grab the leaves, and graze on them.

For most of the people in the world, this is not a problem. They know where to find food. Roughly 90% of the world’s population still gets part or all of its meals by foraging, hunting or fishing for them. In early spring, Italian women scavenge the hillsides for the young, tender spring greens– the dandelions and their relatives that are such delicacies for them. So do the French, the Germans, the Lebanese, the Greeks, and people in at least some 64 other countries. In England, backyard gardeners devote one whole raised bed to what they call their "wild garden," where they purposely cultivate what we would call weeds to supplement their supply of the same plants they find growing uncultivated among their tomatoes and onions; they want to make sure they have enough of the specific ingredients they need for particular recipes. Betzy Sullivan, Eastern European reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, when asked what the Beemer crowd did when evacuated from their expensive condos in Sarayevo during the Bosnian war, said “they went to the country, arranged with a landowner to build a shelter, and reverted to living off the wild plants growing there that they learned to eat as children and still knew well enough to go back to.”

It is only in America that we turn our backs on the wealth of tasty and nutritious foods that we literally walk over each day– the foods that are growing beneath our feet.

But this wasn’t always so. During the Great Depression and World War II that followed it, as well as in all times preceding it, it was common practice, at least for rural folks, to enjoy those plants which have since become known as “weeds” for many breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Mrs. Ann Kadlececk of Phillips, Wisconsin said that “It was the custom to rely on the land to provide the healthiest foods a homemaker could prepare for her family. There were lambsquarters early in spring and mushrooms by the pails full. Women knew how to cook and it had little to do with finances. The eggs and lambsquarters are something we still wait for each spring.”

It was that way with my family also. Back in 1948, my father died and left us with no money. My mother had no skills to support a family, but a friend told us that we could “live on lambsquarters” until she developed some.. Today, had she said that, she would have been laughed out of the kitchen. But then it was not unusual advice, because most Americans grew gardens and were familiar with what the soil had to offer. We knew that we were surrounded by mysterious wonders waiting to be discovered and harnessed for our use, and just needed someone knowledgeable to unlock the secrets. For us, that someone was Agnes Mare, a neighbor and friend from down the street.

For the next six months, while my mother learned a couple of trades that would earn her enough money to support us, my six-year-old brother and nine-year-old self would spend the early mornings before school gathering the young tops of lambsquarters and bringing them into the kitchen where mother would make the most amazing spinach dishes from them. For, after all, that is all that lambsquarters is– a wild spinach.

Lambsquarters was so good, in fact, that it got me to wondering what other plants growing underfoot were equally tasty and nutritious, and that wonder spring-boarded me into what has become my life’s work.

But it didn’t happen overnight.

Mother learned a skill, became a door-to-door saleswoman for Avon Products, then a sales person at Sears, and finally a clerk for the City of Pasadena, California, where she stayed until retirement and provided a good living for our family. I got older, and my interest in wild plants --replaced by an interest in girls, sports, and cars– faded into the depths of my memories to maybe be reawakened sometime later.

That “later” came sooner than I would have thought, however.

In 1956, the summer of my 16th year, I went to work in a sawmill in Northern California. I was big and strong for my age, and more than a little bit independent. My uncle had this friend who owned a series of sawmills nestled in amongst the California redwoods, and, in the course of a conversation with my mother, suggested that a summer in the woods would do me good. I thought so too.

So it was arranged. After I had finished my junior year in high school in 1956, a friend and I loaded my red ‘51 Ford pickup truck with camping gear and headed north along the Pacific Coast on US 101, which at the time was mostly a two-lane highway. The route took us past vast fields of vegetables growing in the blazing sun and the Monterrey Bay area depicted in so many of John Steinbeck’s novels, on up through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge. We continued north into the California wine region, where grapevines were growing everywhere, and finally reached the Redwood region of Willits and Weed, Scotia and Rio Dell.

We never knew California was such an extensive state– reaching over 1500 miles from bottom to top. We had started in Los Angeles, only a hundred miles or so from the Mexican border. Our destination was near the top, just south of Eureka, around a hundred miles south of the Oregon border. The challenge two adventurous but inexperienced 15-year-old kids had taken on was to traverse almost 1300 miles of mostly two-lane road and arrive in one piece, ready to go to work, in less than a week. We camped nights under the stars, and made breakfast in the morning on our little Coleman stove. We would drive from early morning till late afternoon, find a campground, and settle in for the evening, getting used to the equipment which would populate our bedroom and kitchen for the next two months.

After four days, we crossed into Humboldt County, and were greeted by a strange and wonderful, but totally different, land than we had been used to. Interspersed between the redwood stands were lush, fertile, green pastures filled with Holstein, Jersey and Guernsey cows, cone incinerators that burned the waste from the sawmills with wisps of smoke breaking the clear blue of the sky, and quaint little towns, each with its own four-lane bowling alley, gas station, general store, and shiny silver diner made from old rail cars. It was a totally new world for us, and we liked what we saw.

We arrived in Fortuna, the main market town for the dairy farmers and loggers alike, in late morning on the fourth day. We picked up some food and other supplies, got directions, and headed east on the narrow, winding country road leading to Carlotta, where we would be working for the next two months. On the way, we passed through Hydesville, another quaint farming village. After Hydesville, the road wound into the hills and, an hour later, we were in Carlotta, which, as far as we could tell, was nothing more than two sawmills, a general store and a post office. Not even a diner or gas station! Now all we had to do was figure out where we were going to live.

At the Post Office, we learned that there were plenty of campgrounds up the road–including Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park. The most intriguing, however, was a place managed by Strong’s Station, an old stagecoach stop along the road between Fortuna to Red Bluff (a town on the other side of the mountain). This was a private redwood grove, owned by Hammond Lumber Company, through which the Van Dusen River, from which we could get our water and in which we could take our baths, ran. It was beautiful and very quiet, and we assumed that we would be able to live comfortably and peacefully there for the next two months.

We soon learned that “comfortably and peacefully ” weren’t quite the right words, but we had no way of knowing what adventures were coming our way when we plunked down our $12 a week camping fee on that first day. We unlocked the gate to the redwood grove, went in, locked the gate behind us, drove down the dirt track through the giant trees, and found the perfect place to set up camp on a bluff overlooking the river.

What a summer it turned out to be! The adventures started the first night and included, but were not limited to, the following:

● That first night it rained–hard– and, not having ditched the tent,we got flooded out. Our sleeping bags were soaked, our clothes were soaked, and, since the rain wasn’t about to stop, we had no way to dry things out. So we slept in wet sleeping bags and wore wet clothes for the next two days.

● Bathing wasn’t as easy as we were led to believe. The water was ice cold, and the only good way to get into water deep enough to bathe in was by diving off a 16 foot cliff into four feet of water. My buddy Bill, fortunately, was a competitive swimmer and diver, and taught me how to make shallow dives. So, every afternoon when we got home, we’d strip down and dive in, soap in hand, to wash off the day’s grime. It was exhilarating at first, but after about a week, we got used to it, and soon began taking our unusual method of entering our ice-cold bathtub for granted.

● Fascinating people attached themselves to us. One was Dutch, for whom we provided lodging, or at least a place to pitch camp for about three weeks. Dutch, last name unknown, was the millwright (or sawmill mechanic-troubleshooter) in the mill where we worked. He was only there for part of the two months, but the reason for that will come later in the story. The thing about Dutch is that he was a turtle. Everything he owned– all his clothes, bedding, cooking gear, food supplies, toiletries, anything he needed– was contained in his ‘50 Chevy panel sedan with “Bluebird Cleaners” written on the side. He traveled everywhere in it, and when he was done traveling for the day, he slept in it. From the first night on he was our cook, conjuring up the most remarkable meals in his Dutch oven, which he buried in a pit each morning, covered with hot rocks and dirt, and dug out when we got home each evening. After dinner, it was story after story of life in the logging camps and sawmills and the quirky personalities that he had known in his days. Oh, how I wish I could remember even one of those stories, but I don’t. I did learn, however, valuable lessons about living a successful nomadic life which has stood me in good stead ever since as I travel this grand country in my motor home conducting workshops on edible wild plants. Intrigued by Dutch’s example, I, too, have become a turtle, at least part-time.

● The story wouldn’t be complete without at least mentioning the two teenage girls who came camping in our woods one weekend, and became our girlfriends for the summer. Wonderful memories, and lessons in sharing for Bill and I, as we had to schedule the pickup truck so each would have enough time to go to Fortuna for private time with our respective girl. The hills around Fortuna were never more beautiful than on those nights, sitting in that pickup truck looking out over the dairy farms in the valley with a delightful, soft, and cuddly companion by my side. (I'm surely glad that trucks can't talk and embarrass us with the tales they'd have to tell.) From this standpoint, (and most others for that matter) for me, summer ended all too soon.

● They, however, weren’t the only girls who impacted on our lives during that summer in our peaceful and pristine redwood forest. There was also that weekend when a twenties-something (could have been thirties-something, I suppose, but she looked good to us) singer, who was booked to perform at Strong’s Station, and her two “handlers” parked their travel trailer across from our tent in the woods. The pheromones she was giving off were overwhelming, and during their stay there, we romanced her as much as we dared, always aware of potential retribution which might be meted out on us by her two goons should we happen to explore too deeply into our options. We more-or-less minded our manners, and parted company peaceably when her contract was completed.

● Pulling green chain (removing fresh, rough-cut lumber from a rapidly moving conveyor belt and stacking it in proper piles) next to a wiry 66 year-old man who was still working as hard and making the same wage as I was, helped me realize that, when I was 66 years old, I didn’t want to still be doing the same thing. I decided right then and there to make something more of my talents, so that I wouldn’t be stuck in a dead-end job with no retirement or medical benefits when I arrived at my dotage. I wanted my golden years to be a bit more golden than that.

● What surprised me the most, however, was how small and wiry, but incredibly strong, the average logger and sawmill worker was. I went into the woods at 6'3" and 240 lbs of solid muscle, and got harder and stronger the longer I stayed there, so that by the time we left for home and started back to school, I was probably the strongest and best-built student at Rosemead High school. By contrast, NONE of the men I worked with were over 5’ 8" or 5' 9", and practically all were thin and wiry. However, there wasn’t one of them whom I could beat at arm wrestling even by the end of summer. There also was none of them whom I would have wanted to be angry with me and then meet in a dark alley at night.

● Life in the woods was hard for these guys, and, while they were fascinating characters, they were more than a little rough around the edges. There were lots of drunken nights at local bars, wives leaving husbands and vice versa for what they perceived as “greener pastures”, and the periodic fight. We made friends with one of our co-workers named Claude Batty, who lived in a shanty with his wife and a couple of kids. One day, we went home with him at lunch and found that his wife had run off with a guy she had met at the bar, leaving him and the children to fend for themselves. He was heart-broken, and we, being young and inexperienced in such things, had no way of consoling him.

● One characteristic of many of these men, especially the day-workers–-management was more responsible–- was that they would seek work after they had run out of money, work hard until they had earned enough to go on another drunken binge, quit, and then come back to work again at the same mill or another one when they had again run out of money, and this cycle kept repeating itself. It didn’t matter if they were married or not. Years later I discovered that this was true also of blue-collar workers in the woods and blueberry packing plants of Maine. They were interesting, rough, but playful guys who were full of stories to tell– a fascinating crowd from whom to learn about that particular perspective on life. What you learned mostly, however, was how NOT to live your life if you wanted to be really happy. I’ve learned, over the years, that those often are the best and most useful lessons, and stick the longest in your head.

● Driving the 20 miles or so in to work and back home each day started out as a very scary adventure. Rt 36 was a narrow former stagecoach route that crossed the mountain between Fortuna and Red Bluff. Over the years, it had been paved, but not widened very much. Logging trucks, both empty and full, considered this road their very own, and, even when the fog was thick, would come barreling around the tight corners at death-defyng speeds. Time was everything, and their continued employment depended on them getting logs to the mill and returning for a new load as fast as possible. Fortunately, they were masters of the road, and no matter how fast or dangerous it seemed, they rarely drifted over the center line into our lane. Within a couple of weeks, we came to know the road as well as they did, and long before the end of summer, we were matching them in speed and agility in our little red ‘51 Ford pickup.

There were lots of other memories of those two months in the woods. The little general store at about the halfway point with its old-fashioned crank telephone, and crackers with a layer of raisins smushed in the middle that were so good that I practically lived on them are a couple. But probably the most significant action I took that summer, in looking back, was making friends with the Ashcraft boys, Donnie and Dickie. They worked with us in the mill but lived with their parents, Ruby and Dick, in town. Ruby was the town Postmistress, and Dick was the foreman at the Carlotta Mill, across the street from the Southern Humbolt Mill where we worked. Both mills were owned by Orban Lumber Company, which was captained by my uncle's friend.

The Ashcrafts adopted us and involved us in whatever they were doing as a family as if we were their own sons. This included going berry picking almost every afternoon after work while the berries were in season. These huckleberries, salmonberries and other treats, the names of which I don’t remember any longer, became the ingredients for some of the most luscious pies and jams I have ever tasted.

The other item of defining significance was stripping the ripe cherries from the wild black cherry tree in the field next to our camp, from which we could only get the cherries by psyching out the bull in the field next to the tree.

