Foraging for Black Walnuts

Here's a little foraging and garbling tale from Paul, on the finicky business of handling black walnuts.

A few years back a friend from Kentucky gave me some black walnuts from his folks’ farm. I was immediately addicted. I helped him gather some in Ottawa last year, but wanted my own supply. Our little village should have some walnut trees, I reasoned, but had no success locating them, because I was looking for a HUGE tree, like the massive one in an old part of Ottawa we saw last year.

Late fall foraging

We seem to be having what the country folk call a 'long, open fall' here; no snow yet. And as this comes on the heels of the best wild fruit summer we've seen in our 10 years here, I am one happy camper these days.

I keep going for walks and coming home with the likes of this:

Top - dandelions
Left - nettles good for eatin' (and we did) Right - rosehips and wild grapes for juice

Garbling the message

Herbalists use the word "garble" to describe the process of preparing plant material for use. Dictionaries call this definition "obsolete". (sigh)

To everyone else, to garble is to mix up words or ideas so badly that the original meaning or intent is obscured.

I can tell you, when it comes to all things herbal, the message out there on the internet is garbled in the second sense. Pretty badly, too.

"Herbalists have always been strange"

That's a line lifted from a talk by the much loved herbalist David Hoffman that I just tripped over on youtube.

Here's part one:

A musical interlude

Yarrow

I know this blog is supposed to be 'snippets from a wildcrafter's journal', but this wildcrafter doesn't have a lot of time to write a journal when she's in the thick of it.

This is the beginning of the busiest, and therefore sweetest time of year for me.

Commercial break post that became a furious rant

(this is the not-ranty part)

Remember last year when I had tinctures and other wild crafted, home made products for sale?

I am so NOT going to do that this year. (Although I do have a few things left over, if you want to know what's still available, write me)

It's not that it wasn't successful. It's not that I didn't kinda sorta enjoy certain aspects of it.

It's just that it's so. not. me.

Roses - part one

Remember, click
to embiggen!

Well this comes under the heading of "what was I thinking??" 

I blurted out in comments earlier that some day I would do a rose post. Oy vey, I can't fit everything I do with roses into one post! And for all I do with them, I barely scratch the surface of what can be done with roses.

But then this blog was never intended to be a comprehensive teaching tool, just a sort of journal of my wildcrafting adventures meant to pique your interest. You, my clever reader-friends, know how to do a Google search, and (as I'm finding out) you're a creative bunch, too. So I'll just share what I do, you guys share back about what you do, or would like to do. Leaving links of cool rose stuff in comments is encouraged!!