Author: Plantswoman

I put up over two gallons of honey last week. Much of it was purchased by friends and I set aside some for holiday gifts. But a few jars are for me to enjoy. Harvesting and eating honey is a way for me to connect with my Neolithic farming ancestors — who are charged by historians with the exploitation of bees –just as we are today. The ancient hollow log pictured above shows an example of the comb treasured by Stone Age raiders of hives 8500 years ago in France. link

I wonder if my Stone Age counterpart got honey all over the place as I did when I extracted and bottled my honey last week. I did not use the big circular extractor in my garage, but just scraped off the wax caps on the hive frames and let the honey drain all night Then I strained it through a fairly large mesh to preserve all the precious pollen and nutrients. The friend who gave me the extractor, when he divested himself of his bees and bee equipment, also gave me a box of eight ounce plastic squeeze bottles. I used these bottles only after I ran out of my supply of pretty decorative glass bottles. What would my Stone Age counterpart have thought about these little plastic bottles, considered mundane and practical by me; perhaps wondrous by her. And since much of the honey for sale now has been heated and ultra filtered; I wonder how often my ancestors heated the honey to extract if faster and more thoroughly; I wonder if they filtered it at all.

The grocery store shelves are now filled with jars of honey to which sugar and water have often been added to increase profits. Mass produced honey has been basically killed by the ‘pasteurization’ process; and, should any remaining nutrients survive, they are filtered out by high-tech machines. We are told that this ultra processing makes the honey smoother and more transparent. link

Vaughn Bryant, professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University, has spent decades analyzing commercial honey; he peers through his microscope at a sample, looking for pollen or other signs of life and says, “Nothing!” A modern day crusader, he has led opposition to the sale of dead honey in ‘big box’ stores; and, he has revealed honey contaminated by heavy metals and other toxins dumped in the United States by China, India and other countries. Casting a wide net, Dr. Bryant has extensively researched ancient honey discovered by archaeologists and geologists who have found honey in their research sites.

We have learned that honey doesn’t spoil because of its acidic and antibacterial content. Three-thousand year old honey found in an Egyptian tomb was found to be edible. link  Honey was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. Recognizable honey stains, 5500 years old, were found in ceramic vessels in ancient Georgia. The earliest apiary with more than 100 hives was found in Israel, dating to the 9th century B.C.E.– contemporaneous to King Solomon.

So why do we kill it? Honey has been beloved by humans for thousands of years and used to honor the dead, satisfy our love of sweets; and importantly, to improve our health. link

The health benefits of raw honey are well known. Unheated honey, filtered only enough to remove wax and dead bees has dozens of amino acids and is loaded with minerals and vitamins. It also contains almost 30 kinds of bioactive plant compounds that act as antioxidants. All of which contribute to honey’s reputation for reducing inflammation, lowering the risk of heart disease, fighting cancer, helping to control blood sugar by improving liver function, improving vascular function, assisting with weight management, suppressing coughs, boosting immunity, healing wounds and helping to lower cholesterol. link.

Why DO we kill it.

It’s fun to dream about having a flock of chickens that produce the beautiful array of eggs pictured above. And not impossible by any means. I’ve had hours of fun reading Henderson’s Handy Dandy Chicken Chart. Sixty or so chicken breeds are listed; for example, Marans, bred long ago in France, produce the chocolate colored eggs; Ameraucanas, bred in South America, produce the green and blue eggs. Generally the more exotic the egg color the fewer eggs you will get each week. For production, the venerable white Leghorns — kept by the ancient Romans — can lay up to 300 white eggs a year.

But a keeper of chickens has so many factors to consider. Do you want friendly chickens? Free range chickens? Exotic feathers? The combinations are dizzying since chickens are thought to have been domesticated 10,000 years ago and have been bred worldwide for any trait you might want to imagine, for eating, for fighting, for display and; of course, for eggs.

But the domestic history just scratches the surface. I never tire of reminding my readers that thirty years ago dinosaur fossils found in China revealed feathers; and confirmed the dinosaur/bird link. Millions of year ago the Tyrannosauridae genetic line produced T-Rex whose living genetic relative is our beloved modern chicken.

I have enjoyed for the past three years a pleasant flock of seven hens and one rooster who are a mix of Ameraucanas (green eggs), Marans (brown eggs) and Ameraucana/Maran crosses (olive eggs). And three years is when egg production declines sharply and also when older free-range hens tend to abandon their nesting boxes and lay eggs in hidden caches.

