I remember reading a Daniel Boone biography years ago and one of the most fascinating parts of it was how important, and dangerous, the job of making salt was for the folks living out on the "frontier." I probably remember that more than anything else.
Very nice structure (chiastic?) to start with the personal experience with the slug, move to sauerkraut and salt, and then remind us that we are talking about slugs (oh, slugs and salt!) and the land and where does salt come from anyway? And who can access salt? How are access restrictions that prohibit us from foraging from the land similar to the access restrictions that prohibited the Indians from foraging for salt? Excellent.
On foraging, and converting foraged foods into cuisine, my family made our first successful chokecherry harvest and boiled it down into a sauce. It's been a while since I had a Dr. Pepper, but using the sauce to flavor sodas brings some Dr. Pepper notes, with a whole lot of extra magic. We have to drive for some miles to get the chokecherries, though, despite living in good habitat for them. The city seems to have displaced them. We have the resources to drive to the Beartooths to fish and forage for fun, but those in Billings who would benefit most from an edible landscape won't find chokecherries there. I just learned from Tom Elpel that russian olives are actually edible (who told me that they were poisonous?), but I need to experiment. Within walking distance of my house, I have access to abundant gleanings that last into the winter, and probably sweeten in the cold.
Also, this is my second for This Land. I've been learning so much.
You're reminding me of something I think about a lot, with regret and without much in the way of solutions: when I'm learning a craft (or any physical skill, maybe?), the ideal is to learn it FROM someone, preferably in person. So I can see what they do, do what they do, ask questions, argue, change things, get feedback from someone who can see what I am doing in turn.
And there's more than seeing to it; if there wasn't, we could learn how to build tables and pickle vegetables and make our moms' best recipes over video calls.
We CAN learn that way — you just did! And it's often enough to pick up a skill or refine one, after which our own persistence or aptitude does the rest. But that kind of learning is still a distant second-best for me. It's also what's available to me, almost all the time. So better to do it and learn, even if that learning isn't optimal. The perfect is the enemy of the done — or something like that.
The physical skills I remember, viscerally, are those I learned from a human in real time and space together. Community-based skills, in the sense that I learned them in community. The way they were transmitted was at least partially the relationship itself. I wish I had a lot more of this type of learning, in my past and in my present and future. We don't really build for it, though.
All of this makes me think about distance learning and covid. From a public health standpoint, I believe distance learning is and has been a necessary safety precaution. And also: wow, I really get why it sucks when it's the ONLY method available. It's doable. It just isn't the optimal way humans do.
As a people who got very used to believing the personally optimal is what we deserve, at any cost, it's rough for us to rub up against some of the natural consequences of that assumption.
I'm a big fan of slugs. I'm horrified by our childhood salt-pouring activities that murdered a few of the little black garden slugs lurking around our yard. The only time I didn't like slugs and snails was when they were eating my vegetable garden, but I no longer have a garden so I'm back to just adoring them. One year I was pulling out the bean plants after they finished producing, and felt a weird tickling sensation on my leg. I looked down to see numerous tiny baby slugs crawling on me! I suppose I had disrupted their happy munching, and they were probably very confused by the sudden appearance of my legs. We're heading to the woods next week for a couple of nights in a cabin, and I'm excited to be on the lookout for banana slugs. And mushrooms - it's going to rain A LOT between now and then.
I caught part of your conversation with Annabel, it was very lovely! I'll have to get my hands on her book.
I remember reading a Daniel Boone biography years ago and one of the most fascinating parts of it was how important, and dangerous, the job of making salt was for the folks living out on the "frontier." I probably remember that more than anything else.
Thank you, Nia! I'm in the midst of reading Annabel Abbs's _Windswept_ as we speak and am loving it; I'll listen to your discussion with her.
Very nice structure (chiastic?) to start with the personal experience with the slug, move to sauerkraut and salt, and then remind us that we are talking about slugs (oh, slugs and salt!) and the land and where does salt come from anyway? And who can access salt? How are access restrictions that prohibit us from foraging from the land similar to the access restrictions that prohibited the Indians from foraging for salt? Excellent.
On foraging, and converting foraged foods into cuisine, my family made our first successful chokecherry harvest and boiled it down into a sauce. It's been a while since I had a Dr. Pepper, but using the sauce to flavor sodas brings some Dr. Pepper notes, with a whole lot of extra magic. We have to drive for some miles to get the chokecherries, though, despite living in good habitat for them. The city seems to have displaced them. We have the resources to drive to the Beartooths to fish and forage for fun, but those in Billings who would benefit most from an edible landscape won't find chokecherries there. I just learned from Tom Elpel that russian olives are actually edible (who told me that they were poisonous?), but I need to experiment. Within walking distance of my house, I have access to abundant gleanings that last into the winter, and probably sweeten in the cold.
Also, this is my second for This Land. I've been learning so much.
This Land is really well done. Season 2 is gutting me.
You're reminding me of something I think about a lot, with regret and without much in the way of solutions: when I'm learning a craft (or any physical skill, maybe?), the ideal is to learn it FROM someone, preferably in person. So I can see what they do, do what they do, ask questions, argue, change things, get feedback from someone who can see what I am doing in turn.
And there's more than seeing to it; if there wasn't, we could learn how to build tables and pickle vegetables and make our moms' best recipes over video calls.
We CAN learn that way — you just did! And it's often enough to pick up a skill or refine one, after which our own persistence or aptitude does the rest. But that kind of learning is still a distant second-best for me. It's also what's available to me, almost all the time. So better to do it and learn, even if that learning isn't optimal. The perfect is the enemy of the done — or something like that.
The physical skills I remember, viscerally, are those I learned from a human in real time and space together. Community-based skills, in the sense that I learned them in community. The way they were transmitted was at least partially the relationship itself. I wish I had a lot more of this type of learning, in my past and in my present and future. We don't really build for it, though.
All of this makes me think about distance learning and covid. From a public health standpoint, I believe distance learning is and has been a necessary safety precaution. And also: wow, I really get why it sucks when it's the ONLY method available. It's doable. It just isn't the optimal way humans do.
As a people who got very used to believing the personally optimal is what we deserve, at any cost, it's rough for us to rub up against some of the natural consequences of that assumption.
I'm a big fan of slugs. I'm horrified by our childhood salt-pouring activities that murdered a few of the little black garden slugs lurking around our yard. The only time I didn't like slugs and snails was when they were eating my vegetable garden, but I no longer have a garden so I'm back to just adoring them. One year I was pulling out the bean plants after they finished producing, and felt a weird tickling sensation on my leg. I looked down to see numerous tiny baby slugs crawling on me! I suppose I had disrupted their happy munching, and they were probably very confused by the sudden appearance of my legs. We're heading to the woods next week for a couple of nights in a cabin, and I'm excited to be on the lookout for banana slugs. And mushrooms - it's going to rain A LOT between now and then.
I caught part of your conversation with Annabel, it was very lovely! I'll have to get my hands on her book.