Arthur Haine's Forraging and Inspiration for Health in Korea, the US, and the World

Arthur Haine's collection from a recent forraging trip. 

Like many, I have teachers and mentors who inspire me. One is Arthur Haine's who to me is a great forrager as well as taxonomist. Recently he went on a forraging trip and posted about it on his website. Some of the plants gathered and shown in the picture above have validity worldwide since they are found in the same climate zones worldwide and have been used by the wild peoples of the world. Those are  Japanese Knotweed on the left of the picture is found in the US and in Asia.  Wild foods are more nutrient dense then what can be found in the supermarket and something I believe we should get as much as possible in our diet.

This is reposted from Arthur Haine's Site.

"Spring Abundance

The plant foods shown in the picture were gathered with an investment of about 30 minutes of work (not too bad, right?). These three plants (left to right)—Japanese knotweed, stinging nettle, and dame’s rocket—will comprise the bulk of our vegetables for nearly a week. Learning to gather wild foods efficiently is an important skill set that involves knowledge of several fields.

Most people realize that identification is important, but knowing the ecology (where) and the phenology (when) are also critically important. These allow the aspiring forager to direct their efforts to the place and time when wild foods are ready for harvest. Without this knowledge, foragers wander over the landscape without direction. Wandering is enjoyable and allows people to survey the resources they have around them, but many times we need to visit specific habitats at specific times in order to fill our baskets with food.

In the center is stinging nettle (Urtica dioca). Though this plant has a formidable defense (the stinging hairs), it is easily overcome by careful collecting early in the season (before the stinging hairs become rigid enough to puncture the skin) or using a gloved hand. Once cooked (or dried) the hairs lose the ability to create the painful irritation. Why go after this plant? It is a powerhouse of nutrition. It has 50 times the pro-vitamin A of cabbage and 1.5 times the vitamin C of oranges (for the same mass). This is how indigenous people lived without vitamins and supplements—they consumed wild foods that are more nutrient dense than what we purchase in the supermarket. Stinging nettle is also over 40% protein by dry weight. It is true superfood that can be found near you.

I encourage you to get there and enjoy the spring abundance. It is your gift for enduring the long winter. It will require an investment in learning about our world, but you will be rewarded for this with vibrant health and self-reliance. Ksipkawsuwelomolpa (I wish you all long life).

Arthur Haines (www.arthurhaines.com)"

Jerusalem Artichoke (뒤지감자), a rewilder's vegetable

My friend got the roots of Jerusalem Artichoke for me from a Wonju market lady. This is a great vegetable which I will be planting in certain places in Wonju for a new carbohydrate source in my diet. A sunflower, this hails from the midwestern US, and were used by the wild natives of the area. Native Americans are a great model for sustainability because their survival was dependent on living within their local environment. They are often referred to as a model for  true paleo diet, which is often confused by the grocery store paleo authors, who make rules to approximate wild food choices in a grocery store. Native people had a wide variety of plants and animals in their diet including grains and I think that the key to a true paleo diet is their wildness and their diversity. This plant was cultivated by the Native Americans, but still retains much of it's wildness.

It's a very useful for me because rewilding is the best way to minimize ecological foot prints. Jerusalem Artichoke will thrive in the wild and is good way to start gardening. One plant can out produce sweet potatoes. John Koller from growingyourgreens.com, reported growing approximately 10 pounds from one plant. The tubers can be stored in soil for a year. It is a perennial plant that will come back year after year. They also produces beautiful sunflowers that attract bees to pollinate crops, as well being beautiful to look at.

That's my opinion, but you can do whatever you want. Take care.

Wild Gardens of Cardon

The photographer Choi Gi Soon's outdoor center, Cardon in Honchong, Gangwon-do,  is allowed to grow wild.  He he lives when not photographing animals in Russia. He runs a wilderness school there, which he has invited me to visit as an instructor.

One of the skills he teaches is natural building, something I am very excited to help with. I've done my share on a primitive level and I plan on sharing my skills with him.

What Rewilding Doesn't Have To Be and What It Can Be

Rewilding doesn't mean taking off your clothes and running into the woods. Most people would die this way because growing up in cities doesn't produce hunter/gatheers.

