NH Outside: Nutrition/Fitness Archives

I joined an elite group this year: Roadies. Roadies with a cause. I trained with my local high school cycling team to meet the New Hampshire Firefighters Challenge of biking from the Canadian border to the Seacoast: 250 miles the last weekend in June. It’s a fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and a personal challenge for the individuals who participate.
           
Traveling on the edge of New Hampshire roads by bicycle is a challenge all by itself, a challenge for neither the faint of heart nor weak of knee. First, there’s sharing the road with motorized vehicles; a major intimidation. Next, the condition of the roads. Riding on two thin wheels means paying close attention to the details. And finally, the geography. We Granite Staters are more likely to use the term “flat” to describe a paint texture than our terrain: “Would you like that Mountain Moss in semi-gloss or flat?” Elevation changes continuously and often significantly.
           
The need to keep a close watch on the road somewhat negates enjoying the scenery. Riding on the edge, I become acutely aware of the condition of our roads. Perhaps this year is even worse than usual because of all the rain. Dirt washed onto the road makes conditions slippery for bikers, and dirt washed away from shoulders leaves us no place to go. Everybody using the roadways notices uneven and broken pavement, but drivers are less likely to spot the cracks that run parallel to the edge and spell certain disaster for any cyclist who catches a tire in a narrow opening.

Aside from the physical conditions, there are plenty of other hazards along the road. I’ve seen things I probably wouldn’t have noticed from my car, but that forced me to move quickly to avoid them on my bike. Small rocks, broken glass, strips of metal, bolts, bent nails, and even tools can lead to flat tires if hit. Other debris includes trash, tree branches and road-kill. Sadly, one of the few rabbits I’ve seen in New Hampshire lay flattened on the edge of the road.

Speaking of dead animals, cycling is an olfactory experience. The smell of the air can’t be missed when you’re speeding through it. For the most part, it’s pleasant. Honeysuckle is one of my spring favorites, followed by lilacs and wild roses. Fresh-cut grass and fabric softener remind me of chores left back home, and the smell of back-yard barbecues helps me pedal faster toward supper. Then there are the olfactory assaults: freshly-fertilized farmland, recently battered skunks and burning cigarettes.

Those of us “sucking air” as we ascend steep terrain end up tasting some of the things we smell. The acrid taste of exhaust from rapidly accelerating vehicles is particularly unpleasant. Dust and dirt are probably the most common things we roadies ingest. We also take in our share of insects.

What do bugs taste like? I try to spit out the intruders or swallow them immediately if they’ve gone to the back of the throat. However, I attended a workshop recently where the instructor mentioned that he chomped down on a fly once and he thought it tasted like blueberries.

What with poor soil, automobile pollution and winter salt, only the heartiest plants can survive along the edge of the road. My favorites: violets, buttercups, Queen Anne’s lace, daisy, black-eyed Susan, daylily, forget-me-not, and chicory, to name a few. Their colors run the spectrum of the rainbow, decorating the otherwise drab corridor of pavement. As I pedaled through Sugar Hill during the MDA bike ride, I remembered the town’s reputation for lupines and, sure enough, I saw some lovely blue ones along the road.

The plant I notice most while riding, perhaps because it causes me the greatest anxiety, is poison ivy. I have seen vast tracts of lush, green, healthy plants, growing in full sun and dense shade. The leaves may be quite large or rather small; some are shiny, others dull. Poison ivy grows close to the road, up trees and along fences. I’ve seen an enormous plant arched across a guardrail so close to the road that an unknowing pedestrian or cyclist trying to stay clear of traffic is likely to have brushed by or pushed the poison ivy out of the way.                                                                              
Insects cause a few problems for cyclists beyond the inhalation and ingestion factors. Like any sweaty, warm-blooded pedestrian, when we stop, we become magnets for black flies and mosquitoes. Unlike the other biting insects, deer flies are exceptional drafters and sprinters, tough to outpace. I can’t resist the urge to swat and have nearly tumbled off my bike on many occasions trying to whack a deer fly. The only times I’ve succeeded in nailing one is when it’s already bitten through my pants.

