Category Archives: Food Value

Acorn Acknowledgement; ‘Nuts as Staple Foods’ with Osker Brown; and More – for “The Creation of a Thousand Forests is in One Acorn.”

Acorns have great potential as a staple food. This may seem like it takes a lot of processing, but compared with conventional staple food sources with similar nutritional profiles and palatability, this and many other tree crops require less energy overall to enjoy, potentially require less capital as a cost-of-entry, and have numerous co-benefits. This calls for a different culture however, as there’s a shift in where much of the energy is expended in enjoying regional nuts and trees for basic needs:

In conventional systems, energy use and negative externalities occur “Not In My Backyard“, in rural areas and in far away oil and fertilizer producing places. In systems offering greater food sovereignty, resilience, and positive externalities, energy use is brought closer to the point of consumption and after the point of sale.

Shelf stability of acorns highlights a trade-off of this shift in the point of energy use to enjoy the crop: acorns and many nuts are very shelf stable, but when they’re processed enough to be ready to eat (e.g. as acorn tortillas or roasted hazelnuts) they become less shelf stable. This is not a critical issue, as acorn flour and many value-added nut products can last for weeks dried or refrigerated and be preserved for months or maybe years frozen. This trade-off affects the culture of use and markets for local nut crops:

Tree nuts are long-lasting, resilient, more intimate staple foods which require more labor close-to-home, but

tree for basic needs also bring home closer with the source of one’s well-being and being well in ecological mutualism with that which supports oneself.

And with this in mind, I give thanks to Osker Brown and Living Web Farm for the information below about acorns for landscapes and livelihoods.

Distribution of time for tasks to enjoy acorns:

  • 1/3 labor gathering and drying
  • 1/3 labor cracking, leaching, processing
  • 1/3 labor quality control, removing nuts with signs of mold

Gather & quality-control red oaks, dry, store in-shell . . . here is a very informative video series, starting specifically at part 5 which details home and community-scale acorn gathering.

Ready to prep for meals? De-shell red oak acorns using hammer, nut cracker, nut crucible…or for large home-scale (e.g. ‘5lbs batch weekly for two months’), Davebilt #43 nut mill has been found effective and robust.

Sort and quality-control, winnowing kernels from shells. Discard kernels that are not a shade of brown whether dark or cream colored, e.g. remove nut meat colored white, yellow, green, or blue), discard shells for mulch or fuel or tanning.

Leech (various methods) until astringent flavor is no longer noticeable when tasting nuts. Dry. Break down further into flour using food processor or similar methods. To begin with cut with 50:50 all-purpose flour and use as you would all-purpose flour. Acorn flour can replace all purpose flour for many recipes.

Continue reading →

Predation & Evolution

I poem I originally shared July 15, 2014:

wild cat catching a fish

SPLASH
FIGHT
BITE
All was alright in the world, as I was moving toward the light
Looking for some food so I’d sleep well through the night
And awaken another day
My mouth becomes open
!!! Woah I am awoken !
I spread my wings and make like a cross
Then my world is tossed – tension to release; anticipation to closure; potential to kinetic
So,
It is written
Now I make like the moss (gratitude to the roots, foundations of the Kingdom)
Growing slowly through the churning fires of Time
Now at the turning of the rhyme, I ask:
Have I eaten or been eaten?

Visions of Love, Gardening with Theurgy: An Imaginative Practice to Empower Plants

Plants are people that participate in our world in wondrous, mutualistic ways. Plants serve as the foundation of our human lives, in so many ways, grown by Solar rays of a very high Source. Plants bridge us and the Sun. How can we serve plants? A mystical practice, known as a type of theurgy, is one way to empower plants to give greater gifts as they go forth in life, using the power of human mind to imagine and visualize colors and light.

Definitions of theurgy tend to be vaguely described, as hints of it seep out from the mysticism of various traditions. Definitions often include compelling or querying supernatural beings and deities. I offer this definition based on my learnings and experiences on alchemy:

Theurgy is the mental animating of matter, so to bring out more of matter’s inherent qualities and potential capacities, without imposing a state or process on the matter that is not in harmony with its nature and natural laws of cause and effect [1].

There could be a lot to unpack here, but I will leave that to your own inner and outer inquiries. I raise this work to share an ecological application of it. Based in imagination, it is the use of visualization and color to enliven objects with their vital three-part nature.

Continue reading →

Starchy Perennial Plant Ally: Sunchoke

A long term steward of the northeast, Sunchoke aka Earth Apple aka Jerusalem Artichoke aka Helianthus tuberosus. This plant is a sunflower species with a starchy, potato-like root that propagates itself (usually easily) from year to year.

In the video below, Ben Falk harvests and discusses a 400sq.ft. area that grows sunchokes year after year, with minimal maintenance, while building soil. This year’s harvest offers 90lbs of starchy “J-choke” tubers, leaving some in soil to regrow the patch for next year’s harvest. He notes using them as pureed soup after some slow cooking, as well as pickling and lactofermenting them. I have only had them a few times. When I cooked them I cut them thin and stir fried them, cooking them for a while and adding other veggies and seasoning into the mix. They are dense plants and feel like a good staple, able to significantly help mitigate ‘the hunger gap’ as Ben says regarding strains on food supplies and ecology. I look forward to growing, harvesting, and cooking more of this perennial plant ally.

