Pine Nuts

Investigating a Torrey Pine (Pinus torreyana)

Today Katrina and I hit the road again and drove down to San Diego to spend New Year’s Eve with her Grandparents.  We stopped at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve on the way.  The Torrey Pine (Pinus torreyana) is one of the many pines that produce nuts large enough to be worth eating.  Torrey Pine nuts formed an important part of the Kumeyaay tribe diet and are 19-20 mm long, which is larger than most other pine nuts.  Torrey Pine distribution is limited to Santa Rosa Island and the mouth of the Soledad River near San Diego, making it the rarest pine tree in North America.  Development appears to be the major threat as all the trees I saw in the reserve were thriving.   I put together a table of all the ethnobotanically significant pine nuts found in North America for those as curious as I was.

Scrub Oak (Quercus dumosa)

We also found Scrub Oak (Quercus dumosa) growing on the hillsides but didn’t notice any acorns.  Evidently, they were not as preferred for acorn collecting as the larger oak trees to the east.

Road trip- to The Land of Little Rain

For the last several years my family has migrated south to California for the Holidays to take advantage of the warmer weather and visit the more fecund family members who have difficulty traveling with small children.  Traditionally we all loaded into the “Odious Whaler,” Mom’s red minivan so named for our normal coastal route paralleling the Grey Whale migration and the repugnant odors that result when a van full of car camping siblings eats too many Odwalla bars.  Trips in the Odious Whaler where characterized by Rambo camping (discovering hidden and free places to camp) and screeching halts in Big Sur to identify shore birds, photograph elephant seals, race up coastal trails, and to answer the whaler’s cry with raised binoculars. 

This year, complex family schedules and Mom’s reluctance to allow the aged “Oddie” her former freedom, forced Katrina and to drive ourselves to our rendezvous in Ventura, CA.  Our independence allowed us to extend our trip considerably in order to take in the natural bounty of California.  My primary goal was to harvest as many types of acorns as possible, and Katrina—who has been more obsessed with salt lately—was keen to collect some salt from some of the region's many natural deposits.  We packed our camping gear, binoculars, collecting bags, a back roads atlas, and a few of our favorite ID books and planned a route that included the Salton Sea, Joshua Tree National Park, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, and Yosemite.

Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii) silhouette

We left Seattle on a frosty clear morning driving hard for the potentially snowy Siskiyous in Southern Oregon.  We hoped to cross the pass before dark and camp somewhere in Northern California.  I wanted to explore the north end of the Sacramento Valley for Valley Oaks (Quercus lobata) because I have seen pictures of Valley Oak acorns so large that it only took three to fill a hand.  We started seeing bare branched oak silhouettes in the fading light as we passed through Redding and by the time we got to the small town of Cottonwood, I couldn’t bear the thought of missing a collecting opportunity, so we pulled off the highway on a lonesome exit and drove down a quiet dirt road until we found a nice oak to sleep under.  The stars were twinkling brightly and the crescent moon had already set so we didn’t set up the tent in order to enjoy the stars.  The next morning we were up at first light eager to stomp around and warm up our cold bones (I thought we were in California!).  

Variations in Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii) leaves

Insect damaged Blue Oak Acorns

Yuck! There isn't much left to eat.

The oak we had slept under didn’t have any acorns, but it didn’t  take me long to find places with a heavy mast of acorns lying on the ground.  They were about the size and shape of Garry Oak (Quercus garryana) acorns with warty caps but the leaves were shallowly lobed or entire.  I think they may have been Blue Oak (Quercus douglasii).  Almost all of the acorns were damaged by weevils so I did not collect any.  One of the reasons that Native Americans burned oak savannahs was to kill the weevil larva, which spend 1-2 years buried in the leaf duff before pupating, and searching out an acorn crib.  Infected acorns fall early, so a burn after they have fallen would serve the dual purpose of limiting weevil reproduction, and clearing the vegetation below an oak so that good acorns were easier to collect.  Klamath River Jack summarized this practice in a 1916 letter to the California Fish and Wildlife Commission, “Fire burn up old acorn that fall on ground.  Old acorn on ground have lots worm; no burn old acorn, no burn old bark, old leaves, bug and worms come more every year…. Indian burn every year just same, so keep all ground clean, no bark, no dead leaf, no old wood on ground, no old wood on brush, so no bug can stay to eat leaf and no worm can stay to eat berry and acorn.  Not much on ground to make hot fire so never hurt big trees, where fire burn (In Kat Anderson’s Tending the Wild, 2005, p. 146).”