I have a small property and my little barn only comfortably houses about 10 chickens. I have no space to keep the older birds and also add new layers. This week I handed off five of my older hens to a friend who had lost most of her flock to a fox. Another friend supplied me with four six-month old chicks.

One of my new chicks died in the terrible heat wave that hit this week. The other three are thriving and all are expected to lay a modest four eggs a week beginning in January 2019. I am thrilled that one of the birds is a Speckled Sussex. The Sussex are touted by chicken sellers as the bird with ‘everything.’ Her antecedents are said to have been living in England when the Romans invaded in 43 BC. The modern Sussex are family birds– friendly, easy-going and intelligent. My little Sussex seems to the the leader of the three new girls. They are all sticking to the barn and the fenced coop right now, partly because of the heat and partly because a family of hawks live nearby in a large Oak and at least eight of them are on patrol almost all day.

When my rooster, the Calico Kid, integrates the new chicks into his coterie, he will protect them from the hawks by spreading his large wings as cover. The hawks are respectful of his four-inch spurs. And the hawks fear my guardian dogs as do a long list of other chicken enemies.

I also have a regal Jersey Giant chick who will grow to about 10 pounds, way too big for a hawk to lift off the ground. Bred in New Jersey late in the 19th century, these giants are supposed to be very sociable, especially friendly to children. You can see that the young farmer who supplied my new chicks likes companionable breeds. The Jersey Giants were on a critically endangered list in 2001 but now have been moved to a watch list. I always like to try and preserve these historic breeds.

And I have a new Ameraucana or Easter Egg Layer. I kept two adult Ameraucanas but am getting no eggs right now–none that I can find anyway. I love, love, love green and blue eggs and am hoping my new chick will supply them for me. She is a beautiful reddish brown. Bred in Chile, these chickens have a puff of feathers around their heads that reveal the wide standards of what is beautiful in the chicken world.

All over the planet, dreams of productivity and beauty inspire chicken keepers. Always, always reality bites hard. Scorching weather, icy winter storms, and predators. Predators by the score, foxes, hawks, raccoons–everyone likes chicken apparently.

When the weather breaks, I will add a few more hens so that my family and friends and I have plenty of eggs. And I will have the pleasure of living with these marvelous, interesting creatures. I also like knowing they have a wild past, a past where they were fearsome indeed. I love the illustration of bird ancestry below. This is not the first time I have published it and probably not the last. It reminds us that the gentle, pretty, useful creatures we keep have either dramatically evolved or dramatically devolved. I’m not sure which.

 

Food Gardening is hard. Much harder than flower gardening. I love flower gardening. My Northern garden was beautiful. It was placed on tours, featured in the Chicago Tribune and was an ongoing source of pleasure; it was a pleasure garden. I would put in a plant and, if it died, I would replace it. I just tried one thing after another until it pleased; and I am now enjoying the same technique in my Southern garden. Try something and if it does not work, try something else. I have been enjoying a talk by Leonard Bernstein who describes the creation of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony link, The great musician left pages and pages of notes and drafts of this symphony–he made 14 attempts to create the perfect beginning to the second movement following the opening that featured the famous FATE chords. Bernstein tells us that Beethoven tried one thing after another to make “something we can trust, something that will never let us down.”

Of course, I do not claim any great artistry in making a garden. The plants are the artists. Flowers and other ornamental plants are fun to play with; they will show you the way. Even a new pleasure garden can be trusted to bring peace and well being. And, in my experience, a mature pleasure garden will never let you down. A food garden, on the other hand, will do no such thing. It is more like stepping into a boxing ring or into a contest in Rome’s Colosseum.

First, food is powerful draw.

While flowers have certain issues with pests, a food garden can mean the difference in living and dying to my opponents: rabbits, squirrels, birds, deer, raccoons, a myriad of bugs, spiders and even fungus. Peace is not an option for them.

Second, there are no sturdy native plants to form the cornerstone of a food garden. Eating plants native to Central Texas would make a very sorry table. So going into this battle, one is in an alliance with the delicate and the exotic; an alliance with plants that would not survive three minutes without the gardener’s care. For example, cabbage, considered a plain, everyday food, is an exotic plant. It needs one’s best soil and is in constant peril of being devoured by any pest you want to name. Onions need very rich soil. Asparagus. Tomatoes. All of them really. And water. Lots of water.

