#wild harvest

[septemberbells]

the homoeroticism of leaning into the blooms with your chef friend and showering him with compliments

[wowbright]

I have done wild berry picking for some time and I must say it infuriates me when I see little articles in the newspaper about someone who runs pop up kitchens with all "wildcrafted" foods, or when I go to a patch that has for years sustained a large population of animals and humans who each just take a little bit and see the whole thing picked clear because some newbie decided this would be a great way to fill their freezer for the end times and/or start a business.

Now, in my opinion, sometimes it might be argued that it is okay to pick destructively in some cases. In the Northwest U.S. we have an invasive species of blackberry, so you could argue that picking all the berries and leaves for commercial use is helpful because it would damage the population of these blackberries. Honestly IDK about that argument because these guys are really hard to kill. And since invasive species have led to habitat destruction and it being harder to find some of the native berries, it could be argued that taking them away could harm the animals that eat them. It's a complicated issue.

Garlic mustard in the United States, on the other hand? Eat it all.

But those are exceptions. To identify the exceptions, you have to understand local ecology.

Wild areas aren't vegetable gardens or farms. You don't need to worry about vegetable gardens and farms being self-sustaining because humans set aside a certain number of seeds, or buy them from people who do, and plant new seeds every year. In nature, you are relying on natural cycles. So you have to understand the natural cycle before you can responsibly harvest.

Oh my god I'm sooooo mad right now

So. I have no business telling people not to collect wild plants/materials.

I do it all the time.

However.

The words "wildcrafted," and "foraged," even "sustainably harvested," are terrifying to see in an ad on Etsy or Instagram

There is a such thing as the honorable harvest where you ASK the plant if it is okay to take, with the intention of listening if the answer is NO. Robin Wall Kimmerer talked about this, She did not make it up, it is an ancient and basic guideline of treating the plants with respect.

Basically it is not wrong to use plants and other living things, even if this means taking their life. But you are not the main character. You have to reflect on your knowledge of the organism's life cycle and its role in the ecosystem, so you can know you are not damaging the ecosystem. You have to only take what you need and avoid depleting the population.

Mary Siisip Geniusz also talked about it in an enlightening way in her book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask. She gave an example of a woman who was on an island and needed to use a medicinal herb to heal her injured leg or she would not survive the winter. In that situation she had to use up all of the plant that was on the island. This was permissible, even though it eliminated the local population, because she had to do it to save her life. But in return the woman had the responsibility to later return to the island and plant seeds of that plant.

And what makes me absolutely furious, is that there are a bunch of people online who have vaguely copied this philosophy of sustainability in a false and insulting way, saying "wildcrafted" or "foraged" materials to be all trendy and cool and in touch with nature, when it is actually just poaching.

If you are from a capitalistic culture the honorable harvest is very hard and unintuitive to learn to practice. I am not very good at it still. This is why it is suspicious if someone is confident that they can ethically and respectfully harvest wild materials with money involved.

So there's this lichen that is often called "reindeer moss." It looks like this:

It grows only a few millimeters a year.

This is "preserved" reindeer moss.

It is from Etsy, similar is also sold in many other online shops, many of which have the audacity to describe it as a "plant" for decorations and terrariums that needs no maintenance.

It is not maintenance-free, it is dead. It has been spray-painted a horrible shade of green. The people buying it clearly don't even know what it is. It is a popular crafting material for "fairy houses," whatever the hell those are. So is moss, also dead, spray-painted, and wild-harvested. Supposedly reindeer moss is harvested sustainably in Finland, where it is abundant, for the craft industry. However poaching of lichens and mosses is absolutely rampant.

It's even more upsetting because there's hardly any articles drawing attention to the problem. This one is from 1999. And the poaching is still going on.

There is a "moss" section on Etsy, and it is so upsetting

These mosses and lichens were collected from the wild. Most of the shops are in the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia, which are the major locations of moss and lichen poaching. There are some shops based in Appalachia selling "foraged" reindeer moss.

Reindeer moss may be abundant in Finland, but in Appalachia it should NOT be harvested to be sold on Etsy as craft supplies! Moss doesn't grow quickly. Big, healthy colonies like this took years to grow. Some of these shops have thousands of sales, all of bags and bags of moss and lichen, and thinking of how much moss and lichen that must be, I am filled with horror.

Clubmosses do not transplant well, and these ones have no roots. The buyers do not realize they have bought a dead plant because clubmoss stays green and pliable after it is dead.

This is especially awful because in Mary Siisip Geniusz's book she talked about clubmosses being poached so much for Christmas wreaths that they had almost disappeared from a lot of forests.

I don't even know if this is illegal if it's not a formally endangered species so I don't know if I can report them I'm just. really sad and angry

[fountainbeee]

Cinnamon Myrtle Benefits

Today we are sharing the potential uses and benefits of Cinnamon Myrtle such as assisting our gut health and microbial infections.