Continuing southward and downstream, we soon left the savannah and entered the immense central valley grassland. What John Muir once described as a “scene of peerless beauty” and an “ocean of flowers” confronted us in half flooded rectangles of brown dirt rimmed with patches of invasive Giant Reed Grass (Phragmites sp.)   Irrigation projects using Sacramento River water have made this region a large producer of wild rice (Zizania palustris), a grain native to the Great Lakes region.  While I am a fan of wild rice, it is sad to see native ecosystems destroyed to grow a crop that flourishes with minimal management in its own native habitat.  We pulled off the highway to investigate a paddy further and found ourselves on a road to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge.

Northern Pintail

The Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge hosts 40 percent of the Pacific Flyway’s fleet of winter waterfowl.  We followed the safari style automobile loop through a portion of the 35,000 acre refuge and got good views of Cinnamon Teal, Northern Pintail, Ruddy Ducks, White-fronted Geese, thousands of Snow Geese, a Coomon Moorehen, and about 40 other species.

That evening we arrived at Jeremy’s house and I met my new nephew who is still the size of a loaf of bread.  Everybody else showed up the next day and I spent the next few days on the beach teaching Christian how to build sand castles and play bocce rock.  The birding was pretty good and I saw a Long-billed Curlew, several Marbled Godwits, and learned to ID Black-bellied Plover in non-breading plumage and California Towhees.  We all went to the Griffith Observatory one evening and learned a lot about space.  I was really intrigued by a Foucault Pendulum replica that is on display near the main door.  It slowly turns clockwise relative to the floor as it swings back and forth and in 1851, it was the first direct proof that the earth is rotating on its axis (the earth rotates beneath the swinging pendulum).

Galiano Island Oyster Feast

Katrina and I took a ferry to Galiano Island on Thursday to meet our good friends Shin and Andra.  Galiano Island is conveniently located half way between Victoria and Bellingham, and Shin was able to host us in the fabulous house of a UVic Professor that he is house sitting for.  I was fascinated by the post and beam construction of the home and the use of enormous local sandstone slabs in the landscaping, and custom Douglas Fir cabinetry.  Most of the hours that we spent indoors not cooking, eating, or playing Settlers of Cattan, I spent daydreaming about a similar but smaller version of the home that I would like to build someday.  Fortunately, I didn’t waste too much time in idle dreaming, because we spent much of our time outside.

Seaside Juniper growing at Porlier Pass on Galiano Island

We hike through Dionisio Provincial Park on the north end of Galiano.  We investigated the ruins of an old light keepers home at Porlier Pass and the modern solar powered light and fog-horn that put the light keeper out of business.  Porlier Pass provides a shortcut for north bound mariners trying to get to Nanaimo, but the narrow passage, strong currents, and frequent fogs make it dangerous.  Donald Graham has written a chapter dedicated to the history of this particular lighthouse in his book Lights of the Inside Passage.