It was the berries and the cherries that reawakened my curiosity about “what else in the wild would make good food,” and set me off in the direction which has become my career. From then on, I was looking for wild harvests whereever I went, whether they were cumquats, persimmons or wild greens, and for stories from the people who valued them as food and medicine.

It was during the summer of 1956 that I began asking and observing and learning everything I could about how people used wild plants to enhance their lives. While I started college a couple of years later (I put in some military service time between high school and college) as an animal husbandry major, within a year I had switched to biology, and by my junior year to botany. The last happened when I, being lazy, realized that zoologists had to run after animals. Plants stayed put.

I have now spent my last 52 years learning how various cultures use backyard weeds and other wild plants for food and medicine, and have written eight books and countless magazine articles about it, as well as conducting workshops and seminars and giving keynote speeches at conferences in the US and Europe. This pursuit has taken me into fields, farmhouses and dairy barns all over Europe, Canada, and the United States, including Hawaii and Alaska, both learning and teaching what I have learned to others.

When I entered college, I noticed that all my friends were majoring in what they felt would give them enough money to take two weeks off each year to do what they wanted to do. I said. “No way. I want two 6 month paid vacations a year.” So I decided what I would do on vacation and majored in it. And, except for about eight years in my 40's, that is exactly what I have been doing.

And that is how what I became fascinated by when I was nine years old has become what I have done on my 52 year "paid vacation."

Peter A. Gail, Ph.D.
Director
Goosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living.

Where to Start in Developing Foraging Skills

2008-10-31T08:17:00.000-07:00

Sam Thayer is a highly knowledgeable and accomplished forager and is very comfortable living on the provisions nature provides. His book Forager's Harvest was a classic as soon as it was published. But Sam, who is very forceful in expressing himself, occasionally has some opinions not always shared by everyone else. Here is some of what he has recently said, most of which I agree with:

"You can always fish with the wrong lures or bait, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and complain about how hard it is. Some hunters almost never get a deer. Some do easily. Efficiency in foraging is about having skills and knowledge and experience, not about trying things a few times as a novice and then making premature conclusions about things we are only slightly familiar with. Certainly there are a lot of people with ridiculous notions about learning 3 green vegetables and then going into the wilderness and living off of them. Those fantasies have no bearing on reality, though. There is a lot more than greens out there, even if people don't know about it."
_____________
I bristle at the suggestion that living for a time primarily off of three green vegetables is a "ridiculous notion". It is a place to start, and I know of many people who have at least started that way, especially in and after the Great Depression. My family and I lived on a diet primarily made of lambsquarters for six months back in the late '40's, and a friend supplemented the meagre rations of a German concentration camp by grazing on dandelion leaves for two years during WWII.

I always go back to the reality that no matter how much people contend that living off the land is difficult, the world is filled with native peoples who have lived since the beginning on nothing but what the land provides, and they are still here. They have developed the knowledge and skill to make do with what they have been given, and their bodies are adapted to the reality that sometimes they may have to go hungry for a while.

Most of us who teach survival skills don't live that way day-by-day, and certainly not a year at a time, or a whole lifetime, knowing nothing else, like these native peoples do.

The longest I have gone at one stretch was two months one summer while doing research for my doctoral dissertation, and I had little trouble doing it for that long. There was plenty of plant foods and fish available to keep me fed and healthy, and my base camp, with all the implements and shelters and furniture I had made, stayed in one place, so I didn't have to keep remaking them in new locations. Flint and steel worked just fine for starting fires when I ran out of matches. I never had to do anything with a fire piston or bow drill, and still haven't mastered either of them, although I have friends that have.

But I had arrived at that place after providing for myself off the land for varying periods of time in various habitats for 16 or 17 years prior to it, and it was just part of my life.

People have to realize that there are really no shortcuts to learning the skills for living off the land. It takes time and comes step-by-step.

But that raises the question about what the FIRST step is. The first step, quite frankly, my friend Sam, is to get people started, and to do that you teach them a few common plants that are easily identified and abundant in their area, and motivate them to begin using them regularly in their diet. Once that has become a habit, you introduce them to a few more. Somewhere along the way, they get excited by their new discoveries, and that jump-starts them to begin exploring on their own until, finally, their facility with this new-found way of living begins to develop.

So, my friend, you START with green vegetables, usually the dark green, nutrient-dense invasive types like dandelions, plantain, stinging nettle and lambsquarters. This is not the "be all and end all" of "survival training". But for many people, if that is all they have, and the plants are abundant in their urban or suburban surroundings, they CAN get enough nutrients to keep going for extended periods of times if supplemented by small quantities of less nutritious, but calorie rich, domestic foods such as tubers and familiar nuts and fruits. Knowing something is better than not knowing anything.

I, too, find interesting how hard most people think it is to do such things as separate dandelion florets from the involucral bracts and receptacle, and how amazed they are when shown how easy it is, and how fast you can generate a cup of florets to include in a recipe. The truth is that in every profession, it takes a long time to develop skills to the level that you can do the job fast enough to make a living at it. I have an Amish friend who wanted to be an upholsterer, but had to wait until his son was old enough to work and help support the family before he could devote enough time to developing the skills to end up upholstering enough furniture each day to make enough to support his family on his own. Same with cabinet making, electrical and plumbing work-- anything.

As you so often emphasize yourself, there are no shortcuts. Becoming knowledgeable and skilled in anything is a slow, plodding process, often involving years in college, or as an apprentice, or in some other training program. You have spent a lifetime developing your skills, and you are very good at what you do. You can teach one skill to someone very quickly, such as how to identify and use bitternut hickory, and if they are surrounded by them, they can live on that one plant for as long as it lasts, but that knowledge wouldn't do them any good if they were on a survival trip in spring or summer, unless they had stored enough for use then.

Hence, the inability to pass on a lifetime of skills in a two-hour class session. It is better to pass on enough knowledge about a few long-season plants to start people on their journey and get excited about it, and then let them develop from there.

Having said that, I'm not about to challenge you in a wild rice gathering contest. But come on down and we'll see who can peel dandelion flowers the fastest!! Gotta get the rhythm...........

Peter

A voice from India about using "uncultivated" foods

2008-10-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

It is always better to get the message directly from the one who is actually involved in the action. I have for years reflected that as many as 90% of the world's population gets part or all of their daily sustenance from wild foods. I call them "volunteer vegetables"-- Madhavi, in the post below, calls them "uncultivated foods"-- I think I like "uncultivated foods" better.

Anyway, hear what he has to say, and then read my comments following. This is particularly pertinent for those who contend that you can't get enough nutrition to survive solely from plant foods:

In a message dated 10/29/2008 8:15:26 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, madhavisb@yahoo.com writes:

Dear All,
I've been reading posts from this group for ages and at first I only joined because I wanted to know what people in the "west" ate apart from buying from a super market. I was horrified when I met series of people from America and Europe who had never actually eaten what we call "normal" or uncultivated or wild foods. When I spoke with my mom about how fantastic this group was, she looked seriously unimpressed and asked me whether I'd completely lost it. And then it came to me that uncultivated or wild food is nothing new in our culture. It's always there, especially for the poor. The whole notion of 'weed' doesn't really exist.

It's only in the large cities like Mumbai/Bombay or Delhi that people are forgetting the range of veggies, roadside greens and tubers, uncultivated plants growing between rows of domestic farm crops, aquatic plants, small fish and shellfish in local ponds and streams, and small animals. But even here we still pick from nearby trees and parks and gardens. A very everyday domestic occurence is the picking of the buds, flowers and young leaves of the kachhnar tree (I think it's the bauhinia), the sainjan ki phali (means the fruit of the drumstick tree), and millions of other things that are incorporated in the diet without us actually noting them down. In rural India these are what sustain a large chunk of the families. Sometimes as much as 50 to 60 percent of the diet comprises "wild foods".

It is I suppose pretty much a labour intensive job collecting these and as a result they cannot possibly have any market value (which is sometimes a dashed good thing, considering what GM foods has done to a major portions of the indigenous plant varieties in this country, with active participation from the Indian government and the thoroughly stupid and ignorant bureaucrats).

In most rural areas agriculture of the poor is characterised by the celebration of bio-diversity of their lands. Sometimes a minimum of 8 to 12 crops are grown by them at the same time and space on their lands. The diversity of their fields and lands is their way of celebrating nature and establishing a communion with it. A major reason for this spiritual celebration of diversity is the fact that,over the millenia, uncultivated foods have been the source of life for the poor. Many types of green leaves are consumed as veggies and most are rich sources of calcium, iron, carotene, vitamin C, riboflavin and folic acid. There is a voluntary rural development organisation called the Deccan Development Society which has been working in Medak district over the last two and a half decades that has been looking into the role of uncultivated foods here. Another strange thing that happens here is that some wild plants are gathered and consumed by all sections of a local community and some are consumed by only a group/or a particular caste.

I realise that a large part of my post is not really relevant to this group but I keep getting the feeling that for the poorer people living in western countries it is cheaper to eat a McDonald's burger than to eat clean food. And it is only people who are well-to-do who can afford to go foraging or eat organic food. Warm regards
Madhavi

Most of this post is incredibly relevant to this group, especially those who are contending that wild plant foods don't provide enough nutrition to sustain people. Plant foods are not just leaves, which, granted, have few calories. However,they DO have a full range of vitamin and mineral nutrients, along with some protein, carbohydrates, and fats. But when people "graze" throughout the year, they eat not only the leaves, but also the roots, shoots, buds, fruits and other parts as they become edible. Many of these parts are much richer in calories. If you know a range of plants that produce different edible parts throughout the year, you are getting a range of nutrients AND calories in your diet. You are very seldom eating just leaves.

Uncultivated plant foods,as part or all of the diet, sustain a great majority of the people of the world every day of their lives, supplemented by occasional animal foods. A good bit of the world is vegetarian, and gets along quite well on the food that they automatically harvest as they walk by it. In most cases, as Madhavi said, they take this food for granted, and don't think of it any differently than they do the stuff they plant and cultivate.

When I taught at Cleveland State University, my students were assigned an oral history project in which they interviewed their older relatives to determine the wild foods they had once eaten, or in some cases were still eating. Most American kids didn't know what I was talking about, and asked me for examples. When I showed them pictures of the plants, they recoiled, exclaiming "Yuk, those are just weeds. Who would eat those?" Students from the Middle-East, Southern Europe, Germany and elsewhere also came up to me and thanked me for showing them what plants I was talking about. They said that they would never have thought of these plants, because in their countries they weren't "weeds" at all, but just part of the herbs they ate every day. Now that they knew the plants I was talking about, they could write volumes about their experiences with them.

In 2004, I had the honor to be one of the delegates and presenters at the first Terra Madre Conference in Turin Italy, hosted by Slow Food International. As part of my participation, I had organized a session on "Hunting and Gathering Economics-- The Role of Wild Food in the Cultures of the World." Sitting next to me on the dias, and presenting after me, was a Native Siberian, dressed elegantly in her elaborately-beaded tribal regalia. When she got up to speak, she told of their native diet of wild foods and hunted game and fish that had sustained her people since the beginning of time, and how the government was establishing rules to make foraging a criminal offense, punishable by jail time. She appealed to the 5000 delegates from 130 countries present at the conference to come to their aid in persuading their government to drop this pursuit.

When I taught in Europe back in the 1980's, I discovered the extent to which the common people in England, France, Germany, and Italy rely on the wild edibles that volunteer in their gardens and in the fields around them to add diversity and excitement to their diet. Italians can't wait till spring to harvest the young, mostly Asteraceous (sunflower family) greens for salads and cooked greens. Dandelions and chicories (which they call "Chigoda") are the chief ones, and in some places in rural Italy are almost the regional vegetables. The English and Belgians, when "weeding" their gardens, put all the uncultivated as well as cultivated edibles in their colanders, and take them inside to use in their cooking. One Belgian farmer's wife used stinging nettles from their farm to make two rounds of delicious stinging nettle cheese a week, which she sent to market. I bought a portion of it at the cheesemonger's stand in the weekly Kendal Market in the Lake District of England, and reveled in its tangy flavor.

As much as half of these people's yearly harvest is made up of plants which volunteer in their garden. Many even have a section they call their "wild garden", in which they encourage the growth of favorite wild vegetables so that if they come up short,in their "weeding", of the ingredients they need for a recipe they want to make that evening, they can go to this special plot and supplement their harvest. n.

So, thank you, Madhavi, for the first person testimonial about the value and commonality of these foods. The reality in most countries is that the bulk of the population is "poor". Very few are "rich", and only a relatively few more are even middle- or upper-lower- class enough to be able to afford to get all their needs met by purchasing them from stores. "Only in America" is it "cheaper to go to McDonald's for a burger than it is to eat clean food", as you say.

A final reflection on Madhavi's observation that in America it is "only people who are well-to-do who can afford to go foraging." It is not so much an economic issue as it is a mind-set issue. Here, poor people have become conditioned to the idea that only bought things have value and command respect. Foraging is viewed by those of that mind-set as a "dirty activity." It is an affront to their dignity to get their hands dirty harvesting "weeds" to eat. People who do that aren't respected, and respect is everything in their eyes. Besides, they wouldn't know which wild plants were which anyway.