Finally, there is timing. I should have started my spring seedlings: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach and lettuce this past January. Busy with the holidays, I was late and in May we had a crushing heat wave. I ended the spring garden season, having enjoyed one cabbage, two cauliflower and no broccoli. But I was awash in spinach and lettuce for months. Carrots did well this year; all the beets died. I did not get a single peach; the grapevines were loaded. Leeks, tomatoes and melons were delicious. I never know what will work out. Each success is like a little miracle.

I have been late starting my seedlings for the fall garden. Last weekend, I set up trays of little pots seeded with tomatoes, brussel sprouts and broccoli. I’ll get around to cabbage and cauliflower next week. With lots of overlap, if I’m lucky, I will have cauliflower in October, broccoli in November, cabbage in December, brussel sprouts in January–and tomatoes if and when it pleases them.

I have only been food gardening for about five years so perhaps I’ll get more predictable results with practice. And perhaps the uncertainty about the success of the little seeds sitting on my outdoor sink right now is not all bad. It is certainly a miracle for a tiny seed to turn into a fat cabbage for my winter dinner.

 

The Moon at Perigee looks a lot bigger than the Moon at Apogee–because the orbit of the Moon around Earth is not perfectly round. Occasionally the Moon swings closer to us and we see it in what appears to be a gigantic form. Imagine you were 30% bigger or imagine a man normally six feet tall, looming upon you eight feet tall.

On Friday, two days from now, the Moon will be in Perigee; or, it will be, according to the new vernacular, a Supermoon. It would look the same the 30% bigger, just like the full moon, IF we could see it. But the Moon will be “new”– and entirely dark. And it will not rise at night. It will rise with the Sun about six in the morning and set at nine in the evening.

The New Moon has probably always been a symbol death and then rebirth, as the Crescent Moon gradually increases night after night. Paintings and illustrations abound of the beautiful and very feminine Virgin Mary with the Crescent Moon.

And long before Christianity swept through the world, the ancient Greeks, Romans and Chinese; and, probably a dozen other cultures described the Moon as a ‘feminine” force. Not feminine, meaning gender, but feminine, meaning having intuition, empathy and patience.

Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt is often paired with the crescent moon, as is the Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana. I am sure intuition, empathy and patience help one to hunt successfully, but it is interesting that such a masculine modern pastime was viewed so differently in the ancient world.

I have always loved the Cheshire Cat appearing first as a crescent moon and then materializing into the only creature in Alice in Wonderland who really listens to Alice. Although edgy and sarcastic, he becomes a kind of care taker, acting as her guide and advisor.

And moon gardeners, another kind of care taker, advise us to plant above-ground crops, put down sod and graft trees during the new moon and the first quarter that follows it.

Whether the Moon is considered in a deeply religious context or simply an object of intellectual or practical value, it is always a positive. I have said before and repeat, that I love looking at the Moon that has appeared in almost exactly its present form to ancient and prehistoric humans. It links us to this past chain of humanity.

The New Moon has long been considered a symbol of a clean slate and an invitation to correct mistakes. On Saturday night, July 14, the first phase of the giant Waxing Crescent can be seen in the western sky just after the sun sets. If you are lucky, you’ll be able to see the sky smile down upon us.

A huge plume of dust rose up out of the Sahara Desert last week and traveled 5000 miles, across the Atlantic, up through parts of Mexico and the American South. The dust hit the Texas Gulf Coast and spread throughout the State. The red African dust has been hanging over my little farm this past week. While the current dusty red atmosphere is new to me, violent wind storms in the Sahara are common. Every year 182 million tons of dust are blown into the upper atmosphere and driven by the trade winds to the Americas. 182 million tons.

The dust, called mineral dust, is loaded with nutrients: primarily iron and phosphorus. When this airborne fertilizer falls into the ocean, it creates a problem endemic to all fertilizers: rampant growth of the wrong thing. A “red tide” of algae growth poisons huge numbers of fish and other marine life. Scientists also believe the microbes in the dust may be poisoning coral contributing to death of coral reefs.

Naturally humans worry about the presence of foreign red dust. It may bring fungus, bacteria and harmful chemical residues. It certainly causes sinus and respiratory issues. And red dust, well, it makes things a dirty, dusty red. Because of the iron.

But it turns out that all these complaints about the red mineral dust do not weigh very heavily since, on the other side of the scale, is its contribution to the generation of oxygen.

Every breath we take is a gift from plants. Rain forests are well known to be the ‘lungs’ of the Earth, burning carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. The African mineral dust often settles on the Amazon rain forest that gratefully soaks up the iron, phosphorus and other nutrients provided by Mother Africa. The Saharan dust is largely responsible for the fertility of the rain forests.

