Greenwash #13 in Trouble - Eating Weeds
Friday, July 2, 2010
We're in Sydney planting out the Food Forest this week, and it's equally beanie weather here as it is at home. A few weeks ago twenty of us rugged up and roamed the hills of Daylesford in search of edible weeds. Here's the story (click on image):
On my Garden Notes for Relocalisation blog I've posted images and descriptions of the edibles we found.
An abundant, free world is an uncapitalised world.
6 comments:
In Chicago there's a similar character. Nance Klehm, also known for her large-scale human waste composting project. She leads "Urbanforage" walks to identify and collect food, medicine, dyes and fiber (for making textiles) plants. She also travels a lot, so she has a very broad knowledge-base. She emphasizes that it's a matter of being connected to the land around you, not just the economics or politics of it (even though that's a big part of it too).
http://www.spontaneousvegetation.net
thanks kelly,
i checked out nance's sites and films. great stuff!
thanks for sharing and for your comment.
in sydney currently planting our food forest and noticing how much uncapitalised food is around this city too.
p
Thanks Patrick, i really love yours and your family work, we still haven't met in Sydney but soon enough we gonna cross each other's path.
I would like to share a thought about the relationship between human and pioneer botany.
We are a pioneer specie too, and it seems logical to assume that our relationship with weeds is much more complex than just cohabitation. We sustained ourselves with the plants closest to us from so long that they became to be beneficial to our systems, as much as weeds benefit/adapted to our disruptions of the environment.
uhmm
maybe this needs more space than just a comment window, but anyway, here it is.
cheers Patrick
thanks diego, yes, i hope our paths cross soon, perhaps on a forage somewhere? pls fell free to comment further, i feel you started something really interesting here.
p
Ok, the idea is simple, and yet i havent found any dedicated study on it as yet.
Basically, in my search for getting to know spontaneous flora i found out that the most common weeds have also medicinal qualities.
Now, this is the same plants who have traveled with us since we came down from trees 250k years ago, from north-east africa.
many more plants joined the journey then as we spread around the globe, picking up species as we found them.
Undeniable is that as we foraged we collected plants closest to our environment, plants who got used to live in close proximity with our dwellings with all of the disruption that that imply.
We on the other hand got so used at eating those plants that if we eat a dandelion nowadays, it does good to us, same is for nettle, thistles, etc..
would it be true to say that we ate those weeds from so long that our body adapted to them, to the extent that if we eat them now we feel better..
example: my mum once told me that comes late winter kids were sent in the fields to collect the young shoots of dandelions, as not only they were available, but also it was an understood practice to eat those seasonal treats as a cleansing exercise after months of fatty and grains rich diet (winter food). with that knowledge she sent me and my sisters in the fields in early spring.
as i said haven't found any research on this, so if you find something let us know.
green cheers
when food is also our medicine there is much freedom to be had. i'll keep a forager's eye open for that type of research.
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