Home-Grown Food Pays Off In Dividends

As winter wears on, the value of home-produced food becomes increasingly evident.

My fondness for leafy greens compels me to put up a number of wild plants, all of which satisfy this craving. Dandelions, goosetongue and lamb’s quarters complement fiddleheads, Japanese knotweed and a host of garden vegetables in my freezer and on my shelves.

Sometimes, though, the craving for fresh veggies draws me out of the house and to the nearest grocery store. And it’s then that I truly realize the worth of my foraged and homegrown produce.

The last visit gave me a bad case of sticker shock. Food prices had risen by perhaps one-third since last I prowled the produce isle. This made me wonder to myself, “What do people do who must depend upon the store for all their food?”

This wasn’t a self-righteous quip either. I truly cannot imagine paying what people are compelled to pay for their food in today’s world.

Besides that, it appears that our sluggish economy has had the effect of driving grocers to keep outdated produce on their shelves longer than in the past. The end result of this is that food costs more and is not as fresh.

After examining many containers of wilted peas, half-dried mushrooms, tough-looking lettuce and wizened zucchinis, I finally settled on a small head of cabbage. That’s a sad commentary on the current situation.

I also recall how last year I found myself wondering if all the work involved in picking, cleaning, freezing and canning wild stuff and garden vegetables was worth it. It was, and is, without the slightest doubt.

So if like me, you have qualms about paying exorbitant sums for outdated produce from faraway points of origin, make a promise to yourself that next year, you will go foraging. And it wouldn’t hurt to consider growing a garden, either.

It doesn’t take a huge garden to provide a decent quantity of food. It makes more sense to start small and increase garden size as needed. To start, though, it’s surprising how much one 3’ X 10’ raised bed can produce.

And for those who for whatever reason cannot build a raised or in-ground garden bed, a certain commercial product can serve very well. This is called “The Earthbox” and it works wonderfully. I’ll highlight The Earthbox in a future blog.

The benefits from foraging and gardening are inestimable.

Burns Birthday Marks Height of Winter

For me, the arrival of the poet Robert Burns birthday on the 25th of this month coincides with a desire to eat some boiled nettles and nibble on homemade oatcakes. Unfortunately for me, I did not put up any nettles last year, so I’ll have to settle for something tamer…perhaps lamb’s quarters or seaside plantain.

Oatcakes, though, are easy. I once adhered to strict measurements when making these most basic of Scottish snacks. But no more. Now, I just pour a big slug of rolled oats into my food processor and put it on high for a few seconds. The resulting product is like a grainy kind of flour.

Next, I add a handful of flour, a pinch of salt and perhaps two tablespoons of cooking oil. This I mix with some water and then fashion into a ball, which is then flattened with a rolling pin.

After that, I cut the flattened oat dough into little rectangles and place these in my toaster oven for perhaps 10 minutes. With the heat on high, I watch until the oatcakes begin to show just the tiniest bit of browning. That signals that they are done.

I never grow tired of eating oatcakes and can easily make a glutton of myself.

Another Scottish treat that I never seem to have enough of is smoked salmon. A week ago, a friend gave me a huge, smoked filet. Today, seven days later, it is gone.

In marking the seasons, I consider Burn’s birthday the peak of winter, the pinnacle of the season. The coldest weather of the year usually hits around the bard’s birthday.

Despite the cold and snow, it seems refreshing and even invigorating to try some Scottish fare and perhaps tip a glass to one of the most beloved poets of all time. To the immortal memory.

Power of Plants

Wild Plants And Wooly Bears

Here’s something that has fascinated me for years. Call it the power of plants. Specifically, it amazes me that when low-growing, pointed-leafed plants begin shooting up in early spring, the leaves often penetrate whatever has fallen on top of them over the winter.


This often includes dried leaves of deciduous trees and even, in some cases, bits of tree bark.

Now here’s the thing. If you took a dried leaf and tried to poke a hole in it with, say, a crocus leaf, the crocus leaf would bend before it penetrated the dry leaf. Something doesn’t make sense here.

Someone with a keen knowledge of physics could probably explain this. I can only guess. And here’s my guess.

