Forest Folk

I had such an amazing weekend with the most wonderful people. Forest Folk is a four day private event that embraces universal spirituality, promotes peace and harmony, and inspires creativity, knowledge and love. During those four days in the woods all manner of folk of open mind and heart gather to share wisdom, skill, talent, play, good food, fire and so much more.

So much happend this weekend that I don't even know where to begin. I met some really great new friends, bathed in an ice cold creek, discovered some truths about myself, and became inspired to take up fascinating new hobbies.

Because there is just so much- too much to put into words- I'm going to let most of the photos speak for themselves.

Some of the really cool people I met at Forest Folk...

Some of the cool stuff we did...

And some of the yummy food we ate...

Needless to say, I am REALLY looking forward to next year. And the best part of the whole weekend? Proceeds from the event went to St Jude's Children's Hospital. Together we raised more than $300, and had fun doing it!

Fiddleheads with Walnuts & Fennel

Fiddleheads have a unique flavor that reminds you they have just come up from the soil. That earthy goodness found in few other vegetables, a taste easily comparable to tender young asparagus. They're a delicacy in many parts of the world, especially my corner in western NY. Sure, sometimes you can find them in specialty grocery stores for a price, but some of us get lucky. We can harvest our own.

Fiddleheads with Walnuts & Fennel

Ingredients:
1 cup fiddleheads
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 Tbsp walnuts, crushed
2 Tbsp coconut oil
coarse black pepper
sea salt

Start by lightly crushing your fennel seeds in a mortar and pestle. If you don't have one, the back of a spoon and a cutting board will suffice. You don't want to grind them up, just bruise them up a bit.

Heat your oil in a pan on medium heat and add the fennel seeds. Cook them until they get nice and aromatic. Add your walnut pieces and get them nice and lightly toasty too. Add your fiddleheads and saute just until they're tender. Sprinkle with cracked pepper and salt to taste.

There are a lot of ways to season fiddleheads, so use whatever you like. They're really easy to make. One of the easiest methods is to lightly coat them in olive oil and roast them in the oven. This morning I sauted half a cup of them in some bacon drippings. Get creative with them. You really can't mess them up.


Baby Robin Update:

My eggs hatched! Well, not MY eggs, but Mama Robin's eggs. We now have four featherless, wonky little peepers. They really are quite ugly, and yet you can't help but to say "Aww..."

Obviously this little one was hungry. I still almost never see Mama or Papa, though one of them did almost fly into my head as I came up the stairs in the dark one night. I decided next time I should give them fair warning that I'm approaching.

This year's crop was small. The cool spring made the fiddleheads late to rise, and many of them were destroyed by a deep freeze just a week after we spotted them. My enjoyment of fiddleheads this year is precious little, so I'm savoring every one of them.

As vegetables go, fiddleheads are superior to nearly everything you'll find in a grocery store. They're loaded with antioxidants, largely due to the fact that they grow wild and must protect themselves from their environment. Fiddleheads often contain twice the antioxidant power of blueberries, which are considered the gold standard for neutralizing free radicals. That must mean nutritionally, fiddleheads are platinum. Add to that their high levels of omega-3 fats. You just can't go wrong!

One small word of warning though. Don't eat fiddleheads raw. They may contain natural substances that can cause gastric distress if not cooked properly. To be on the safe side, only eat cooked fiddleheads. When they're properly cooked, any toxins that may be present are destroyed. Fiddleheads should be boiled prior to sautéing, frying or baking. I typically blanch them for 3 minutes and then soak in an ice bath right after picking. From that point they can be frozen or cooked.

I decided to do something a little bit different with some of my fiddleheads. Sure, roasting them is great, but I wanted to play with flavors.

Knotweed, A Delicious Pest

There's only one plant I can think of that is as annoying to people as dandelions, and that's Japanese Knotweed. This bamboo-like plant has become very successful in many parts of the US, to the degree that it's being labelled as "invasive." Indeed, it is, but that's not a bad thing, if only people would realize just how useful this pest is. And it's good for you too! You can just imagine my delight to learn I have a HUGE crop of it available to me down by the creek. It just sort of showed up, and hopefully it's here to stay.

It really is a pretty plant when you take the time to look. Green, speckled with burgundy, large oval leaves, and lovely little, creamy white flowers in late summer.

While the roots are troublesome, damaging foundations, roads, flood defenses, paving and the like, the flowers are sometime prized by beekeepers as an important source of nectar. Knotweed flowers at a time when little else blooms. The honey produced from knotweed is similar to buckwheat honey, though not quite as strong.

Knotweed Cobbler

Ingredients:
4 cups knotweed, sliced into rings
3/4 cup sweetener (optional but recommended)

1/4 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup coarse pecan/nut flour
3 tbsp butter, melted
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg

Start by cooking down your knotweed in a pot over medium heat. You don't need to add water since knotweed contains enough on its own. Just put it in the pot, add your sweetener, and stir it occasionally until it cooks down into a compote.

Add your compote to a buttered baking dish. In a separate bowl mix together your coconut, nut flour, melted butter, cinnamon and nutmeg. It should stick together in a crumbly mixture. Sprinkle this over your knotweed mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

This dessert is wonderful served warm with a side of vanilla ice cream, but I found it to be just as tasty served cold all by itself.

Japanese knotweed is quickly becoming one of my favorite foods. It's a plant that tastes sweet like fruit, it's abundant, it's good for you, and it grows quickly- as much as 3 to 4 meters in a matter of weeks. Rest assured, there will be more recipes with knotweed in the future. How much more I'll get this season with the deep freeze is unknown, but at least I have yet another crop to look forward to each spring.

