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Stimple Prairie Detail, April 2018
Author: Jean Snodgress Wiedenheft
Stimple Prairie Greening, April 2018
What Goes into a Food Forest Canopy
One concern I have with the phrase “food forest” is that it implies that the rest of the forest is inedible. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least in Iowa. Upland forest canopies are dominated by oaks and hickories, with a handful of butternuts mixed in. The midlands are full of mulberries, black cherries and black walnuts. Even the bottomlands, with their thick stands of silver maples and lindens, are full of edible life.
In most landscapes, I focus on the natural history of the land, and ask what would be here, if we hadn’t cut the trees, grubbed out the roots, and planted corn in the heart of the forest? What is missing from both this particular plot, as well as the surrounding areas? What would increase the native diversity and resilience of the ecosystem?
In a food forest, I narrow that focus to species that 1) are native to the area, and 2) are fairly straightforward for humans to eat. A food forest has a greater concentration of native edible species than you might naturally find in a woodland. Done properly, a guest wouldn’t necessarily notice they were in a food forest; they would simply notice that they were in a beautiful woodland with abundant opportunities for them to forage as they walked. People are so far removed from what is and is not edible without a plastic wrap label and a price tag on it, I’ll probably need to put out signs. There isn’t much point, if people don’t know that the food in the forest is there for them.
The pocket of sunlight we created this winter will be planted to maples this spring. I am locally sourcing Black Maple from Fleming Nursery and Sugar Maple from Hughes Nursery. Just downhill from the clearing is a large silver maple, well-suited to flooding. Mulberry and black cherry are already growing in the area, and we planted butternuts last year.
To the Sugar Bush We Go
It was 20 F when we out to tap the maple trees this year, but the wind wasn’t blowing and the snow didn’t start falling until we were wrapping up. When it warms up in a few weeks, it will be too late-the sap will already be flowing.
We primarily set taps in silver maple trees. All of the native maples, including black, sugar, silver, and box elder, produce sap that can be boiled down into maple syrup. We just happen to have a large amount of floodplain, and a corresponding large amount of silver maple trees.
We also tap, to a lesser extent, box elders and sugar maples in the uplands. What difference does it make? Silver maple sap typically has between 1.5%-1.75% sugar in it. Black or sugar maple sap typically has between 2-3% sugar. And box elder sap has 1% sugar.To make syrup, we need to boil the box elder sap twice as long as the the sugar maple sap, and the longer it boils, the darker and richer the caramelization. It boils a long time, because we have to take the sugar concentrations from 1.5% sugar (sap) to 66% sugar (maple syrup).
Maple syrup is the first crop I harvest every year, and tapping the trees for it is my own personal act of faith that spring is about to emerge, in the form of sweet flowing sap from the maple trees.
The well known path
The sound of the fresh falling snow lures me outside with the alacrity of a five year old. The snow renders the world silent, reduces the color palette to monochrome, refracts light into a million swirling rainbows, and turns even a well-known path into a journey of mystery and wonder.
I headed for the Baltic labyrinth because I wanted to be totally immersed in the snow experience. The woods can be a very distracting place for me. In the fresh falling snow, with no tracks before me, I am the pioneer and the sole voyager. The sense of the place is subsumed by the sense of the elemental. I become one with the intense solitude, and experience, well, obviously not waldeinsamkeit. Schneeinsamkeit, perhaps?
What Comes out of a Community Supported Forest?
Firewood.
We took out two leaning black cherries. A third cherry was left, because black cherries, while tiny, are quite tasty. Spit the pits out! Cherry pits contain amygdalin.
We took out a half dozen small scruffy elm trees and mulberry trees. Two large red mulberry trees were left to anchor the southern edge of the forest, because mulberries are also quite tasty.
We took out a box elder, nearing the end of its life. All of the trees we cut were about 40 years old, and one was quite hollow in the middle. Check out the mouse cache of bittersweet berries.
We also removed a variety of impenetrable bittersweet vines, green briar vines, honeysuckle bushes, and blackberry canes. The blackberry canes will come back with a vengeance (as will, regrettably, the others), but we needed a clear space to work in. Underneath that mess, we discovered the old fenceline.
The firewood will be split, allowed to dry for two years, and then used to boil maple sap into maple syrup. It will also be used to heat the pizza oven.
Small Steps to Zero Waste
Packaging after-dinner leftovers can be something of a challenge in our house.
Jerry: I’ll clean up.
Jean: Awesome.
Moments pass. Then a wad of plastic wrap goes sailing into the living room.
Jerry: Maybe if you could just do something with the leftovers…
Jean: Of course.
Moments pass. A second wad of plastic wrap (this one launched by me) goes sailing into the living room.
Jerry: Maybe it will fit into a little container?
Plastic wrap has long been the bane of our kitchen. The metal teeth on the box will cut part of it, but not all of it. If the wrap is within 2″ of the box, it sticks to itself as if it were in a strange gravitational field. But getting the plastic wrap to stick nicely on anything once it’s out of the box is a disaster.
Jean: What did people used to do?
Jerry: They starved a lot. So when there was food, they ate it all.
This is clearly not a problem today (as my belly will attest to). But in a slightly less-distant past, back in the “good old days” when plastic wrap actually worked the way it was intended, it was made from polyvinylidene chloride. In 2004 it became in vogue to use low-density polyethylene (since vinyl and chloride are both chemicals that create a lot of problems, this was probably a really smart move). The new version may have made manufacturing cheaper and eliminated concerns about chloride, but it also doesn’t work. Except as interesting, non-harmful indoor projectiles when wadded up. All filmy plastics, including our wads of plastic wrap and sandwich bags, can be recycled with the plastic bag recycling. Which is good, but it is ridiculous for me to buy something just for the sake of recycling it.
Since I’ve been fortunate enough to never be close to starvation, I needed a better solution, and found it in beeswrap. Its natural, reusable, and wait for it…really works. I’ve been using it for three months now and only wish I had given up on plastic wrap years ago.