As a Master Gardener, I need to volunteer at least 15 hours a year to maintain my active membership status. I fantasize that the volunteer coordinators will accept my swatting, rolling over, inhaling and swallowing these insect pests when I bike as service to the community.
                                               

By Jackie Bower, Master Gardener, UNH Cooperative Extension

07/26/06

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

To many people, the favored portal to the natural world in New Hampshire is the extensive network of trails and footpaths found in the state. Trails allow us to move at a pace that encourages close up views of the natural world while hiking, snowshoeing, or cross-country skiing. Unlike bushwhacking through the woods, using a developed trail allows us to concentrate on where we are, rather than on how we are getting to our destination.

Trails offer the added benefit of having features such as a summit viewpoint or a lake or pond as their destination. When designed properly, trails also lead hikers past the most significant and most interesting parts of the landscape they travel through. We expect all of these things from our trails, but few of us have an appreciation for the effort behind creating and maintaining them.

In 1819, Abel and Ethan Crawford used axes to create the oldest continuous-use footpath in New Hampshire, the Crawford Path, designed to carry tourists on horseback from their inns to the summit of Mount Washington. As increasing numbers of summer tourists came north from Massachusetts and other parts of southern New England, innkeepers began to cut trails to other mountain summits.

The boom in trail construction in New Hampshire really took off after the Appalachian Mountain Club was founded in 1876, and the following fifty years were filled with exploration, mapping, and trail building in New Hampshire’s White Mountains Region. Trail building was so successful that the crews who built the Appalachian Trail had to cut only one eighteen-mile link to join existing segments and complete the Trail in New Hampshire.

Other trail and outing clubs, such as the Dartmouth Outdoor Club, Randolph Mountain Club, and smaller local clubs, also built and maintained trails throughout the state during the same period. While the original trail-building boom has passed, those organizations remain integral to the work of protecting and maintaining the trails in use today.

The White Mountains Region alone contains more than a thousand miles of hiking trails; the U.S. Forest Service maintains 670 miles of those trails, with volunteers adopting sections of trail and performing much of the routine maintenance work. The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) also maintains more than 260 miles of trails there, using professional crews, volunteer trail adopters, and weeklong volunteer trail crews led by AMC staff.

Terry Robinson, the AMC North Country Volunteer Coordinator, guides the work of nearly 150 Adopt-A-Trail volunteers who donate their time with three or more work trips each year to perform basic maintenance on trails. The volunteers, each responsible for a section of trail one to three miles in length, clear and repair water-bars and dips that keep the trail’s tread-way from eroding. They also brush the trail by trimming back vegetation and maintain the blazes that mark the route. Interestingly, Terry said that, while 45 percent of AMC’s trail adopters come from New Hampshire, one-third are Massachusetts residents who continue the long tradition of trail work in our state.

While volunteer adopters perform basic maintenance, AMC paid professional crews and volunteer trail crews spend their time performing heavier maintenance, such as building rock water-bars and rock steps or bog bridges. The rock steps are placed in particularly steep sections of trail where erosion is a serious concern. The steps are placed with such care and skill that most hikers aren’t even aware that they are hiking on an improved surface. The twenty- member pro crews also cruise every section of AMC-maintained trails in late spring, removing the blow-downs caused by winter storms and winds.

Even with the donated time of volunteers, the cost of maintaining trails is high. Andrew Norkin, AMC White Mountains Trails Manager, says he budgets approximately $320,000 for AMC trail maintenance programs each year. About $80,000 comes from Forest Service cost sharing and other grants, leaving the remainder to be raised from AMC members and donors. He also said that dedicated volunteer crews based at Camp Dodge pay participation fees of about $20,000 to help fund their own volunteer work.

New Hampshire’s temperate climate and ample rainfall are great for growing trees, and it takes only a few seasons’ neglect for a trail to be lost to the closing forest. Hikers and other users should be grateful to all the clubs and organizations that maintain our trails.

One way to express that gratitude would be to join volunteers at AMC or any of the local trail maintenance organizations. National Trails Day and New Hampshire Trails Day also provide a perfect opportunity each summer for people to get involved and learn about trail maintenance. Contact your local hiking club or visit the AMC Web page for more information about how you can help.

