Now I am going to give a heads up that while I will do my best to be careful in my wording on this subject, I know that I could and most likely will cross that PC line so if you read it and think, that was mean or whatever, know that I am writing with the best thoughts in mind and that words on a page can be hard to get right..
First a story from my childhood, one of the things we picked and loved was Pincherry pancake syrup, and if you have never picked them, they are tiny little red berries with a pit and they are so! sour, that to eat one raw will pucker your mouth and make you spit a number of times at a min.. the whole family was out at a local campsite that had lots of wild pincherry tree’s and we were all picking away, there was a couple in a motor home, and the wife watched us doing this and sent the hubby over to get her some, he avoided us and walked over to a patch a bit down the road and picked some,didn’t answer our smiles or hello’s and took his handful back to the wife, who put them all in her mouth and chewed, and then spent the next bite spitting and coughing and rinsing her mouth, while making comments about crazy Canadians.
Now we all thought it was funny, because if they had just bothered to ask us, we would have happily explained what they needed to do and even shared the recipe etc, as I have grown up and I see folks watching me wild craft in the outdoors, I have often thought of this as I have seen or overheard folks say, she picked that, grab some and let try it.. but what they don’t know is that I am going to blanch that once or sometimes twice before use to take the bitterness out, that I not going to eat it but make a salve with it, or that those roots I am digging are not for raw eating or cooked eating but are for drying and use in a tea etc..
Its the pincherries all over again, folks see, and folks do but they don’t have the rest of the story.. I got thinking about all these tree’s that Hidden Harvest is planning on working with (and I do think this is an excellent program, and I can already tell the odds are I will get more involved in the program itself because I do believe in it) but it got me to thinking about that the fruit picked while miles above what you can get in the store in terms of freshness, will not look at all like the fruit in the stores, it won’t taste like it either.. many times different trees in wild area are from seed and you never know what you are going to get.. Some will be more sour, some will be small, some will have more seeds, thinner or thicker skins and if the fruit has not been sprayed and looked after, then we will have lots of buggies, and worm holes and brown spots in the apples etc.
Unless you want and know how to use sour plums, browned spotted apples, tiny little crab apples, or cherries that are have ready right now, and some that are not quite ready, because that is the truth, I mean look at my own grapevines, when I cut the clump, 10 to 20 percent not ready, 10 to 20 percent overripe, and 40 to 60 percent perfectly ripe, which makes me wonder just how much get cut off and throw away for us to get that perfect clump of grapes in the stores.
So lets assume that we give that bag or box of tiny crabs apples to folks in need of food.. and then get it home and now what! They can’t eat them fresh, they can’t make a pie with them, which means they need the rest of the story and the training and equipment to choose to
- Make homemade pectin with them
- can them so they can be eaten whole
- Cook them, screen them and make crabapple sauce with them
- Cook them and get crabapple juice from them.
All of the above they are still going to require some kind of sweeter added to them to make them so you can eat them in any kind of amounts..
Which means you have now asked folks to have jars, screens, linens, sugar or honey etc. plus the spending the powder heating costs assuming they have a working stove etc..
The nuts are not different, I have cracked black walnuts, I know folks drive them over with car around here LOL and let me tell you , its work, steady, not easy work.. so while it sound amazing.. we can pick up XX amount of pds of this kind and that kind of nut, how do you get it from the raw nut into a workable form for use?
Try and picture it.. worked nine hours on your feet in a store, picked up the kids from school, made supper, you are tired, and want to just watch an hour of TV or read a book, how likely are you really to sit down and spend hours cracking nuts.. I mean we have a heck of time get folks to even save and use their pumpkin seeds, and they are super easy to prepare and eat compared to nuts..
I love the idea of so much of this food finding its way into food banks and lower-income families where it’s needed but I think without training and making sure that you find the right people that its given to, that it’s just wishful thinking.. and in truth I worry that much of it will just be thrown away when they get it home.