Peter A. Gail, Ph.D.
President/Director
Goosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living
3283 E. Fairfax Road, Cleveland OH 44118

Surviving the Coming Hard Times

2008-10-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how much time has passed since I last posted an entry here. It has been busy -- lots of workshops and classes, trip to Alaska where I saw red elderberries for what I think is the first time --- this old-timer's disease makes me forget sometimes, because I vaguely remember seeing them in Oregon back in 2005-- and all sorts of other adventures.

I am prompted to post now because of a thread on Martial Law and Food, and the possibility that the domino effect will put everyone out of jobs and there won't be any food in the supermarkets, and such-like, that has appeared on the ForageAhead listserv in the past couple of weeks. After it had gone on ad-infinitum and gotten more and more bizarre, about not enough rats and pigeons to feed everyone in New York City, so you'd have to find other things, some of us began to say "Too much, already. Let's get on to other things." Here is what got me cranked up---pammunkey's post which said:

"I think this whole discussion is alarmist; kinda reminds me of those folks who hole up in caves waiting for the world to end. I think it's much more likely that areas of the country might suffer a natural or man-made disaster, and if you're stuck there, you might have to resort to foraging in the absence of dependable supplies of food and water. Even that might be a stretch.

To which I responded:

"WAIT, WAIT..........You mean I don't have to stay in this hole anymore?

Whew. What a relief!

The reality, folks, is that nobody can take away what is in your head. If you begin learning which plants are edible and how to use them, how to find water, how to make shelters (and maybe better yet, have some shelters already earmarked and prepared), and go about it quietly and systematically, when you need the information, you will have it. It is an evolving thing, not something you have to race to do something about. The key is not to wait till the last two months to get started.

Back in the old Y2K days, I was on the lecture circuit with a couple of Y2K expo producers. 6 months before the end of the year, I'd get 50 or 60 people for each lecture, but as we got closer to the end of the year, the crowds began swelling -- at first to 100 or so, and in November and December 200 and more-- in each case basically asking me to teach them all that I know in 2 hours. In college, we called this "cramming" . In survival, it's just plain stupid. What has to happen is for each person who wants to be prepared to begin learning one new thing about living off the resources around you every day or so, and begin practicing it. Got lambsquarters in your yard? Start harvesting the young tops and making spinach dishes out of them. Find some Oxalis? Make some sorrel soup out of it. And so on. Just keep adding to your knowledge. You drive by a secluded rural property that looks interesting? Look into it and see if it suits you. If so, buy it, and fit it out as an escape location for your family. Build an appropriate shelter, find water, etc. and then it is there.

In truth, we are not worrying about feeding the whole city of New York on rats or pigeons. All we care about is ourselves, our family, and maybe some of our friends, all of whom we might be able to accommodate on that little secluded piece of land, and feed on the wild plants around there, and on the fish in the pond if we have one, and on animals we can harvest from the land. Learn the skills to do that, practice them on the land, and when the time comes YOU will be ready. There never will be a time that everyone will want to do this, so don't worry about everyone. Just be ready to take care of yourself using what is around you.

At least that is the way I am approaching it. This really isn't rocket
science.

Peter Gail

RELIEF FOR STRESSED OUT BUDGETS

2008-07-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

My apologies for all the repetition in the past few blogs. I am doing this, quite frankly, to conveniently save writings that I will want to use for various purposes over the next year or so, in a place where I can find them easily. In each, I present much of the same information, but expressed in different ways. My suggestion to those of you who have been following these writings over the past months is to quickly scan a new blog to see if it says something in a way that catches your attention, or imagination, in a different way than was done before. If you find something particularly good, please let me know in a comment. That will help me decide which wording to choose for the introductory chapter of the new book I am working on. Thanks.

__________

Here is a press release I prepared this morning for the Edible Wild Plant Workshop we will be conducting on Saturday, August 9 at Lucky Penny Farm in Garrettsville OH. For more information and/or to register for it, contact Abbe Turner at 330 527 0548, or at luckypennyfarm@verizon.net. Last year it attracted over 170 people, of which 50 had to be turned away for lack of space. This year, there will be three two hour sessions starting at 9:00 a.m., so we can hopefully accommodate all who want to participate. To make sure you are one of them, however, please get your reservation in within the next couple of weeks.

______________

Life goes in cycles. There are years of plenty—plenty of food, plenty of money, low gas prices—and years where all the negatives seem to line up in a row and threaten to crush us, like now. High oil prices help us realize, by all the things in our life that now cost more, how much we depend on oil.

The result of all these increases? More and more people are finding that they don’t have enough income to pay rent AND buy food! Realities we never thought we’d face are now here and changing our priorities. We are beginning to look for help and at least some of the solutions relate to buying our food from local growers to save on transportation costs.

“At least part of the answer for providing food locally lies right outside our back door,” says Dr. Peter Gail, Director of Goosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living, in Cleveland OH. “It’s organic, free and there’s absolutely nothing more local than food growing 6 feet from your kitchen door.”

These vegetables grow in cracks between your patio stones, in your flower beds, plant containers, around the corners of your garage or barn, in your vegetable garden and in unsprayed lawns. And they are real vegetables—plants brought here over the last 200 years by our ancestors as food and medicine, and still used by the cultural groups that brought them, both here and in their homeland.

Up until now, we have called these plants “weeds”, and spent lots of time and money trying to kill them. And up till now, attempts to get us to recognize these plants as vegetables have fallen on deaf ears, because we didn’t need them. There were plenty of vegetables and fruits at reasonable prices on grocer’s shelves, and we had plenty of money to buy them.

But that’s not necessarily true any more. Times are getting tighter all over. Unpredictable weather has reduced crop availability below demand for many commodities. Fuel costs and scarcity are driving prices up, and adding to the stress on all of our budgets.

Gail says “The time has come to begin familiarizing ourselves with the foods around us. The problem, however, is which weeds are the true vegetables? How do we recognize them, and what do we do with them to make them really tasty after we know what they are? “

On August 9, at Lucky Penny Farm in Garrettsville, you will have a chance to find out. Gail and his staff will introduce you to eight or ten of the best wild vegetables, give you a chance to taste them raw and cooked into delicious dishes, and send you home with recipes.

Paying the rent AND supplying food in an economic crisis

2008-07-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

In the Mormon Church, all members are strongly urged to store at least three months ---and ultimately a full year's supply-- of staples to fortify ourselves against whatever crises might occur in our lives.

Right now, the crisis seems to be that fuel costs so much that people can't pay for the gas to get to work AND for food to feed their family.

Those families that heeded this counsel and planned ahead are at least partially protected from this economic crisis. However, most people, even in the Mormon Church, are unaware that an abundance of food--locally grown, organic and free-- is right under their feet, just waiting to be of service.

From time immemorial, staples people store as food supplies have been white stuff --- flour, sugar, rice, beans, lard (source of fat or oil), milk (used to be the cow, now it is dry milk), oats, wheat, and so on.

Other than the rice and beans, this isn’t dinner—it is foundation! Anyone who lives on just this for any period of time is going to be seriously berift of basic vitamins and many of the minerals, especially the trace ones.

It is important to remember that the pioneers loading their wagons with bags of this stuff, and the settlers planting their roots in the West, didn’t intend this to be their only food. It was the bread, the pie crusts, the starches, the proteins, the fats, into which they would sandwich the berries, greens, meats and fish that they would harvest along the way and grow in their gardens and forage from the wild lands around them once they got settled.

Today’s society has largely drifted –no, better to say “hastened” or “rapidly run” ---away from a lifestyle that forages, hunts and grows their own, and then cooks from scratch. From the time women went to work in the early 1950's and got out of the kitchen (and garden), the door has been opened for processed and fast food purveyors to enter, so that now, in 2008, those in the under-50 crowd who know how, and actually enjoy, cooking are becoming rarer and rarer. It is easier to open a box, add water, heat and serve.

This crowd is in for a rude awakening, and it seems to be coming sooner rather than later.

I was listening to NPR as I woke up to birds singing and the sun rising at my grandson’s scout camp in Central Ohio recently. The newscaster, who was probably no more than 30 or 35 herself, was reporting that, with the increase in fuel prices cutting deeply into everyone’s pocketbook, many families are having to choose between paying the rent and buying food for their families. There just isn’t enough money to do both. And, so many are in this situation that Hunger Centers and Food Pantries are unable to keep up with the demand, and are having to send families home hungry.

Now, back in my childhood days, this is where the Superhero—Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman and the rest—would swoop in, eradicate the bad guys who were creating the problem, and return the system to the status quo.

So where are the superheros now? Frankly, we don’t need them. In Christian scripture, Matthew 6:24-34, Christ asks (paraphrased) “Why worry about what you will eat. Don’t I feed the sparrows and aren’t you more important than them. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and I will feed you”

So, if God is going to feed us, where is He hiding all that free food?

The answer is as simple as opening our eyes and looking around to see what has been invisible up to now. More specifically, stand on a proper untreated lawn—one that hasn't been treated with chemicals and still has all the plants in it —and look down at the ground beneath your feet. For, right there, in most cases, you will find between 4 and 6 vegetables that are tastier when prepared properly and more nutritious than anything you can buy in the store. During the Great Depression and World War II, when food was rationed or unavailable, many mothers fed their families very successfully on these plants.

Where did these vegetables come from? In most cases, they were brought to America by our ancestors, mostly at the behest of the emigration companies sponsoring them who would tell them to bring seeds of all the plants they valued for food and medicine with them, because who knew whether they would find them in this new land.

So dandelions, plantain, lambsquarters, red root pigweed, purslane and many other plants came with every shipload of immigrants. Plantain was so valuable that it traveled with them to every early English and Scottish settlement. Before they arrived, there had been no plantain. After, they were so common that the Natives called the plant “White Man’s Foot”.

The bottom line is that 80% of the plants we call weeds and pay millions for chemicals to eradicate each year are really the vegetables and medicines our ancestors made great sacrifices to bring here for us to have. Each group had different ones, however, and as the seeds escaped from their gardens, they entered other gardens in which the inhabitants didn’t know their value, and so to them they were a nuisance, and had to be eliminated.

Today, people walk by veritable patches of delicious produce and DON'T EVEN SEE THEM. They are totally invisible, just a mass of green. To test this recently, I found a patch containing jewelweed, plantain, violets, dandelions, oxalis and poke mingled together and asked a bunch of scouts and their leaders to look at the patch and tell me what they saw. Many couldn't even distinguish differences-- they all looked the same to them--- and none had any idea that any of them were actually food. (After all, none of them were wrapped in plastic!) What a surprise they had when they tasted the sour grass (Oxalis) and found out how good it was.

This is the sad situation we are currently in—not only don’t we know how to grow gardens or to cook from scratch and preserve foods for winter anymore, we don’t even know what is food and what isn’t!! Seems we have a lot of work in front of us.

The first thing we need to do is identify in our community all the old folks, especially the ethnics, for whom wild plants were important in their early years, and who still remember some or all of them. This isn’t hard to do. Just hop on a bus of seniors on a tour and ask ”How many of you have ever eaten dandelions?” Half the hands will go up. There you are—at least half of those will remember how to prepare them so they are tasty.

And I’ll guarantee you that most of those will jump at the chance to teach what they know if given an appreciative audience.

On August 9, 2008 at the Lucky Penny Farm in Garrettsville OH, we will be introducing people to this delicious produce. If you want to be one of the beneficiaries of this experience, call Abbe Turner at 330 527-0548 or email her at luckypennyfarm@verizon.net.

Organic, Locally Grown, and Free for the Harvesting:

2008-06-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

Holden Arboretum scheduled me to teach a workshop in September, and have been hounding me for the description and a bio. I was in hospital this past weekend receiving a new stent so my blood will flow better, got out on Saturday afternoon, and, by God, the blood IS flowing better! When that happens, watch out. All kinds of ideas flow into my head. So from 12:30 a.m. to 2:15 a.m. , I reflected on what it is that I really stand for-- that I really feel strongly about-- and how it differs from what other edible wild plant educators do.

John Glass and I had begun this reflection as we returned from a lecture I gave for the 50th Anniversary of the Five County Home Economist Association in North Central Ohio about a month ago. John is a student of just about all of us that do this as our profession, and remarked that I am absolutely the best in the world at what I do, which is focus my instruction solely on the plants that were brought here by immigrants as food and medicine, and which we as humans can rely on being underfoot when and if our world collapses around us and we have to make do with the resources surrounding us. And, because I do that, I am providing my students with more actually useful information and skills than most of the rest of them. That is because they provide too much information about too many plants, many of which aren't those occurring abundantly and, in general, over a long useful season of availability. People come away from my classes knowing well only 8 or 10 wild edibles, but they are those that will be there for them if they are needed.

Well, this morning, with all that fresh blood flowing to my brain, I pulled it all together into what I suppose will be the first draft of my thesis statement, and present it in the form of a class description, accompanied by my biography. Here, for whatever it is worth, it is:

"Eighty percent of the “weeds” we kill each spring aren’t weeds at all– they are vegetables and medicinals immigrants brought with them to America because they didn’t want to live here without them. Most were well known until the late1940's, when the American lifestyle underwent a drastic change into a buying economy.

Today we complain about the prices of fruits and vegetables while walking over ones that are more nutrient-dense and tasty, every time we go out into the yard. Emerson said “Weeds are plants for which we have not yet discovered a use.” The truth is that “Weeds are plants for which we have forgotten their uses, and because of this, they have become invisible to us.”