Larry E. Ely, UNH Cooperative Extension Wildlife Coverts Cooperator

Three great things about riding a bicycle: It gets you fit. It gets you outdoors. It actually gets you places under your own muscle power, occasionally even faster than you could get there by car.

Best of all, it lets you accomplish all three things simultaneously.

On the fitness front, riding a bike burns calories, builds impressive lower-body strength, and improves aerobic (heart-lung) capacity. Riding a bike for a couple of hours doesn’t really feel like work, either—to me at least—compared to, say, running or swimming laps for the same amount of time.

As for getting outdoors, cycling has brought me breathtaking scenery, the scents of pine woods and lilacs, backyard barbecues and just-mown hay, the sounds of rushing streams, raging surf and, once, a whinnying horse who galloped the length of long field alongside me, matching my pace as I rode by.

Cycling brings me the familiar sights of landscaped grounds, green pastures, old barns, stone walls, forested hillsides, laundry swinging from the line, children playing on the lawn. Pedaling along, I’ve seen my fair share of the odd and unexpected, too. Riding home one day in a stiff breeze, I saw an old barn collapse into a heap of boards. Another time, I rode by a tiny girl dancing on the lawn in a pink tutu, holding a black umbrella against the rain, while her family watched from a row of white plastic chairs.

I’ve had many encounters with wildlife. Once, I had to stop to allow an albino porcupine shepherd eight little babies across the road. Another time, I swept down a hill and around a corner and barely missed colliding with a bull moose as he charged from the woods across the road.

As for actually getting me somewhere, since the day I left George Issa’s bike shop in 1984 with my first real bicycle, I’ve cranked tens of thousands of miles over hill and dale on a succession of road and mountain bikes. I’ve done the great bulk of that mileage simply commuting to and from work.
 
I approach bike commuting with a no-nonsense attitude: Pump the tires, fill the water bottles,
climb on the bike and start pedaling. Once a week, I bring a couple of changes of work clothes and hang them in the supply closet at the office. I keep a towel and a bar of soap in my desk drawer for quick sponge baths in the ladies’ room. I carry my lunch, wallet and hairbrush in a backpack.

A few essential tips:
 
Wear the helmet. Twice in 22 years I’ve crashed badly enough to send me to an emergency room. Both times, the ER physicians told me my helmet saved my life.

Buy a helmet with a SNELL or ASTM sticker indicating it meets the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CSPC) safety standards. To protect you, your helmet must fit snugly and sit squarely on your head, with the inner band of the helmet resting just above your eyebrows and the chin strap pulled as tight as you can comfortably wear it.

Don’t wear the helmet again after a crash, even a minor crash. Even the best-designed, most expensive helmet will protect your head for only a single impact. Don’t buy a used helmet. You can’t tell by looking at it if it’s gone through a crash.

Buy local. Unless you do all your own mechanic work, it makes sense to buy your bike, most of your gear, and your service from a local shop. You’ll want and need to form a long, trusting relationship with your shop’s mechanic(s). The folks you trust and rely on deserve your money, too.

Get your bike “fit” and have it tuned annually by a professional. “Fitting a bike” means setting it up and adjusting it to accommodate your body, your intended use of the bike, and your riding style. A proper fit will help you avoid injury, improve your comfort, and boost your energy efficiency. Have a professional tune-up each spring to check the bike for safety and replace worn parts.

Train up. Especially if you haven’t cycled for years, start with a few easy miles and work up gradually. Rather than risk knee injury by grinding away in a high gear, learn to “spin” fast in a low gear. Polish your shifting, turning, climbing and other skills with practice runs on a traffic-sparse road before moving onto a major roadway.

Follow the rules of the road. If you ride on paved roads, ride assertively, but courteously, with traffic. Ride single file. Use appropriate hand signals (but avoid rude gestures. You can’t win against an enraged driver).

On long rides, pick your pit-stop locations with care. Once, my biking partner and I ducked into some secluded woods in the middle of nowhere, she on the right side of the road, I on the left. A few seconds later, I saw three or four gun-toting guys in camouflage gear running toward the spot where my friend had disappeared into the underbrush. Then I saw her, running out with her hands up, shrieking, “Help! Don’t shoot! I’m a civilian!”

