Sumac

Sumac is my favorite plant at the moment.   It is abundant, beautiful, delicious and extremely useful (even in November).  I used to fear Sumac because of the rumors of the dreaded Poison Sumac.  I never went near the stuff because I was afraid of breaking out in an oozing rash.  However, the only danger of (being) rash was my fear of the stuff since Poison Sumac is easily identified by it's white berries and the fact that it grows mostly in wetlands and is more shrub-like than tree-like.  As long as you keep in mind the glaring differences you are not likely to mistake the two based only on the similar leaf shape.

 

Sumac is full of Tannin which in itself renders it useful for many purposes.   For instance, Tanning animal skins.   It is also a fine dye mordant and can in fact be used as a dye on it's own.   Different parts and varieties of Sumac are preferred depending on what dye color you are using the plant as a mordant for. 



Smooth Sumac Berries

Archaeological evidence has revealed a great number of Sumac seeds in Native American 'kitchens' (or fire-pits & ovens) as early as the 11th century.  More recent accounts (16th - 18th century) give specifics about the uses of Sumac.   It was used as an aid after childbirth for bleeding problems, as well as for bleeding problems due to other injury or menstruation.  It was also used for various kinds of inflammation such as sinuses, sore throats, rheumatism, etc.  Sumac is also a good astringent and was used to treat gangrene.   Scurvy was treated with Sumac, Dysentery was treated by Sumac suppository, toothaches packed with Sumac 'gum', and fevers rumored to be broken by ingesting Sumac.   Contemporary sources mention Sumac as being useful to calm the nerves and increase focus, as well as being a legitimate and useful anti-inflammatory. 

 All parts of the plant are used - leaves, roots, berries and branches.   To be used medicinally Sumac can be boiled and reduced to a thick consistency, drank as a warm tea or simmered in wine. 

Sumac leaves, particularly when they turned red in the fall, were dried and widely used by the Native Americans for smoking.   They either mixed the Sumac with tobacco and sometimes other plants, or smoked it on its own. 

nice fuzzy floaters in the top of the glass

It is well known that Sumac makes a refreshing 'lemonade' as it is commonly called.  This is easily accomplished and quite delicious.  The batch I made was from Smooth Sumac berries.  I picked them in November and they were still bright red and full of flavor.  I don't think it tastes much like lemons but it is tart, and tastes a little like purple-flower raspberries after the sourness melts away.  I must be honest, the true motivation for making the sumacade as I prefer to call it was to make wine.  Of course!   Actually, I had read about mixing a bit of it with hard cider to lend it's tannins to the flavor profile of the cider.   I also found several recipes for Sumac Wine.   I wound up with nearly 3 gallons of sumacade, added sugar and cider and it is currently bubbling ferociously as it ferments.  I hope it does not spoil as I would really like to taste the finished product.

To make sumacade you can either boil or soak the berries.  Boiling kills off some of the vitamins so I opted to soak them in cold water overnight.

Sorry about these picture qualities - I still included them so that you could get an idea of the process.   After soaking & mashing the berries a bit I strained them through muslin to get rid of any debris. 

This produced a clean, if somewhat cloudy, pinkish-orange liquid.  

After adding sugar and cider, I used my hydrometer to check the specific gravity, sugar content and potential alcoholic content of the wine.  The 10 showing in the picture is the potential alcohol content (about 20% sugar)

I then added the Sumac & Apple wine to the rest of the cider.   The Sumac is on the far left and is already nearly as clear and light in color as the jug just to the right of it. 

This is just a 'bonus' picture - I racked my maple cider!  Look how clear and light in color it is.  It tasted good so far and now it just needs to age for a few months.   I also racked the Sucanat cider just yesterday and it also is good.  They taste quite different which is great!

