Community Updates
From Wildroots
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Summer 2007
Midsummer greetings!
A good deal of time has passed since our last update. Although we've been wanting to share our experiences with the world around us, we've all been moving farther away from spending time on computers, so often it just doesn't get done. Some thought has been given to getting rid of our website altogether since it's hard to keep it updated. If anyone would be willing to help us with uploading pictures and calendar items every month or so, please get in touch!
Last fall was one of abundance for us, with lots of canning, preserving and drying happening. Along with Autumn olives, blackberries, apples, persimmons, paw paws, elderberries, and deer meat, we were able to obtain enough bear fat from taxidermists and local hunters to render 20 gallons of bear grease for the year's food supply. We also picked up on our annual deer hide connection from a local butcher, and salt-preserved dozens of raw hides for community use and hide tanning workshops.
Our 4th Spring wild foods hike (there have been 8 altogether!) took place in late May, with Frank Cook at the helm once again, leading us in our botanical explorations on the Appalachian Trail. The rigorous section we hiked was new to us and stunningly beautiful. We were a group of almost 30 this time, which was a comfortable size. Some folks kept a list of plants we encountered, which we'll try to publish soon. We ate lots of wild greens, and discovered many plants we haven't seen before on the sections we've hiked, including Angelica and a tender, very edible asparagus-like Smilax species known as carrion flower (it only stinks when it's in flower!). This fall's hike will be scheduled later in the summer.
Over the last year, one of us at Wildroots has left to pursue different paths, and one of us has become a part time resident. Three new folks have moved to the land and are putting the finishing touches on two new poplar bark covered living structures, which brings us to 4 bark lodges. To get this bark, we have established contacts with local loggers and friends in the area who are clearing trees, and they've allowed us to come to their work site to peel the bark. This bark offers an excellent rain shedding material for roofs and walls of these structures, which are constructed with saplings and poles from the land, and lashed with rawhide.
Another exciting change has been our friend's purchase of 60 acres of land across the road from Wildroots. About 1/2 acre of that land is a rich bottom-land pasture on which we have all created a cooperative garden. The summer beds are exploding with food now, and we are watching winter squash and potatoes set their flowers and fruits for a continuing harvest into the fall. Amazingly, we have managed to keep this garden watered by hand, hauling buckets from the adjacent creek 20 feet away. After 4 years of hauling water 500 feet uphill to the terrace gardens at Wildroots, this is a piece of blackberry cobbler!
We've had many visitors for varying amounts of time, some old friends and some new. Several graduates from the Teaching Drum Outdoor School's year-long "wilderness guide" immersion program (www.teachingdrum.org) have stayed with us as well, bringing rich experiences and vision along with them.
We encourage guests and potential longer-term visitors to get in touch with us. New folks bring a diversity of energy and personality to our community. Guests should be fairly independent and capable of taking care of themselves, and should have some camping experience. Living without modern conveniences (power, plumbing, etc) can be challenging, but also rewarding, so guests should prepare themselves mentally for that. One thought we've had is that we would really benefit from a diversity of ages in our community, so we're particularly encouraging families with children and elders to visit.
We've got lots of ideas and visions for group projects in upcoming months, including some building and crafts, garden, trail and driveway maintenance, and some wild and garden food processing. Berry season is just upon us, bringing with it the prospect of full bellies and preservation projects. We plan to spend a lot of our time staying cool in the creek, enjoying the transition from summer to fall and all the abundance that comes along with it.
Autumn 2005
Autumn equinox
Once again, the summer turns slowly into autumn… The leaves are starting to fall and the Sourwood and Sumacs offer us a taste of the reddish wine color that will soon be joined by yellows and browns to paint our landscape. While the transition is beautiful, it is also a reminder to think of things that need to be done in preparation for colder months that lie ahead, such as food storage and preservation and establishing warm dwellings. As other bioregions experience the wrath of hurricane season, we are experiencing the driest couple of months of the year. This seems to work out well, allowing us one last chance to partake in more physical activities before winter when we'll be spending most of our energy just trying to stay warm.
The dry weather is also convenient for all sorts of autumn activities like cutting firewood, gathering and processing feral apples, persimmons, Autumn Olives, (our favorite late-season fruit), and we plan to soon reap the harvest of the abundant supply of fresh deer hides from the local butchers and taxidermists. It is also perfect weather for 2 of us who have been working on our sleeping shelters. One of us is now getting the roof on (!) and the other is preparing for slip-straw insulation.
You may have noticed we never put out a summer update. This is mostly because we were so consumed by the Feral Visions gathering that we didn’t get a chance. Several great projects happened this summer at our land, including building a Tulip poplar bark-covered structure, which we are now spending a lot of time in. We’re still working on it, making some adjustments for winter so we can keep hanging out there comfortably. We’re hosting a “Primitive Building Work Party” in October, where we’ll put up 2 bark walls, process and add some deerhide panels to one wall, and create food storage areas. Read more about it in the calendar below.
Summer gave us lots of wild fruits like usual, including (in order of their ripening) black raspberries, thimbleberries, blackberries, elderberries and blueberries, which we processed by drying as well as mead-making and syrup. Since roadkill is sparse in the summer months, we ate up our frozen stores from our freezer. Our herbalist/botanist friend Frank Cook led a botanical exploration of the Wildroots land for the third time, during which 13 new genera were recorded. We are compiling much ethnobotanical information about the plants here, and will make this list public sometime this winter. We’ll also use it again in a public plant walk on the land, probably in the spring. You can read about Frank’s other upcoming events on his page on our web site: www.wildroots.org/frankcook.
