Eat Your Wild Greens: The Delectable Nettle

There is no other plant I have loved and loathed as much as the stinging nettle. As a child, we avoided these troublesome plants for the itching welts they gave on our legs should we carelessly brush against one while playing in the woods. We just plain did not like them, and the idea that they might be a food never crossed our minds. In fact, if someone had ever told me I would plant them in my garden one day, I would definitely have not believed them.

When I was about 25, I ate nettles for the first time while visiting a friend of mine at the organic farm where he worked. With the promise of a hearty breakfast, we ventured out to the edge of the recently plowed field, where he gathered great handfuls of them with gloved hands. Then he scrambled them up with some farm fresh eggs while I eyed the breakfast situation with skepticism. Not wanting to be accused of lacking a sense of food adventure, I tried them, and found it to be one of the tastiest breakfasts I had ever had. The cooking broke down all the little spines, causing no ill effects to my mouth, and I was amazed by the rush of energy they gave me for our hike that day. It was better than coffee! I was hooked on nettles right then and there.

So, you might be wondering what is so special about nettles and why they are so good for you.  Nettles contain large amounts of amino acids, glucidic substances, amines, sterols, cetones, volatile oils, fatty substances, sitosterols, formic and acetic acid, panthotenic acid, and folic acid. They are also chalk-full of vitamins like C, B2 and K, beta-carotene, calcium, magnesium and iron. Nettles are useful in treating a wide variety of health issues including arthritis, urinary tract infections, conditions of the spleen, diabetes, anemia, allergies, viruses, stress and fatigue. They are truly a super food.

When I started taking Wild Food Adventures classes with John Kallas in Portland, nettles came up often as an important food source. He insisted that we should throw our faint-hearted inhibitions out the door and grab them with our bare hands like a real man. I tried this many times and decided that wasn't going to work for me. Numb fingers for days was something I just couldn't cope with, when garden gloves are so easy to bring along. I decided to leave the stoic wildcrafting practices to John, and make things easier for myself. I always wear gloves.

Last year I went out nettle harvesting all throughout the Spring, in the mountains, in parks by the river, and along Forest Service roads, and dried as many as I could for the Summer and Winter months. Dried nettles are excellent as a tea, as an addition to soups, and in rice dishes. I also dug up some rhizomes and planted them in my garden to get a nice nettle patch of my own going. It did really well, and I anticipate a good source of fresh greens this Spring right out my back door.

With the warm weather we've been having the last couple of weeks, I noticed the nettles were starting to push up from under the leaf mulch in my garden. I decided to stop and check one of my nettle spots in the Coast Range on my way out to visit some friends, and sure enough, I found the most tender, juicy nettles sprouting up from the forest floor. Eureka!

Now, if some of you are reading this and wondering what to do with a nettle should you ever happen across some, here are a few simple ideas for my favorite recipes. They can get much more elaborate too. I know some folks who made nettle pesto and nettle beer last year. The possibilities are numerous.

Nettle tea is the easiest thing to make. Simply boil water and steep some nettles in a mug or mason jar until the water turns a very pale green. It has a wonderful flavor and aroma, and I find it revitalizing on cold days in the early Spring.

Nettle broth is another treat. I boil the nettles for about 20 minutes with some diced onion or dried onion flakes. Then I add a little sea salt and tamari, and slurp it down.

An all-time favorite breakfast or lunch is nettle scramble. I saute them in butter and a little white wine until they are very limp and the spines have broken down. Then I add some diced bacon and eggs, and maybe a little raw blue cheese on top. This, my friends, is the true breakfast of champions.

You'll feel like a superhero after eating this plant.

Winter in the Country: A Tour in Photographs

As we make our way through another mild, and somewhat erratic Willamette Valley Winter, I thought I'd share a handful of photographs of some highlights of the season. Between our one day of snow, some frosty cold mornings, torrential rain for days on end, and the balmy 60-degree weather we're having this week, I can honestly say that times are rarely dull.

Out here in Oregon, even the weather is an adventure.

Foggy morning.