This mineral dust also feeds the world’s oceans. Tiny ocean plants called Phytoplankton use photosynthesis  to live, a process that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and oxygen. The little plants, most of which are invisible to the naked eye, create about half of the oxygen we breathe. Nutrients like the iron and phosphorus in the African mineral dust are in short supply in marine ecosystems. Without the fertilizer from the Sahara, the health of phytoplankton and the oceans would decline significantly. link

I was struggling with my own iron issues when the story of the red mineral dust cloud appeared in the news. I have a persimmon tree that cannot seem to absorb iron so its leaves are a creepy pale green color. I’m treating the problem with a special easy- to- absorb iron called chelated. I hope it works since, if the tree cannot get iron it will die. The iron allows access to crucial enzymes and pigments and is necessary for the tree’s energy production. Which translates into no persimmon sherbet for me. I like the idea that my tree shares a need with the microscopic phytoplankton plants in the ocean.

Of course the necessity of phosphorus, delivered by the Saharan dust, is well known. It is in every bag of fertilizer we buy. It drives the conversion of key biochemical reactions in plants and is a vital part of DNA, our memory unit and the memory unit of plants as well. Phosphorus is a big player in the capture and conversion of the sun’s energy: our old friend, photosynthesis.

So here we have a potential villain. It sweeps across the world killing fish and coral. It makes us sick and dirties our air. But it does the work of a hero by feeding the phytoplankton and the rain forest so we have plenty of oxygen. The red African dust is quite the character. Not one on a human scale as seen on the the stage or a movie screen, but one that comes out of a desert that covers about three and a half million square miles, that measures in tons and travels thousands of miles. It engages with the most crucial building blocks of nature. The red dust exists on a truly grand scale, the scale of a planet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Humans dream up ways to kill unwanted plants. Plants, who are great chemists, dream up ways to resist the onslaught. For example the herbicide, glyphosate (Round-up), kills by targeting a key protein in plants. Most plants have two copies of the gene that makes this protein. Glyphosate is no longer effective against pigweed because the plant has evolved five to 160 copies of this key protein. It fights back with its own genetic modifications.

Carelessweed is another name for pigweed and is the name my grandmother used. I like the old fashioned name a lot since the arrogant weed could care less what humans want. A dozen pigweeds surrounded each of my six tomato plants while I was away on vacation. I just keep pulling pigweed up and it always, always reappears. It is my enemy.

One pigweed plant can produce half a million seeds, according to a June 2018 article in Scientific American. Each seed is loaded with modern “genetic machinery” to wage and win its war with humans. Some large scale farms have been forced to hire laborers to handpick or blowtorch the weeds. link

Other experts have found that, in good growing conditions a pigweed plant can produce not just half a million seeds, but  1.5 million seeds. And pigweed needs only about two weeks to produce all this seed after flowering. link

Pigweed is not alone in its resistance to chemicals. Other weeds have joined the game. For example, horseweed, common ragweed, giant ragweed, annual ryegrass and johnsongrass are all resistant to glyphosate. Barnyardgrass is resistant to the herbicides propanil, quinclorac and clomazone. Cocklebur and pigweed are resistant to the herbicides Scepter and Classic. Ryegrass is resistant to Hoelon and Osprey. Johnsongrass is resistant to Select and Fusilade. link

I included the names of the herbicides above since you might want to check the labels on product you use to kill weeds in your lawn or garden. They may not work anymore. Of course, the big problem is with big farms–massive fields of soybeans and corn. Agribusiness genetically modifies corn and soybeans so that they are not killed by herbicides. The plan was for the herbicides to kill all plants in a field other than the genetically modified corn or soybeans. It is entertaining to me that weedy plants are developing their own genetic modifications to resist the poisons. Poor Big Ag farmers, they have to keep using more and more of old herbicides and are always on the lookout for “new” and usually more toxic herbicides so they can stay ahead of the plants.

The costs are high– the money expended, the health of the soil, the health of the farmers spraying the chemicals, the health of consumers. We pay the costs yet we may not win the war. There is a “considerable chance,” according Science magazine that “the evolution of pest resistance will outpace human innovation.” Weeding the old-fashioned ways may be the solution in the end.