Now I know that Callie K has got some first hand knowledge in this area, so I am really looking forward to hearing her thougths on this?
Just another Day on the Farm 
“I know that I could and most likely will cross that PC line so if you read it and think, that was mean or whatever”
1st of all, I have not even read your post
2nd and most important, It is YOUR Blog, yours, post what you want, how you want, your opinion, your thoughts.
3rd if they do not like it tell them to p*** off….
I recently was told a few things on one of my posts, kinda rudely too by the way, but not by you! your comments to me were very nice and touching, thanks by the way.
Now what ever you have posted I will probably like it, and since it is wild foods and helping the Food Bank, I already know the answer, petty beurocrats in all shapes and all organizations due discredit to everyone and they do not help out at all.
Fair enough Wilderness, I do and will continue to post on many different subjects but I also try very hard to be as nice on the blog as I would be in person, its just that its hard sometimes to get your thoughts across in the manner you would like when its words written on the page instead of visiting where you can hear and see the extra’s that come with that..
When you read the post, you will see that I am in fact worried that we are offering wild food to folks in need and my concern is that there will not be the support and training required to make sure that food is in fact put to good use raither then just thrown away when they get it home.
Fair enough, is what I meant
Here, the Food Banks will not accept anything at all that is not from a store. Farmers have tried to give them regular food, but have been turned away. They would not accept the pears I had in my backyard a few years ago, saying they were wild, not safe and did not come from a store.
I hear you on this one, I know that my own local food bank also would perfer to work with the local stores to get food from them, then take extra’s from the garden, which surpises me a bit because they say they wan’t to work with local farmers in their paperwork but they want to work with the ones that can provide a 1 pds basket of X with ontario produce on the side, near as I can tell with the larger farmers in the area that have the ability to produce food that everyone would understand..
Well, I don’t see where you said anything out of line. Your concern is *completely* valid and accurate.
I know the Salvation Army major for our local family services center, and she works hard to teach local low-income people how to cook real food because she almost never sees people with “survival” cooking skills – that is, people who know how to bake bread, make soup from bones, rescue aging or imperfect produce, cook simple food from scratch.
Food Banks are acting from experience – they know what their clients can and will use.
“Give a man a fish and he’ll have one meal; but teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” or something like that.
There are lots of vacant spaces in cities where food can be grown; lots of food already growing that should be harvested through wild-crafting.
I have seen up close how little people respect something that’s been handed to them by making them “needy” – a lesser being. But when someone works to produce something of their own it’s a totally different story – pride of ownership – to be able to say “I did this!” / “I made this!”/ “I helped this grow!” makes all the difference. Everyone gets a sense of accomplishment from producing something with their own two hands. That, to me at least, is where we need to focus on helping others who need our help; making a difference in someone’s life and changing things for the long term, not just for a day; by feeding hearts and minds and bodies…
I answered this briefly on facebook but here in Toronto when we pick fruit with Not Far From the Tree, the portion that is donated actually goes to community kitchens rather than food banks directly. We are connected with many agencies that serve different groups (such as Na Me Res, a residence for aboriginal men); they feed many people and the donated fruit is incorporated into the menu. We also teach canning workshops, cider pressing and share the bounty with local businesses like St John’s bakery who used black walnuts in some baked goods which were also donated.
We have been donating eggs to a local food pantry. When making the arrangements, the leader was taken aback when I said we could not provide the egg cartons because we weren’t a manufacturer,we just had chickens. He had to think about it for a bit because they’d be getting small boxes with dozens of eggs in them. After a few minutes, he realized that somehow his group might rustle up some used cartons.
While some people might prepare food from scratch and some will want to learn how to do that, the majority will not — not in this region. Those who want to learn can get instructions from the county extension offices in regions where there is some rural population. Here in the US, though, 60% of Americans are urban. People want cheese already shredded, breads already sliced, and eggs already cracked. Or they want the hot meal placed before them. And they all know who won American Idol….