Jack Frost paid us a visit a few times, leaving behind a sparkling trail of ice crystals all over the ground...

And on the last hardy plants in the garden.

The girls out enjoying their snow day.

Jack Frost's window pane artwork.

Smokey the barn cat stays warm hugging his one true love.

Calendula flower in the snow.

Just so you know that it's not all snow-dusted landscapes and ice crystals, here is a typical Winter day in Oregon.  What we lack in snow, we make up for in rainfall, and vitamin-D is a precious commodity around here. However, all those grey, rainy days are what makes everything so lush and green. Those pioneers were on to something. They were trying to get away from the snow!

With all that rain comes a lot of flooding. Our property is situated a very safe half-mile or so from the Long Tom River, but when it jumps its banks, we see things like neighbor's fields and the Oregon Country Faire site transformed into a watery expanse.

So far we've only splashed around the edges,but I hear it's great canoeing!

 Winter sunrise.

A brave little snowdrop heralds the oncoming Spring.

A Day at the Sand Dunes

Along the Central Oregon Coast lies one of the most interesting landscapes I have encountered in the Pacific Northwest. The Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area stretches for 40 miles from Florence to Coos Bay, and holds a natural wonderland of  wind-sculpted sand dunes up to 500 feet above sea level, tree islands, sand lakes, ponds, marshes and abundant wildlife. Wind, water, and time formed these dunes when sedimentary rock from the Coast Mountain Range was worn away and washed downstream in rivers. Then the waves and wind pushed the sand miles inland for thousands of years. The geology of this place is fascinating. You can read more about it at the USFS website here: Geology of the Dunes.

A friend and I took our kids for a day outing to the dunes on their Martin Luther King holiday from school. The weather was drizzly and iffy, but we just needed to get those cooped-up kids outside. We stopped for a hot co-coa by the woodstove at my favorite spot in Mapleton, the Alpha Bit Cafe and bookstore, and pressed onward to the rainy coast.

I discovered a favorite little sand dune area this year near a lovely spot called Baker Beach. I wrote a post  last Winter about all the wonderful hiking trails there, which you can read through this link, called:

A Baker Beach Day Hike.

I discovered a couple of trails heading South out of the parking area, which led to these sand dunes a couple of miles long tucked in amongst forest on all sides. It's an area where 4-wheelers can't go, so it's quiet, peaceful, and solitary, save for the occasional hiker or horseback rider.

Though most hikers were deterred by the rainy weather, it looked like someone had been there right before us. Maybe a coyote or a fox? Animal tracking is so easy on the dunes! You can find their trails clearly and watch them wind off in the distance as far as the eye can see.

Some deer had been through recently too.

We had a break in the weather, and the kids ran around exploring all these little sand ponds created by all the recent rainfall. Most of them were no more than a couple of feet deep, and some had little freshwater clam bubbles rising up.

The terrain of all these little hills and ponds was a lot of fun for the kids to run around on, and they enjoyed playing games with their footprints in the sand.

The evidence of rain in little rivulets worn in the edges of the ponds made for a beautiful sight. It looked like little miniature watersheds with all the networks and fans of streams.

With all that rain came a beautiful rainbow arching over the sky. It remained for quite a while, and I am taking it to be a good sign for the year to come.

One of the fun things about sand dunes is climbing up and jumping down. My son had a good time on this particularly tall one doing just that.

He hauled out a bundle of invasive European beach grass roots he gathered for my nest-making projects. What a thoughtful young man I have.

Finally some foul weather blew in again with horizontal drizzle blowing against our faces. My daughter, and her best friend both ran out of good spirits at this point, and we had to deal with some melt-downs. I have to remind myself sometimes that parenting is an adventure all on its own, which might not always coincide with whatever idyllic outdoor adventure I had planned. At least my son was being really helpful. We took a break for snacks in the car, went on a search for a lost water bottle, and were able to enjoy the rest of the afternoon out on the beach with some clear, mild weather. Nine-year-old meltdowns aside, it was a good excursion to the sand dunes.