Amazingly, the leaves, stems and seeds of pigweed are edible and highly nutritious! The leaves can be cooked like spinach or other greens. link I am not enthusiastic about eating it. Just as i am not inclined, unless very hungry indeed, to eat snakes or bugs. Even if they are wildly nutritious. I just don’t like the idea of eating my enemies.

Plantswoman is enjoying some summer traveling and will return with new post on June 27th.

Pollen, the sticky stuff of life for flowers, grasses, bees and butterflies offers us a window into the past of the Sahara Desert. Scientists have discovered pollen that is thousands of years old. It reveals that the Sahara was once a paradise full of trees. Why this land of tropical trees, lush vegetation and many, many lakes turned to desert is being studied. link Disagreement rages. For example, Gavin Schmidt of NASA believes that 8000 years ago the tilt of the Earth changed from 24.1 degrees to 23.5 degrees. Dr. David Wright believes humans were a factor and that grazing and agriculture destroyed the lush green world and led to desertification. link

Deserts are beautiful, they just don’t help us breathe. Trees and plants absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. And they do more than just provide the oxygen. Like any good set of lungs, trees filter pollutants and clean the air for us. A new study estimates that the Earth has three trillion trees. These trees are represented in the graphic to the left in the dark green bands. Another study estimates that 400 billion mature leafy trees exist and these big trees produce enough clean oxygen “… for the lifetime of ten people each season! There are 400 billion trees, 6.7 billion people on Earth — every person has 60 trees.” link

I am pretty happy having 60 trees making oxygen for me. I don’t think this is a question of a crisis so much as an issue of caretaking. I thought I had lost a chicken but she appeared several days ago with baby chicks. This is a creature not generally admired for intellect, but she understands caretaking. There are 5 or more hawks circling during each day; she keeps her babies near the crawlspace of the porch or near a deep opening beneath a rose bush. She covers them with her wings when the dogs or other chickens threaten. I have no idea where she takes them at night. It poured rain two nights ago, the sky was alight for hours with lightening with attendant thunder. The chicken was out the next morning taking care of her dry, healthy babies scratching for bugs.

How do we take care of our trees and forests? I have planted at least dozen trees and take great care of the 40 or so mature trees on my property. I never buy anything made with exotic wood; I have given up live Christmas trees.  I gripe here often about clear cutting forests. Will this save my 60 trees? Will that preserve my share of clean oxygen? I have no idea.

WIRED magazine recently ran an article entitled “All the Trees Will Die, and Then So Will You” that described, among other things, the terrible insect and disease damage presently ravaging trees. link We will soon be seeing the summer wildfires raging across thousands of acres of forests.

Caretaking of forests has separated successful countries from the unsuccessful. link Jared Diamond in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed  describes the Japanese campaign to preserve their forests initiated 300 years ago. Most of this small island full of people remains forested. Diamond contrasts the success of Japan with Haiti and North Korea where deforestation has led to land erosion, poverty and famine. He also relates the well-worn tale of Easter Island, where the inhabitants lived prosperous lives; so prosperous that they were able to carve statues 13 feet high weighing 14 tons. They cut every tree. The deforestation of the island led to decline, led to a few suvivors living a feral existence in caves eating rats and mice and possibly engaging in cannibalism.

In the end maybe we should wonder who is taking care of who. I believe trees are sentient being and perhaps from their point of view we are their lungs and not the other way around. We are certainly providing carbon dioxide in record levels with our bodies, our cars, our industry. I like to imagine trees taking care of themselves. I imagine they will survive the recent human and insect plagues. They have been on Earth for 370 million years and have probably survived worse.

 

When I hear the word snake my brain translates it into an approximation of the creature in the picture above. Is this wrong? My higher brain cells realize the world is full of beneficial, and perhaps, beautiful snakes so I am trying to overcome my prejudice. My rat snake arrived weeks ago. The chickens aren’t afraid of the snake but when he began showing up in the nesting boxes in the barn, most of them began laying elsewhere. I walked into the barn a couple of days ago to find the snake in the nesting box about to eat an egg. I had the weedeater in my hand and, faced with the noisy little machine, he quickly left the building.

In past years, every snake that has been found in the barn has been killed. I am going to try to live with this one for two reasons. First, non-venomous snakes are considered by most experts to be “beneficials.” Killing all snakes is considered ill-informed; imagining all snakes to be evil is, I am told, plain silly. Some non-venomous snakes kill venomous snakes. You can watch a dozen u-tube videos of these kills; for example, you can see beneficial King Snakes killing and eating Rattlesnakes. Beneficial snakes, like my rat snake also “save us” from being overrun by varmints such as mice, rats, and gophers. link I had so many mice and/or rats last winter that I was forced to buy and use poison, peppermint spray and a little sonar device plugged into the wall — all of which were helpful but did not solve the problem. The rat snake has solved the problem; I have seen no mice or rats for weeks.

