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Today's Annie Dillard chapter, on Winter, was fascinating to read--she had a lot on the hibernation behavior of various animals, for example--but didn't really inspire any writing thoughts in me, so instead I'm going to talk about a youtube channel I watched yesterday on foraging.
I think youtube's algorithm served it to me since I watched a lot of the site of technology labelled primitive (I'm trying to word all these so they don't come up in a simple google search), which I do find very fascinating, but just like I don't think my now somewhat expanded knowledge on how to make shelters from (Australian) wild trees or bricks from mud is really going to be helpful in a post-disaster situation, similarly I don't think learning how to forage is going to help me after the collapse of civilization. And yet that seems to be the underlying theme of the "feral" person who is making the vids. He keeps suggesting that his techniques are going to have you prepared for a nebulous future where food supplies are scarce. Which. Just isn't going to work? I mean, the number of people and the scale of foraging that would be necessary just isn't sustainable. Not to mention that a lot of the technologies he's using--certainly the fancy nutcracker, but even the simpler stuff like the different fine mesh strainers he uses, or even the sheer amount of water necessary to leach the tannins from almonds--certainly wouldn't be available in whatever postapocalyptic future that's going to cause farming to collapse. And if that's caused by environmental factors, it's certainly going to affect wild plants too.
It is fun and interesting to learn how to forage, and I suppose if your calamity is a more personal one--like job loss--you would be served if you actually have access to wild plants in a safe place (in urban areas they're so often sprayed that I doubt it would be safe to eat them!)--but otherwise the sheer amount of labor involved, not to mention the need for all sorts of specialized tech, really does make this impractical as a survival food. Still, it was kind of fun to learn how to process acorns and certain other kinds of nuts so they could be edible. I may try his techniques with acorns. Even with all his tips, though, the process of obtaining the edible parts of black walnuts seems like way too much labor to me.
I think youtube's algorithm served it to me since I watched a lot of the site of technology labelled primitive (I'm trying to word all these so they don't come up in a simple google search), which I do find very fascinating, but just like I don't think my now somewhat expanded knowledge on how to make shelters from (Australian) wild trees or bricks from mud is really going to be helpful in a post-disaster situation, similarly I don't think learning how to forage is going to help me after the collapse of civilization. And yet that seems to be the underlying theme of the "feral" person who is making the vids. He keeps suggesting that his techniques are going to have you prepared for a nebulous future where food supplies are scarce. Which. Just isn't going to work? I mean, the number of people and the scale of foraging that would be necessary just isn't sustainable. Not to mention that a lot of the technologies he's using--certainly the fancy nutcracker, but even the simpler stuff like the different fine mesh strainers he uses, or even the sheer amount of water necessary to leach the tannins from almonds--certainly wouldn't be available in whatever postapocalyptic future that's going to cause farming to collapse. And if that's caused by environmental factors, it's certainly going to affect wild plants too.
It is fun and interesting to learn how to forage, and I suppose if your calamity is a more personal one--like job loss--you would be served if you actually have access to wild plants in a safe place (in urban areas they're so often sprayed that I doubt it would be safe to eat them!)--but otherwise the sheer amount of labor involved, not to mention the need for all sorts of specialized tech, really does make this impractical as a survival food. Still, it was kind of fun to learn how to process acorns and certain other kinds of nuts so they could be edible. I may try his techniques with acorns. Even with all his tips, though, the process of obtaining the edible parts of black walnuts seems like way too much labor to me.
