Well, howdy folks, and welcome to another fine morning in Appalachia.
Come on in and warm yourselves.
Biscuits are waiting on the hearth, and after breakfast, Misala's going to lead us on a
walk for some wild foods to gather for supper, just like in the past, a time when both Indian
and white farmed and hunted the fertile mountain goats.
So come go with us.
Hello the cabin.
How's it with you?
Good.
How's the hunting?
Not good.
Not good?
Not good.
Been pretty dry over where I'm at, but game signs are starting to pick up.
Think we'll have some turkey or maybe some bear here in a little while.
Good.
I'd have my mouth set for a little turkey meat.
How about you?
Turkey would be good.
And corn to go with it.
Looky here.
I can't believe you always have your corn coming in weeks before mine.
Don't know what your secret is.
Then again, I know the Indians have their secrets, and I can tell.
This is a typical farmstead that both the Indians and the whites would have lived in.
And you know, they were good neighbors for a long time.
Had to be able to get along in these mountains and make it for their families.
Even though the Europeans had brought with them over 300 formulas for medicinal plants,
still there was a lot of new things in this new world that they didn't know about.
So it was really helpful to have the Indian women tell the mothers of the European settlers
what they could use for medicine to keep the babies healthy and get them grown.
And Indian medicine men, of course, they knew a lot.
They were about 600 formulas of medicinal plants in these mountains that they knew.
And a lot of those we still use today.
So we're right grateful that they did share.
And they made good neighbors for many, many years.
This video series is dedicated to the people of Appalachia, whose wisdom and resourcefulness
continue to teach and inspire us.
My most inspirational teacher of plant law was an early contributor to Foxfire.
I've been out gathering and foraging with Miss Marie.
This is Marie Mellinger in Clayton, Georgia.
And Marie and I go back a long way, and for the sake of our ages, won't say how far back,
but a long way.
And we were with, oh, 20, 25 years, I guess, with the Incredible Edibles Club here in Georgia.
And Marie's been past president of the Botanical Society of Georgia and various other organizations.
Heaven help me.
And founder of this Incredible Edibles Club.
And we have foraged and invented recipes for many years now and had some great wild foods
feast with everybody remembers fondly.
Well, I was one of my girls, and I'm very proud of her because she's made a career of
it.
And I think it's wonderful what she's doing.
Well, somebody's got to carry the torch, Marie.
And I'm glad yours is still burning bright.
And we've been out at Foxfire this week, too, which you were part of that.
Yeah, way back in the very beginning, I worked at Foxfire.
Back in what, volume three or four that you put on?
Well, I did the, I worked with Billy Joe Stiles, and we did the ginseng articles about the
ginseng and the ginseng association plants and everything.
So it was way back.
And I remember you said that Elliot used to bring you manuscripts from other folks and
say, check this out, Marie, make sure I don't force anybody.
Yeah, make sure it was right.
Come join me now for Roadside Ramble.
Let's see what good things we can find.
This is one of my favorite treats in late summer.
When the elderberries get ripe, then it's time to make harvest pie.
Apple elderberry pie is one of our favorites.
Be sure of your identification on the elderberries, though.
Look for the big white umbel of flowers in the summer, and then come back a few months
later and you'll have these clusters of wine-colored berries, which you can make wine from these,
or jelly, or pies.
As good as grapes are better.
Notice the leaf?
And there's no thorns on elderberries.
There are other shrubby trees that have thorns, and they have the same color berries, but
only these are the edible ones.
Elderberry is also medicinal.
There's recent research that shows that the elderberry contains properties that help when
you have the flu.
And there's sambucol, which is now available in health food stores to take as a cough syrup
or as an elixir when you're sick.
So you might look for that.
Elder wine is also popular in Italy.
Called sambuca.
And the druids had some interesting folklore about the elder bush.
They thought because the pan pipes were made from the wood, and so there was music within
the wood of elderberry, that mother elder, which was its spirit, would curse you and
your garden if you cut her down.
So you might learn all the good properties of the elderflowers, or elder champagne, or
elderflower water, which softens aged skin, so it's said, or the elderberries for the
wine or the jam or the pies.
And include mother elder in your garden's harvest.
This tree produces what is probably the most well-known product from the woods.
This is the sassafras tree.
And from its roots, we get root beer.
And root beer, to the Indians who introduced it to the Europeans, it was not just a good
tasting beverage.
This was good medicine.
And they were able to cure the vitamin deficiency diseases that the Europeans had, such as scurvy
from the long sea voyages.
So they just thought this was a miracle cure, and it was shipped by boatloads from the new
world to the old.