Turns out, we’d answered nature’s call in the middle of a paintball field.

By Peg Boyles, UNH Cooperative Extension Writer/Editor

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

I can’t dispute the wisdom of Winnie-the-Pooh’s creator. Potatoes, especially when harvested small, before their natural sugars turn to starch, are a humble delicacy known for their rich, distinctive flavors.

The “sweet corn” of the potato world, many of us remember “new potatoes” fondly as an essential ingredient in Grandma’s famous creamed-peas-and-new-potatoes, served alongside a piece of poached salmon on the Fourth of July.

Digging through my potato references to prepare for a workshop on growing small “gourmet” potatoes, I couldn’t help but be impressed with this mundane vegetable’s remarkable history.

In New England the potato’s chronicles began in 1719 with plantings by Scotch-Irish immigrants in what is now Derry, New Hampshire. Potatoes adapted to our soils and cool climate. By the 1880s Coos County farmers were producing 3,000 acres of potatoes, mostly to supply starch used in spinning mills. Throughout much of the 1900's table-stock potatoes provided a valuable cash crop for the county, one that fit well with dairy farming. The potato’s history, of course, goes back a lot farther.

It’s generally agreed that potatoes originated around 400 B.C. in the high mountains of South America, where indigenous farmers preserved the tubers by mashing them and spreading them on the ground to producean early freeze-dried product they called chuno. Along with corn and beans, potatoes were staple foods of the Incas long before the arrival of Spanish conquistadores in the 1500s. Recognized for their nutritive value, potatoes were soon introduced into Europe by the Spanish. By 1573 potatoes were used to feed hospital patients in Seville.

An odd-looking underground vegetable that grew suspiciously from “roots,” rather than seed, the potato had a checkered European experience. Most considered it a food fit only for the poor, those of low birth, and animals. Frightful maladies of that era were also attributed to this possibly poisonous plant, leprosy, syphilis, and madness among them. Like tomatoes, which had similar market resistance, potatoes are members of the deadly nightshade family. (Curiously, tobacco, also in the Solanaceae family, didn’t seem to have that problem.)

Perhaps the potato’s reputation had something to do with a banquet once held for the local gentry by Queen Elizabeth I. Instead of using the unwholesome-looking tubers, the chefs cooked up and served the plant’s toxic tops. Banquet-goers promptly became deathly ill and potatoes were thereafter banned from court.

Flummery (wheat cooked in spiced milk) and fruenty (boiled oatmeal and bran) might have remained a dinner-table mainstay, rather than evolving into today’s breakfast food, if not for A.A. Parmentier. Botanist and soldier, Parmentier was captured by the Prussians several times during the course of the Seven Years’ War. While in prison, he was fed and apparently developed a taste for potatoes (German peasants having been forced to grow them by Frederick II since 1744).

Returning to France, Parmentier convinced Louis XVI to let him use a sandy plot of land, where he established a lush potato plantation, which he kept under constant armed guard. (Removing the guards at night encouraged curious thieves to run off with the tubers and replant them elsewhere.)

Parmentier also convinced Louis and Marie Antoinette to wear potato flowers on their clothes and in their hair, starting a fashion trend soon imitated by other aristocrats. Potatoes, now served at court, became upscale. Herbalists further helped their popularity, heralding potatoes as a health food that could cure diarrhea and tuberculosis, although the plant also acquired a reputation as a dangerous aphrodisiac.
 
In America, both Ben Franklin, who once attended a dinner at French court where 20 potato dishes were served, and Tom Jefferson, were early proponents of potato culture. Jefferson may get the credit for inventing French fries, which he served at the White House during his presidency.

And so, the simple tater’s influence can be traced through history. As a staple food introduced to prevent starvation, potatoes themselves, or near-total reliance on them, helped cause the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800s, when a fungal disease destroyed entire crops.

During the Alaskan Klondike Gold-Rush miners thought potatoes worth almost their weight in gold, because of their high food value and rich Vitamin C content. Potatoes also became the first vegetable grown in space by NASA, in experiments intended to feed astronauts on long voyages or in extra-terrestrial colonies.
 