Nowdays, it is only in certain places around the United States that you can find locals celebrating the coming of spring with Poke, Ramp and Dandelion Festivals, Germans cooking up Dandelion dinners for 300 people on a Saturday and German mothers serving Dandelion Gravies at their dinner table. Or Greek mothers cooking up Horta, Egyptian mothers stirring a big pot of Melokhia Mallow Soup, Mexican mothers sauteeing a pot of Verdolago con queso, or an Eastern European mixing up a pot of Sorrel Soup with Sour Cream. These are but a few of the many delicious ethnic dishes based around a common plant we have come to call a "weed" ( or, in some cases, " weeds") as the basic ingredient.

With food prices climbing sky-high, and some food becoming largely inaccessible, the time has come to re-familiarize ourselves with this organic, locally grown produce that nature provides us “free for nothin’” except the labor to harvest it.

On September 27, from 1-3 p.m. Dr. Peter Gail, USA Today’s “King of Dandelions”and Good Morning America’s ‘Wizard of Weeds,” will, through Powerpoint presentation and field experiences, reconnect you to these foods, with samples of dishes made from many of them for you to try. His books containing recipes for them all will be available for sale.

_________
Dr. Peter Gail is Director of Goosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living in Cleveland Ohio. He earned his Ph.D. in Botany from Rutgers University, and has spent the last 47 years studying how various cultures use backyard weeds as food and medicine. He is the author of numerous articles and eight books on edible wild plants, including The Goosefoot Acres Volunteer Vegetable Sampler: Recipes for Backyard Weeds, The Dandelion Celebration: A Guide to Unexpected Cuisine, The Great Dandelion Cookbook: Recipes from the National Dandelion Cookoffs and Then Some, The Delightful Delicious Daylily: Recipes and More, Violets in Your Kitchen, and Those Messy Mulberries. . He has shared his delight with wild vegetables on ABC-TV's “Good Morning America,” Lifetime TV's "The Home Show", and on the Food Television Network, as well as being Cleveland TV-5's The Morning Exchange's "Wizard of Weeds" for five years. He founded and, for 10 years, conducted, the National Dandelion Cookoff, which is held in Dover Ohio the first weekend in May each year, and draws up to 14,000 people a year to learn more about dandelions. USA Today called him the "King of Dandelions.” Good Morning America dubbed him “The Wizard of Weeds.” California State Polytechnic University’s School of Science named him its Distinguished Alumnus of the Year in 1979, and he was inducted into the National Wild Food Hall of Fame in 2000 for his work in popularizing the eating of wild plants throughout the United States.

He lives with his wife, Wilma, in Cleveland Heights, OH. They have three children and five grandchildren. "

That about sums it up. Now to get out there and harvest, process and cook up these ethnic dishes and make some converts.

What's Missing in Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable and Miracle?

2008-05-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

This week I got into Barbara Kingsolver’s "Animal Vegetable and Miracle", a book about , among other things, feeding yourself from locally produced goods, using just what is in season or that you have preserved for overwintering to get you to the next productive season.

Haven’t read very far yet– just through Waiting for Asparagus but already the red "Uh,oh" flags are flying, and I’ve got to speak up.

Toward the end of that chapter, the family of four decides to embark on their year of eating locally produced foods, and sit around near the end of April making a shopping list. Lamenting at the skimpy choices they anticipate they will have, they then go to the local farmer’s market to put together their ingredient list out of which they will make their breakfast, lunches and dinners for that week.

Surprisingly, they do pretty well - turkey sausages, baby lettuces, hulled walnuts, honey, even down to fresh rhubarb stalks to substitute for fruit early in the season. In return for all this, they part with a significant amount of money.. For you see, they are equating feeding themselves with buying stuff.

The problem is that they are starting later than they have to, and are overlooking a wealth of vegetables that are locally grown, organic and free. They tickle with the edges of it by watching for the wild asparagus, as well as that growing in their own garden, but in combing the greenery for asparagus stalks, they are passing by a ton of equally delicious and nutrient-dense vegetables that are growing voluntarily right under foot.

In SW Virginia, by early March there will be still root crops such as dandelion, burdock, yellow dock and cattail, as well as duck potato and daylily tubers. By later in March to early April, we’re looking at young dandelion greens (which sometimes are available at the farmers markets) wild onions and garlic, chickweed, ground ivy, young garlic mustard, young violets, daylily shoots, and a range of young wild lettuces and other composites that go great in salads. These not only provide fresh greens, but are so rich nutritionally that they both drive out the toxins built up over winter as well as replenish stored nutrients depleted through the winter months.

This is a great failing of Slow Food USA, and to a lesser extent SFI. They give lip service to foraging, and provide a forum for discussing it that are well attended at Terra Madre conferences, especially by the First Nation delegates , and some of the elitist chef’s who subscribe to SF principles forage or buy wild ingredients for their menus, but it is treated as an afterthought, not a mainstream topic for consideration. There is far too much emphasis on things you have to plant and grow, and then buy from farmers, and far too little on things that grow in everybody’s yard voluntarily that you just have to stoop down and harvest.

This will be a year to move these elements to the forefront, along with the practitioners of the culinary wild food arts who teach it around the world. Watch for more.

Edibleweeds.com is in Transition

2008-04-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

Greetings, everyone

The company hosting my edibleweeds.com site discontinued service, and created a need for me to finally update the site, which I hadn't worked on since 2004. All things happen for a purpose, right?

I have redirected you, at least temporarily, to my blog site which contains much that you might find interesting. Here you will find

essays written on the current state of edible wild plant research and teaching
reviews of books on edible and medicinal plants
answers to questions asked by people on Forage Ahead, WildForager2, Herbbusiness and other listservs of which I am part
random musings on events happening in my life and with my family that I wanted to record in my journal.
press releases on events I am involved with

I know, it is sort of random, and I am long winded, but if you browse through the offerings, I suspect you might find things that are useful to you.

Soon, I will restructure this blog, and probably restructure and republish the edibleweeds.com website with a different host to include not only appropriate blog entries, but information about my schedule as well. Keep visiting to read my latest. When it is restructured, you will know. One day you will visit and everything will be changed. Until then, I hope you have fun here.

For information, and to order our products and books, visit www.dandyblend.com . Go to the bottom of the home page (or the page on 'Dandelion Information" if your computer runs over the bottom copy on the home page), click on "Browse Catalog" and that will take you to the Dandy Blend products and Peter Gail's books on dandelions and edible wild plants in general. That site is also undergoing upheavals, and within a month or so will be completely redesigned, so come along on the adventure with us.

Peter Gail, Ph.D.

INTEREST WILL SOON INCREASE IN FORAGING

2008-04-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

For the last week or so we have been responding to a posting on the ForageAhead listserv about friends who consider foraging a useless pursuit. The sentence below from one of the posts pretty well summarizes the issue members have been responding to.

"I must say I have meet some that think that wild edible plants is a pointless study. After all, we have modern technology to get processed food to depend on."

I finally put my oar in. My response follows:
__________
At first, I thought this thread about clueless people was rather pointless itself, but the more it continues, the more I realize that it is simply a matter of American short-sightedness, especially among people under 60 who have never really been through bad times, like wars or depressions that have actually inconvenienced them in any way. They can't imagine a worse-case scenario that would cause them to go hungry, and have never read any of the stories, or journal entries, of those who had gone from wealthy to having nothing during the Great Depression, and having to find and use ALL the resources the good Lord has placed here for us simply to stay alive. That was when dandelions, lambsquarters, purslane, plantain, burdock and all the wild fruits were abruptly brought to their attention, because that was all they had.

In many cases, it was one person in the community, or at least just a few, who would let people who were hungry know that "You can eat lambsquarters, and they will keep you full until times get better" like a friend told my mother after my father died in 1948. We had avoided the ravages of rationing by my father having the foresight to plant vegetables and soft fruit plants, and buy chickens and a cow back in 1940, so we had enough of most things for ourselves, and a few extra to sell to neighbors. But we were in Southern California, and didn't have the Midwestern drought problems.

Today, younger people can't begin to imagine why they would ever want to, or even have to, forage. I sense they will soon, and then, since Americans, while hugely short-sighted, are generally resourceful, their interest will turn toward learning what to forage for, how to forage, and how to prepare it. You will be amazed at how fast people who were totally disinterested a week or a month ago suddenly can think of nothing else, and suddenly view what you have to teach them as being incredibly useful and valuable.

It is already beginning to happen. I am finding far more interest in my workshops now than has been the case since 1998 and 1999, when people were responding to the Y2K scare, and were coming out in droves for my classes. People respond to stimuli, and when the stimuli aren't there, their priorities are elsewhere-- they don't waste time on what they don't actually need in the immediate future, unless it is some new electronic gadget, which they actually don't need AT ALL!

So get ready. Flour has gone from $9.00/50 lbs to $32.00/50 lbs in the last year, and is being rationed by Sam's Club and Costco, and people are just now becoming aware of how this might threaten their future. It won't be long before foraging will no longer be "obtuse." It isn't just journalists who look for different "angles" for a story, or politicians who are concerned with what "spin" to put on an issue, or a position. Mainstream America very easily shifts their perspective on an issue when a persuasive enough stimulus-- one that suggests some potential future disruption or discomfort in their life-- threatens to upset their status quo. and conveniently completely forget that, to them, less than a week ago, foraging was strongly perceived as being "pointless."

From a crass commercial standpoint (that "indelicate" issue we have been addressing also about what to charge for lessons), those of us who teach edible wild plants can begin to capitalize upon the uneasiness the media is creating with stories about rationing and the increase in grain prices because of the shift to growing more corn instead of wheat because it is more profitable to sell corn for the making of ethanol. What we have to offer will also progressively become increasingly valuable as "processed" food becomes progressively more scarce and they have to drop back to old ways of doing things-- planting a garden, harvesting, canning, cooking from scratch with basic staples like flour, salt, rice, oats, powdered milk, vegetable oil and others, supplemented with greens, berries, fish and meat they can find in the area surrounding them.

Offer and publicize the classes. People will come-- a few at first, and then in increasing numbers. "Obtuse" will soon be a thing of the past.

Peter Gail

Peter A. Gail, Ph.D.President/DirectorGoosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living3283 E. Fairfax Road, Cleveland OH 44118 http://www.dandyblend.com/ 216-932-2145 Orders: 800-697-4858

Dandelions, Chocolate and a "Sweet Movie"

2008-04-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

Dandelions, chocolate, and a movie. What in the world do these three have in common?

Properly roasted dandelion roots taste just like coffee, but lack caffeine, bitterness and acidity. They are, however, loaded with trace minerals and other nutrients, making them very healthy. Dr. Peter Gail, internationally renown ethno-botanist whom USA Today calls the "King of Dandelions," says "Dandelions are the perfect complement for chocolate when you use the right part and prepare it the right way. The part is the long tap root. The preparation is to roast it gently until it is a deep, dark brown and, when the oven door is cracked open, smells like sweet hot chocolate and coffee combined ."

Gail manufactures and distributes the only instant coffee substitute in the United States containing roasted dandelion root, which he calls Dandy Blend. Several years ago, it captured the interest of Dr. Andrea Levinson (Stern), a former holistic health practitioner in Russell Township, Geauga County, OH and an ardent advocate of the medicinal value of dandelions.

Levinson is author and executive producer of the alternately witty and introspective new independent feature film "Death, Taxes and Chocolates," in which a holistic doctor and five Babyboomer friends float out to sea and on into eternity on Doc’s elegant yacht, surrounded by obscene quantities of their favorite chocolates and chocolaty concoctions. Her lead character, a holistic doctor (mostly autobiographical of Levinson,) grows dandelions in any available space, and calls them "little sunshine gifts from God." Her classic line in the movie script: "Hey, if you men knew how fantastic dandelions are for your SEX ORGAN, AND THEY'RE FREE! NO ONE should ever spray their lawns to get rid of them! They're loaded with nutrients... great for diabetics!"

That explains the dandelions and the movie, but where do the chocolates come in?

Dr. Levinson says that Dandy Blend is a great way to combine the health-promoting benefits of dandelion and chocolate at the same time." I recommend Dandy Blend to most of my patients. You can take the packets with you, and simply pour them into hot or cold water or milk and stir. It is particularly delicious mixed into chocolate, making an exquisite mocha latte or cappuchino." As we all know, coffee mixed with chocolate makes Mocha. If you want a HEALTHY mocha, simply substitute roasted dandelion root for the coffee. Dandy Blend makes this incredibly easy to do.

"Death, Taxes and Chocolates" was recently selected for the prestigious New York Independent Film Festival, with screenings in New York and Los Angeles later this year. It will be premiered in Cleveland on May 8 at the Cedar-Lee Theater, and will be showcased at the 1st annual Northeastern Ohio Chocolate Festival on Saturday and Sunday May 10 and 11 at the Cleveland Heights Community Center Pavilion. Showings at the Cedar-Lee Theater (2163 Lee Rd, Cleveland Heights, OH) will be at 6:30 and 8:20 p.m. Each will be followed by a reception at Jimmy O’Neill’s, 2195 Lee Rd. The movie will also be shown at various times throughout the Chocolate Festival. Dandy Mocha –delicious combinations of Dandy Blend and chocolate– will be available for sampling and purchase at the receptions and the Festival.

For more information about the Festival and the movie, and for advance sale tickets, visit http://www.neochocolatefestival.com or call Adrienne Roth at 216-321 5253.