Rewilding is a process of going back to the simpler processes of life. From going from factory farming to pasture raising animals to wild life farmers. From going from buying clothes from a clothing shop to making your own clothes to making your own fibers. From going from cell phones to telephones to mail to walking to your neighbor. From going from emailing your friends to talking to them on the phone. From going from the internet forums to real-life group meetings. From going to consuming to making. It's specialization to despecialization.

These steps have less of a carbon footprint, but they also have important implications for human health. Handwashing, sewing, walking, cooking yourself, growing your own food, foraging your own food require simple tasks and movement sedentary people suffer without. Just walking instead of driving has a great impact on your health. By procuring your own food you are taking part in the nature. By gathering more from wild food you understand the connection between food and medicine that you will understand from processing food yourself. Wild food by nutritional testing is superior and nutrition and your body will benefit from the nutrition that primitive people enjoyed for hundreds of thousands of years.

We live in a fractured landscape that needs healing and regeneration. Living as hunter gatherers today is impossible for large groups of people. It's possible for people to live as individuals and gather large amounts of food such as Arthur Haines, who gathers hundreds of pounds of wild rice and acorns for himself and his girlfriend. But the point is that the landscape needs a process of going back to simplicity and gratitude and connectiveness to the earth. Rewilding is a process of being grateful to accept simplicity and reject convenience. It doesn't meant that our lives become harder but our tasks become simpler.

Planting Trees

How many of you would be keen on gathering acorns to planting them to produce oak trees this year to produce food for animals and to sequester carbon? It would be a wonderful environmental active-vism.  We need to collect in the fall from a forrested area such as Gangwon, Jeju or another spot and keep them over winter. I will fill you in on the details at appropriate times. But we will gather in the fall, store them in soil, and then plant them in April. We could gather some to make food with.

http://www.wildbirds.org/oaks/oaks.htm

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlE0JYNZRqQ

Looking For Fellow Rewilders to Buy Land

I  am looking for fellow people to buy land to rewild the landscape and themselves. We will be caretakers. Anyone who can organize a land trust are welcome. I am looking for people who are interested in practicing simplicity and primitive skills on this land. We willl help educate others in the skills, and encourage them to find their own land to rewild and caretake. 

Caretaking: Beyond Environmentalism there is Rewilding

Human beings can positively effect their landbase. Native American tribes having learned from previous mistakes adopted a caretaker philosophy that has inspired people in the rewilding movement and primitive skill practioners and ecologists like Aldo Leopold who inspired the creation of national forests.

Tom Brown Jr., founder of the tracker school has revitalized the forest on the property he bought 40 years ago, through harvesting weaker trees so that their brothers could grow and flourish.

Jesse Wolf Hardin in New Mexico bought a piece a lot of land in the Gila National Forest and starting to reforest the river bank that was depleted from ranchers driving their cattle along the  river bank to eat the saplings. There were Wild West moments but Jesse's love of the land endured.

Mike Douglas at the Maine Primitive Skills School has planted native seeds of oak trees on his 29 acre land, a crucial food plant in the eco system which provides crucial food for smaller animals and the larger ones which eat them. Oaks take 40 years to bear acorns. He won't live to see the animals that will be able to have babies in this forest, but his daughter will.

Caretakers take life from the forest to support themselves, but they must do it when there is need for it and it must effect the forest positively.

Buying land is the most effective way to protect the land from development and urbanization which I believe is the biggest danger to life on this planet from people who have forgotten their place in the environment. However, until one can find land we can start by finding a forest to spend time in frequently and begin to bring that ecosystem in balance. Maybe it was once a natural forest. Perhaps you can reforest it.

It doesn't have to be in an English speaking country either.

For me, until I can find the people and make the money to buy my land I have found a grove of trees near my aparment that I can learn from and build a shelter. If I positively identify the trees as an oak tree, the its protection is more important. Acorns provide a base food sources for many animals, including our wild progenitors and cutting one down is a crime of ignorance. So today when I saw one being cut down I felt a stab at my heart.

Perhaps a sign or note is the start to helping the forest but that is not enough. I seek non-violence but that is not enough. For too long people go to protests to protect forests but do not realize that they are empowered to replant and rewild. If that place is cut down than I feel compelled to plant more trees, their and at other places. But that is not enough. The rewilder needs to sign a deed and therefore become the master and servant of that land.

