Tom's Seminar Schedule For Spring - Summer 2014

My 2014 season schedule is shaping up nicely and I have a number of presentations planned around the State of Maine. Here is my schedule, effective as of March 14, 2014. I’ll update this list as more dates get firmed up. I’d love to see some readers of my blog at one of my sessions.

March 29. Digital presentation and question-and-answer session for University of Maine Extension’s Rural Living Days held at Mt. View High School in Thorndike. My class time is 10:45 to 12:15.

April 23. Next, I’m doing a digital presentation and plant walk for Jackson Memorial Library in Tenant’s Harbor, beginning with the indoor part at 12 noon, followed by a plant walk on local nature trails. For more info, contact Hanna Tannebring at (207) 594-9209.

May 3. Digital presentation of springtime plants at Merryspring, Camden, followed by a plant walk. Class from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.

May 17. Plant presentation for Adult Education group at MSAD 40 in Union. Indoor presentation in Union School at 10 a.m. followed by plant walk at Rain Tree Farm in Union.

June 8, 9. Two-day session for hosted by Lynn Howe at Harpswell. For more information, call Lynn at (207) 725-7437.

June 12-13. Woodie Wheaton Land Trust, Forest City on East Grand Lake. Evening digital presentation followed by 9: a.m. plant walk the next morning. Contact Patty A. Michaud at (207) 448-3250 or email her at info@woodiewheaton.org for more information.

July 8, 15, 22, 29. Every Tuesday classes at Spruce Point Inn in Boothbay Harbor. The public is welcome. Contact the Inn at (207) 633-4152 for more information or to sign up. There is no charge.

July 19. Plant walk at Holbrook Island State Park in Brooksville. This off-the-beaten-path state park is a true undiscovered gem in the state’s park system. Few visitors, lots of room both inland (even has their own little mountain, complete with trails to the peak), freshwater marsh and lots of shore land. No reservation needed. Just arrive on or before 1 p.m. and we’ll walk about this excellent spot and find wild plants.

July 20. Another session with Lynn Howe in Harpswell. Specifics not yet available, but call Lynn and she’ll be able to help.

August 5, 12, 19, 26. Tuesdays at Spruce Point Inn. See July schedule for more info.

August 22. Plant presentation and walk for Cobscook Community Learning Center in Lubec. For more information, contact Valerie Lawson, Program Manager, at (207) 733-2233. Sounds like a good time to me. I plan on doing some fishing from Lubec Breakwater after the session.

August 23. Evening presentation for Downeast Lakes Land Trust, followed by plant walk the next morning. For more information, contact Tanya at (207) 796-2100 for more information.

New Material In The Works Include Springtime Plant Seminar, Urban Foraging Walks

It’s snowing and I’m stuck inside. It being mid-March, my thoughts have turned to harvesting wild edible plants. I’m currently working on handouts for my upcoming plant classes and even have a brand-new wild plant presentation almost ready to show.

This consists of digital images of various wild edible plants available in springtime. Prior to this, my presentations have included plants from all seasons, but now I’m concentrating upon each season separately. I also am working on a special “garden weeds of summer” presentation. I feel that all these separate groups of plants, each in their own season, deserve special attention.

Also, and I've toyed with this idea for several years, but this year will definitely make it ready. This project will require lots of legwork on my part...literally. I'm speaking of an “urban foraging walk” and will take place in Belfast, Maine.

Often, while waiting for my car to be serviced, I’ll stroll through residential sections of Belfast and to my amazement, I find useful wild plants everywhere. Even such places as the ditches between commercial buildings hold their share of great plants.

My walk will be somewhat taxing, since it will incorporate several miles of Belfast’s geography. But I’m thinking that what we find in and around Belfast will be representative of plants found in other urban locations throughout Maine. Anyone who accompanies me on one of my Belfast walks will be well-situated to do some urban foraging in other towns and cities.

So maybe it’s a good thing that it’s snowing and that winter continues to hold us in its icy grip. It’s given me a severe case of cabin fever and my only relief comes from planning plant trips and seminars for this spring and summer.

There’s a lot to see, do and talk about in the wide world of foraging for edible wild plants, and I plan on doing all that I possibly can along those lines. 

Unique Job Opportunity

Every once in awhile I come upon an interesting topic not directly related to foraging or wild plants. I believe this is something that may interest someone among my readers, and so I’ll post it here.

Linda Bean seeks a team to operate Camp Wapiti, a 100-plus-year-old camp in Patten, Maine, near Shin Pond. Linda needs a “talented superwoman and husband to continue the camp’s history as a place where licensed Maine guides take guests into successful experiences of lake fishing and game hunting: the L.L. Bean way.”

Camp Wapiti offers stunning views of Mt. Katahdin. The camp sits 20 minutes from the north entrance to Baxter State Park. Linda would like to hear from someone interested in running Camp Wapiti for her this summer, fall and next winter and spring. She says that if the new team and she “click,” this could be an ongoing opportunity.