Directions to Baker Beach: About 5.5 miles North of Florence on Highway 101, turn west on Baker Beach Road and follow to the end. The Baker Beach Trails can make a seven mile hike in all, and the Lily Lake Trail is an easy one-mile loop, great for smaller children. This is a day use fee site where USFS recreation passes are honored. There are also five campsites with vault toilets, picnic tables, and fire rings for about 10$ per night.

To find out more about the dunes, places to camp, and recreational activities, visit the USFS website at: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/siuslaw/recreation/tripplanning/oregondunes/

The Natural History of the Chicken

For a family movie night this weekend, we watched a PBS documentary by Mark Lewis called "The Natural History of the Chicken." My son, who is a chicken person through and through, was absolutely thrilled about this, and I was intrigued, expecting a look back at chickens throughout history. What we saw was very different from our expectations, but far more entertaining. The first thing I can say is if you ever feel like a crazy chicken person, watching a move about folks far weirder than yourself really helps. Today, I feel downright normal.  

This one hour documentary introduces us to some real characters and their chickens. From a Maine farmer who resuscitates her hen with CPR after finding it frozen stiff in a snowstorm, to a man raising 100 roosters for cock fighting in his semi-rural neighborhood, to a woman in love with her pet rooster who takes him out wearing his little diaper to eat a hamburger at McDonald's, we see how much some people are into their chickens. One man does a very convincing crow, followed by a rooster's mating dance. My favorite part was a look at the unsettling conditions of factory farmed poultry and eggs in America followed by a backyard farmer talking about how much his free-range flock means to his family. He takes us through a morning of children gathering eggs in the field, happy hens foraging for bugs all day long, a very humane killing and the family sitting down to a roast chicken dinner where deep gratitude was given for their meal.  

One more gem in this movie was a man reading his inspirational story about his white silkie bantam hen named cotton who bravely put her own life on the line to protect her chicks. He begins by looking at the cultural practice of the word "chicken" as an insult, and ends the story saying that he would be proud to be called a "chicken."

For all you chicken people out there, this is a must-see. Here's a peek at the first part on YouTube, where I think you can even watch the whole thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkxO91TLKVg

Cluck, cluck, cluck....

He Goes By Paul Bunyan

This last spring, we ended up with an enormous mystery chicken. The "Buff Orpington pullet" chick I picked up with all the other assorted breeds quickly began to look very unlike a Buff Orpington. In fact, with it's black and white plumage, this chicken looked more and more like some strange ptarmigan or wild fowl of the tundra. It also grew bigger and bigger than all the other chickens every day. I had no idea what it was. I was stumped.

Then one day, in the fall, it let out an unearthly howling moan. By this time it was three times the size of our other chickens, so I was a little startled by this. A giant howling chicken? Then I noticed the fancy tail feathers had grown longer, and upon hearing several other howls, decided this was a rooster with one booming, burly good morning crow! All our other roosters had come out months ago, so he must have just been a late bloomer.

Here is a picture of Paul Bunyan next to an actual Buff Orpington. Note the size difference. He's one big rooster!

It turns out Paul Bunyan is a Brahma. Apparently they are known for being calm and excellent foragers, so this rooster is a keeper. This presents a slight dilemma beings that we now have four roosters, but such are the dilemmas of farm life. As I have been following one of my absolute favorite blogs, Coldantler Farm, I noticed her giant rooster, Winthrop, must be the same sort when she described his morning howl. Here are a couple of great posts by the author, Jenna Woginrich, about her howling rooster: Winthrop, and Voice Lessons.

In honor of Paul Bunyan's soulful, wailing moan, here is a link to a song by one of my favorite contemporary bands, Iron and Wine: The Rooster Moans.  Enjoy!

Raising Nature-Centric Kids: It's All About the Little Things Around You

Kids love the outdoors. Given any opportunity, they jump in the dirt with abandon, marvel at little bugs and creatures, collect rocks and flowers, and make themselves right at home. More and more frequently, I am hearing about things like Nature Deficit Disorder and how children are spending more time plugged in and less time tuned in to the outdoors. Diagnoses of ADD, ADHD, Sensory Integration Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder are on the rise, and research abounds linking this to our increasingly indoor society.  The good news, is that this is not a hopeless situation.