As the crocus leaf begins to grow, it does so in slow but steady increments. This motion is not enough to pick the dead leaf up and move it, as anyone might logically expect would happen in this case. But no, the crocus leaf (or leaves) keeps up its slight but steady progress. This focuses the most pressure on a tiny point, the tip of the growing leaf.

In time, the weight of the dried maple leaf, bit of birch bark or whatever it is, allows the pointed end of the crocus leaf to eventually force its way through.

In other words, if the crocus (or whatever) leaf grew quickly, it would simply push the dried maple leaf aside. But instead, it grows slowly and that slow motion allows the pointed end of the crocus leaf to make a teeny hole. This eventually becomes a larger hole as the crocus leaf grows and reaches its full diameter.

And by gosh, I just think that this is wicked neat.

There may reside in this an analogy for us. Keep at it, whatever it might be. Eventually, you will persevere.

Windblown Seed

Ever wonder how some new weed managed to get where it is? Wild plants have a way of springing up in the most unexpected places. The answer, of course, depends upon whether the plant spreads by wind-blown seed, seed that drops on the ground in fall and germinates in spring, or by means of runners and rhizomes.

In the case of wind-blown seed, certain plants develop seeds that have little fuzzy hairs, called “parachutes” that carry the tiny seed along on the breeze. And winter is prime time for such seeds to spread far and wide.

Some of my favorite plants expand their range by virtue of wind-blown seeds. Among these are New England aster, boneset, common milkweed and common cattail. Of these, cattails have the longest season for seed travel. By now, seeds of these other plants have long ago dispersed. But cattail seedheads persist from one season to the next.

Winter, though, is the time when cattails use their floating seeds to best advantage. In warm weather, leaves on deciduous trees and shrubs catch the airborne seeds and prevent them from spreading. But in winter, bare limbs have no effect on windblown seeds and one tiny cattail seed can finally settle to the ground many miles from where it was released.

Which explains why someone can dig a pond miles from any other source of water and in only a few years, cattails “magically” appear.

In the same way, airborne seed lands on recently cultivated ground and the following spring and summer, all manner of new plants suddenly begin growing.

While chances of finding a seed on the snow are slim at best, its for sure that for every square foot of snow, at least a few new seeds will land during the winter, waiting for spring to germinate and thus establish a new colony.

So remember that while winter seems like a dead, lifeless time of the year, that certainly is not the case. Wild plants continue their ceaseless quest to perpetuate their kind, even as the blizzards howl and temperatures plummet. Ain’t it grand?

January Thoughts

This morning, January 7, 2011, the temperature was 0 degrees Fahrenheit at my Waldo home. With a steady breeze blowing, I found things downright uncomfortable. Which brings to mind some old English sayings about the first month of the year.

“A wet January, a wet spring.”

“If the grass do grow in Janiveer,
It grows the worse for it all the year.”

And finally,

“The blackest month of all the year
Is the month of Janiveer.”

I just love those old proverbs. And just because they lie in the realm of folklore, doesn’t mean they aren’t rooted in at least a modicum of truth. More about that when Groundhog Day rolls around.

So given the cold, brisk conditions, I was a little surprised to see an immature bald eagle this morning. It sat atop a big sugar maple at City Point in Belfast. That area has, as of late, become a regular eagle hangout.

I stopped and took a few photos and then another vehicle passed and the eagle flew away.

What impresses me most about eagles is their size. Massive. I wonder if people would accord eagles the same degree of esteem if they were, say, the size of a robin?

Eagles aren’t especially handsome, but they are impressive and a bit scary when viewed close up. Immature eagles lack the trademark white (bald) head, which gives them a raggedy, unkempt appearance.

I did wish the bird luck, though. With the river frozen and all, it must find it difficult to find food. Which brings to mind the fact that besides catching fish, eagles are fond of carrion and will eagerly devour old deer carcasses and so on…not exactly a noble profession.

A few other things come to mind today and I want to mention them here. Last night, I watched a television show that outlined possible nightmare scenarios for our country. One of the worst was a shortage of water.