Second, the antipathy toward non-venomous snakes does not seem to be shared. My son spotted a cache of chicken eggs under the rose bush and shouted for me when he saw the snake dining there. I ran for the heavy shovel and my daughter-in-law ran for the house. Amidst this excitement, the snake headed across the pasture. As he passed the chickens, they spotted the movement, walked over, gave him a glance and returned to their search for bugs. The snake went right past the bull and the cow, who looked up and returned to grazing. The dogs lifted their heads and returned their afternoon naps. It occurred to me that the human view might be a mistake.

Might. My brother is adamant that I should kill the snake. He predicts, among other things, that the snake will reproduce and that I’ll soon have ten snakes. Are one’s prejudices right or wrong?

In Ken Kesey’s 1964 novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, the protagonist’s father nailed a crude, hand-painted sign over his small son’s bed that read: “NEVER GIVE AN INCH.” I am thinking of getting an old board and painting it with the words: NON-VENOMOUS SNAKES ARE BENEFICIALS and nailing it up in the barn. Of course, refusing any compromise is stupid. And maybe getting the creepy, crawlies in the presence of a snake is stupid.

I have strung barbed wire on the floor around the nesting area and along the edges of a little storage room where the snake hides. I may buy a battery-powered device that creates vibration in the ground around the barn and I am considering buying some stuff called Snake Away. I will now store the weedeater in the barn as a helpful weapon training aide. I may also nail up a tiny sign at floor level that says NEVER EAT AN EGG.

 

No matter how far we live from the wild, we have to eat. Nature’s gift of food has always bound us to her. Our long-time respect for food is revealed entertainingly in old recipes. Humans have apparently always loved recipes, the majority of which have probably been obscured by time–made inaccessible by our inability to read, for example, old cave scratchings. Perhaps our current TV cooking shows will be unearthed by some future beings who will, I imagine, try to figure out what in the world was being cooked and why.

Some of the oldest known recipes are written on the clay tablet pictured above. The tablet is one of three that record about 25 dishes enjoyed in Babylon around 1700 BC. link Herb-laden meat stews made with stag, gazelle, kid, lamb and a variety of birds are featured. The recipes describe use of garlic, onions, mustard, coriander, cumin and a sprinkling of bread crumbs on top. link Mesopotamia was a world of ‘foodies’ with perhaps 18 kinds of cheese and 300 types of bread made with different kinds of flour.

Our ancient relatives did not neglect alcoholic drinks. Bronze vessels have been found in Turkey from a funeral 2700 years ago containing a drink that mixed grape wine, barley beer and honey. Strange. But our ancestors did love beer; and writing down how to make beer was not neglected. The oldest list of ingredients was discovered in a beer-making facility in ancient China: millet, barley, Chinese pearl barley and tubers.

This brings to mind current avant garde trends in food and drink: boutique breweries, restaurants that use old strains of wheat for bread, different kinds of potatoes, lettuces and herbs now offered at the grocery store. Broadening what we eat and drink is fun; especially if it helps us connect our lives to our long-dead ancestors.

However, it impossible to recreate the old dishes, partially because farm to table practices have changed food. For example, eggs have doubled in size and have different moisture content. link  And modern tastes do not extend to nettle soup yet, although the oldest recipe in the UK, dating back 8000 years, uses nettles as the primary ingredient. And I doubt if we will see any TV food shows demonstrating roast dormouse as is depicted with great favor in a large Roman recipe collection called De Re Coquinaria.

I am unsure whether the differences between ancient and modern eating practices is more interesting or, the similarities. The Roman cookbook also describes the preparation of wild boar: “…it is cleaned; sprinkled with salt and crushed cumin and thus left. The next day it is put into the oven; when done season with crushed pepper. A sauce for boar: honey broth, reduced wine, raisin wine.” Not alien at all.

Clothing, shelter and food are all nature’s gifts for the most part. Even our beloved plastics are derived from oil, and oil was produced when animals and plants died and sank to the bottom of the ancient seas and lagoons over millions of years. It may be just possible to imagine clothing and shelter from non-natural sources. But food will always bind humans to nature’s bounty…..Naturally.