Evergreen Huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) still fruiting in December

Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia) bark

The vegetation of the Island’s Coastal Douglas Fir Ecosystem thrives during the winter as many of the tree and shrub species are evergreen, and special suite of groundcovers have adapted to thrive in our relatively mild and wet winters.  We spotted Evergreen Huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum) that still had a few ripe berries, but repeated rainfall and age had leached most of the flavor out of the berries.  We also saw a number of Pacific Yew trees (Taxus brevifolia), which are currently grown industrially to produce the chemotherapy medication Taxol from the bark.  Taxol is used for treating breast, lung, and ovarian cancers.  Pacific Northwest Indigenous Peoples also used Yew bark medicinally and constructed hunting bows, digging sticks, and splitting wedges from the dense and flexible wood of the Yew tree.

Miner's Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) and Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Further down the trail we found the tasty winter annuals Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) and Chickweed (Stellaria media) growing luxuriantly on a mossy sandstone cliff under a Blue Heron rookery.  Had they leaves not been speckled with white-wash, I would have had a hard time resisting my impulse to immediately stuff them in my mouth.  Licorice Ferns (Polypodium glycyrrhiza) were also thriving on the rock face on account of the more open, wintertime, tree canopy, and ample moisture.  Unlike most plants, these Licorice Ferns will go dormant during the summer because the rocks are too dry to support photosythensis.  Licorice Ferns persist these annual droughts as a rhizome.  The green colored rhizomes can be dried and used to make a nice sweet tea with trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus) leaves and Grand Fir (Abies grandis) needles, which were also abundant on Galiano Island.

Douglas Fir (Psuedotsuga menziesii) bark scar

After we rounded the point we came to a series of small bays with shell beaches.  Park signage informed us of the historical Salish use of the site as a seasonal village and harvesting ground for shellfish, roots, and berries.  A few fallen trees revealed the salt and pepper soil of black “human earth” and white shell fragments.  I also noticed that some of the larger Douglas Fir (Psuedotsuga menziesii) trees were scarred from the removal of thick chunks of bark that were probably used for fire wood.

Shin cooking Pacific Oysters

An Oyster ready to be devoured

The low tide was at 9:40 pm, so we returned to the shore with flashlights to hunt for Pacific Oysters (Crassostrea gigas).  Also called Japanese Oysters, these large oysters were introduced to the coast by Taylor Shellfish Farm (here in Bellingham) in the early 20^th Century.  Since then they have spread to brackish estuaries from Baha to Alaska.  Now they are much more common than the native Olympia Oyster (Ostreola conchaphila).  We rustled about the sea lettuce and rocks in the dark until we had 12 large oysters.  The next day we baked them until they opened and served them on the half shell in their own juices with a healthy slathering of herbed garlic butter.  They were divine!

Gardening with Nature

Katrina and Mom planting Garry Oak acorns

Today Katrina and I planted a number of excellent wild foods with Mom.  I have been collecting seeds from a number of different species over the last few years and now I finally have a place to plant them.  We planted Giant Camas (Camassia leichtlinii), Common Camas (Camassia quamash), Northern Riceroot (Fritillaria camschatcensis), Chocolate Lily (Fritillaria lanceolata), Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), and transplanted root cuttings of Salal (Gaultheria shallon).

By planting native plants we not only garden with natural elements, but we also work in collaboration with nature, and so the title "gardening with nature" has a double meaning I quite enjoy.

Sprouted Garry Oak Acorns (Quercus garryana)

The small black seeds of Giant Camas (Camassia leichtlinii)

The roots of Salal (Gaultheria shallon) ready to be planted

Trays of native plants seeds ready to propagate

Chuckanut Bay Silverweed

The frosty leaves of Silverweed (Argentina egedii)

Yesterday Katrina and I went to Chuckanut Bay to harvest Pacific Silverweed (Argentina egedii).  We packed our yew wood digging stick and binoculars, and set out on the cloudless day for Mud Bay.  Mud Bay is on the North end of Chuckanut Bay and has marshland where Chuckanut Creek and a smaller, nameless creek that drains Chuckanut Village enter the bay. 