Dandy Blend is available at many health and natural food stores in Ohio, and at Zagara’s Marketplace in Cleveland Heights. You may also visit www.dandyblend.com or call 800-697-4858.

Grazing on Your Greenery

2008-02-25T20:24:00.000-08:00

Food!

In America, we sort of take for granted that it will always be there for us, but it might not..
Today we have choices:
! between commercial and organic,
! locally grown or transported in, often from very far away,
! supermarkets, natural food market or ethnic specialty markets.
Lots of choices. Some "organic" produce is actually affordable these days because corporate farms, as much as we may hate them, have been listening to consumers, practicing economies of scale, and have kept supplies in line with demand. How truly "organic"are they? That’s another story.

One source of locally grown, completely organic produce is totally free for the taking and Modern Americans completely overlook it — the weeds beneath our feet.
Emerson once said "Weeds are simply plants for which we have not yet found a use." The truth, however, is that most weeds are plants for which we have FORGOTTEN their uses. About 80% of the plants we call "weeds" are really vegetables, fruits and medicines that were brought here by immigrants from many cultures over the past two centuries. They brought them on purpose, because sponsoring emigration companies told them to "bring seeds of your favorite things, for you probably aren’t going to find them in America."

You walk over these nutrient-dense, tasty and incredible health-giving plants every day, but they are totally invisible because you haven’t a clue about what they are or what they are good for. The time has come, however, to learn some of these plants and how to use them, because the world is changing, and you may need them to survive.

At one time, wars, political and economic crises, terrorist attacks, and environmental disasters were things we read about in the papers or saw on the news. Today they are in our backyards, affecting us, our relatives and/or people we know. Prices of fuel are high and rising higher, food costs are increasing, and family incomes aren’t keeping pace.

When this kind of thing last happened back in the 1930's, people were better prepared. We weren’t a specialist nation then, where everyone was trained to do one job and to buy everything else they needed from others who also were trained to do only one job, like we are now. They all had vegetable gardens, and knew how to preserve food. They knew the values of the foods their grandparents had brought from the old country that now were growing wild in their gardens, and they used them. If grandma sent you out to get dandelions and you were Greek, you knew dinner was going to be "horta." If you were German, you knew you were in for a wonderful "dandelion gravy." If you were Italian, it could be one of any number of dishes, because dandelions were pretty much the Italian national vegetable– just about everyone ate them and enjoyed them

When the Great Depression hit, people who had been living comfortably all of a sudden had nothing to live on except what they had stored in their heads– that which their teachers and parents had taught them by word and example all their lives. Common journal entries of the day included such things as " You lived on what you had. If it was windfall apples that were lying on the ground or given away, you took all you could get and canned them. No matter that you ate apples all winter long. You were eating." or "The weed "Queen Anne’s Lace" was dipped in egg first and then flour and fried. It kept the family from going to bed hungry many times." or " The cellar had to be well stocked. Everything possible was harvested from the vegetable garden, picked along the roadside, the edges of the fields and in the woods to provide food for the coming months ahead." Lambsquarters ( an absolutely delicious wild spinach that was a major food of pre-historic native Americans) and dandelions were staple foods of the day and were the most frequent wild plants mentioned in journals.

Today, even if dandelions cover your backyard, you’d never think of eating them. If you want dandelions for a recipe you found in the newspaper or a magazine, you’d walk over the ones in your yard that are screaming for you to "Look at me. I’m here for the taking and I’m free," go to the grocery store, and buy organic dandelions imported from California for $3.99/lb.

My father died in the late 1940's and left our family with no money. A friend told my mother that we could "live on lambsquarters" until she learned how to make a living. So for the next six months, my brother and I went out in the backyard each morning, gathered the young tops of lambsquarters and brought them into the house. My mother would then make the most wonderful spinach dishes out of them. Even today, we purposely grow lambsquarters in our vegetable garden so we will have enough for our favorite recipes. We have never planted garden spinach.

Ohio Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher’s father-in law, Mike Zone, survived for two years in a German concentration camp by simply , whenever they were let out to exercise, stooping down, pulling the leaves off of dandelions, and eating them. This was something he had learned to do growing up as an Italian kid in Cleveland. When the Allies liberated the camp two years later, he was the only one of those who had been interred at the same time he had who was still alive.
The Gail family and Mike Zone lived by knowing how to use only one wild plant. Imagine how much more interesting dinner would have been if we had known five or ten of these wild plants that grow beneath everyone’s feet, all over the United States and Canada.

Ironically, those who remember the plants grandma used, now harvest and process them, and pack them in fancy packaging. You can find them in every health food store as herbal teas or remedies. I am one of those who does this. I make and sell Dandy Blend. Roasted dandelion and chicory roots have been used as coffee substitutes for centuries. Today, we combine extracts of those two roasted roots with extracts of roasted red beet roots, roasted barley and rye to make a delightful instant herbal coffee substitute that tastes just like coffee, but is healthy for you. It is available now at many stores and can be bought through Healthy Referral. I even tell you how to make it in my books The Dandelion Celebration: A Guide to Unexpected Cuisine and also in The Volunteer Vegetable Sampler: Recipes for Backyard Weeds, so you can make it yourself. Sadly, we have found that, even though it is easy to do, people prefer to buy it rather than do the work. So, ironically, profits from Dandy Blend sales have ended up helping to support my lectures and workshops teaching people how to eat weeds!

With so much uncertainty facing us today, it behooves us all to learn to recognize and use at least some of the plants that we walk over each day. So in the coming months, I will introduce to you the plants in the cracks in your patio and walkways, your vegetable garden and flower beds and your lawn. Once you know them better, your violets, purslane, lambsquarters, red-root pigweed, plantain, sorrels, dandelions and many others will become great and valued friends. By the time we are done, you too will know how to feed yourselves and your family from the bounty that surrounds you, much as I learned to do back in 1949 when I was 9 years old.
___________
Dr. Peter Gail is Director of Goosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living in Cleveland Ohio.. He earned his Ph.D. in Botany from Rutgers University, and has spent the last 47 years studying how various cultures use backyard weeds as food and medicine. He is the author of numerous articles and eight books on edible wild plants, including The Goosefoot Acres Volunteer Vegetable Sampler: Recipes for Backyard Weeds, The Dandelion Celebration: A Guide to Unexpected Cuisine, The Great Dandelion Cookbook: Recipes from the National Dandelion Cookoffs and Then Some, The Delightful Delicious Daylily: Recipes and More, and Violets in Your Kitchen. He has shared his delight with wild vegetables on ABC-TV=s Good Morning America, Lifetime TV=s AThe Home Show@, and on the Food Television Network, as well as being Cleveland TV-5 AThe Morning Exchange=s AWizard of Weeds@ for five years. He founded and conducted the National Dandelion Cookoff for 10 years, which drew up to 15,000 people a year to learn more about dandelions. USA Today calls him the AKing of Dandelions. He lives with his wife, Wilma, in Cleveland Heights, OH. They have three children and five grandchildren. He was named Distinguished Alumnus of the California State Polytechnic University (Pomona) College of Science in 1979, and was inducted into the National Wild Foods Hall of Fame in 2000.
To order Dr. Gail’s books, book Dr. Gail’s program "Reconnecting Americans to their Wild Food Traditions," or to find out where he is speaking, visit http://www.dandyblend.com/ or call him at 800-697-4858.

Sidebar:
Dandelions are inherently bitter, but the bitterness is easy to mask so that you can get the benefits of the incredible pool of nutrients, but not have to taste the bitterness of the substances that make them so nutritious and health promoting.
The secret is ‘sweet’. Serve dandelion salads with sweet and sour dressing or with raspberry vinagarette Cook dandelions in tomato sauces of various kinds– in lasagna, or rigatoni, or as a topping for pizza.
My favorite way to introduce people to dandelions is in a dandelion pizza sandwich.
Ingredients:
Pita bread, English muffins, or any toasted bread
spaghetti, pizza or other Italian tomato based sauce
chopped up dandelion leaves right out of the unsprayed back yard
shredded cheese.
Directions:
Toast the bread or muffin,
Spread sauce over it
Top it with a heaping pile of chopped dandelion leaves
Top that with shredded cheese, or a slice of any cheese will do
Broil or microwave until the cheese melts
Eat.
IF you take a single leaf segment out of the middle and taste it, you will find that it is bitter. But if you chomp into the whole package, it will be like eating spinach.

What Should Lawns Look Like?

2008-02-17T08:23:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I was sent a wonderful e-mail purporting to be a conversation between God, who as we all know, created all our greenery plus a few other things, and St. Francis, the Catholic Saint assigned to watch over all things natural, in which God basically has looked down at his creation and is asking "What the h___ happened?" Here is the exchange, tweaked somewhat over the years as I have presented it at each of my lectures on Reconnecting Americans to their Wild Food Heritage

"Frank you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there in the Midwest? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect, no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, they withstand drought and multiply with abandon. And the nectar from the long-lasting blossoms attracted butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But all I see are these green rectangles."

"It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers 'weeds' and went to great extent to kill them and replace them with grass."

"Grass? But it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms, and it's temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?"

"Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. Each spring, they begin by fertilizing the grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn."
"The spring rains and cool weather probably makes the grass grow really fast. That must make ‘em happy."

"Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it. Sometimes twice a week."

"They cut it? What do they do then? Bale it like hay?"

"Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags."

"They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?"

"Oh no, sir. The do just the opposite. They pay to throw it away."

"Now let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, these Suburbanites must really be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work."

"You’re not going believe this Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it."

"What nonsense! At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer, and the evaporation of water from their leaves provides a natural air-conditioning for the houses under them. In the autumn they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to enhance the soil. It's the perfect natural circle of life."

"You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and have them hauled away."

"No! What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and keep the soil moist and loose?"

"After throwing away your leaves, they go out and buy something they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves."

"And where do they get this mulch?"

"They cut down trees and grind them up."

"Enough! I don't want to think about this anymore. Saint Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us tonight?"

"Dumb and Dumber, Lord. It's a real stupid movie about..."

"Never mind. I think I just heard the whole story."

A few comments:

Emerson once said that "Weeds are plants for which people have not yet found a good use." The truth is, in most cases, just the opposite--weeds are plants that came here with a purpose and value, which has been forgotten over the years, thereby making them invisible to us as valued allies.
80% of the plants we call "weeds" were brought here by immigrants as food and medicines
As soon as we relearn the uses of these plants, they are no longer "weeds", but plants with value to us. Those who know these plants and their uses are much better prepared to deal with the environmental, economic and political crises which have been increasing in their occurrence.
Food storage can be wiped out in 10 seconds by a flood, tornado, earthquake, or even a terrorist attack. THE ONLY THING NO-ONE CAN TAKE AWAY FROM YOU IS THAT WHICH YOU HAVE STORED IN YOUR HEAD.

For information about what these plants are and how to use them, visit http://www.dandyblend.com/ and look for the Volunteer Vegetable Sampler, by Peter Gail (Goosefoot Acres Press). It profiles 41 common backyard "weeds" (volunteer vegetables) and gives culinary and medicinal uses for them.

How to Assess the Risk of Potentially Toxic Chemicals in Foods

2008-02-13T05:35:00.000-08:00

Recently I received an e-mail crying out in alarm that scientists have found Acrylimide in chicory, and asking how that might impact on users of Dandy Blend. In brief, she said that acrylimide, a possible human carcinogen that is found in roasted foods, has been found to exist at 2-3 times the level in chicory than it does in coffee. Acrylimide is created when items are roasted at temperatures above 212 degrees F (100 degrees C), especially when foods are roasted to a deep dark color and are very dry. This certainly applies to both the chicory and dandelion in Dandy Blend.

I had never heard of Acrylimide before, and was very busy at the time, so I didn't answer her right away. She called me on that, and so I wrote the following response for her. It might be of some value to others as well.

The reason I have not yet responded is that you have me at a disadvantage. Until you wrote, I had not heard of the problem, and knew nothing about the existence of Acrylimide. I have not yet had time to properly research your contention, but in the little web browsing I have done, I have noticed that practically everything contains acrylimide, and that research on the subject has just really begun. I have also noticed that the literature cautiously describes acrylimide as "potentially carcinogenic" but has not truly made the determination yet.

Considering the long history of use of roasted chicory in herbal medicine and the good that has been ascribed to its use, I would be very surprised if it were to be found to be a health menace. From my experience as a Ph.D. botanist, with a minor in chemistry, and years of university research, I have discovered that there are scientists and then there are scientists. A great many make assumptions based on isolated elements taken out of context, and then sound alarms very prematurely, and often erroneously. It is possible that this is one of those cases. I will not know until I have time to research it, and may not even know for a surety then because of the probable paucity of serious, competent objective research on the issue.

The particular blend of ingredients in Dandy Blend, in its present form and made by the current process, but without the dandelion, has been used daily since the early 1930's by over 7 million people in Eastern Europe and, to my knowledge, no-one has reported any problems. Low temperature roasting of chicory and dandelion roots has been the standard practice by herbalists for centuries, because it breaks down cell walls to release trace minerals and makes them available to the system, and makes other health-promoting substances more available and effective as well.

My primary complaint with today's so called "science" that you commend so highly is the tendency of some of its practitioners to isolate a particular chemical from plant cells and do their research upon it, ascribing to it all kinds of negative properties, and then sounding alarms that upset people who have been using those substances. This is extremely bad science, and it has discredited some very valuable medicinal plants that have been in use for centuries.