I give thanks.

Nuts for Life, or “what does an ideal food system look like to you?”

From a food resiliency standpoint: collecting wild nuts, cleaning and drying them properly, and storing them in-shell with decent airflow in a cool space like a basement – it’s probably one of the highest levels of resiliency for fat and protein that you could store, I think. These hickories should be good for 10 years, I’ve heard for up to 15 years. Chestnuts when they’re dry, more or less indefinitely. Acorns, more or less indefinitely. These Japanese walnuts from 4 years ago…one out of 50 is a dud, the rest taste absolutely beautiful.

from Edible Acres (@4:31 of video below)

@ 5:34 some processing footage

“It feels like a critical base layer to food security, with gardening, wild foraging and hunting as additional layers of benefit.”

Replying to a comment about wild nuts being a most efficient form of hunting & gathering

Food sovereignty, good when times are good and when times are not so good.

An imaginative exercise – what does an ideal food system look like to you? When I envision optimal food systems and resilient, rewarding primary sectors that are grounded and guarded by ecological mutualism, I see trees are a key & core part.

Towering timber trees among their families and cohorts of diverse company, gifting staple crops for current and future generations with numerous co-benefits. Agroforest cows? Shiitake and other medicines? Trees of all types, hazel in the northeast alongside other handy hardy bushes. Alley & edge crops. Wildlife habitat. Connection to place and harmony with neighbors human and nonhuman. Productive conservation & restoration agriculture. Forest gardens. Community food hubs, gathering and processing.

How can we integrate ecological mutualism into our lives, at various scales? Go nuts

Thanks for the Hazelnut Harvest

Hazelnuts from my first times harvesting intensively, summer 2019, have lasted me through Jan 1. Maybe a quarter of my stash remains, still in shell stored safe and sound. I snack on hazels alone and in good company sporadically, this year being my first deep diving into staple tree foods. I look forward to incorporating these wonderfully healthy serious staple foods into my diet more in mutualism.

This bounty I’ve been snacking on is from one casual afternoon’s harvest with friends at Z’s Nutty Ridge, where I estimate I hand harvested ~2,000 nuts and kept half. I did another hazel harvest with local friends & nurserym’n one morning over the summer as well, collecting ~1,500 nuts that I’m stratifying in buckets to propagate from Dilmun Hill Organic Student Farm. I enjoyed reflecting on those harvests as I sat and had an after party hazelnut munch this Jan 1 middle of the night.

Both casual half-day harvests were some of the best days of the summer. Sure, it could get old if it was everyday work, but one thing that would not get old (or at least would help me get old) is that they were also some of the healthiest days of the summer. And here’s to health in surviving with’em: trees, gotta love’em. Thanks and peace.

cr0 – Lines Out of Limbo (Beat: Pete Rock – Think Twice)

Lyrics:
(please think twice – sucka MCs, please think twice
“you’d have to be crazy not to be crazy”, as for me?)
–
If I wasn’t talkin to trees, bugs I’d go crazy
Motherfuckers acting lazy or stacking shady funds nd guns nd
Piles of trash, no joke landfill leakin’ toxic yoke while blokes be blowin’ up motha’s mountains
what the fucks, and the cops?
Damn, I ain’t callin’em
Politicians? I ain’t stallin’em
Tryna get like complex numbers and off this line
New train of thought, new training newly taught
Know the names of those who aught to lead
Brotha I’m talking seas, I’m talkin birds and bees
I’m talkin’ lettin’ shit be and see how I can adjust
Like what the fucks, we gotta control every dial? Every worthwhile mile gotta be styled to our industry?
Fuck’um, styled to who’s liking?
Shuck’um, styled like lightening – in mutual benefit to all with one bad day
So you want beef? I’ll take it rare-ly
Rarely eating it if I don’t know where it grow
Rarely seeing it suffering or not in Hozho
I’m in it to mimic ecosystems, tried and true
Economics out of alignment with the physical? Dismiss’em
Or at least know they’ll dismiss you
Watch out – first principles comin’ through
So when bygones be bygones be strugglin’ to buy some bread
Kids and cats better know, better grow better ways ahead
Plant some trees
Eat some nuts, befriend some bees
What the fucks, what’s our priorities?
What’s the future you want to see?
While some drain they brain to complain or get you in a particular lane
I encourage you to bushwack, look back only for orientation
Trailblaze through the maze of crazed disharmony
Harming me, and you, and the whole zoo of this planet
But I gotta hand it to the motha, like no otha, forests provide
So when you turn on ya heat and engage what ya need to survive
Remember that: grocers hustle, forests grow, fossil fuels tucked in tight on the low
And there’s a time and place for every glow, but while the road gets rough I’m lookin’ for flames stayin’ lit through it all
Resilient – lifeboats ladders and lamps
I’m out, y’all can join me at nuttery camp gettin’ buttery with million year old champs growin above
and with it: peace, peace, peace, One Love