Five years ago Nancy Turner got me excited about Silverweed while discussing a potential research project for my Master’s Degree that would involve close work with Kwaxsistalla, a Kwakwaka’wakw elder and Clan Chief.  Before moving to Victoria, I searched around Bellingham for a place to experiment with Silverweed and found it growing in the Chuckanut Village salt marsh.

Silverweed roots resting on my digging stick

The roots of Silverweed might not seem like the best candidate for a food plant: they are only about as thick as a pencil, are difficult to harvest because they often grow entangled with the woody rhizomes of rushes, and have a bitter flavor.  However, those observations are based on “wild” Silverweed.  Native Americans living on the coast between Washington and Alaska carefully cultivated and weeded garden patches every year to increase the size and abundance of Silverweed and other root vegetables like Spring Bank Clover (Trifolium wormskioldii).  Flavor was also improved by harvesting the roots in the fall, and storing them until the winter when they were an important feast food.

At work in an estuarine salt marsh

Returning to the marsh now and harvesting Silverweed, I realize how much Kwaxsistalla has taught me, and how much more there is to learn.  My thesis experiments only tested the effect of tilling and weeding on Silverweed abundance over a very short time period.  I didn’t have time to explore how long-term harvesting alone may be enough to eliminate less disturbance-adapted vegetation.  Before leaving the Chuckanut Village salt marsh, I couldn’t help but drive a few stakes in the ground that I tended so that I can return and monitor the ecological impact of my meal from the marsh.

I wanted to show Katrina one of the places that Garry Oaks (Quercus garryana) still grow so we went further around Mud Bay to Woodstock Farm.  A few Garry Oaks cling, desperate for sunlight, to the rocky shore of the bay.  I recalled how I recently learned from a Lummi woman that their word for the Chuckanut Mountains means “fires in a line.”  Perhaps the name is an indication of an Aboriginal fire history that would have favored Garry Oaks over the now dominant Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii).  A few pit house depressions and a shell midden exposure around the root ball of a wind-thrown Fir were further evidence of the previous productivity of Mud Bay.  It is easy to see the destructive nature of clear-cut logging, but what of the destructive nature of human inactivity….  Fire suppression and fallow gardens choke the biodiversity of this place.

Chehalis River Coho Fishing

Dad had been away for two weeks visiting little brother Christian in Mexico (see Christian's blog here), and I didn't get any fishing done without him.  He is back now, and today was his birthday so we decided to go on a father-son outing to explore the Chehalis River in British Columbia.  It was still dark when I left my house (yes, finally moved in!) and the wipers pushed slush off of the windshield making me happy that I packed gloves and plenty of layers.  At Dad's we quickly loaded the tools of the trade and were soon on the road with his boat in tow.  The Trumpeter Swans were plentiful as we passed Wiser Lake and many farm fields were filled with Canadian Geese.  The low hanging clouds lifted briefly as we passed through Sumas to reveal snow near the bottom of the foothills, but for the rest of the drive the weather looked glum.  As we followed the Fraser upstream Dad easily spotted salmon carcases and although I didn't see them, their presence was confirmed for me by the Bald Eagles in the trees, which increased in numbers as we neared our boat launch on the Harrison River.  I started counting Eagles once we were on the water.  On one stretch that was less than a mile long, I counted 125 eagles on just one side of the river.  I actually gave up because they were getting so thick that I couldn't count them; some trees had more than 20 eagles on them!  The carcass abundance was equally impressive.  They lay hollow eyed on the banks, could be spotted in underwater heaps that looked like miniature logjams, and drifted belly up and nose down in the river- tracing lines in the sand with their gnarled snouts as the current pushed them towards the sea.