The fact that the FDA pays heed to these so called scientists has for years cast aspersions on the FDA's competence to make decisions about what can actually have deleterious effects on humans. I refer specifically to comfrey and sassafrass in saying this, both of which cause no harm and do much good when used as they are supposed to be used.

The truth is that all plants are made up of many chemical compounds, some of which are health promoting, and some of which are deleterious. In some cases, the deleterious compounds, usually heavy metals, are present in infinitesimal amounts, often even lower than the ambient levels in the environment, and are of no consequence. In other cases, trace minerals which are harmful at higher levels are essential to the health of the organism at lower levels.

But in all cases, these chemicals do not exist in isolation. In many cases the synergy existing between the various components neutralizes or counteracts potential negative effects any one of the chemicals might have on the body by itself.

Likewise, isolated tests on plant materials grown in different edaphic conditions will yield different results. This is the reason that nutritional profiles published by the USDA in the Bulletin 8-41 "Composition of Foods" are only good for the particular plant material that was tested. Plants gathered from different areas might be higher or lower than the level published. During World War II, rose hips gathered in Scotland were found to have over 2000 mg Vitamin C per 100 grams, whereas those collected in the south of England tested at only 1350 mg/100 g. And this from the same species, too.

You state that Chicory roots tested at 2-3 times the Acrylimide levels of coffee. That means absolutely nothing to me. Where was the chicory grown? What were the roasting conditions? What about the extracting conditions for the sample? What other variables existed? What potential amelioriating factors might have been present in the roots. And so on. There is far more to be learned than what the acylimide levels were in specific samples of chicory root or coffee bean.

And then there is the factor of the effects of other components in foods on the human. Every now and again, the literature reports on some good effect coffee has on some aspect of life, but what about the total package. Sure, it may have something that is useful, but what about the 200 or so acids and the effect they have on the stomach and on the body's acid base balance? And the caffeine? The presence of one good thing doesn't counteract all the bad a substance like coffee can do to the human body. Likewise, the presence of one "potential human carcinogen" that up until now has been classified as "GRAS" (Generally Regarded as Safe) by the FDA, does not negate the effects of all the good things in chicory that promote good health in humans.

I frankly know nothing about acrylimide right now other than what you have reported. I also know nothing about the credibility of the website you cited, but promise you that I will research both and make a judgement on it. If I discover that it is not just another body of naive scientists crying "wolf", and that the presence of acrylimide in Dandy Blend does potentially pose a risk, it will be no problem to eliminate it from the blend in the future. I will keep an open mind, as I always have, but before taking any action, will examine the claims very critically and objectively and make sure that there is cause to be concerned..

Meanwhile, as for you, whether or not you continue using Dandy Blend in the light of what you have learned is totally up to you. But if I were you, I'd be very careful what you accept as wise counsel, especially from a very flawed scientific community that I have been a part of since receiving my Ph.D. 36 years ago. From the inside, the kind of science that is being generated very often looks pretty dismal. Witness the number of times science ends up reversing itself when it has been found that a methodology or a base assumption was flawed because the scientist spent too much time looking at the trees and not enough analyzing how those trees functioned in the forest.

She then wrote, thanking me for my response, and that prompted an addendum. It may be slightly redundant, but I don't think significantly so, and sometimes repetition of a major point is not a detriment, but an emphasis on the importance of that point. Here is what I told her.

I guess I am enough of a cynic to believe that, taken chemical by chemical, there is NO food product that can ever be classed as 100% safe. Looked at superficially, without placing it in the context of concentration and interactions with its fellows, there always will be something in each food item that will raise red flags to casual researchers who don't know their science well enough and who don't research the entire plant/issue deeply enough.

In the end, however, it all comes down to relative risks. Coffee contains acids, caffeine and a bunch of other harmful chemicals AND some acrylimide, whereas Chicory has B vitamins and digestive bitters and loads of antioxidants and minerals and maybe a little more acrylimide. If you are going to drink one of them, which one has the least risk of doing serious damage to you and maybe providing some health benefits? That is a call everyone has to make for themselves, for every food they eat. Make macaroni and cheese from organic pasta and raw milk cheese, or from a Kraft Mac n Cheese box? Your call, especially when in a hurry and the organic ingredients aren't readily available.

We all have a bunch of food choices to make. The irony, though, is that those eating Kraft's Mac n Cheese seem to end up living just as long, with just as good a quality of life, as those who take really good care of what they put in their bodies. I hate to tell you the number of herb store owners and herbalists, and other professionals in the industry who, at relatively young ages, have died or contracted cancer, or had heart attacks and strokes, or have been afflicted with Alzheimers, or diabetes, or whatever, in the past few years while on this healthy diet. By contrast, nobody I personally know outside of the industry, in the same age category (church friends, work colleagues, etc), have died or contracted such deadly diseases, and they don't really work very hard at it-- they eat processed foods from a box, etc.

So go figure. But it causes you to wonder, doesn't it? I've got arthritis really bad, and take fermented cod liver oil with butter oil every day for it, and think it helps. But it certainly doesn't go away. Before the oils, I tried all the other stuff, too. I get some relief sometimes, but not always.

If you've got answers, I'm willing to listen. And I suspect that Jim Long, Maureen Rogers, Tom Baggis, and others are too. It is a little too late, however, for Robin Helstrom, who died of cancer at 49, and Christine Utterbach, also of cancer in her early 50's.

Flashback

2008-02-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

I was cleaning my office yesterday, and came across a quote from the Reader's Digest that reminded me of counsel given to daughter Kori (and probably Karin, too, a few years earlier) as they were struggling with teenage "failure to communicate."

The counsel, recalled for me by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." I seem to remember that was sort of my basic message when the girls were encountering severe resistance to desires they were espousing, particularly to parents, but really in any situation of like type.

As the years have gone by, I acknowledge that a caveat has to be added to that, and that is: Only raise your voice when you HAVE improved the argument and are presenting a solid, reasonable and rational proposal. but it still is not receiving an objective hearing, by he or she who has the authority of approval. And then make sure the appeal is made appropriately.

This principle is vividly illustrated by the story about the farmer, facing a threatened downpour with hay in the field, who had to get the hay into the barn immediately or lose the whole crop. He remembered that his neighbor had a remarkable mule that could outwork by double every other mule in the neighborhood. He went to the neighbor, explained the situation, and asked if he could borrow it. The mule's owner finally, but reluctantly agreed to do so , but counselled the farmer to be gentle and kind with the mule, because it was a very special mule.

So the farmer took the mule to his barn, hooked up the traces and the equipment, and began coaxing the mule to get going. He "giddyup"ed for a while, and kicked it in the flanks, and tried everything else he knew how to do, with no success. In desperation, he ran over to the mule's owner and related the dilemma. The owner grapped a bullwhip from the barn wall, ran to the barn where the mule was, and with a curse filled yell, cracked that whip across the back of the mule and got him going. The farmer was flabbergasted. "I thought you said "Treat him gently". "I did," said the owner, "But you've got to get his attention first."

That same Reader's Digest contained a couple of other memorable quotes. The first, "Every door that swings wide for you has somebody on the other side opening it" is very true, and should make us both humble and appreciative, realizing that accomplishments are a team effort, with God often being the other member of the team.

On the other hand, the one "I live by the truth that "No" is a complete sentence." is NOT accurate. If it were true that there was an ultimate finality in "No", then improving your argument would avail you nothing, and no salesman would ever sell anything.

When you get a "No", your job is to do the homework necessary to find out why, and then, knowing why, improve and restructure your argument to make the proposal appeal to a particular need, or show how it provides a particular benefit for your target. Want to see this in action? Check out the movie "Legally Blonde2: Red, White, and Blonde" with Reese Witherspoon. Magnificent!

From Russia with Love and Healing

2008-01-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

It is snowing outside right now and I am writing a book review for a wonderful volume that I can highly recommend.. It is called Mama's Home Remedies, and is written by Svetlana Konnikova, formerly a journalist in the Soviet Union.

It in many ways is like Plain and Happy Living, in that it is a How-to-Autobiography that recounts not only a wide variety of natural remedies, but how they were learned at the feet of her mother and grandmother, with a wonderful potpourri of folk and fairy tales, and modern and ancient natural science interspersed between. Most fascinating to me is the number of common fruits and vegetables for which she suggests medical uses -- beets, onions, garden radishes, grapes, carrots, garlic, cabbage, apples, apricots, lemons, plums, potatoes, and many others--- in addition to the uses for a full range of backyard weeds --dandelion, burdock, chamomile, rose hips, black elder, nettles, mallows and many others. That is one of the delights of reading Eastern European writers- they grow up knowing, and using, the healing properties as well as the food properties of a much wider variety of domestic and wild plants than do most Americans.

Most books like this, when something is wrong, you go into them, find the ailment in the index, and then look up the suggestions for helping alleviate the problem. This book does that too, but in addition, when life is stressful and you are looking for a few minutes of relief, you can open this book and escape into the fairy tales, folk stories and life's adventures of Svetlana and her family, along with fascinating explorations of such things as ancient Druid beliefs about trees or the instincts animals have for healing themselves that we can learn to be sensitive to in our own lives as well.

Mama's Home Remedies is so well organized with everything arranged in bullitted boxes, numbered lists, (also boxed,) and boxed sidebars containing the stories, that everything is ridiculously easy to find. Usually you have to dig through a book to find a fact remembered but not bookmarked. Not so here. All you need to do is remember the topic, or chapter. Once there, a quick thumbing through the pages will take you directly to the right box, and there you are. It is a model for the way I am going to lay out my upcoming books.

In the few short weeks I have had the book, it has earned a place on the bookshelf right next to my computer, so that when I need a break, it is right at hand. It is a marvelous vehicle for stress relief.

Svetlana has a whole chapter on stress, but nowhere in it does she mention picking up her book and reading a few pages as one of the ways. She should.

The New Bose Portable Sound Dock

2008-01-10T19:13:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to live forever. Even more significant, my hearing, eyesight and other faculties will undoubtedly diminish over the years. Lately, as my arthritis has devastated my knees, and my ears get clogged, and I can't do much lifting or carrying or walking anymore, I have become acutely aware of, and humbled by, my mortality.

We aren't wealthy people, but we're doing OK, and I've decided that none of us know how much longer we will be able to take advantage of the great adventures available to us, not only the physical ones where we can go to fascinating places and do fascinating things, but those that are more associated with our senses-- our sight, and our hearing, and our taste and smell.

About three years ago, I decided that the time had come to spend some of our children's inheritance on ourselves, and go and do what was out there to do. It was stimulated in part by Kori and Chris deciding to get married in Hawaii, and actually going there for the first time. Then Chris and Kori went on a cruise to Alaska. I had never really been interested in either going on a cruise or in Alaska, but it captured Wilma's imagination, so I thought, "Maybe that is something we should do before we get too old to enjoy doing it." Whatever, we have now been back to Hawaii a second time and enjoyed it immensely, and this coming summer will be taking that long- delayed Alaskan cruise, right after the school year ends.

I am also investing time, money and energy into working with my grandkids and others interested in helping to convert the 18 acres in Windsor to the idyllic wilderness retreat I have seen in my vision since we bought it 20 years ago. We have cleared areas, put up a gate to keep interlopers out, and will soon hire an excavator to help improve the driveway so that the Turtle can climb the hill in all weather. (The Turtle is our Winnebago View 24 foot Class C motor home, for the uninitiated) By spring, I want to be able to retreat to the farm for a week at a time to write uninterrupted and unhindered by other demands. The Turtle is already, and will soon be more so, a mobile office, with all the capabilities of my office at home.

On the final front, I am gradually improving my sensory experience. I am getting better use out of my glasses, have gotten hearing aids and will soon commit to wearing them more often (maybe), am starting to work out at the Lewis Aquatic Therapy center and on my AirDyne air resistance bicycle. I very much want to regain my old flexibility, to the extent possible, so that I can again bend myself into the angles necessary to take the pictures I want of the Amish, or wild edibles, and all the other fascinating things around me.

One thing I never considered as being particularly important to me was my hearing. However, when I bought Wilma a Bose Wave Radio/CD about five years ago, I rediscovered how incredible music could be when reproduced on real, state of the art, equipment. So for the last five years I have lain in bed, listening to symphonies, violin concertos and every other kind of music imaginable floating from the dresser across the room to my ears as I lay in the bed. It made me want for more.

Last year, as I was returning from California after the Natural Products Expo, I had as seatmates a little family of father, mother and small child. The child was a bit difficult, and the mother was having a hard time, so I took him off her hands for a while, and we ended up "bonding" for at least the duration of the flight. During the flight, the husband took out a set of Bose headphones, put them on, and proceeded to be oblivious to everything around for a couple of hours. Later, I asked him about them. They turned out to be Bose Triport on the ear headphones-- not the Quiet Comfort kind, but the cheaper model. On the headpiece, he had attached an Apple Ipod Shuffle, which was plugged in to the earphones. He let me listen, and I was astounded. There, in that little set of headphones, was all the rich sound of the Bose Wave Radio/CD. Completely self-contained, wireless, almost small enough to stick in a coat pocket when you weren't using them. Absolutely astounding.