What’s next for the humble pomme de terre? Inventor Henry Ford once said there was enough potential ethyl alcohol fuel in an acre of potatoes to power the machinery necessary to cultivate it for the next 100 years. From the looks of gas prices, I think I’ll be planting more potatoes this spring. No, I won’t be turning them into tractor fuel. But I figure the more food I produce for myself, the fewer trips I’ll have to take to the grocery store.

By Steve Turaj, UNH Cooperative Extension Agricultural Resources

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

Date

Cranking away on my bike trainer one evening after work last week, I got to thinking about the indoor activities I do throughout the winter that connect in some essential way with the outdoor life I lead in the warmer months.

I’ll begin with the bicycle. I set my road bike up on the trainer in the little alcove off my living room sometime in October. I hop on a few times each week, not just for exercise during the months when short days make outdoor exercise difficult to fit in, but to maintain the muscle and lung conditioning I’ll need when I once again start commuting by bike in late April.

My indoor winter riding serves another purpose, too. I read—actually skim—a lot, propping my book, magazine or newspaper up against the aerobars that extend up and out from my handlebars. I keep a little sheaf of Post-it tabs handy to stick onto pages or paragraphs I want to return to for closer reading when I’m no longer puffing and panting.

Two or three times a week from November through April, I hit the Concord YMCA weight room. I don’t go there to “trim 'n tone,” but to push big weights that help maintain my strength year-round. An aging body can’t simply pick up that seasonal grunt labor where it left off a year ago. I’m talking about shoveling paths and walkways after a mid-winter blizzard, swinging that eight-pound splitting maul to work up my winter firewood, and the hundred other tasks of a self-reliant, semi-rural life.

Weight training does more than build strength. It helps prevent injury. It improves balance and grace by training the body’s proprioceptors, the little spindle cells embedded in muscle tissue that help the body orient itself in space and deliver information about the relationship of the various body parts to each other. Heavy weight training also helps develop a single-pointed focus in both mind and body, an awareness that translates well into other dimensions of my life. 

Because we heat our house exclusively with local wood we cut, split and stack during the warmer months, our indoor winter activities involve a lot of wood-lugging, stove-feeding and ash management. And because we don’t have an electric clothes dryer, we use the woodstove’s heat to dry our clothes, which, in turn, humidify the dry indoor air as they release their moisture. It takes less than five minutes to hang a large load on a wooden rack set up in the living room in front of the woodstove. The clothes typically dry in about two hours.

Another benefit of air-drying: energy savings. Project Laundry List (motto: “We are changing the world through clotheslines—one household at a time.”) claims that clothes dryers consume between five and 10 percent of total residential energy.

In mid-March, I’ll move the bike trainer to the spare bedroom and lower the shop lights, fitted with full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs and currently suspended near the ceiling of the alcove. Then I’ll set up the large plywood table that fills the alcove and use this space for starting hundreds of seedlings that will become part of my big backyard vegetable garden: onions, leeks and lettuce first, then cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and the hardier annual flowers. Around the second week in April, I’ll sow the warm-weather crops that don’t get transplanted until early June, tomatoes, peppers, basil.

Pretty soon after that, the ground will have thawed enough to spread my dry wood ashes in the garden and plant peas, lettuce, and spinach directly in the ground. The snowbanks will have melted enough so I can get to my clothesline without snowshoes and the light will last long enough to dry a load of wet clothes outdoors. And then I’ll get a day that allows me to pull the bike off the trainer and take a spin to the corner store for the Sunday papers. I’ll be ready!

Writing this, I notice two common threads that connect all these activities, winter and summer alike. They rely on human, instead of mechanical, power. And they turn me into an active co-producer, rather than a mere consumer. But pretty inconvenient for a busy modern life, eh?

Well, yeah, at least according to conventional wisdom. But then, in light of a growing number of inconvenient truths: global warming, the volatile global energy situation, rising rates of obesity and chronic disease, the alarming incidence of foodborne illness—staying fit on the bike, raising my own fruits and vegetables, burning local wood for heat, and hanging my laundry—make my inconvenient life feel more convenient every day.

By Peg Boyles, Writer/Editor

3/8/07

A New Hampshire family can eat well and healthfully all winter from a big summer vegetable garden without the fuss and cost of canning or freezing, simply by planting (or purchasing) storage varieties that will keep all winter. Old-timers termed this food-storing strategy “common storage.”