Knotweed has found itself a plant of interest to the healthfood industry as well, being a fantastic source of resveratrol. In fact it's packed with a lot of good stuff, including vitamins A and C, phosphorus, zinc, potassium and manganese. I was surprised to find that most resveratrol supplements are actually made from Japanese knotweed.

More importantly (to me anyways) is that you can eat it! The young shoots are tender and flavorful, tasting a bit like mild rhubarb. The flavor of the raw shoots reminds me more of starfruit- crisp, juicy, just a little bit tart. It makes a lovely snack, though eating too much can aggravate gout, arthritis and kidney stones. I'm not entirely sure how much is too much, however. I can't stop snacking on it. It's delicious! As much as I love eating it raw, my supply was more than I could consume, so I opted to cook some of it for cobbler, and canned the extra for future desserts.

My First Crop Mob

I went on my first Crop Mob this last weekend. What a fantastic experience! I had a blast and can't wait to do it again.

For those of you who aren't familiar with crop mobbing, as I'm sure many of you aren't since it's fairly new, crop mobbing is a venture where you work in exchange for food. A clan of volunteers descend on a farm that is short on hands, planting, weeding, and doing whatever needs to be done that day, in exchange for a homemade meal.

Crop mob is a phenomenal idea. It helps local family farms not only survive, but thrive. It brings members of the community together under a common interest, and it's great exercise! Mobbing is a great learning experience for young farmers-to-be, those of us who love farming but haven't got enough land of our own, and is a way for experienced farmers to pass on their wisdom to future generations.

My first crop mob was at Kestral Perch Berry Farm in Ithaca, NY. Ithaca is approximately an hour drive from my house, but it's such a wonderful little hippy city, I can't help falling in love with it. I've found myself making the trip at least a couple times a month to enjoy the variety of shops, restaurants, the fine farmers market, the co-op market, and now the crop mob. To make the trip to Ithaca and get to the mob on time, it meant getting up at dawn, and leaving the house no later than 7:30. I didn't quite make it out the door on time, but I was close.

It was a long, sleepy drive, but I had my coffee to keep me company. So what if it was decaff? It was turning out to be a pretty nice morning, not as rainy and cold as expected. I got into town and started following my directions to the farm, only to find the road was closed and there was a detour. In the midst of it, I managed to get myself lost, and found again with the help of my VZ Navigator. Somehow I managed to actually show up on time

I pulled up on the side of the gravel road behind the line of other small sedans. I was already fitting in. A rather hippy-looking bunch of people began to gather inside the fence where the berry patches were located. I promptly took up my hand tools and gloves, and joined them. Introductions were somewhat brief. We all signed in and donned name tags- our names crudely written on blue duct tape. A group of six of us were assigned to retreive the frost netting from the far fence so that we could begin covering the strawberry plants to protect them from the expected frost. That task went extremely quickly, a dozen or more mobbers covered the whole patch in less than 10 minutes. We were all quite impressed with ourselves.

Then the big project of the day- weeding and terracing the blackberry bushes. After a brief history of these bushes, and why they needed the extra care we were about to give them, we were set to work. Four at a time on each row, two on each side, starting at opposite ends and working towards the middle. Some mobbers took up wheelborrows to collect the weeds and haul them to the compost area. The dandelions were gigantic, and with my love of fritters it was a shame to be digging them out. The thought of starting a dandelion crop such as this on purpose crossed my mind. We ripped, we pulled, we cut and dug. Some of those weeds were brutal!

As we finished weeding our rows it was time to start terracing (covering exposed roots with dirt to make them more stable in the wind.) We simply dug trenches down one side of the row, then the other, moving the dirt to the center to cover the roots. Most of us rotated duties, giving each other a chance to rest between weeding rows. Weed, shovel, weed, shovel.

Of course there was a great deal of gabbing during our labor- sharing stories, introductions, our mutual admiration for the little town of Ithaca. I found myself endlessly entertained by one group of mobbers, at least one who is Romanian, talking about the differences between Romania and the United States. One particular store featured some sort of game or contest, the prize being a live rabbit! I could like living in Romania, at least when it comes to winning live food animals. Occasionally a child that was with one mobber would chime in with "Look! A snail!" and she would trot him (or her) safely out to the fence.

One o'clock rolled around and we finished up what we could, finding a good place to stop. The weeds were piled high in the wheelborrows, and dragged off to the compost pile. We gathered our tools, dusted ourselves off, and stretched our aching legs and backs. The wind was picking up at this point, threatening to rain, but it was ok now. It would have been a welcome shower. Up to Eco-Village for lunch.

Eco-Village is a fantastic organization of houses and people. According to their website, they are "Comprising an intentional community and a non-profit educational organization, the project is developing an alternative model for suburban living which provides a satisfying, healthy, socially rich lifestyle, while minimizing ecological impacts."

We ate in the common house, which had an amazing, large kitchen and several mismatched tables, chairs, and dinnerware. We washed our hands and set in to setting up our much deserved meal. Everything was homemade, organic and fresh. Rolls, hummus, vegetable soup, apples and seltzer water with raspberry syrup made from the previous year's berries. With my dietary choices, I limited myself to 2 servings of soup and 2 apples, and plain seltzer water. It was a very satsifying meal, in spite of lacking fat and protein. I wonder what they would have thought if I'd brought my own pemmican or jerky.

What an experience it was, working side by side with virtual strangers, then sitting side by side at a meal prepared just for us. The whole day felt wholesome and good. I felt wonderfully at home at Eco-Village with these new friends. Most of us have very different backgrounds and goals, political ideals and religious ideologies, and yet we're all there together to accomplish one thing, even if it's nothing more than giving up a few hours on a Saturday morning to lend a helping hand.

If you'd like more information about Crop Mob, or starting one in your area, please check out CropMob.Org