When I got home, I began researching the Bose headphones, and found that it wasn't as easy as just going in and saying "I want one of THOSE!" There were choices to be made. Did I want the QC 2 (over the ear) or QC 3 (on the ear), or the cheaper Triport on the ear or over the ear?

Perusing the internet gave no satisfactory answers, so I went to the Bose Outlet store in Aurora Farms and tried them. It was clear, after trying them, that on-ear headphones were the right ones for me, but which? The Quiet Comfort Noise Cancelling headphones were larger and more cumbersome, but cancelling out noise around you so that you could hear the music unimpeded seemed to be an advantage over those that didn't do that. I ended up buying one of each to take home to try out. That is really the way to do it. Within five minutes at home, after trying them both, and seeing how cumbersome the QuietComfort set was, the TriPort won hands down. I also learned from experience, that "noise cancellation" is a misnomer-- all it cancels is the specific, narrow wave-lengths of noise that airplanes make. All other noise came through, and was no different than it was on the $150 cheaper Triports. So, back to the Bose outlet store went the QC headphones. The Triports found a comfortable place to hang in my office, curled up, and made themselves right at home, within arms length so they are always ready to be installed on my ears when I want them.

For the last year and a half I have thoroughly enjoyed my Triports and the Ipod Shuffle I bought to go along with them. Learning to use ITunes has been a slow process, because I haven't applied myself to it very well. But I have loaded many hours of favorites of many types and have no lack of very satisfying sound in my life when I am working in the office or am in the motor home on the road.

This past fall (2007) Bose introduced an Ipod Portable Sound Dock, which brought all that Bose quality into a totally portable speaker system that was no bigger than a sheet of notebook paper, and could be carried anywhere to enrich the air anywhere with incredible sounds.

I had to have one, even when I found out that the Shuffle wouldn't work-- I'd have to buy a "real Ipod". So I began plotting. Saw my opportunity on Black Friday, and bought a 3rd generation Apple Ipod Nano, connected it to ITunes and set it up, checked it out on the headphones, and then stuck it away in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.

I finally got the Bose Sound Dock yesterday, charged it up, and have been playing my music on it all day. WOW! Most incredible sound I have ever heard, even from big expensive systems. Crystal clear, even at highest volumes. Every instrument, every bird song, every wave, every note clear and crisp. Worth the money. It is interesting how a little Ipod, plugged into a little speaker barely bigger than a notebook page (6 1/2" x 12 ") can power out such incredible sound.

So I am now enjoying my ears while they are still working well. My hearing aids? That is just to make mother happy. I have the same "selective hearing" my grandfather had. Don't seem to have any problem hearing people except when there is lots of ambient noise around, so I wear them at my lectures and workshops, and at other similar times. Maybe I'll start wearing them to church someday soon. Haven't done it so far for fear that it might interrupt my sleep time.

The Writing Gene is Finally Creeping out of Kori's Hidden Recesses

2008-01-10T18:32:00.000-08:00

I knew it would happen someday. I've seen it in her since she before she entered school.

Kori is a born writer, although she has always denied it. I knew that someday, it would come out of her, either creeping into the light or bursting out full-blown. It started with "books" in kindergarten, took the next step with the Dandelion Cookoff cookbooks she produced in her early to late teens. And now THIS, just over a month past her 25th birthday. Who'da thunk?

Today I got an e-mail from dearest daughter that read like this:

I was wondering, have you ever considered that Grammy didn’t like mom because she was German?

Random, I know….I’m writing down a storyline that I’ve been thinking about. The kind of thing I could turn into a book one day if I ever get around to it. Anyway, I’ve been doing character analysis on one of my characters – a Hungarian holocaust survivor living in Budapest. I was thinking about why this character wouldn’t like certain people, and a German, came to mind…which made me think of Grammy and mom. Anyway, have a great day!

Love you!
Kori

Here is my reply:

Knew it would happen one of these days. Writing is in your genes. You can't escape it.

However, as to your question, it is an interesting angle. I hadn't put that spin on it before.

The main reason Grammy gave was a class difference. My mother came from aristocratic Jewish stock-- important father who was president, CEO, manager of steel mills, coal mines, etc. -- part of the Budapest social scene. She herself was part of the 1920's equivalent of the jet-setters-- a social butterfly going to all the best Hungarian parties. They were wealthy people until the War stripped them of most of it.

Your mother's parents, on the other hand, came from German peasant stock-- farmers, butchers, bakers, shopkeepers, people of the soil --coarse, working class folks just one step up from poverty in the eyes of people like my mother.

That alone was enough to make her think that I could do better-- I was marrying beneath my station, as it were, and she didn't like that. I'm not sure how German commoners who didn't have anything to do with the Third Reich and its activities would have factored into her feelings, but it could have. It was never mentioned, so I don't know.

I'll do some checking around, however, and let you know what I discover.

Now, with regard to helping your writing urges evolve:

One thing I have done over the years to help writing projects evolve is to write newspaper articles-- sometimes monthly or bimonthly columns-- on segments that I wanted someday to collect into a book. My "On the Trail of the Volunteer Vegetable" column for the Business of Herbs forced me, every two months for ten years, to write a profile of a different backyard weed, and these columns (which I got paid for as I wrote them, by the way) were what I collected into the book which is now called The Volunteer Vegetable Sampler: Recipes for Backyard Weeds.

Back then, I just wrote them in the computer, along with the articles I wrote for the Plain Dealer, Ohio Magazine, Plain Community Business Exchange, and all the others. They are all there now, ready to be arranged in logical collections, given titles, edited a bit, and published as books of my collected contribution to the learning of others.

Today, things are different, however. Thanks to blogs, all this can be published right away in a personal blog on the internet, so you can share it with whoever you want, get their input and help in research, etc.

Start a blog for the book project, and write everything you are thinking and discovering, no matter how well developed, as entries in your blog. You will never know which pieces will come in useful some day. Different entries might be useful in different articles, or form chapters of the book. That way you will have them electronically, so you can massage them into different forms later. Take a look at my new blog http://www.goosefootacres.blogspot.com/ to see what I am doing. Titled Doc Weed's Doin's, it is my first effort at keeping a journal electronically. Some entries are detailed answers to questions asked on one of the list serves I belong to. Others are recountings of adventures with the grandkids and others. One is the story about our getting a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer and how we are enjoying it.

Some may never go any further than being an entry in my blog, but the one on "Heat to Burn" in Firewood may well become a column or book that I will use in teaching about making fires for welfare training, and/or may submit for inclusion in http://www.providentliving.org/, and/or prepare for Boy Scouts , or whatever. It is a very important thing for everyone to know, and no one teaches it anymore. However, now it is started, and will be easy to add pieces to as more comes to mind or to my attention, so that someday soon, it will emerge as a full-blown article first, and then maybe expand into a booklet or small book. In this case, everytime I learn something new, I will open that particular blog entry and expand it, rather than write a new entry. That is the nice thing about blog entries-- you can always open an old one and edit it to make it better.

The winter edible wild plants will be added to as I find more of them on other trips to the farm, and that will become a chapter in my Dinner Underfoot book-- or may be added to the existing small chapter on winter fruits to enrich it and add dimension.

If you start a blog and let me in to it, it would be fun follow your creative process and input to it as your writings trigger memories that otherwise would stay hidden away. I'm excited.

Love you
Dad

The Lesson of Mequite Flour

2008-01-03T10:30:00.000-08:00

The other day I had a chance to try cookies made from flour derived from mesquite seeds. Cookies tasted OK, nothing special, just like regularcookies. But it got me thinking about the new Heritage food movement and the offshoots of the RAFT project, as well as others.

We make bread and things out of white, wheat, multigrain flour and so on. Occasionally someone may think that soy flour or spelt flour or some other is better for you, which may or may not be the case.

But flour from edible wild plants, as well as other products from edible wild plants have a different story.

The people who developed cattail flour, or mesquite flour, or skunk cabbage flour for that matter, did so because that was all they had-- they didn't have any of the grain flour alternatives. They didn't develop the flour because it tasted better or had any particularly nutritional benefit over the real stuff. They just wanted to make bread or pasta or whatever, and searched around for something to make it with.

To go out and pay $20 a lb for mesquite flour to make a unique cookie is a little over the top, in my opinion. It mightbe OK once, to find out what it is all about. But to do that regularly may be bringing income in to some tribe somewhere, but it isn't going to give you any product which is special enough in any way to merit the expense.

The same is true of many other edibles. Lots of plants that have been shown to be edible aren't all that flavorful, even though they might be nutritious. Sometimes the value of the plant lies more in its availability, rather than in anything else. People used them because they were there, provided nutrition to keep them alive, and weren't, to their knowledge, poisonous.

It is important in evaluating complrehensive texts on edible wild plants (such as Frank Tozers Uses of Wild Plants - Chelsea Green Press), to realize that most of the 'foods' included in there are not in common use, and may not be appealing. They were used because people needed food and they were there. The plants that are used regularly are those that are commonly found around settlements -- the ones we now call backyard weeds-- such as dandelion, plantain, purslane, lambsquarters, burdock, sorrels of various types, and so on. These are the ones we should be getting to know and be using regularly, because when and if crises hit, these will be our backup produce market --locally grown, organic, and best of all free.

New Jack LaLanne Juicer in service at the Gail's

2007-12-30T11:49:00.000-08:00

I had always poo-pooed the idea of a juicer. "It takes out all the fiber," I told my wife Wilma. "We need that fiber."

But one day a couple of weeks ago, we were channel-surfing and came across Jack LaLanne pushing his Power Juicer, and showing all kinds of fascinating juice drinks he makes with it. This guy has been around a long time-- even before I was a kid, and I'm 68 years old-- and has at various times (especially when I was going through my body-building phase as a teenager)had a degree of influence on me. So we paused to watch this 93-year-old guy hawk his juicer and his system for good health, and got caught up in it.

Now, Wilma has every so often expressed an interest it getting a juicer, so I asked her "Would you like me to get you one of these?" She was uncertain, so I didn't do anything more then, but asked her the same question the next evening. By that time, she had been to work, and had talked about juicing with one of her colleagues, who enthusiastically told her that she had TWO of those juicers, and used them every day.

So, considering that there was a 60 day return warrantee on the machine, when I asked the second time, she said "Go ahead and get it, and at least let's try it out."

I ordered, and within a week or so, it came. Since then, we have had fresh juice every day. It reminds me of an apple grinder and cider press we used to use to make hundreds of gallons of cider. Wilma complains about the cleanup required, but to me, there is no more cleanup than you do in the milk house after milking is finished. So, as far as I am concerned it is no big deal. The benefits of a nice cold glass of "beetcarrotceleryapplepearpineapplelemonandginger" juice is worth it all. When I think of all the vitamins and trace minerals that have been wrested from the cells of each of those vegetables and fruits as the cell walls were broken open, it makes me feel good---like drinking the "potlikker" resulting from cooking a mess of greens, especially dandelion, for 8 hours or so.

So I guess the Jack LaLane Power Juicer is a 'keeper". And I satisfy my craving for fiber by mixing some of that discarded pulp into meat loaves and casseroles.

Winter Edibles at Goosefoot Acres

2007-12-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

Usually, I'm not thinking "let's look for wild greens" in the middle of winter. It is usually snowy, and greens, other than wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris) are hard to come by. But not on December 29th this year.

We've had a rather mild winter so far-- Christmas came and went without snow after an early December dusting-- and temperatures haven't been extremely cold. So we have a lot of green left on the ground, including a number of edibles.

Grandsons Connor and Daniel Gail, along with my son and their dad Kevin, went with me to our farm in Windsor, Ashtabula County, on December 29 for rifle and practice driving the farm's Geo Tracker, as well as some time to work on campsite improvements. While Connor and Kevin were occupied with shooting at cans, jugs and a target by the pond, Daniel and I went up to the campsite to gather firewood and get a fire started for lunch.

As I sat on a log, gathering tinder, I looked down. There, in front of me, was a beautiful stand of ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) and an even more lush stand of young garlic mustard ( Allaria petiolata). So I took the opportunity to teach Daniel, and later Connor, the importance of differences in the odor of crushed foliage in distinguishing between plants with similarly shaped leaves. Never, in my wildest dreams, had I thought that someday I would be giving this lesson on a hilltop in Ashtabula County in the middle of winter!

It was a wonderful supplement to the large stands of multiflora roses (Rosa multiflora) that, thankfully, didn't get mowed down in the fall, but which will this winter while the leaves are off.
The bushes were loaded with tiny, at least twice-frosted, rose hips that didn't have much flesh, but the flesh that was there was sweet and mealy. They will be gathered for syrup on our next trip out.

It was a delightful, surprising bonus to an otherwise already delightful time spent sharing the wonders of the Ashtabula County outdoors with my grandkids. Hopefully, there will be many more such adventures.

Challenges in Making Winter Fires

2007-12-30T11:17:00.000-08:00

You never hear the phrase 'heat to burn" anymore. At least not in the Boy Scouting literature. And yet, when making fires, especially in winter, it is a really important concept to know.

It goes like this. Every species of plant-- most often trees, but not always-- has to be brought up to a certain temperature before the wood starts to burn. Some, especially those with flammable resins in them like black birch bark and pine, start at very low temperatures, and will continue to burn. Others, like oak, hickory, beech and maple, have very high "heat to burn", and won't catch fire till the temperature is over 300 degrees farenheit. To get them started, you have to toss them onto a fire that has already become very hot. Sometimes to keep them burning, you have to mix them with woods with a lower heat to burn-- either very dry pallet wood or softwoods-- to keep the temperature up high enough.

