Nature is always in transition, but at this time of year it’s not subtle.
I just finished picking the first ripe white oak acorns from reachable branches. Thanks to a bear who climbed one productive tree, I was able to reach a few acorns on limbs which broke beneath the bear’s weight. I’m going to try dehydrating them. My attempts at oven roasting them were a disaster. A few oak leaves in sunny areas are turning red.
Tupelos are also sporting red foliage. European mountain ash berries hang in huge red clusters. It’s mostly green now, but in a few days the transformation will be awe inspiring.
I’m freezing the chicken mushrooms I found - I’ve eaten too many for them to be a treat right now. Puffball mushrooms are in abundance since the rain stopped and the temperature warmed up. I’m still eating them, although I might store a few if I keep finding them.
Leaf season will be perfect if we have cool nights and bright sunny days for the next week or so. I’m pet sitting in Woodstock, NY an artsy community at the foot of the Catskill Mountains. It’s north of where I live, so I can follow the foliage, (known as “leaf peeping”) as it changes from north to south.
I can walk from my suburban house, surrounded by white oaks, to the center of town. On the way wild turkeys, deer, and migrating birds travel the corridor formed by back yards, crossing residential streets with ease. They are all feasting on the acorn pieces dropped by the squirrels. This is the place where the Woodstock music festival was supposed to happen in 1969; the event actually took place on a farm in Bethel. But years later, the shops and businesses still have a “hippie” feel to them. I guess old hippies never die, we just flash back.
My current house mates are two cats, both excellent hunters proud to demonstrate their skill. I’m impressed. These two felines have bells on their collars, so I figure they’ve earned their quarry.
I think about the time I tried to rescue a baby bunny that one of our farm cats had caught. I was maybe five or six and my Dad stopped me from interfering. He told me that if all the rabbits and rodents that were born lived to adulthood, they would eat all the plants and there would be no food. He understood the balance of nature and how the relationship between predators and prey maintained that balance.
I just began reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma. My Dad would not be able to farm today, as he had from 1952-65. I never understood why corn was so magical to me as a child. Now I realize that the corn I grew up on no longer exists and that the hybridized, mutated plant of today is the source of a number of health-related problems. How sad is that.
I’ll keep reading, even though it hurts to learn how it is that farmers can grow more food, but not feed their families, how the landscape has changed, and why so many of us cannot return to the land, even when we want to.
For the first time in many years my freezer has more wild edibles than purchased cultivated food. I’m proud of that. It’s time consuming, but I am sure of where the plants grew and what I am eating. Given the recent spinach scare, I’m also relieved. I don’t understand why people are encouraged to throw out fresh spinach instead of cooking it, which typically destroys bacteria. But I’m willing to guess that if I followed the money trail, that some form of corporate greed is at the root of the problem.
I know where the food I eat comes from. Yes, I eat processed food sometimes and pay the price when I feel ill or bloated the next day. I’m lucky that my taste preferences were formed when family farms were a way of life. I cannot imagine who I would be if I were born and raised thirty years later.