So that has become my mission before I die and one that keeps things simple enough to do it. In order to really serve that land I have to learn as much about it and live within it. I have been emptying my cup for this. I have begun simplifying my life. It started with consumer choices like not buying plastic goods and then with learning primitive skills to live less dependent on this destructive system. I have moved back into a city to make money but this time around I am sleeping on a floor and I drink from bamboo cups. My work uniform is going to be a traditional Korean clothing, dyed with plant material. I am learning how to empower my choices.  From learning primitive skills, I am learning skills that allow me to do things myself rather than buy those things. My hand soap is soap I made myself from a locally organic pig. That soap is not a soap shipped from a far away place using some exotic oil. Although I dislike the term carbon footprint, it is definately smaller.

In times things have been getting easier I no longer feel the embarrassment or guilt for not living the life others want me to live. After months, I have been able to commit to the idea. The simplicity of a Buddhist, primitive Christian and primitive inspires me that I am not alone. Then there is a story of someone who is trying to simplify like me. His name is Wanderer and whose story is documented by my friend Mike Roy, someone who inspires many with his obervations and his simplicity.

However, just simplifying as a consumer is not enough, my calling is to caretake.

Maybe some day the mainstream will adopt a term with spirit like such as caretaker. Instead of saying I am an environmentalist, they will say: I am a caretaker. Instead of saying I am trying to talk in terms of re-ducing destruction they will say I am a reforester, rewilder, replanter and re-creator. Such a mission is the potential for modern people to realize and for themselves to empower.
Whatever people's choices are,  if I continue my life as a moderrn day nomad buying land is the next step. After that depends on what the landscape needs.

The New Aboriginal- Combining Our Ancestors Knowledge with Safe Technologies

Our domesticated life is a block between us and what needs to be done to live sustainable. We are too disconnected from the world. Arthur Haines, a taxonomist and primitive skill expert lays out the philosophical problems as well as environmental problems of domesticated human life. He outlines a new path towards a "New Aboriginal" man in a video titled by the same name.

Here is a summary of his premises.

Our reliance on civilization's technologies from the beginnings of agriculture have made people according to the fossil record: weaker, dummer, and unhealthier. Indigenous people- the surviving ones still remaining have been shown to be healthier, with less cavities and degenerative diseases.

Agriculture has allowed for population explosions, trading high calories for bad nutrition.

Hunter Gatherer societies technologies were specific to regions and possessed skills to survive in their own local landscapes, with the foresight to have healthy children.

Now compared with those with modern people of today "who are utterly dependent on the craft and wares constructed in some distant land.. unable to feed cloth or heal themselves; people who are essentially aliens on their own wild landscapes; people who are unable to decipher which plant species could be used for what purpose; unable to build any hunting weapons; lacking dietary wisdom, and producing children with dietary deficiencies and physiological problems; spending very little time outside the home; requiring a thermostat to stay comfortable, and completely domesticated; possessing a blunted awareness of the plight of the world.

Self reliance and Nature Competency were the norm in Hunter-Gatherer Societies. They were egalitarian.

Civilization allowed for specialization, bureaucracy and the accumulation of wealth.  It has also disconnected people from the world.

"People believed they had dominion over the earth."

Speciation of humans has continued into the modern age to produce a new subspecies of human which he calls, Homo Sapiens Domestico Fragillus; so named because we are domesticated and more fragile than our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

We can not go back. Most of our landscapes are too altered to go back to hunter-gathering. Property lines make it impossible to migrate from growing grounds to winter hunting grounds. It simply is not possible in most places.

That doesn't mean we should keep going forward into domestication. Arthur Haines has a third way.  We can follow a path which can combine our benign technologies with our ancestors knowledge to follow a new path.  His words are better thought out than my own:

"It has taken generation for humans to lose their ancestral skills and their ancestral strengths...  The situation can not be corrected in one generation; it means generations to alter mindsets, build strong healthy bodies and relearn skills that promote self-reliance without polluting the landscape.... Imagine people that commit to learning the most sustainable technologies on the planet, who nourish their children so that they are capable of seeing the state of our world and like their parents follow this new path of heightened physical, emotional and spiritual health. Imagine a path where people possess the awareness of wild creatures and regain a connection to the landscape. Just like domestication has led to speciation, re-wilding can as well. We can alter the present day course to recreate ferile hominids; a population of people who combine incestral skills with benign modern technologies; people who can once again feed, heal and cloth themselves; who don't hide in them homes and have heightened senses of awareness; people who would classified as Homo Sapiens Neo Aboriginalis; the New Aboriginals."