November

November.   Usually I start holing up inside once the weather gets cold.   However, thanks to my new hunting license I have a lot of motivation to be outside for long periods of time.  These pictures are all from the farm where I hunt and which has a great array of different types of land including fields, hardwoods (oak, apple, ironwood, cherry, maple, ash, beech, birch, spicebush, etc), coniferous forest, lowlands and wet areas, and it borders a large wetland/swamp which covers at least 50 acres in its self.  So, if you think it's November and time to curl up in a ball with a book:  That sounds like a really great idea but don't neglect to get outside too!   It is beautiful out there every season and a would be a pity to let it pass by unappreciated

the last goldenrod of the season

wild grapes are still sweet and juicy

I found 2 strange strawberries (in November and after several heavy frosts - what?)

I have some lofty plans for these staghorn sumac berries which have many different uses  (which I plan to expound upon shortly)

I couldn't resist taking more frost pictures

You had to be there, really.   The frost crystals fell off the plants when I brushed them and fell like the finest glitter onto my shoes.  A picture is nice, but not the full experience of course.  

Singing birds, rustling squirrels, cold toes and the faintly warm sun rising and making everything silver for a moment before melting away the night's frost

Milkweed 

This cool green bug landed on my sleeve and then hung out by my foot for a while 

                                       

October

I thought I would share some photos which I have not yet posted anywhere online.   They are from a camping & fishing trip that Bruce (my husband) and I took early in October.

Some sort of jelly fungus

Wintergreen Berry

Wintergreen also known as tea berry is a delightful plant.  The berries can be found and eaten nearly all year round although they are best when dug from under the snow in the winter, or in the late fall.   The leaves and berries make a delicious tea and I have even used the berries, strung and dried, as beads.  Medicinally wintergreen is used traditionally to treat headaches and colds and intestinal gas.   The extracted oil is also used to treat rheumatism.

Wintergreen is particularly delicious steeped with Sassafras and drank hot with a little sugar 

Slimy

Edible Oyster Mushrooms

                                    

Edible (and really cool) Lions Mane mushroom.   This was found after a few days of rain and was quite infested with maggots

This was one of those mornings that sticks with you. As the sun rose and transformed the sky and then the hillside with brilliance, our hearts were transformed with it for a while

I spotted these ducks looking for food in a puddle after the rains.   I sat down and waited until they got a little comfortable with me and then got some fun pictures of them.  

Acorns

Acorns were an important food source for the Native Americans before the Europeans influenced their culture to the degree that the Native Americans no longer desired or needed to harvest and use acorns.   As you will see by reading my blog in the future, I am interested in foraging and in native plants and their uses.  Naturally, using acorns was on my "to do" list this fall.  I remember eating acorn biscuits as a kid but I don't remember any of the gathering or processing.  I do remember that the biscuits were edible but had a strong bitter taste to them.   We most likely processed the acorns incorrectly.

There are many different species of Oak trees here in the Northeast.   Most notably are the white and red species of which there are many variations including the lovely and interesting Burr Oak and Chestnut Oak.   White Oak acorns have less tannin in them making them sweeter but they are also significantly smaller in most cases, making them more difficult to process.  For my acorn meal I used Red Oak as they are abundant on the farm and quite large making shelling an easier process.

I gathered a large bag of the acorns relative quickly and in the rain.   While I was gathering them I disturbed 2 Grouse.  They sat about 15 feet away from me for a good 15-20 minutes and only moved when I got withing 8-10 feet of them.   I never would have known they were there had I not gotten too close.   Smart!

Shelling the acorns is a tedious task, but enjoyable none the less.   After shelling them they must be leeched.  Leeching is the process of removing unwanted substances from something, in this case, tannin.  This can be done by boiling the acorns in many changes of water until the meat becomes sweet.  The Native Americans used several different techniques for removing tannins.  They did boil the nuts but added ashes (lye) which binds to the tannin and speeds up the leeching process.  Lye is caustic and dangerous externally but if ingested it is neutralized by your body so there is no danger of being poisoned by this method.  The other most interesting method of removing the tannins is to put the shelled nuts in a twined bag or net and put them into a moving stream for a few days.   I wish that I had a clean running stream to try this in as it seems simple and I wonder at it's effectiveness.