If you are interested or know someone who is, send an email to Linda Bean, owner, Linda L. Bean Camps LLC, at Linda@LindaBeansPerfectMaine.com.

Pine Needle Tea

This unusually cold and long-lasting winter has me down. And I suspect that it has taken its toll on you, too. I’m scouring my shelves for wild foods that I have preserved and though I still have plenty of dandelions and goosetongue on hand, they are only a substitute for fresh, wild green things.

With ankle-deep snow on the ground and nighttime temperatures well below zero (it was minus-6 last night), the possibility of some early-season foraging seems quite remote. But there is something we can harvest right now and in fact, it was available all winter. Tree tea.

Some conifers offer a delicious and healthful (vitamin C) tea. The needles (leaves) are picked fresh, chopped up, covered with boiling water and steeped. White pine is my favorite source of tree tea. It has a pleasant scent that relaxes me. Any pine is suitable for tea-making purposes, though.

So I will go out today and break my way through the snow crust to the nearest white pine, gather a handful of needles and bring them back inside for a nice, hot cup of white pine tea.

In other news, my schedule is filling up for summertime field trips and seminars. I might mention to anyone looking for a fun few hours this summer, that I’m at Spruce Point Inn in Boothbay Harbor every Tuesday, beginning on July 8 and continuing through August 26. I believe my sessions begin at 12:30 p.m. and last until 2:p.m., but the exact time is yet to be determined. Nonetheless, I mention this for the following reason.

Spruce Point Inn hires me for the benefit of their clients. We walk the grounds and I identify different wild plants and explain their uses. The inn owners kindly allow non-clients to participate as well. So if any readers of this blog would like to have a fun, relaxing time some Tuesday afternoon this summer, just come to Spruce Point Inn and join my plant walk.

I’ll post the exact date as the season nears, but with so many people “thinking spring” at this point, I wanted to reiterate the offer of coming to Boothbay Harbor and walking around the grounds of this scenic peninsula, searching for wild plants.

Readers may feel free to contact me about this any time. You have my contact information on the bio portion of this blog.

Meanwhile, take heart. The cold may try and convince us that winter will never leave, but the nighttime sky tells a different story. The springtime constellation Leo the Lion is coming up now and the sun grows stronger with each passing day. Spring will come. It’s just a matter of time. 

Tom's Wild Plant Course

In this blog post, I’m asking for input from readers. I seek your thoughts on my proposed wild plant course, whether or not you think it a good idea and if it would appeal to you or people you know. Here’s how it would work.

I’d offer five sessions. The first would take place indoors and would be an introduction to the topic of foraging for wild plants. The next three classes would be field trips. The first of these would take place in early spring, perhaps May. It would center upon the mostly-ephemeral plants of that season that grow along streamsides (the alluvial plain) such as ostrich fern fiddleheads, the various dock species, wintercress, wild oats, false Solomon’s seal, groundnuts, orpine and others. The trip would also take in some woodland plants of the mottled shade, such as large-leaved aster, Clintonia, Partridge berries, violets, trillium, trout lily and others.

The next session, probably occurring some time in late June, would concentrate upon plants of the seashore. My workshop here would be Sears Island, a place with a wild abundance of useful and interesting wild plants.

The third field trip would cover summertime plants that show up on cultivated ground, such as the various “weeds” that we find in our gardens. This would probably happen in late July or early August.

The last session would take place either inside or perhaps at a park in the Midcoast area, weather permitting. Here, we would go over everything we had learned and observed during our trips and I would give participants a quiz to make sure that everyone had all the facts down to my satisfaction. We would have plenty of time for questions and answers and after that, I would hand out certificates of completion.

This scenario is subject to change, of course. Also, my wild plant school may not begin this May. As I said, I want to mine people for feedback and make sure there is sufficient interest before committing to anything.

However, it all sounds like a good idea to me and if enough people agree, then I’ll spend this coming season searching out sites for my field trips and fine-tuning my prospectus.

So please, give me your thoughts, either positive or negative. Contact me at (207) 338-9746, write me at Tom Seymour, 194 East Waldo Road, Waldo, ME 04915 or send an email message to: tomgseymour@gmail.com.

Good-King-Henry

My fondness for lamb’s quarters, Chenopodium album, is no secret. I frequently mention this edible “weed” in seminars, columns, blog posts and guidebooks. But there is another member of this same family that long ago piqued my interest and yet, I have yet to locate even a single specimen. It appears that that has changed.

The order Chenopodeae has several members, one of which is the goosefoot group. The leaves of these plants generally resemble a goose’s foot, thus Chen, or chenos, from the Greek word for goose, and pous, which means “foot.”

Some, but not all members of the goosefoot group occur naturally on both sides of the Atlantic. Lamb’s quarters, probably our most common example, is an alien plant, that is, it came here from Europe. Likewise, the plant at the center of this discussion, Good-King-Henry (GKH), is another European introduction.

My knowledge of GKH is limited to a page in a Reader’s Digest publication, Magic and Medicine of Plants. The text explains that the name came not, as we might think, from England’s King Henry VIII, but from a Germanic goblin that was known to help with housework, as long as the housekeeper kept it supplied with a daily saucer of cream.