Were we too late?  No fish were jumping and the only ones we saw were Chum that looked like zombies.  We were also having trouble finding the mouth of the Chehalis.  It empties into the Harrison through several channels in a large tidally influenced (freshwater) estuary.  We had already motored up one channel as far as we could go and were forced back by shallow water.  In the distance we saw two fish biologists that were counting salmon carcases and we motored over to ask for direction.  Half way there the signs improved: we saw our first Coho jump and two seals in the water.  The mouth of the main channel was just up ahead around the corner, and so off we went.  It wasn't exactly as easy to find as they made it out to be, and we ended up parking the boat and walking for about half a mile, but at last we came to the crystal clear water of the Chehalis.  The Coho were thick in the deep slow moving water.  As we walked along the bank to scout out a good place to fish, they spooked easily and moved off shore even further.  I rigged up quickly and cast a pink colored weighted fly over a small school of fish... they all spooked.  We tried drifting flies, setting them on the bottom, and Dad put on several different patterns, but nothing would entice them.  They were onto us and all we could do was watch and delight at the splendid display of life (and death) around us.

Thanksgiving: Calories for the Soul

Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday.  On this day we celebrate nothing more than family, food, and friends.  The tradition of eating native foods like turkey, Cranberries (Oxycoccus spp.), and others explicitly recognizes the ecological communities that nourish us.  These lessons solidified in my mind about 12 years ago when my best friend Sam (www.foragersharvest.com) began hosting a completely wild food Thanksgiving.  The venison roast, mashed Wapato, and Wild Rice were not only incredibly delicious—as we ate, we listened to Sam tell us where he had harvested each food and we honored the land with our conversation—they nourished us in a much more profound way.

For many people, the food element of Thanksgiving has become abstracted with store bought, industrially produced, agricultural commodities, which have little connection to land, a particular ecosystem, or the sacred act of human harvest.  While I always long to be back at Sam’s table for Thanksgiving, this will be the first year in several that I am able to spend the Holiday with my own family.  I will bring some of my best wild edibles to the table and in the spirit of Sam, share some calories for the soul.

Progress with Bracken Ferns

A 7' long Bracken Fern

More Bracken Fern (Pteridium aquilinum) experimenting….  I harvested several rhizomes from Dad’s property in rich loose soil under Red Alder (Alnus rubra).    The fronds are mostly dead and are starting to topple over.  I stretched one upward to its full extent and it measured 7’ tall.  The rhizomes are also quite large, but I wasn’t able to unearth an entire one although I got a few pieces that were more than 2’ long.  I washed the rhizomes and brought them home to cook.  I initially steamed about 1/3 of the rhizomes for an hour.  When they cooled they had a molasses like aroma and I peeled one with a carrot peeler and found the peelings to be very sticky on the inner surfaces.  Without further preparation I chewing on the rhizome and found the initial flavor sweet.  As I chewed an unpleasant bitter flavor dominated and I spat it all out.  So far the smell and the taste are similar to my limited experiences with Wood Fern (Dryopteris expansa) rhizomes.

Bracken Fern rhizome cross section

Using the base of a heavy wooden spoon, I pounded the remaining portion of the peeled rhizome and was easily able to separate the dark central fibers from the rest of the rhizome.  I picked through the pounded rhizome strands and tasted some pieces that didn’t have any dark fibers and found their flavor agreeable, which leads me to believe that the bitter flavor is concentrated in the dark colored fibers in the rhizome.  I finally feel like I am making some progress on the Bracken Fern front.

Peeled Bracken Fern rhizome

I continued steaming the remaining rhizomes from my first batch for another hour and peeled them.  They now have a smell reminiscent of potato chips.  I will let them dry for a day or two in the hope that the dry starch will pulverize into flour while the dark fibers remain intact enough to be separated with a sieve.

Pounded Bracken Fern rhizome

Acorn Cracking Davebilt Style

Mark next to his Hazelnut dryer

Our Garry Oak (Quercus garryana) and English Oak (Quercus robur) acorns had been drying for several weeks on baking sheets and the time was finally right for cracking them.  I called up Mark, a Filbert (Corylus avellana) farmer based in Everson to see if I could use his Davebilt hand crank nut cracker to remove the shells from all of our acorns.  He welcomed us over and we went down to his shop to get the nutcracker.  He showed me an extremely heavy duty, stainless steel, 1.5 hp, electric nutcracker that he has just finished fabricating to keep up with the growing production of his orchard.  