Humble and homely, the underground crops: carrots, beets, rutabagas, parsnips, potatoes, garlic and onions provide the foundation of the stored-food winter diet. Late-season red and green cabbages, kale, and Brussels sprouts offer up salads and cooked vegetable dishes. And the majestic winter squashes, mashable, roastable, stuffable, and suitable for a variety of tasty deserts, shape and round out the vegetable menu.

Most New Hampshire households no longer plant food gardens, but more of us could. And a lot more Granite Staters could pre-order a specified amount of storage crops next spring from a local grower, or join a community-supported agricultural venture (CSA) that offers winter storage crops in bulk.

Whether you grow, buy or trade for your winter vegetables, store only those varieties our grandmothers called “good keepers,” the ones that mature late and contain less water than their summer cousins.

Some tips for common storage:

Brussels sprouts and kale: Late-season varieties store well right in the garden all winter long. Mark the rows or beds with a pole so you can dig ‘em out of a deep snow. Harvest as needed.

Cabbage: Cabbage keeps best under conditions of high humidity with a temperature between 32-40 degrees F. Store only perfect, insect-free, unblemished heads whose leaves show no signs of disease. Keep the cabbages directly off the ground, on pallets or shelves. An old-fashioned root cellar with a dirt floor works best for cabbage and root crops, but inventive gardeners have used insulated bulkheads or outside storage boxes, dug pits in the ground, or built earth berms for the purpose. Humidify the environment with boxes of wet sand, old sawdust, or soil in the storage space.
    
Carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas and parsnips: Dig root vegetables after the first frost, but before the ground freezes. Dig carefully to avoid damage, selecting only well-formed, mature, disease-free roots for storage. Cut back the foliage to within an inch of the root. Store in a cool (34-40 degrees F.), location in wooden boxes or plastic crates (I use cheap plastic laundry baskets), in single layers sandwiched between layers of fresh, damp fall leaves. Sprinkle the boxes occasionally with water to create the moist environment needed to prevent the roots from drying out.

Garlic and onions: You should have harvested garlic bulbs in late July and air-dried them out of direct sunlight for two or three weeks. Cut off the dry tops an inch from the bulbs and store the bulbs in mesh bags in a cool (below 40 degrees, but above freezing), dry place.

Harvest storage onions when the tops fall over as the “neck” region of the onion plant begins to dry out. Leave the harvested bulbs in the garden a day or two, covered by their tops to prevent sunscald. Then set the onions in a cool, well-ventilated location, preferably on screens, to dry. When the tops have dried, cut them to within an inch of the bulb and store the onions in a mesh bag (old pantyhose work well, too) in a cool, dry location. Reserve “scullions”—onions whose necks don’t seal—for immediate use.

Potatoes: Harvest when soil and air temperatures cool down, taking care not to damage tubers. Cure the potatoes in darkness at 45-60 degrees for a couple of weeks, then store in a cool, damp place at 34-40 degrees, in darkness. Discard any potatoes with green skins. Potatoes stored at higher temperatures or in the same room with apples may sprout early. Remove and discard any sprouts that do form.

Winter squash (including spaghetti squash): Cut squash from the vine with at least an inch of stem when green stems turn tan and woody and the rinds have lost their gloss. As long as the weather remains above freezing, leave harvested squash outdoors a few days to cure; the cut end of the stem will heal and the rind will harden.

Store only perfect, unblemished squash on a pallet or a few layers of old newspaper in a spot with a uniform temperature of 50-60 degrees F. and moderate humidity—under the bed in an unheated guest or utility room, or in a dry, unheated cellar or closet. Check squash often and discard any fruit with soft or moldy spots.

By Peg Boyles Writer, UNH Cooperative Extension

10/25/06

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

“Sarviceberry’s what we call it,” he explained, “as you can see it’s one of the first plants to flower come spring. Up here in the hills of West Virginia, folks that died in the cold of winter weren't buried until the ground warmed up enough. When the proper time for their funeral ‘sarvices’ arrived, these were the flowers they used.”