Human beings need time outside in nature. It really is our native habitat. I realize that not every family is made up of wild outdoorspeople and naturalists like ours, but you really don't have to go out on wild camping excursions or long grueling backpacking trips to get your children outside. Nature is all around us. In parks, alleyways, backyard brooks, ravines, bike trails, county and state parks, and even in little cracks in the sidewalk where gardens of weeds pop up. Bugs, slugs, snails, raccoons, deer, wild turkeys and bats can all be found nearby, whether you make your home in a city, suburbia, or the countryside. I am encouraged by urban outdoor programs, like our local Nearby Nature and Whole Earth Nature School offering programs to help parents find an outlet for their kids to tune in to the natural world we live in. I hear about more and more schools having outdoor walk times built into their curriculum and taking older children to week-long sessions at outdoor schools. Parks and arboretums oftentimes offer guided walks and programs with activities and crafts. Ask around, and you're sure to find something offered in your community.

Getting kids interested in nature is key. The more you show interest, the more likely their interest will be sparked. I have heard quite a few parents say that their kids don't like being outside, and they don't want to make them unhappy. My thoughts on this will perhaps go against popular parenting sentiments of today, but I feel strongly that it is our job to do the best thing for our children and to teach them to grow into adults who know how to create their own happiness, not expect it from people around them. It is not our job to make them happy. They might complain and display apathy or outright resistance, but once you get them out there immersed in outdoor spaces, even dirt-loathing couch potatoes will start having fun. They can't help but notice all the little bugs and critters, and eventually, they will start playing in the dirt or splashing in a puddle. I think it's in their wiring.

If you have a child with special needs, ADHD, Autism spectrum disorder, or many other challenges children and their parents face, consider outdoor time as a very inexpensive form of therapy. When my son was diagnosed by the local school district with Autism spectrum disorder in pre-school, a whole array of therapies and treatments were presented to us, none of which were covered by our health insurance, and none of which we could afford. We were fortunate to have access to many services through the school district for free, but we wanted to do more to help our son. We found a specialist who our insurance covered as a regular pediatrician, and she was the one who first told us about the concept of Nature Deficit Disorder and Richard Louv's book, Last Child in the Woods. She said she could tell we were outdoorspeople, and that what would help our son the most was to do more of what we were already doing. She said if we took him outside as much as possible, it would be of great benefit. We took her advice and stepped up the camping and day excursions outdoors. Every chance I got, I sent him and his sister to outdoor nature programs with local organizations on no-school days and during the summer. Many of these organizations had wonderful scholarship programs that made this possible. At the same time, we put him on a gluten-free casein-free diet, and they did some focused work with him at school on his social and sensory issues. Do you know what? He improved dramatically! I'm not saying the outdoor time was THE only thing that helped, but it was certainly a big help.

So, I've said a fair amount about how connecting kids with nature is good for the kids, but it is also important to note how it is good for the earth. It is unlikely that a human being with no personal connection or positive experiences with nature is going to feel a sense of responsibility for environmental stewardship. Recycling, reducing pollution, using earth-friendly products, preserving wild places, and supporting sustainable agriculture are all optional at this point. Choosing the options that have positive impacts on the environment is not inherent, it is learned. Think of your child's outdoor time and activities as an environmental education. This may or may not be something they learn in school, and much of it is simply first-hand experience. Taking your child on a walk through a park may one day inspire them to help shape laws preserving National Park lands. Letting your child play in the dirt in the vacant lot next door may result in them leading community garden programs in inner-cities as an adult. You never know what experiences, however great or small, will shape them into the adults they will become. They are, after all, the ones who will inherit the earth after we are long gone. 

With all of the nature education I have tried to provide my children, they are turning out to be some very nature-centric little people. They are comfortable and happy in the outdoors, and I see a lot of thought go into being caretakers. One of my proud parenting moments was when this summer, they discovered a colorful garden spider building a web in our herb bed beside the house. My son recognized that it was an orb spider, and they named her Orbsy Orbie Orbarella. Instead of asking to watch movies, they went outside every day to watch Orbarella and get updates on her happenings. That spider was the first thing they wanted to show everyone who came around. Their teacher came out for a home visit before school started, and they ran over, beaming, to introduce her to their little Arachnid friend.