The Davebilt gobbling our acorns

Many of his tools would easily translate over to acorn harvesting.  He is working on some padded hooks for shaking the nuts out of the tree branches; he has sieves to sort the nuts into different sizes; and a large forced air nut drying box to dehydrate the nuts to 9 percent; and of course, he has those dandy nutcrackers.

Smoked Chum Salmon

Using the Davebilt, we cracked our 28 lbs of dried Garry Oak acorns and 12 lbs of dried English Oak acorns in about an hour.  It was difficult to say for sure how long the process took because I kept on picking Mark’s brain for more information about his orchard.  We left with a 10 lbs bag of his Barcelona variety Hazelnuts that only cost $30!  As a token of gratitude for letting us use his Davebilt, I gave him some of the Chum that I just finished smoking.

Salmon Fishing

The day awoke clear and cold.  A thick frost glowed with un-warming light on the grass and chimney smoke puffed from glazed roofs in our neighborhood.  As I scrambled to gobble down Katrina’s home-made granola and get out the door to meet my dad for our fishing trip, I noticed large clouds on the horizon and donned another sweater and packed my rain jacket.  The last time we went fishing it rained the whole time, and with the cold temperatures, I was really hoping it wouldn’t do the same today.  

I met Dad at his house and he was already prepared to go.  Fishing rods packed, and boat trailer hitched, we set out northward to Canada to fish Chum Salmon on the Vedder Canal.  The Vedder River used to connect the Fraser River to Sumas Lake until the 1920s when the 15 square mile lake was drained to open up more land for agriculture.  Despite all the alterations to this river system, several fish species manage to survive in its waters.  Two months ago we fished Pinks and later in the winter we might return to fish Steelhead.

We arrived to find the boat launch parking lot completely empty which made us wonder if we were going to find any fish, but we launched anyway and motored down the Vedder to its confluence with the Fraser.  The river was full of bird life including Mergansers, Herring Gulls, Western Grebes, Blue Herons, and Bald Eagles but we didn’t see a single fish jump.  Without much optimism we slowly made our way back up the river and just when we both decided to pack up and try a different river, a large Chum jumped.  Suddenly the fish were everywhere, but it took us about 45 minutes to figure out how to catch them.  We used strike indicators and weighted flies to fish deep in the pools where they were resting.  I hooked into the first fish, but after a couple minutes it broke off on the anchor line while I was reaching for the net.  Then Dad showed me who was boss by catching about 5 fish while I struggled for another bite.  In the end, he landed about 8 and I landed 3; we killed 4.  On the drive home, Mt. Cheam looked glorious with snow dusting the forested slopes.

I filleted the salmon and froze one, put half in the fridge to eat fresh, and will smoke the other 2 ½ tomorrow.  It is gratifying to have another positive calorie day after a string of days hunting only for apartments.

Mentors and Moving

These last few days have been filled with more good-byes.  Friday I traveled up to Qualicum Beach to see a very important person in my life, Kwaxsistalla, a Kwakwaka’wakw Clan Chief, who has taught me an extraordinary amount about the traditional food ways of his clan.  Nancy introduced me to Kwaxsistalla almost exactly four years ago and I can still hear him singing the traditional Soapberry (Shepherdia canadensis) whipping song that he sang for us that evening, and I vividly remember him teaching us about his favorite way to eat frost softened Crabapples (Malus fusca).  My visit Friday was different than my countless other visits where my goal was to apprentice with Kwaxsistalla and trade my labor for his traditionally-styled education which comprised of on-the-land instruction and storytelling.  Today, my visit was for the purpose of telling him that I was moving.  It wasn’t exactly a goodbye, although I am moving away, and he is of a venerable age.  I still plan on seeing him again.  I mostly wanted to use the occasion to tell him how much he means to me and let him know how important he has been to my understanding of indigenous foods.  I have been lucky enough to participate in the harvesting and preservation of  food, not as part of some eccentric counter-cultural desire, but as part of a timeless tradition of food sovereignty.  More important than these experiences, were the life lessons that he taught me, such as the meaning of family, and the importance of place; he showed me generosity, he inspired humility, and he gave me the courage to speak what was in my heart.