The presenter showed a map of states that will soon, within the next few years, experience a water shortage. Maine was one of them.

This got my attention, pronto. Maine? A water shortage? Without going into detail, that is the least of our worries. In fact, it just isn’t going to happen, at least not any time soon. We have oodles of water, more water than most other places. Besides our legions of lakes and ponds, we have plenty of subterranean water. That, of course, includes so-called, “ground water,” those underground veins that people locate by dowsing and turn into water wells.

My own well, one of the most productive around, is one I located myself and had dug out with an excavator. I have also found numbers of wells for others.

Maine has no shortage of potable water.

Next and last, I want to bring to reader’s attention the radio advertisements for people to have a star named for themselves or a loved one. In this time of scarcity, unemployment and so on, it seems truly wicked to delude people in this manner.

Please remember the next time one of these ads comes on, that all known stars are already named. This is in accordance with the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the body that governs international astronomy.

Star names are either actual names, mostly Arabic, and those without names are catalogued according to a system dating back to 1603. Newly-discovered stars are given a catalogue number by the IAU. End of story.

Anyone paying one of these companies to name a star for someone is throwing their money away. The only place these names are recorded is in the company’s records…and that’s a maybe.

So save your bucks. If you want to do something nice for someone, give of your time and talents. Or just give them money. At least you will know that it has gone to some good use.

Kep on The Sunny Side

“Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,” goes the old Carter Family song. That advice has literal as well as figurative value.

The sunny, or south side of hills, slopes and embankments loses snow cover quickly, even in mid-winter. For me, a visit to such a place provides a foretaste of things to come, an insider’s view of the nascent spring.

My home, little more than three miles from Penobscot Bay, sits in a frigid valley. Here, cold air creeps down the channel provided by nature, making the local climate at least five degrees colder, and often far more, than that found down by the sea.

Snow on the north side of the valley lingers far into spring. When flowers bloom and others plant their gardens, I monitor the snow patches and note when the last vestige disappears.

The sunny side of my little valley fares considerably better. In fact, dandelions along the south-facing wall of my cottage frequently appear many weeks ahead of the season’s main crop.

Sometimes, when darkness, cold and deep snow get me down, I hop in my car and drive down to the coast, there to view bare ground. This seldom fails to produce a sense of well-being. Such therapy also supplies the patience needed to accept the things I cannot change, namely the long, cold winter.

So when the weight of the world bears heavily upon mind and body, why not visit the sunny side? It’s a sure tonic for the winter blues.

Running Clubmoss

Marie LeClair recently sent me a plant sample to identify. Marie uses various wild plants to good effect by drying and pressing them and gluing them to her homemade greeting cards. This seems pretty innovative to me and makes me wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Anyway, Marie’s sample is a sprig of running clubmoss, sometimes known as ground pine. The scientific name, for those interested, is Lycopodium clavatum.

This stuff grows in long strings on the forest floor where sunlight only dances in dribs and drabs. It does not occur out in the open. Running clubmoss makes a nice decorative plant and clever folks such as Marie put it to all kinds of interesting and attractive uses. But in the not-too-distant past, this primitive plant served us in several other ways.

First, the spore-producing cones, those little tapered yellow things that appear at the end of long, scaly stems, become laden with a yellow powder in summer. This powder, the accumulated millions of spores, is sterile and was used medicinally as an absorbent on various wounds and even surgical incisions. It could serve that same purpose today, if push came to shove.

But the powder’s other use fascinates me, mainly since I am still a boy at heart. The stuff is wicked flammable and I like to hold a match next to one of the powder-laden cones and flick it with my finger. “POOOF,” it goes, in a wonderful, brilliant flash. Sure, it’s a dangerous practice, but such as this brings out the kid in us all. But do as I say and not as I do. Please refrain from putting clubmoss spores to the test.

Because of its explosive properties, the fine, yellow “dust” from running clubmoss was used as flash powder in the early days of photography. So the next time you see a movie that portrays someone like, for instance, Matthew Brady taking a photo, remember that the stuff that makes the big flash grows all over the woods here in Maine.

So thank you, Marie, for sending me your plant sample and bringing this delightful plant to mind.