Solutions: They may have to be individual self-sufficienty and local community support

"Correct discipline and enough time are inseparable notions. Correct discipline can not be hurried for it is both the knowledge of what ought to be done and the knowledge to do it period."- Wendell Berry 

What do we need to harvest sustainably, Mike posts about the Upo Wetlands and the fishermen fishing there. Mike was nice about the government, development, fishers, and environmentalists role but he didn't mention the complications but development of civilization is destructive to the environment and ultimately us. The fish will lose environment which means less fish and that means less food for us.

Environmentalist can often remove men from nature as a way to protect nature from man but it also lessens man understanding of it.

I feel the fishers are the most suffering lot of all groups because they really have the most understanding of their environment and the truth is that pressure to feed a population of people who are too many of their is is putting a strain on the available number of fish to feed people and then the government is destroying the number of fish available in nature and then the environmentalists remove men from nature. My oversimplification is just a model of the most acute problems in this cycle.

But I don't believe this really is the biggest problem. Rather it is the lack of understanding or I should say humility about how we fit into this. We kill and are killed by the life cycled. I think amateur environmentalists need to stop thinking about how to remove the threat of man from nature and bring man back into nature. We often hear talk about this with other animals but not with ourselves.

The hard truth of this is that with peak oil all these choices are self-preservation as much as environmentalism. And it won't matter if your a vegan or a non-vegan because it won't really matter in 200 plus years. What will matter is do you have enough to eat and at this point whether or not its beef or dandelions won't matter. Food storing, preserving, growing, and procuring are essentially environmental when done by yourself.

We need to use less fossil foods not because there it is because of its environmental impact but because there are less fossil fuels and costs will continue to go up. IN order to meet the demand of food with dwindling households who can drive more farmers will be necessary. Even public transportation wouldn't be able to be sustained through sustainable energy a concept in itself that is optimistic. The truth is that many people may starve before we find a sustainable balance. If we are talking truth here, we are suffering from overshoot as it is. Overshoot is the concept that when a species of animal grows to large enough population it will exaust its food supply and the population will die until the level comes back into balance with nature. We have dealt with this throughout history. In Jared Diamonds, Gun's, Germ's and Steal, all civilations destructions when not caused by a natural disaster is the result of farmers exausting the top soil and populations in the cities feeling back to the woods to find food. As we run low on oil we will depend on people to harvest more and more food.

This documentary tries to explain a lot of material easily to people succeeds in coming off only convoluted. A success for an environmental documentary:

Farming for the future

As I think more about this I realize that the next step to becoming more ecological is to become a permaculturalist. Is it enough to have a professional job and be organic or vegan? Truth be told, even a vegan relies on industrial agriculture when it comes to grain production. Wouldn't it be better to depend less on a system to feed us and take our food into our own hands.

This is my solution to education problems and I wish to form a group of people willing to exchange books resources and ideas. A community of like minded individuals to support one another will be necessary to become successful at this. The internet is a good resource so far.

Permaculture Forum
Survival topics 

Starting small and simply will be necessary with so little money. But I can start training myself to move backware to permaculture. 

One is action with others who already know what they are doing:
 Wwoofing will provide a means to work with other farmers in large scale agriculture.

Korean Wwoofing

The other is the experiments I make to move into growing my own food.

The other is the knowledge I can aquire through books work towards is a subsistance life style as the first step in farming until I can make it into a productive place. These are how to guides in self sufficiency and living off-the-grid by. Each one talk about one of the following topics or all, including food preparation, growing food, building, meat preservation, and storing vegetables.

These are books I wish to read, accept for Wild Fermentation, which I read.

Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian

Living the Good LIfe

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times

Perenial Vegetables

Wild Fermentation

Successful Small Scale Farming

Charcuterie

Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning

Tom Brown’s Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants

Primitive Wilderness Living and Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness

Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages

Build It Better Yourself

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables

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Acquiring knowledge is important and I want a road map for myself and for others to follow so I wish to found a non-profit site for people to post scanned books of useful information for people to use. It will be a small consortium of like minded people so we can scan our sources into pdfs and share them with each other.

1 year ago the thought of becoming a farmer was far from my mind but then again a lot has changed. There are a lot of intermediate steps and a lot of struggle along the way but it will be easier than all the things I've forced myself to do because I was told it was the right thing to do. This decision has already brought me happiness and excitement. Still I got a long way to go. But I can still grin about it.