One day, Orbarella disappeared, and not long after, the kids noticed this red sphere hanging in a network of webbing in a clump of wheat near her old web. They put two and two together that this was her egg sac, and devoted their time to protecting it. They said they wanted more orb spiders in our garden to eat the mosquitoes. As the winter set in, we moved the egg sac to a rosemary bush in the garden for more protection. What impressed me most about all this was that they were not afraid of the spider, they liked the spider and gave it a name, they could identify the spider, and they felt a sense of responsibility to protect her and her offspring.

I feel that I can rest easily knowing my kids are going to take good care of the earth, and they understand that the earth will take good care of them. They know it will always be a place to turn to for peace and renewal, no matter how crazy the world around them gets.

Ah, Nature...it's poor-man's therapy.

Resources:

Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv

The Geography of Childhood by Gary Paul Nabhan and Stephen Trimble

Hands-on Nature by The Vermont Institute of Natural Science

Nearby Nature: http://www.nearbynature.org/

ReWild Eugene: http://www.rewild.com/

Whole Earth Nature School: http://www.wholeearthnatureschool.com/

Dormancy

This dormant time of year can be a challenging one. There aren't many sunny days, the rain falls for days and days, working outside can be very cold and wet, the trees and shrubs are bare, you can see all the neighbor's trash piles and junked vehicles usually hidden by foliage, kids get cooped up and turn wild on you, and it's hard to see much going on around a homestead. Most things are dormant. The thing about dormancy to keep in mind, is that it's only temporary. It is a resting stage in the life cycle of plants, where growth and development are temporarily suspended. Plants sense the shortening day length and decreasing temperatures of Winter, and go into this resting state to store up energy for new growth in the Spring. Similarly, many animals go into hibernation. Modern day people like ourselves don't really have the luxury of hibernation, life goes on, but I think we experience our own sort of dormancy to some degree. For many folks, it's a fine line between dormancy and a winter funk. That makes this a good time, no matter how foul the weather, to go work outside and look for signs, however small, that Spring will be on the way.

The bare-root fruit trees were in at my favorite local nursery, so I picked a few up to fill out our orchard. It is a long-time dream of mine to walk out my back door and have abundant, ripe fruit hanging from the trees and lying all over the ground for me to pick and the chickens to snack on. Last Winter, we ordered two apples, an heirloom cider apple, two cherries, a plum, two pears, and a peach tree (which our dogs ate) to accompany the two mature apple trees already on the property. The growing is going very slowly, aside from the cherries, so these tall, vigorous trees I picked out should get us some fruit in two years.  I brought home an Italian plum, an Asian pear, a Seckel pear and a Frost peach. Out in the drizzling rain, my husband and son planted the plum near the back door, the peach between the garden and the corner of the house, and the two pears out in our back field beyond the clothesline. If all goes well, we should have a wonderful little orchard here in a few years. It's quite a thing to look forward to.

Right now it might not look like much, but work is beginning for the Spring. There are plants to be moved to better spots, paths to mulch with wood chips, cardboard sheet mulching to re-do in the front yard, quail housing to build, and bigger projects like shop roofing and house painting to plan for. When I think of all that work ahead, I'm grateful for a little dormancy. Even if things look pretty bare out there right now.

There's a busy year ahead on the homestead, folks!

There Was a Child Went Forth Every Day

"There was a child went forth every day;

And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became;

And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of

the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,

And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,

And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,

And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there--and the beautiful curious liquid,

And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads--all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;

Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,

And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms, and the fruit afterward,

and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road...

And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.

His own parents,

He that had father'd him, and she that had conceiv'd him in her womb, and birth'd him,

They gave this child more of themselves than that;

They gave him afterward every day--they became part of him...

The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,

The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away

solitary by itself--the spread of purity it lies motionless in,

The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud;

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day."

~Walt Whitman