A charming story, perhaps, but that wasn't what garnered my interest. Instead, the plant’s culinary qualities drew my attention. The leaves were known as a spinach substitute (lamb’s quarters, too, are not only a fine substitute for spinach, it has largely replaced that garden vegetable in my diet) and the shoots an ersatz “asparagus.” Reader’s Digest goes on to say that the plant is rich in iron and vitamin C and serves to prevent anemia. That much we might well infer from any leafy, dark green plant.

The leaves are said to reach 6 inches in length, far larger than lamb’s quarters. The plant grows to 12 inches, according to Reader’s Digest.

But since reading about Good-King-Henry back in 1988, I had not seen another reference to it until several years ago, when I was given a signed copy of Flowering Plants of Great Britain, 1870. Here, in an exhaustive listing of the various chenopodiums, was a detailed reference to GKH. The text explained that GKH was extensively cultivated in gardens and cottage gardens. The author went on to say that the plant has ceased to be regarded as a common vegetable, although it is still occasionally boiled by cottagers.

Good-King-Henry has a perennial root, as opposed to lamb’s quarters, which is an annual. With all these pleasant-sounding attributes, it’s easy to see why I have searched, in vain, for GKH over the years since first learning about it. And now, it appears, my search is over.

The end of my quest came in the form of one of those pesky garden packages of postcard-type order blanks. While thumbing through these cards before discarding them, I came upon one that caught my eye. It was from Le Jardin du Gourmet and it read “the 40-cent seed packet.”

The idea here is to give people a chance to try new herbs, flowers and vegetables without having to pay a fortune. I looked at the abbreviated list of herb seeds on the back of the card and that prompted me to visit their website. There, I saw an offer for Good-King-Henry.

I could barely believe my eyes, much less my good fortune. I immediately sent in an order for a packet of GKH seed, as well as a bunch of other seeds that I had planned on buying anyway, come spring. Shipping came to $3.50 my order total was something like $7.50.

So now I sit and wait for the mail carrier to deliver my Good-King-Henry seeds.

I plan on starting the seeds indoors and setting the young plants out in a select section of one of raised bed gardens. If these taste as good as I suspect they do, GKH will become a regular member of my vegetable garden community. If not, I've only lost 40 cents. But either way, I will have resolved my wondering and hunting for this great-sounding plant.

By the way, the website for this interesting little seed company from St. Johnsbury, Vermont, is: www.agrp-dec.com/seeds.

Ground Ivy - The First Wild Green

Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution,
Richard A. Howard Photograph Collection.

What a long, tedious winter this has been. It seems as though it will never end, although I know it must. But any hopes for a respite any time soon seem in vain. It snows every other day now and sometimes, every day. And each night, temperatures dip down to zero and stay there until mid-morning, when the sun, if it becomes visible at all, drives the mercury up into the teens.

The ice storm that hit Maine in December caused me the loss of some of my frozen foods, including frozen fiddleheads. I have plenty of frozen dandelions left, though, as well as some of the home-canned variety. But I’m tired of canned and frozen food. I want something fresh. Sure my homemade produce keeps me well-nourished, but it still seems that some vitamins and minerals from a fresh source would help my body and lift my spirits.

To that end, I’m looking for a perennial plant that will become available just as soon as the snow begins to melt just a little bit and withdraws from around the base of my greenhouse. There, hardy vines of ground ivy await. These should be just as nice and green as the day they became snow-covered early last winter.

Ground ivy, or gill-over-the-ground, was once known as “alehoof.” Brewers used it to tone up and preserve beer, well before hops came into general use. But it’s not for beer that I want ground ivy. It’s for its ultra-high vitamin C content.

Ground ivy was once said to cure “painter’s colic,” which we now know was nothing more than lead poisoning from using lead-based paints. Vitamin C combats bad effects of lead. But vitamin C also does far more than that and recent studies show it to be an alternative treatment for certain cancers and in some cases can either complement or augment chemotherapy. That’s saying a lot for any wild herb.

Lots of vitamins C and A seem like a good way for anyone to ward off late-winter woes. That’s why old-timers referred to spring greens in general as “spring tonic.” Their vitamin-starved systems responded well to heaping doses of vitamins and minerals served up by bowls of fresh-picked wild greens.

So my longing for a strong cup of ground ivy tea makes sense in view of me wanting more vitamins. Besides that, ground ivy is a very bitter herb, and as such serves as an appetite stimulant. And my appetite has been lacking lately, probably the victim of winter ennui and lack of inertia because of forced confinement indoors while the snow falls and temperatures range in the single numbers.

Tonight, while listening to the winter wind howl as yet another storm pelts Midcoast Maine, I’ll drop off to sleep with dreams of ground ivy dancing in my head. And soon, hopefully, my longing for that first wild plant of the year will be assuaged in the form of a steaming-hot cup of ground ivy tea. That can’t happen too soon, either. As I said earlier, it’s been a long, cold winter.