Up North we call this small tree Juneberry or Serviceberry (botanical name Amelanchier arborea, an apparently close western relative Amelanchier alnifolia, known as “Saskatoons”). Another popular name is Shadbush, since their masses of aromatic, white flowers blossom at the time when shad ascend our New England rivers to spawn.

Having fished for shad in the lower reaches of the Connecticut River, I can agree that this is a time worth noting. Funny how tying a plant's name to a special event trains the mind to watch for its appearance. I seldom miss seeing “Sarviceberry” when its bright white flowers light up our drab spring woods.

These Amelanchiers have long been recognized as an important, early-ripening fruit for birds and other wildlife. Native Americans and early settlers once pounded the dried fruits into a pemmican high in Vitamin C.

Since the 1950s, breeding programs in western Canada have sought to enhance the best attributes of selected wild plants. Now grown as a commercial crop in place of blueberries (to which they bear some physical resemblance), the new varieties have produced some impressively high yields. The fruits have an interesting flavor, though their seeds make them less desirable for fresh eating than blueberries.

Their extreme winter-hardiness, wide adaptability to different soils/conditions, along with their long life and ornamental value make Amelanchiers worth considering for New Hampshire gardens and home landscapes.

Yet another sign of spring: the sudden appearance of wild-food gatherers, buckets in hand, heading into a greening meadow or searching along tree-lined streams. I can't help but wonder if our passing tourists, speeding by in a hurry to get to some destination or other, are thinking, “What are those people up to?”

Why, collecting fiddleheads! These well-known culinary delicacies, start appearing ready for harvest sometime in early to mid-April. The only edible fiddlehead comes from the Ostrich Fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris.

Fiddleheads may well be one of the state foods of Maine (right up there with lobster). They're so much esteemed that Maine Extension publishes information about their proper gathering, cleaning and cooking. Correctly identifying the edible ostrich fern fiddlehead is essential. Quoting the Maine bulletin:

“In the spring, the ostrich fern's distinctive ‘fiddleheads,’ the young, coiled fern leaves about an inch in diameter, are mostly green, but have brown scales. Nearly all ferns have fiddleheads, but the ostrich fern's are unlike any other. These fiddleheads have a paper-dry, parchment-like sheath that usually has started to peel. Most other fern fiddlehead sheaths are fuzzy or wooly.”

The fact sheet contains this warning: The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has investigated a number of outbreaks of food-borne illness associated with fiddleheads. The implicated ferns were eaten either raw or lightly cooked (sautéed, parboiled or microwaved)…. Although a toxin has not been identified in the fiddleheads of the ostrich fern, the findings of this investigation suggest that you should cook fiddleheads thoroughly before eating (boil them for at least 10 minutes).

Cankerwort, swine's snout, blowball, pisenlit—all these strange names have been used to identify that wild green most of us call the dandelion, Taraxacum officinale. After a long winter of bland diets, dandelions were a welcome addition (of variety and vitamins) to springtime meals in earlier days. The plant serves the same purpose for many rural people today.

A native of Eurasia, the dandelion may have been intentionally introduced into America for its
nutritional and medicinal value. In fact, the officinale in its species name comes from a Latin root that originally meant “workshop,” but gradually evolved to mean “pharmacy,” or any use for the practice of medicine. .

I can’t emphasize strongly enough the importance of precise identification of any wild plant you’re gathering for use as a food, beverage, or home remedy. Most of us are a generation or two removed from the country folk with long experience of wild food-gathering. Mistaking a poisonous plant for a useful one can have serious health consequences. Some plant families contain many look-alikes, some of which are edible and others that are deadly.

To begin learning, check your local library for reference materials—field guides and botanical keys, or buy a couple of good field guides. A couple of volumes from the Peterson Field Guide Series could get you started. Try A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants and A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs Of Eastern and Central North America.  For information and recipes, check out Maine Extension’s online fact sheet Edible Wild Greens in Maine.

A final note: Remember, land management factors, such as heavy fertilization (which might cause nearby wild plants to have an excess of nitrates in their leaves), or pesticide residues can also affect the safety of plants growing in a particular location. Know the history of the land you forage from.

by Steve Turaj, UNH Cooperative Extension Agricultural Educator

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

3/31/06