My other great mentor over these past four years has been my Master’s Supervisor, Nancy Turner.  On Wednesday she took me out for dinner and I did my best to impart to her my feelings of gratitude for her wonderful example, inspirational character, and overwhelming generosity.  Over the years she has even showed me some of her favorite berry patches and mushroom-picking grounds.

Yesterday we loaded up the balance of our belongings (my dad took all of our books earlier) and narrowly caught the ferry to the mainland.  We arrived in Bellingham in the middle of a rainstorm, but with the ferry and border crossings behind us, the worst part of the move is over.  We are watching a friend’s dog for the next few weeks while we look for a place to live- hopefully someplace with a big pantry.

Wild Food Feast!

Katrina and I wanted to host a special meal for our friends to let them know how much we appreciate them before we leave Victoria and move to Bellingham.  With 19 mouths to feed, it was by far the largest dinner party that I have ever thrown and I wish I could have invited more people.  We spent the better part of the day preparing food and moving furniture to the venue.  Our menu was as follows:

Drinks- 
Homemade Apple cider.

Appetizers- 
Toasted Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) and Nori (Porphyra abbotae), Salal (Gaultheria shallon) fruit leather, Kate’s smoked Sockeye Salmon, Garry Oak (Quercus garryana) acorn bread, Hannah’s homemade bread, Andra's Grapes, and roasted Chestnuts (Castanea sp.).

Soup-
Cream of White Chanterelle (Cantharellus subalbidus) and Cattail (Typha angustifolia) rhizome soup. 
Salad- 
Ryan’s English Walnut (Juglans regia), Filbert (Corylus sp.) and Cranberry (Oxycoccus oxycoccos) salad. 
Mains Dishes- 
Sam’s Wild Rice (Zizania palustris), roasted Metchosin Farm Pumpkin Squash (Cucurbita sp.), and Ashley’s Trout.

Desserts- 
Hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida) pie, Blue Elderberry (Sambucus cerulea) cheesecake.

It was really fun cooking the food and not as hard as I imagined it would be, especially because many of our wild foods are stored in a way that makes them easy to use.  We made the desserts the night before with frozen Hawthorne pulp and sweetened, canned Elderberries.  The appetizers were easy, the seaweeds and chestnuts just had to be roasted; the acorns had just finished leaching, so I just drained the water, added maple syrup, and fried for 10 minutes on one side.  The oven was hot, so instead of flipping the bread and frying the other side, I flipped it onto a baking sheet and baked it for 20 more minutes.  The soup required only slightly more work.  We had already fried and frozen the Chanterelles, so all we had to do was thaw and season, but I decided to add cattail rhizome flour, which required pounding the dried cattail rhizomes to separate the fiber from the starch.  Our friends also brought some nice dishes, which was a big help.

The wonderful thing about eating wild foods is that with each bite, we are reminded of the landscapes we harvested from and the people we harvested with.  With so many of my foraging friends at the table, it was a real communion- a sharing of Nature's bread.

