Happy
Indigenous People’s Day!
This
weekend, a long weekend with a full moon, my partner and I went foraging, with
the express intention of collecting the falling seeds so we could save them.
I
figured, why buy a seed packet when a plant naturally drops its seeds in the
fall? And, of the seeds in this area, many would be of native plants. What
better way to get free seeds that naturally grow in the region and use them to
expand our supply of greenery?
Intro: Starting Out
We’ve
foraged once before, a couple of weeks ago, and collected the following loot:
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| Can you guess what these plants are? Not to worry, I'll cover them all again later. |
I
must say that I’m blessed to have a partner who is a biologist and has spent a
large part of her childhood foraging with her family members who have a farming
background. My grandparents were also farmers, but unfortunately when I was a
child we did not delve into that aspect of their past – something I regret.
Grandparents, after all, have such a store of knowledge, passed on through so
many generations, that we in the industrial and post-industrial ages have just
totally neglected.
The
tome Edible Wild Plants by John
Kallas, also proved to be very helpful. After scanning Amazon for the easiest
possible primer on foraging, I chose this book, because it covers 15 extremely
common plants in extensive detail. As a beginner, I felt that I needed the
level of detail, especially as, to be honest, I have difficulty telling plants
apart. I mean, they are all green and have leaves, right? So, I am in
particular danger of ingesting something poisonous, unless I have an “Explain like
I’m five” introduction. The introduction, in particular, taught me some things that
might be obvious to those who have more common sense, but were mind-blowing for
me, such as that just because one part of a plant is edible, doesn’t mean other
parts can be poisonous.
Last
week, I also received another beginner book, The Backyard Forager, which covers 65 common edibles. This one is a
bit more of a handbook, and I brought it along for this weekend’s trip.
The Trip, Part 1: An
Encounter with Affluence
We
set out around 3 p.m., with the goal of making about a 40-minute trek to a
nearby cemetery by sunset. What more classic October activity, complete with New
England’s picturesque fall foliage?
Walking
while foraging combines multiple fun and useful activities into one: gathering
food, getting more in touch with the neighborhood right around us, exercising,
and having fun.
Almost
as soon as we left the house, Google Maps directed us onto a street that we’d
both seen from one side but never actually walked on before. Pretty soon we
found ourselves in a different neighborhood that neither of us had ever seen –
despite living only a ten-minute walk away.
My
favorite part of ditching the car and walking/ biking instead is how intimately
I become immersed in my immediate surroundings. I feel so much more in tune
with what is going on within a 0.5-mile radius of my own home – something you
can never experience in a car, burning rubber from Point A to Point B with no
idea what’s in-between.
All
of a sudden, in this neighborhood, instead of scraggly sidewalk-crack weeds and
deformed, uprooted street signs and leaks and blasts of motor oil, greens bloomed
upon the brick cobblestone in the quaint quiet everywhere we looked.
It’s
unfortunate that in our society, only the rich can live in what is essentially
a private forest. That’s what the suburbs are, anyway, manicured and pedicured
trees and flowers for those who can afford to hire “illegal immigrants” and
other poor people to till them for them. Meanwhile, the poor have to live in that
concrete jungle.
We
saw that the trees in this area were almost all old-growth; they were as antiquated
and well-constructed as the massive houses – no cheap housing developments here.
Many of the trees even had ornate wicker or wood “tree boxes” installed around
them, like this one that I saw in a different neighborhood last month:
Contrast
this with the trees in our area, which all look less than twenty or thirty
years old, consisting mainly of hardy species such as the ash, planted
desperately by the city’s tree committee in an attempt to uplift the area from
the poverty that had characterized it in the past.
Somerville,
after all, had once been known as “Slummerville,” due to its mostly immigrant working-class
community. Somerville’s trees are just plopped, bag and all, inside a sandy pit,
whereas the soil around these Cambridge trees is so dark and luscious one can
just imagine how it feels in the fingers just by looking, as if the soil were
itself misplaced from the Hawaiian island on which they belong. (That soil, of
the perfect consistency and bursting with nutrients, is known as “humus.” It’s
like the soil equivalent of filet mignon.)
Our
tree in front of our house even has some weird mold growing around it:
By
contrast, in this unknown, affluent neighborhood, which has clearly been
steeped in the aristocracy for a long time, we saw many public-ish gardens in the
green strips between the sidewalk and the road, gardens which seemed to belong
to no one, but were clearly being taken care of by someone – perhaps some sort
of local club or municipal committee.
And,
because of the class divide regarding environmental education, it seemed that
some individual or individuals had even taken care to plant edible greens. Someone else who was
privileged, elite, environmentally conscious, and probably white, had clearly seen
the benefits of planting specifically what is edible.
In
my next post I’ll discuss what we found.
Meanwhile,
enjoy Indigenous People’s Day!