It was called the good news out of the new world.
So this became quite a trade item, and people such as Sir Walter Raleigh made his fortune
first in the sassafras trade, and then used that money to start his tobacco plantations.
Those took a little while to get up and running, so this made some quick money for a lot of
folks.
And it's still good medicine today, and a good beverage.
We still love this tea.
Mountain folks love to come up and find a patch of trees like this, a grove of young
sprouts coming up.
And then you can gather these and thin out the patch, and you've got roots that will
last for quite a few boilings for the tea.
You don't have to discard it after the first pot.
You can boil it three or four different times.
It was known in Cajun country, among those folks, that the leaves of this made a good
thickener for things like gumbo and jambalaya and all the various soups and things that
they made in stews.
So when we talk about the filet powder, the green powder that's used for Cajun cooking,
they're talking about sassafras leaves, dried sassafras leaves is what that makes.
And the children, wherever this grows, know this as the mitten tree because of the unusual
shapes of the leaves.
There's a trident shape.
There's the plain shape without any indentations.
And then you get a right and a left-handed mitten, such as this pair here.
Now for the children, that's good luck.
You find a pair of matched mittens.
You put those in your pocket and you'll have good luck all day.
So I think I'll hang on to this pair just in case.
So good taste, good medicine, good energizing tonic.
It's no wonder they said that in the spring of the year when the blood is too thick, there's
nothing so fine as a sassafras stick.
One of the frequently asked questions is how did the medicine people know what plant to
use for medicine?
And the answer is something called the doctrine of signatures.
North European and North American medicine people, and probably some in South America,
use the system, which means that if you study a plant long enough, it will be marked in
some way that's a correlation to the human body.
A good example of this is yellowroot, aptly named for its brilliant yellow roots.
And this correlated with the color of urine.
So it was used for jaundice or for any disorder of the liver or kidneys.
So for stomach trouble, not specifically named what kind of trouble, but anything that caused
pain, this was given.
It was used for mouth ulcers and also for stomach ulcers.
And the doctors thought it was ridiculous that this plant could heal a stomach ulcer.
Everybody knew it was due to your diet.
But when they found that it was a bacterium that caused the ulceration, then it made sense
that this could have cured some mild forms of the ulcer.
Because it contains berberine, which is an antibacterial.
So this was common medicine, still used today in the mountains.
And it's very bitter medicine.
It's not one of those that taste good.
And it is never sweetened, as any adult will tell you as a kid, that if mama said to take
it, you took it.
You didn't talk back.
So this is still commonly used and frequently found along the stream sides if you're looking
for it.
It is along these beautiful mountain streams.
That's its habitat.
It likes its feet wet.
So it's a common plant along the stream side.
This is basswood.
And in a lot of English storybooks, they talk about a linden tree.
And this is a linden tree.
This is the American linden or basswood.
And these funny looking berries that come off that leaf on the end, those were flowers
at one time, very fragrant white flowers.
And the botanical name is telia.
And there is a tea in Spanish markets where the Latin American people shop.
And there's chamomile tea, which is manzanilla.
And right next to it will be tea bags that say telia.
And telia is a nerve tea.
It calms the nerves.
So it's very labor intensive, I can imagine, to try to gather these flowers.
But it's not a very expensive tea besides all of that.
So if you had the tree, you could probably get ladders and you could collect it yourself.
But when this is in flower, that funny little leaf with those berries, when that's in flower,
then that's what's gathered and dried and that makes the tea.
The leaves, the bark, none of that works for that.
But basswood is also a carving tree.
A lot of the things around Cherokee that you'll see in the stores are carved out of basswood.
It's easy to carve.
And it also makes rope.
And the way you make rope out of it, or what's called cordage, is that in the early spring
when the sap's rising, you can cut a piece with your pocket knife down below and you
can strip off a very long piece of bark, maybe about a half inch to an inch wide.
And then you separate that out further into the separate fibers and then you braid that
or you do the rope twist, which is a special way that you twist and it makes rope.
But you can do it either way.
You can braid it.
And you have very strong cord or twine or rope out of that wood.
So because it can come off in maybe 10, 12 foot lengths.
So it's a real important wood.
Also, they said, and the botanists say it's possibly true, that a basswood has never been
hit by lightning.
And the locust frequently is.
You see lots of those shattered that are hit by lightning.
But nobody can ever remember.
And the loggers, I've asked loggers too who would know these things, and they said they've
never seen a basswood.
So it has something to do with the density of the wood and the water content.
And apparently they aren't.