Knowing this is not as critical when the wood is starting out at room temperature (70 degrees of so) as it is when you are trying to start a fire outdoors in winter, or from firewood that has just been brought in from outside in the middle of winter. Then, the wood is possibly 50 degrees colder, and will take much longer to get to the "heat to burn" level.

On December 29, when Kevin, Connor, Daniel and I were at our farm (see post on Edible Wild Plants in Winter, same date), we ran afoul of this particular peculiarity. We had a bit of paper, some dry goldenrod stalks and inflorescences, some pine needles, and dry twigs broken off a spruce and a pine tree, in addition to some larger hardwoods. We cleaned out the fire pit and laid the fire with the paper at the bottom, some pine and fir needles next, then the goldenrod and pine twigs over that, and, using a little box of waterproof safety matches, tried to start the fire.

First, don't buy "waterproof safety matches" with the sandpaper striking surface on both ends of the box as the only way to start the matches. These matches, in the cold weather, were almost impossible to start, and when one started, it wouldn't stay lit long enough to get the tinder going.

We tried with paper started on a Coleman stove, but only got the pine needles to flare up, but not burn long enough to start the pine and goldenrod twigs. The tinder burn time wasn't long enough to raise the temperature to the heat to burn, and so the twigs didn't catch before the paper and needles went out.

it seems that the best way to make this work is to have as tinder fire starters that burn even when cold and burn long enough to raise the temperature of the kindling to the point where it will start burning. Today I am going to soak some drier lint and some cotton balls in hot vaseline, and store them away in my emergency kits in each of our vehicles, so I will have them when needed.

Then I will start experimenting with other materials

Whatever you do, make sure you keep "heat to burn" in the back of your mind when selecting tinder, kindling, and woods to use in making fires, and make sure you have fire starting materials that you are comfortable with, and know you can use to start fires along with you on all your trips.

More specifics and accounts of the results of our experiements will be added to this topic later, so watch for subsequent posts.

Plant Root Beverages

2007-11-30T02:12:00.001-08:00

There has been a thread on the ForageAhead@yahoogroups.com list serv dealing with the properties of burdock (Arctium lappa) that morphed into a discussion of inulin in roots. I responded to the posting of Henrietta from Finland to give a bit more background on inulin, and it evolved into something more that I thought would be useful to keep and pass on to others. So here it is:

In a message dated 11/30/2007 2:34:03 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, hetta@spamcop.net writes:

You'll find inulin in the root of burdock (Arctium), dandelion (Taraxacum), elecampane (Inula), Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus), and a few other large-rooted Asteraceae plants. Dunno if it's found in the roots of plants in other families ...
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Inulin is also in chicory (Ciccorium sp.), closely related to dandelion. Inulin is a fructooligosaccharide, which only means that it is a bunch of fructose molecules tied together by simple bonds. Freeze them or roast them long enough and the bonds break, leaving you with fructose. That is what makes food so treated sweet. Inulin itself is not appreciably sweet. The leaves of dandelion and chicory, at least, become sweeter in the fall after a couple of freezes. That which was bitter loses its bitterness-- not because they are gone, but because the sweetness masks it. You want those digestive bitters anyway, because they are the medicines that work on the liver, purify the blood, regulate the gastro-intenstinal system, function as diuretics, and so on. It was suggested, I think by Sam Thayer at one time, that the diuretic property may result from the bitters being mildly toxic and the evacuation of water being the body's way of getting rid of the toxins. No documentation on this, and I had never heard it said that way before, but it is an interesting hypothesis that might be worthy of some research. Whatever, it is an effective way to get rid of excess water.

If you want to try an experiment, harvest some dandelion roots--probably isn't too late yet in most of the US-because the ground hasn't frozen enough to freeze the roots and reduce the bitterness. Clean the roots, dry them, and from part of them make a decoction (put them in boiling water and boil for about 5 minutes). Then drink this without adding anything. It should be bitter. Now take the rest of the roots and put them in the oven at 250 degrees F on a cookie sheet. Roast them, turning regularly, until they are light brown with streaks of white still in them. Take some out and make another cuppa. Should be still bitter, but with a hint of sweetness. Now roast the rest until they are deep, dark brown all through, with no streaks of white, and the smell coming from the oven when you crack the door is a sweet chocolaty coffee smell. Takes between 2 and 4 hours, depending on how big the roots are. That is when all the inulin has been converted to fructose. Make a cup out of these and taste the difference. This is how all the old European healers did it in times past. Don't know as much about the Asians, but expect they did too. Some of our practitioners of TCM might be able to tell us-- I know I have researched it at one time, but my memory is getting weaker.

From what I have been told, but haven't experimented with myself, it is a little harder to convert the inulin in jerusalem artichokes to fructose than that, but it may be they just aren't cutting the segments small enough or roasting them long enough. Don't know. Be fun to hear from someone about that. Also about experiments with roasting chicory and burdock root. After roasting, chicory still has a bitter bite to it, with a bitter aftertaste, even when it is roasted really dark. The flavor is coarser, less refined than the flavor of properly roasted dandelion root, at least from my experience, but the two complement each other, and when blended together create a flavor which is better than you find with either of them separately.

Eagle Song, from Monroe Washington (who I suspect most of you don't know) used to make a wonderful coffee substitute out of roasted dandelion, yellow dock, chicory and burdock roots, along with roasted hard red wheat or barley. She called it Dandy Doc. This beverage brings together in one place almost all of the most common winter root vegetables into one beverage, with three of the roots containing inulin as their storage starch. She says "roast each item separately, and roast dark, to the color of the coffee you usually drink." The recipe is in my book "The Dandelion Celebration: A Guide to Unexpected Cuisine", available at www.dandyblend.com. if you are interested.

Peter Gail

Peter A. Gail, Ph.D.President/DirectorGoosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living3283 E. Fairfax Road, Cleveland OH 44118www.edibleweeds.com www.dandyblend.com 216-932-2145 Orders: 800-697-4858

Eating Poke Berries and Teaching Others about Wild Food

2007-11-27T05:53:00.000-08:00

I subscribe to several list serves on edible wild plants, among them ForageAhead@yahoogroups.com, in which people ask questions and make comments, some of which are informed and others not so accurate. Occasionally, I stick my oar in and issue advice under the title of "For Whatever it is Worth". Today, it was a question about poke berries and their edibility, and it raised other issues beyond the edibility of the berries. Here is what the post said:

On 11/26/07, Michael Harrison wrote regarding Poke berries:> are you saying then that as long as we don't eat the seeds, the berries> themselves "are" ok to eat. I try to focus on "trail nibble" types of wild> foods and poke berries are very abundant. I have always steered away from> them b/c everyone said the berries were poisonous. Now I understand it is> just the seed that is poisonous so like Joe previously asked, can we just> press them through a sieve and use the pulp and juice without fear of> illness?

And here is my response:

I have Amish friends who use the berries, sans seeds, to make a pokeberry wine that is very effective against arthritis, and another friend who treats his arthritis by eating five poke berries a day. He worked up to it, starting with one pokeberry and gradually increased his intake till he got to the five, and has stayed there for several years.

I also regularly hear of folks from Appalachia making poke berry pies by straining the seeds out like you suggest. However, as a wild food educator, who is dealing with inexperienced people, I would never dare to suggest thatmy students make pies out of pokeweed. It is amazing the liberties neophytes take with knowledge given to them, and how badly they can screw up even the most crystal clear directions they are given.

It is like that game where you whisper something simple in the ear of a person at one end of the line, and have them repeat it to the next person, and they to the next, and so on down the line. What that "simple something" sounds like by the time it reaches the end of the line is almost never anything like what it started out as.

To make sure students in my workshops have learned the plants I have introduced them to, I have them make recipes out of the plants. They have to gather the ingredients, and then have their identity confirmed by me or one of my assistants before they are allowed to use them in their recipe. You wouldn't believe what people think are lambsquarters, or violets, or mallows. Or, surprisingly enough, dandelions. It also tests me on how well I have taught. Student mistakes often reflect on what I have NOT taught them that I should have, so it gives me a chance for a "redo" with everybody, especially when it comes to distinctions between plants with leaves that superficially look similar, such as mallow, ground ivy, violets and young garlic mustard. This is one issue which is relatively easy to correct, but there is a more serious issue that some of my professional wild food educator colleagues tend to ignore, and that is, what is it safe to teach newcomers to foraging.

It is one thing to experiment when foraging for yourself, but another thing again to teach others to forage. The old adage that you need to learn English grammar thoroughly, so you can write according to the rules, before you take liberties with the rules to create specific effects, applies equally to teaching foraging. Live experimentally if you want, but teach conservatively. Make sure your students leave your classes and workshops knowing the "rules." Then if they want to break them by using such things as poke berries because, from their own research, they have heard that others do it, it is up to them. They are on their own.

There is so much good food out there, in practically all places and at practically all seasons of the year, that others have experimented on and determined to always be safe, that no one will ever go hungry by using it. Plan ahead for winter, and store greens in the dry powdered form so that you can get your vitamins and minerals from them all year round.

Another contribution from the Whatever it is worth department.

Peter A. Gail

The Birth of a Blog

2007-11-25T14:31:00.000-08:00

I've read about blogging for a long time, and have actually read a few, but today, after reading a new blogger's account of their start-up, I decided to take the plunge.

I am having a good year, overall. My coffee substitute, Dandy Blend, is selling well and the bills are all getting paid, and I am beginning, slowly, to put my Reconnecting Americans to their Wild Food Heritage show on the road. In August, I did a full day workshop for 125 people at the Lucky Penny Farm in Garrettsville, Ohio, in which I, assisted by Bob Tubbesing (my colleague in these adventures for 30 plus years and my book cover and marketing materials artist) and Jonathan Glassroth (my protege), oriented the assembled multitude to the common wild foods growing beneath their feet, divided them into groups, provided them with recipes and ingredients, and had them make food from wild ingredients for everyone present. We also gave samples of Dandy Blend, and sold copies of my books.

The logistics weren't exactly right, but we learned a lot about what has to be done to properly serve that many people. From now on, every recipe, including ingredients, utensils, pots, and stove will be in its own box, set on a table, and no-one will have to search for anything. All books and Dandy Blend, and the Dandy Blend demo pump pots, will also be in their own boxes, with all perishable parts stored in the motorhome refrigerator and freezer. Tasting samples of each plant will be in their own separate plastic bags ready to distribute as I talked about the plants.

While folks were cooking, Jonathan and Bob took small groups on weed walks to see the plants in the wild and become acquainted with their characteristics.

My health has not been wonderful, so by the end of the afternoon, I was exhausted, and it took a long time to pack up and go. That can be improved also--both the health and the logistics of packing up.

We are scheduled for another workshop at Lucky Penny for August 8 next year, so I'll get a chance to try to do it better next time.

On September 27-28, I gave my first keynote speech to a medical conference-- The 4th Integrative Medical Conference at Toledo Hospital, sponsored by Pro Medica Health. It included the Reconnecting Americans to their Wild Food Heritage powerpoint presentation as a public lecture on Thursday night, and the keynote speech for the conference on Friday morning, on the role of wild food and medicine in Sustainable Living scenarios. It was very well received, and should open the door to a number of other medical conferences. Sales of both books and Dandy Blend were brisk, so the weekend was very profitable.

On November 9-11, our Dandy Blend was the official coffee substitute for the Weston A. Price Foundation conference in Chantilly VA. I contracted for a vendors booth, shared it with Susan Hess of Farm at Coventry who has a brewable version of dandelion coffee, and did very well. Her husband manned the booth while I participated in another conference about 5 miles away on Saturday, and then I took over on Sunday. The other conference related to another hat I wear, that of the Regional Welfare Specialist for Northern Ohio for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In late August, initiated by me and under the direction of local church leaders, we provided volunteer recovery services for people affected by the Blanchard River flood, and were invited to report on the experience at a North American East areawide meeting.

When I packed up to come home Sunday evening, we had sold all but four cases of Dandy Blend and four cases of books. More than 75% of the inventory we had brought went home with other folks. During that same weekend, Dom and Karin, and their team had manned a booth at the IX center in Cleveland for the Fabulous Food Show, a consumer event that drew over 30,000 people (compared with my 1100 people). It was a great experience for them, and made a lot of friends for us, even though it wasn't a financial success. They learned a lot, though.

We just recently received a 20 food container full of Dandy Blend from our factory in Poland, and sales have been so good that almost all the cost of this container was covered by current income, making a loan unnecessary. For the first time, much of the load was converted into 2 lb foil ziplock bags, and the sales of these took us by surprise! One store bought 60 bags before they even came off the line, and over 500 bags sold in the first week. So we were forced to place a reorder less than a month after receiving the first one so that we won't run out of stock of the 2 lb bags -- This is the first time this has ever happened. The best we have ever done up to now is 3 containers in a year. Things are really picking up, and we are VERY happy.

Well, it's Sunday night, and the Thanksgiving weekend is almost over. Tomorrow we get back to work. Bills to pay, marketing materials to write ----lots more that I don't remember right now. So it is time to close down this first episode of Doc Weed's Doin's and turn in.

I'll be back another day.

Peter Gail November 25, 2007