Many relatively modern resources suggest grinding the nuts before leeching and then using a cold leeching process which involves soaking the ground nuts in cold water for a period of time and then drying the resulting tannin-free meal or flour.

I boiled my acorns for about 4 hours, changing the water out every 1/2 hour or so.   They eventually lost their bitter taste and developed a nutty and very unique flavor.   I then dried them in the oven at about 150 deg. F for several hours.  The result of this was some hard, very edible acorn quarters.  As the acorns cook they become dark brown.

Grinding them once they are leeched and dried can prove to be a difficult task.  I tried several methods with the help of my grandparents who have about every tool imaginable.  The flour grinder could not grind nuts, the kitchen aid was not strong enough, the nut grinder didn't stand a chance!   Finally my grandmother's "Magic Bullet" did the job but I burned out the motor.    Hmmm.... I have yet to try a coffee grinder but I suspect that that will be the best tool for the job.   I would also like to try grinding them with a large rock mortar & pestle but have not yet found the time to travel to said rock.

The resulting meal/flour is somewhat coarse but very palatable.   It is a lovely color.   I made acorn cakes with the meal by mixing one egg, 1/4 cornmeal and 3/4 acorn meal with a little maple sugar and cooking them in butter over an open fire.  The result was some very good, though crumbly, cakes.  What I loved most about them is that they satisfy your stomach and need for food in a remarkable way.   When you are exerting a lot of energy and especially in cold conditions the food you eat really effects how you feel and how much energy you have.  The acorns were an excellent food for a cold day of hard work.   They were also quite tasty and I would be extremely happy to have a pile of acorn meal on a week-long adventure in the woods.  

 

Acorns deliver high levels of fat along with protein and carbohydrates.  They are full of vitamins and have particularly high levels of Folate and Vitamin B6.  They also contain many minerals and are abundant in Potassium, Manganese, Magnesium and Copper.

Hard Cider

Having been inspired by my friend Eric's cider as well as the availability of free apples, I decided to try my hand at making hard cider this year.    

To make cider you first need to pick the apples.   When I was a kid I worked at a horse farm which was connected to a summer camp in Broadalbin, NY.  Many years ago my family picked up apples off of the ground there and made apple cider with them.   We froze most of it and drank it all winter long.   My dad's wife now works at the same camp and I got permission to take as many apples as I wished.  My mom helped me out with picking and we used my grandfather's apple picker which was quite fun.  It is a "claw" as we so named it, with a gallon milk jug beneath it to catch the apples.   The handle is a snow scraper handle made to remove the snow from rooftops. "Getto-fabulous" in the most excellent way.

Red Delicious

One advantage to these gnarley looking apples is that they have not been sprayed with any nasty chemicals

Mom - Just before loosing "the claw"

 If every kid had an apple tree and one of these claw pickers I am quite sure that video games would be obsolete

 Mom's preferred picking method

4-5 bushels of apples!

I supplemented my free apples with some gleaned apples which I acquired very inexpensively from a local apple grower.   He had lost most of his apples to the late frost in the springtime and was happy to let me take what I could salvage of his crop.  

I took the apples to an orchard in Sharon Springs to be pressed and on my way home I found this little snake hanging on to my windshield wiper with his nose in the breeze

 I think he was pretty happy when I removed him to the grass on the side of the road

 30 gallons of cider!

 Mixing in the sugar 

 The first two batches!

I consulted with my local Zymologist on the best cider making techniques.  He loaded me up with information, supplies and a few different yeasts to try.   I have 2 batches made and I am waiting for the sugar mixture on the third to cool as I am writing.  The first batch has about 4 pounds of Sucanat sugar added (a molasses-rich sugar), the second batch has 1/2 gallon - about 5.5 pounds of Maple Syrup.   Both batches have wine yeasts added.   The third batch has 2 pounds of dark brown sugar and 1 pound of white refined sugar and no yeast added.   I have one more batch to concoct.   Any ideas for what should go into it?