So it's a safe place to put your house if you find a grove of basswood on your land.
That's where I put my house.
Here's another medicine plant that follows the doctrine of signatures, commonly known
as Joe Pye weed.
But because its roots grow in gravelly soil, this particular clump is growing in the rocks
in the middle of the stream.
It's known as gravel root, and that corresponds to the gravel in the body, or kidney stones.
This is one of the few medicine plants that's gathered in the fall as the plant begins to
die back.
And before it's completely dried out, the roots are dug, cleaned and dried and put away
for use in kidney stone formulas to help people pass them.
It's also a beautiful native plant for native plant gardens.
The English loved it so much that they have hybridized it into several different color
varieties and different heights.
So you might look for those in native plant nurseries and add these as a backdrop to other
beautiful native plants.
This is related to Joe Pye and also used for fevers.
This is Boneset, and it was not used for broken bones, but for high fevers.
There used to be one called breakbone fever.
You felt so bad, it felt like your bones were breaking.
And so this is still used for things like flu, where you have a high fever and you feel
awful.
And so this is still a home remedy in a lot of areas for that kind of thing.
And still a good fever remedy.
It's bitter, but it does work.
The whole plant is boiled except for the roots.
And to know you have the right plant, because there's other things with white flowers at
the same time, this one blooms, be sure that it has this strange configuration of a stem
going through one solid leaf.
There's no separation.
There's no leaf on either side of the stem.
It looks like it perforates it all the way through.
And then you know you've got Boneset.
Remember a weed is a plant you don't know its name, or its use yet, or it's growing
where you don't want it.
We don't like this plant, commonly called horse metal, because it has thorns.
However, that doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Turns out the Cherokee do have a use for it, but not the plant, the roots.
They take the roots, or that is pieces of it, and they weave it into a necklace that's
put around a baby's neck who has excessive drooling from teething.
It dries up the saliva.
An ethnobotanist friend told me there is a chemical in this plant that is extremely dry.
And being close to the glands in the neck and in a safe place where the baby can't get
to it, it really could work.
Another way to recognize this plant is by the fruit.
It looks like a little tomato, or a cherry.
This one isn't completely ripe yet.
It will get yellow.
And it does not have a papery husk.
If it had the husk, then it would be a ground cherry, which is another plant family and
is edible.
This is not edible.
This is a toxic plant, but does have a very good use, especially for mothers of teething
babies.
This is the edible ground cherry.
Notice this flower is yellow with a brown or maroon center.
And these are the cherries that have the capsule, or North American tomatee of tomatoes.
When they're ripe, they're yellow, and these husks get papery thin.
When they're ripe, you can put them in a pie, and they can be sweetened, like cherries.
Or when they're green, they can be cooked in stews or salsas.
One of the things in late summer worth walking up a mountain for is to find the highbush
blueberries that grow in the high elevations.
This particular location has a high mountain meadow that's completely ringed with these
bushes loaded with berries in late summer, early fall.
For about a month, you can come up here and share the meadow with a bear, perhaps.
He's usually on the other side of the bush, so you have to watch who else is picking.
But these are particularly delicious berries, and in some summers, in great quantities to
take home and can, eat fresh out of hand, and then can them up for later, or turn them
into a good blueberry pie, blueberry jam, and something that mountain folk have looked
forward to year after year after year.
Good eating.
Another thing, too, they use for medicine are the leaves.
Some folks, before they had insulin, were able to control blood sugar by using the leaf
tea.The blueberry family seems to contain something called myrtlein, which is something
like an insulin in the body and helps to lower blood sugar.
So I suppose if the case wasn't too severe, it might have been pretty good if you didn't
have anything else to use.
If you see this interesting shaped leaf, it has a very pretty early spring bloom.
It's a white star-shaped flower that comes up before the leaf, and then later in the
summer you'll see this convoluted shape.
This is blood root and has a very good reason for its name.
It's one of those that, when it was studied, found that the blood-like substance in its
roots was not good for the blood after all, so it didn't follow doctrinal signatures.
But when they studied it, they found it did have a use after all, and that was that it
prevents dental caries in the mouth.
So this now is an ingredient in viadent toothpaste and mouthwash.
Quite effective, it seems to be.
It is highly prized by the Indians for dyeing the white oak splits for their baskets.
It was also used sometimes to dry up a rash, so externally it works pretty good as a medicine.
But mainly nowadays it's gathered for the basket making.
Well this is Grandma's birthday.
This is Amanda Swimmer, who we know as Mandy.
This is Grandma and one of our typical afternoon pastimes is sitting here polishing up the
pottery.
