How many types of mushrooms can you name? Unfortunately, for most of us, our knowledge is limited to what the grocery store can offer – usually three or four commercial varieties. Yet, nature offers hundreds of species – many of them edible, and some of the best available in the Pacific Northwest.
So I went to a mushroom workshop outside Salem at the Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center to get schooled. The forest center itself provided a perfect learning environment, as the center is remotely located among the Cascade Mountains – a perfect region for mushrooms. The mountains trap the weather systems moving in from the West and cause large amounts of rainfall. Rain and moisture are essential for mushrooms to grow. Once you bring in other factors – such as elevation, flora and fauna – what you find on a mushroom hunt can be quite varied. The center itself prides itself as being a steward of the land – it not only uses its educational program to foster sustainability but also offers a rare low-impact energy use system.
On our first hunt, we found Chantrelles, Winter Chantrelles, a Hedgehog Mushroom, Lacluster Lacaria, and Lobster Mushrooms - all edible!
On the hunt, it is good to have a knife, a brush, and a basket for placing the mushrooms into. The knife helps cut the dirty or undesirable part of the mushroom away, the brush helps further clean it before putting it into the basket. It is helpful to have them as clean as possible before they are placed together with other mushrooms they could possibly dirty.
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Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago at 10:38 pm. 4 comments
So I seem to have picked up the Swine Flu. And yes, I am calling it that, and not H1N1, after learning that the virus has been traced back to factory farms in the United States (and subsidiaries in Mexico) and that the hog industry lobbied for the much-harder to say jumble of letters and numbers.
In the days that I have been bed-ridden, I’ve received countless messages of support but also some words of warning. Many are concerned about vaccines such as Tamiflu and cite recent articles that draw in to question their widespread use in treating viruses that are all too often non-threatening.
With all these man-made assaults on my body, I decided to stay as natural as possible for my treatment. On day one of my illness, I pulled out of my fridge a medicinal elixir that my friend Nicole gave me earlier in the year. The tincture bottle is labeled “Elderberry Syrup” and is composed of the namesake berry, along with honey, brandy, lime, cinnamon, ginger, and clove.
Some of Nicole's elixirs. Photo: Julie Sabatier
I asked Nicole to explain the properties of the elixir.
The elderberry elixer was made from locally harvested elderberries. They grow all over the pacific northwest and are harvested in early fall. Elderberries are rich in anti-oxidants, vitamin C and are anti-viral and immune boosting. The elixer is an awesome remedy for colds, influenza and other respitory problems. It is also soothing to the throat and tastes delicious.
Elderberries (elder sambucus) have been used as a folk remedy for hundreds of years. They were a main medicine in England and also used by the native people of this area. Some Native American tribes made flutes from the elder branches and so called it “the music tree”. It was said to protect from evil spirits and in some traditions was planted on the gravestones of the dead. It is a very magical tree and has a strong connection with the fairies!
The elixer also has brandy, honey, osha root, licorice root, ginger root, rose hips and orange peel all increasing the medicinal qualities of the elixer. It was super easy to make, just put it all in a mason jar, let it sit for four to six weeks and squeezed it out with cheese cloth. yum!
Nicole among her garden plants used for medicine. Photo: Julie Sabatier
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Posted 3 months, 4 weeks ago at 3:45 pm. Add a comment
Have you wondered about an apple tree and thought, can I pick one and eat it? If you’re lucky to live in Portland, you can find that out; you can ask your neighbor; and there’s some motivated people who have already met the neighbors and created Urban Edibles, a wiki with all the fruits, nuts, and edible plants in Portland. There’s a lot of available food in the city: apples, pears, plums, figs, walnuts, hazelnuts, blackberries, and abandoned garden beds.
Michael Bunsen is the founder and web designer of Urban Edibles. He had the idea for a couple years and as his web designing skills developed, he asked his friends to get involved. “When I moved to Portland,” Carly Boyer tells me, “I happened to live with Julie Noble who was getting involved in the project. I had just come from a year-long apprenticeship in herbalism in Eugene. So it was just a natural fit, and my good friend Bobby got involved.” Bobby Smith does work with Portland Parks and Recreation: park rangering, environmental restoration, and education for youth interested in native plants.
The first and most important native plant is Oregon Grape, our state flower, planted alongside government buildings, corporate landscaping, and apartment complexes. “It looks similar to Holly, except it’s not quite as shinny and jagged. This plant is an amazing anti-bacterial, anti-biotic, alterative,” Boyer states. “An alterative stimulates the bodies own immune response. If you catch a cold, your body would respond – but the alterative quickens the process.” Continue Reading…
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 9:46 pm. Add a comment
It’s common the world over to plant food near your house, and Portland’s a quick study. There’s a growing community of people who realize they would just as soon like to eat vegetables grown next door as they would buy some picked and shipped to the supermarket. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is one way to get vegetables from a local farm to the table. City Garden Farms is a Portland CSA grown on small plots throughout the city. “I’m a lifelong gardener, a passionate gardener,” Dan Bravin tells me. “I always had a dream to make a small business off what I grow.” Bravin and his business partner, Martin Barrett started City Garden Farms last year after Barrett read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and said to Bravin: “I have a big backyard, can I make money growing vegetables?”
Most CSAs in Portland have a waiting list, some lists are a hundred customers long. “One reason,” Bravin considers: “once people sign up, they tend to stay on. There’s a buzz about local food and ‘getting back to basics’ during the recession, so there’s more demand than supply. Every year, you sell a share of your farm – as much produce as you grow – so they’re buying a piece of the farmer’s output. That’s your share of the farm.” City Garden Farms grow high quality vegetables and promote urban agriculture.
Bravin and Barrett started the business last year with 12 backyard sites around the city, and this year they’ve optimized it at around nine, though the number is not finalized yet. “We get requests to farm in people’s backyards all the time,” Bravin says. They farm any unused land in general that is at least 1000 square feet, has eight hours a day of sunlight, and is not in complete disrepair (if concerned about a site, they do heavy metal testing). They use all organic methods to fertilize the soil: fish meal, soy bean meal, kelp meal,alfalfa pellets, and manure from local farms – so long as the farmers don’t give hormones to the animals. In exchange for the input of agricultural wealth and a share of the CSA, the owners of various yards provide space, water, and welcome City Garden Farms to come in about once a week to maintain the garden. Continue Reading…
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 6:54 pm. Add a comment
What to do about the growing amount of eWaste? Free Geek is one organization who has stepped up to the task.
Along with sister organizations across North America, Free Geek Portland recycles used technology to provide computers, education, internet access and job skills training to those in need.
I took a trip to their large facilty to find our more. You can listen to the podcast here.
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 5:20 pm. Add a comment
