I have long been somewhat of a forager. Perhaps it comes from my mother making me pick blueberries behind our house each summer. The lowbush varieties were at the edge of the Jack Pine near the railroad track. I wasn't always fond of it then, but love berry picking now. It is almost an addiction, an "itch" to get out that starts each year with strawberry season. As I head to the fields, I tell myself that I will only pick "a few", but then come home with 30 pounds or so. You just can't leave that one luscious big red berry in case someone else misses it. What a waste that would be! And when my husband and I go to the blueberry picking farm with highbush varieties (much better for your back and knees), we fill gallon buckets in a good year.
My grandmother's old farm had remnants of an apple orchard. We often ate green apples, since most of the fruit never made it to full ripeness without being gnawed on by insects, worms, or some type of wildlife. Bears were also occasional visitors to the trees. As a child, that fact was a bit unnerving since there was only an outhouse at the farm, quite some distance from the house.
I haven't been back to the house for several years, but I suspect that it isn't in good condition. But oh, the memories of time spent there with my many, many cousins in the Copper Country of Michigan. Besides copper, that area was also good for growing strawberries and we often picked at those farms. Wild raspberries and blackberries were at the edge of the woods of the farm, and we mostly ate the harvest as fast as we could pick. Foraging and fun-filled days over the summer!
Our family had a cabin on a lake surrounded by woods, and I spent many hours foraging there too - usually for berries or hoping to find morel mushrooms. I will never be as complete a forager as my dear friend Sue who lives off the grid not from from the cabin we owned. To this day, she collects all sorts of things from the wild and certainly knows mushrooms species better than I. Besides morels, I have only been brave enough to collect and eat chicken-of-the-woods. She makes dandelion jelly, dries wild herbs and mushrooms for culinary and medicinal purposes, and brews kombucha. The latter is something I haven't developed a taste for, but my sons love it and now make their own.
When I moved away to graduate school, there were strawberry farms nearby that I took advantage of. Freezer strawberry jam is one of my favorites. I started my own small vegetable garden. In late summer and fall, I would look for abandoned or ignored apple trees to pick fruit for juice, jelly, applesauce and pies. Grad students are notoriously poor, so finding free food was quite the treasure!
So given this history, imagine my delight when I moved to upstate NY last summer and found apple trees all over campus. I was cautious in my first year, filling my pockets or sometimes small bags -- only enough to make a pie and some applesauce. This year, however, the trees -- crabapples and "regular" apples of unknown variety -- are so full of fruit, that it seems appropriate to label it as "open season".
The trees are scattered all over campus, and I am surprised that I don't see other people indulging. The fruit is so inviting. So far, I have made two batches of juice with crabapples that were partially used to make 24 jars of jelly today. I have 2 more bags of apples for other purposes and given my tendencies, I will likely pick more over the coming weeks. It drives me nuts to see this food going to waste, although the yellow jackets and deer would probably argue that the fallen fruit isn't a waste!
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| These are not all for me! Some will be gifts. |
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| Isn't it a pretty color? |
This all got me thinking about the student interest in permaculture and homesteading... something I hadn't seen at the other institutions that I have worked at. It isn't the majority of students here at St. Lawrence, but there are enough that it caught my attention early in my first year here.
Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system. -- Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture, 1997.
There is a small garden dubbed a permaculture garden on campus, and a larger one at the Living Lab adjacent to campus.
This small permaculture garden is looking pretty good this year as there was a student intern who worked there all summer under the mentorship of a faculty member who has his own organic farm. We had a hot dry summer, so she and others who planted in the space had to do a lot of watering. As I walked around, I saw that the deer or groundhogs had munched on some tomato plants not covered by mesh, but the plum tree looked pretty good!
I don't know how many students or even employees knows that this garden exists even though it is very close to campus safety and security, the bookstore, and a great campus coffee shop! At least one faculty uses the space for teaching and, in 2023, published an article with student co-authors entitled "Student Led Governance of a Campus Community Permaculture Garden at a Liberal Arts University."
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| The garden shed with a green roof. |
This year, all of the campus sustainability initiatives have been moved under the Center for the Environment that I oversee. I have been thinking a lot about how to define the term (broadly, I think) and infuse sustainability into many (all?) aspects of campus life. That is perhaps too ambitious, but I want people to realize that it is more than operations and measuring greenhouse gas emissions, hoping to somehow magically get to net zero emissions (not easy or cheap to do).
With all the apple trees around campus, what if we planted other fruit trees -- pears and plums -- around campus and convinced the campus committee that the yield is safe and delicious and versatile? The Cornell Cooperative Extension for the county is very close by and they do courses on canning and preserving. We have students interested in and doing something about decreasing food waste and enhancing food security both for their peers and for the local community.
....working with, rather than against nature....
The campus has several no-mow areas that provide wonderful habitat for pollinators and a range of wildlife. The campus house I rent is adjacent to one of these, and I routinely see not only the ubiquitous deer and squirrels, but also rabbits, racoons, fox, skunks, and the pesty family of groundhogs. St. Lawrence also owns acres of forested areas and fields and is adjacent to the Little River. There are many trails traversing these different ecosystems.
I am imagining an entire campus as a living lab for students to learn about sustainable food practices, habitat management, stormwater runoff through careful design, and so on. This isn't a new concept -- many campuses have organic gardens and sustainability features throughout. Some have even achieved carbon neutrality.
I came across a new term today: futuresteading. It appears to be promoted by a social media influencer from Australia, but nonetheless, I really like the tagline:
Live today like tomorrow matters...Perhaps that is the campus definition of sustainability that I am looking for.
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| Some of today's harvest from around campus. |
Happy fall foraging!