[sandwichtribunal]

Veggie Burger--Animal Style

"There's a rugged irregularity to the Beyond Burger's texture that is very much like actual cooked ground beef. It browns like ground beef and pulls apart under your teeth like ground beef. It tastes almost like ground beef." Veggie Burgers--Animal Style

The invention of the veggie burger–or as he called it, the VegeBurger–is generally credited to a London restaurateur named Gregory Sams. Sams, whose restaurant had been making meatless burgers for the likes of John Lennon and Yoko Ono throughout the 1970s, started selling a dried, rehydratable mix of sesame seed, oats, wheat gluten, and soybean under the VegeBurger name in 1982. Of course…

[canisalbus]

uh hi hello!! first i wanted to say i am deeply in love with your art (god those shapes, these lines, texture, anatomy, expression, EVERYTHING) and your latest drawing just moved something in me i cant quite grasp it, been thinking about it for a couple days. sooo i felt inspired and made myself a smol little machete out of uh wild clay so i could kiss him on the forehead before going to sleep, i hope you're ok with that? (also sorry he's kinda wonky, me and acrylics hate each other haha)

.

[midithi]

nintendogs original ds + some of my favorite ds games.

[mer-se]

vegan food is boring

[rherlotshadow]

Blackberry-and-apple

[galoogamelady]

Dunno if this is something you've been asked before but how does our favorite post apocalyptic beanboy and his most excellent gal celebrate Halloween in the Commonwealth?

It's been a long time since we talked about this in detail (probably in 2014-15?) but I think we established that many traditional American holidays were lost in the Great War (people were more concerned with surviving, obviously). A lot of these celebrations were kept alive by Vault residents however. Buttons does his best to inspire his fellow Arefu settlers to celebrate Halloween to some extent and Meg plays along, even if it makes no sense to her. The budget Brahmin has to be my favorite Halloween post so I did a quick redraw:

Buttons had a couple other Halloween costumes since 2014:

Butt-O-Ween skeleton

Slutty Molerat

Hancock (aka raunchy mayor)

GTA Online Buttons is a sexy cat every year

[ahedderick]

Crabapples are kind of an extreme fruit. Sour and sometimes a bit bitter, they take a lot of sugar to be edible. Wild rosehips are nicer; you can eat them as-is if you like intense sweet-tart flavor. This fall I decided to make a small batch of crabapple-rosehip jelly.

The thing with crabapple jelly is that you don't need to add pectin (such as Surejel or Pomona's). I simmered the crabapples and rosehips in a 50/50 mix of apple cider and water, strained it twice, then cooked the resulting juice with an equal measure of sugar. I can't quite describe the very old-fashioned 'jelly test' I used, except to say that my mother taught it to me and it involves pouring a few drops of the mixture off the side of a large spoon until it drips "correctly."

Crabapples produce a jelly with a very different consistency. It's honestly more like pine tar. My uncle, who loved foraged foods and unusual jellies, called it "the La Brea jelly." I'd have been mad about that, but . . he wasn't wrong.

I ended up with a small quantity of extremely sticky, rosy-amber jelly with tons of sweet-tart flavor.

[ID: A small dish of jelly held up to the light to show its color. Also the same dish of jelly sitting beside a plate with a piece of bread and jelly.]

[noseysilverfox]

September 2021

[shadowsketches]

🍂🎃 Pumpkin Harvest 🎃🍂

[jdragsky]

possum creek is releasing some new books by @wildwoodsgames and they're cool as hell and i'm so excited for them

GRAND GUIGNOL is a victorian romance/horror game where you take on the queer themes of classic Victorian gothic stories like Dorian Gray, Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, and Carmilla, playing with both violence and desire

HARVEST is a folk horror RPG about a bucolic pastoral village on a small island in the british isles with a grim and monstrous secret — every year someone must die in order to keep the island perfect. inspired by The Wicker Man and Midsommar.

i'm SO excited for them, luke is a phenomenal designer and the project is launching as a double-feature on halloween in just 3 weeks!! you can sign up for updates here

[fountainbeee]

Adrenal Tonic | Restore | Australian Native Plants | Alchemical Spagyric...

Today we are sharing the Alchemical Spagyric Restore Adrenal Tonic made from Australian Native plants:

- She oak (casuarina) – womb wisdom, hormonal balance, improved mood, menstrual pain, womb hydration, menopause, fertility, regulates fluid in the body

- Cinnamon myrtle (backhousia myrtyfolia) – Indigestion, anxiety, boost antioxidants

- Riberry (syzygium luehmannii) – Vitamin B12, anthocyanins for cognitive function, protection against certain cancers, folate, calcium

- Desert lime (citrus glauca)– Vitamin E, Lutein (eye health & wellbeing), Potassium (reduced blood pressure, Folate (10 times more than blueberry)

- Native ginger (alpinia caerulea)– headache, nausea, stress, anxiety & fear, calming, indigestion

What is Spagyric's?

It is an ancient Egyptian alchemical process based on the three philosophical principals of the following:

Salt – Body

Sulfur – Soul

Mercury – Spirit

You can find more on my website here: https://onenessbeing.org/offerings/remedies/herbal-tinctures/restore-adrenal-tonic/

[smulie]

misc photo dump to pass the time

[goldiipond]

save me silly farming sim i played in 5th grade