She's been a potter well-known for how many years?
It was 32 at the village.
35.
So I'd say she kind of knows what she's doing by now.
Everybody's up in the field pulling all that corn out and putting it away.
They put them in the crib.
And how many different kinds of corn is there?
How many corn is different from flour corn?
Well, I'll tell you about that.
How many corn?
How many corn is shiny?
It's like it's got shiny, please like this.
The curls are shiny?
They're shiny on the top.
And you can't lie that in the water like you do flour corn.
What they done when they made hominy soup, they get this hominy corn and get a big old
arm pot and they put the corn down in there, no water in it.
And then she'll get a can and we'll get a can that big and make holes in there.
And we get this hot ashes and put it in there.
And when we put the ashes in there, then we get this boiling water.
Just pour it in that can.
Let it drip slow.
Makes the line.
Yeah.
And just let it sit there and it gets on that corn and they'll turn orange.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Well, that's ashes are so strong.
They'll turn orange looking.
And when they about an hour or so you get them out, then you rinse them out with cold
clean water.
With cold water, rinse them all that ashes out.
Does that take the holes then off of the kernels?
No, it doesn't take it off.
Then you have to put it in that block where you beat your corn.
Oh, that's when it goes in there.
And then we get that pistol, then we beat it up.
And you don't beat it hard.
You'll have to leave some grits with it.
Just when you mash them up and then you take it out.
And then you don't sift through it.
We always had a dish pan and another bucket.
And then when we get that grits and that miller in that dish pan, we pour cold water in there.
Then mommy used to have a little old sifter like.
Then why would she have it in a pot on top of the big old on pot?
And then when she poured that first water in that grits, she'd pour that water in that
pot.
And then in the bucket, she'd leave that separate, but she drained that water at first.
And she'd have it in separate bucket.
Then the second time, then she pours more water in that grits.
And that husk that came off, you come to the top when you put that water in.
It came off when we beat it up.
And she'll get that sifter and put it in that.
She'd throw it away and get all that husk off.
And then she'll get that hominy grits and she'll put it in the pot.
Then she put another water on top of it and save this first drain aside until that hominy
gets done.
Then she'll pour that other water in there.
Oh, save all the flavors, what you're doing then putting it back in.
She just pours plain water and then when she starts boiling that grits, and when the grits
gets done, then they start drinking that soup.
Remember if you're out on a roadside ramble looking for medicinal plants or edibles, be
a responsible forager.
Remember the rule of three, identification, location, multiplication.
Identification be absolutely certain of the identity of the plant you're about to ingest
or put on your skin.
Location, look around and make sure the area that you're picking in is free from pesticides
or herbicides and far enough away from a roadside not to be polluted from curfews.
And then remember when the Indians used a rule of four and that is that you don't pick
the first plant that you see.
You look around and make sure that there's four plants.
The first one you leave to go to seed for a harvest for next year.
And the second one you leave because it may be necessary for another species to survive
like butterflies that need certain plants for their larvae.
The third, leave one for a brother that may be coming behind and need the plant also.
And the fourth one you pick for yourself.
We've had a successful summer of foraging.
Mother nature's harvest has been quite bountiful.
We've got sassafras stick put away for sassafras tea now and walnuts ready.
Persimmon seeds are roasted for coffee to go with apple, elderberry, blueberry pie.
Wild grape juice is canned ready for winter.
And rose petal jam, I love that one.
Lamb's quarters is canned waiting for quiche or lasagna or soufflés.
Blackberry jelly, boy everybody loves that on biscuits.
And there were plenty of ground cherries this summer.
I have a lot waiting for me to get to it to get them canned.
I think we've proven the truth of Thoreau's words when he said, the woods and fields are
a table always spread.
Everybody knows nothing but pecking on a bough, bough of a sky so blue.
Never knew till I met you what love, oh love, could do, could do, love, oh love, could do.
Can't you hear that turtle down, flies from mind to pie, mourning for our own true love,
as I once did for mine, for mine, I once did for mine, to eat.
Blue jay pulled a four-horse plough, sparrow, why can't you?
Cause my legs is little and long, they might break in two in two, they might break in two.
Red bird sitting on a sycamore bough, singing out his soul.
Big black snake roll up that tree, swallow that poor boy home, swallow that poor boy home.
I'm just a poor little country girl, money have I not.
There is silver in the moon and gold in the morning sun, gold in the morning sun.
Woody knows nothing but pecking on a bough, bough of a sky so blue.
Never knew till I met you what love, oh love, could do, could do, love, oh love, could do.