Capital Nut Tree Project Acorn Workshop

Stalking the elusive acorn

Acorn bread with acorns in different stages of processing in the background

Today I led an acorn workshop for the Capital Nut Tree Project at Playfair Park in Victoria.  I just can’t stay away from that place!  Every time I go back, there are more acorns on the ground, and today was no exception, although many were hidden under the accumulating leaves.  It is a peaceful place to pick, hidden away off of the backstreets.  About 20 inquisitive people showed up and we worked our way through the process of identifying the different species of Oaks in Victoria, selecting healthy acorns, drying, shelling, grinding, leaching, and cooking the acorns.  I brought as many props as I could, so they were able to see dried, shelled, and ground acorns, and smell the delightful acoroma (an acorn aroma worthy of proclaiming ¡ay caramba!).  We started leaching some acorn flour, and I had some leached flour that we cooked on a camp stove for everybody to eat.  I forgot maple syrup, so everybody got to taste the true essence of acorn flavour in the acorn bread.  I haven’t had it plain in a while, and it was better than I remembered.  For more pictures and a nice write-up of the workshop, see Rhona McAdam's website.

Rod, a Playfair Park neighbor enjoying acorn bread

Acorn tannin dissolved in the first (left) and last (right) change of water

The City of Victoria's Agrologist, Kendell, told us about many other nut trees in Victoria.  I learned that layering is the easiest way to propagate nut trees, especially those species that aren’t always true to seed.  All you have to do is weight down and partially bury a low lying branch and then wait a few years for the branch to develop an independent root system.  She also mentioned another Chestnut (Castanea sp.) in Esquimalt, and she brought a number of different species of Hazelnuts (Corylus spp.) that were all from Beacon Hill Park.  I hope I have time in the next few days to go look for them.

Fall Reflections

The last few days have been pretty quiet on the foraging front.  I made some more apple butter, and have cracked some acorns, but the majority of our efforts have been focused on packing up our apartment.  We are moving to Bellingham.  A chapter in our lives is rapidly coming to a close.  We will both participate in our graduation ceremonies next week and I can’t help but reflect on all that I have learned and all the wonderful people that I have met over the four years that I have lived here.  As a rather trivial measure of my graduate education, I kept a list of all the wild foods that I ate during the four years it took me to finish my Master’s.  The first year I ate 107 different wild foods, 41 of which I had never tried before and 31 of which I had never collected before.  The next year I tried another 25 new foods and collected 14 new foods and the third year I tried 21 new foods and collected for the first time 20 more.  During my last year I tried 13 new foods and collected 9 new foods.  It amazes me how many different things there are to eat in this world—even this bioregion—and still so many that I haven’t tried!  Such a shame that our society mainly eats different combinations of corn, wheat, sugar, and beef!

Katrina and I have endeavored to follow the phenology of Chestnuts (Castanea sativa or C. dentata) closely this year so that we can get the nuts before they fall prey to squirrels or get squashed by car tires.  It hasn’t always been very convenient to bike to the few Chestnut trees in town, but we watched last month as they started dropping empty and immature nuts, and a couple weeks ago, as they started dropping some mature nuts.  Today, a kindred nut from the Victoria Nut Tree project tipped us off about two entire streets lined with Chestnuts that are practically in our backyard!  We stopped by for a quick peek on our way to meet Kate for a hike up Mt. Work and had enough time to grab a couple handfuls of nuts.  In general, the nuts aren’t as large as those we found in Fernwood, but they are more abundant, and it looks like some of the trees have plenty more still to fall.

On our hike up Mt. Work we saw many Bleeding Milk Cap mushrooms (Lactarius rubrilacteus).  Katrina and I have been talking about trying to salt some Milk Caps, but most of the ones we picked today were too buggy to keep.  Near the summit we found some dead camas (Camassia sp.) flowers and I dug down to examine the bulb.  Camas, like many members of the lily family, begins to sprout in the fall.  The sprout overwinters just below the soil frost line, and then emerges and flowers early in the spring.  Here in this mild, wet climate, there are other plants that follow a similar strategy of getting a head start on the spring.  The Sheep Sorrel (Rumex acetosella) and Miner’s lettuce (Claytonia spp.) have already sprouted and established themselves ahead of the winter.  I hope Katrina and I can establish our roots in fallow soil before it gets too cold as well.