The Feral Visions gathering went better than we could have hoped. Dozens of workshops and discussions happened, relating to the skills and experiences of rewilding ourselves and our communities. Some of the workshops included primitive weapon making, wool felting, fermentation, Tulip Poplar bark basket making, and hide tanning. Discussions included such diverse topics as anti-breeding and radical parenting. Over a hundred people showed up, and pitched in to make it a real community event by helping set-up, cook, do security shifts, and clean up. Thanks to all of you who came and contributed your energy and inspiration! Next year’s gathering will be held in the Southwest. Keep checking the Feral Visions web page for details (http://www.greenanarchy.org/feralvisions), and if you want to join an email update list on future gatherings and related events, write an email to subscribe-bandgnet@lists.riseup.net.
Mid-Spring 2005
May 6, 2005
Once again, spring is in full swing across the continent...wherever you are, take a moment to focus on all the rebirthing going on around you: The trees are budding and leafing out...the peepers and songbirds are returning or re-emerging...the butterflies and hummingbirds are floating and zooming around...baby deer are stumbling to their feet...and wildflowers of every color are unfolding under forest canopies, in grassy meadows, and on sterile suburban lawns. Trout lilies, day lilies, cleavers, chickweed, curly dock, violets, pokeweed, nettles and toothwort are just a handful of wild greens we've been eating lately. Here in southern appalachia, the ramps (native wild onion greens) are finally popping through the leaf mulch, as they are in all the other eastern woodland places where they grow (like up in the north woods, where they're called Wild Leeks.)
Some of us are halfway into our 2 week primitive living "immersion". The 4 of us are joined by 10-12 more folks, which should make for an interesting learning and living experience.
Thanks for all your correspondence. We've gotten all kinds of fun stories and advice requests from various folks we've met in our travels and even some we've never met. We'd love to here from friends and strangers who are also blown away by experiencing the real world directly this spring! Keep it comin'!
Check out our friend Sandy Katz's (aka Sandorkraut), upcoming "Fermentation Fervor" workshops and demos schedule: www.wildfermentation.com/upcomingworkshops.htm
The main reason for this email is to announce that Wildroots has switched to a new email account, so please try to start corresponding with us at that address:
Everything else is still the same, although watch for a new P.O. Box in the near future.
See ya at Feral Visions this summer, July 27-August 3! www.greenanarchy.org/feralvisions
Spring 2005
March 12, 2005
Early spring greetings from southern Appalachia!
Spring is hinting at its arrival as we return home after winter adventures in warmer lands. The rhododendrons are showing their first buds, chickweed and toothwort have begun springing back from their wintery dormancy, and the leaves of the persistent multiflora rose are emerging.
We all had a full and warm winter. After a couple months beside our woodstove at Wildroots, two of us took a trip to florida, where we camped on an island in Tampa Bay and feasted on foraged whelk (a giant sea snail), and sea catfish (which didn’t taste the least bit muddy!) One of us spent the winter in Arizona where, amongst other things, much time was taken up gathering feral olives, and curing them so they taste savory and oily, rather than mouth-puckeringly disgusting, as they do fresh off the tree.
In February, we packed into the van and headed to Winter Count, a primitive skills gathering in Arizona, which we were able to attend by doing work trade in the kitchen. Our experiences there were very full both skill-wise and socially. We met up with a bunch of feral friends and made many new ones. We attended all sorts of workshops, including wicker pack basket making, antler handle knife hafting, wet scrape hide tanning, rubber tire sandal making, and cattail visor making. It was interesting to see what people are doing with primitive skills in the west, as it seems that more people out there are actually living primitive lifestyles, rather than treating primitive skills as a hobby.
One exciting project that came out of our experiences was the founding of a new publication, “Uncivilized, a journal of feral living.” The editorial circle will be made up of folks scattered around the continent. The first issue will be put out of the southern Appalachians. We are currently looking for submissions. If you are interested in writing something, contact feral@riseup.net to find out what subjects the collective is currently hoping to see covered.
After Winter Count we went down to a ghost town in southern Arizona that a friend of ours care takes. There we set up a primitive camp by a lake with some folks that we met at the gathering. We spent our days hiking, tanning hides, and teaching, learning, and playing with each other and the 2 feral children that were part of our tribe there, and our nights singing, feasting, and sweating in a hand-built sauna. We made a birthday coffee cake in a dutch oven filled with an enormity of tasty and nutritious foraged barrel cactus seeds. We ended our ghost town adventure with a night with the tribe in a cave in the breathtakingly beautiful Sycamore canyon.
Our road trip back to Wildroots was memorable, thanks to the fact that we were not in a rush, (unlike usual). We went backpacking in the gorgeous and mysterious Guadalupe Mountains of west Texas. Anxious to be out of the car we rocketed up the mountains, tasting a serious case of vertigo, as we looked down on the almost 3,000 foot canyon that we climbed above, with save-laden rock spires all around. In Fort Worth, Texas, one of us noticed a few pecans half-buried in the mud in front of the house where we were staying, which prompted us to look up, and realize that the entire neighborhood was filled with pecan trees. We gathered a large sack-full before making our way out of dreaded Texas.
Now we are home and looking forward to the cleansing greens and crisp sunny days of spring.
Autumn 2004
November 1, 2004
The autumn season finds much of the community of life preparing to enter dormancy. In the hardwood forest of Southern Appalachia, greens turn to vivid reds, yellows and oranges. The leaves of trees and shrubs fall quietly to the earth, providing a thick layer of mulch to nurture the seeds that lie naked on the ground, protecting them from hungry critters and birds so they might sprout in the spring.
We humans sometimes experience melancholy at this time, as so much vitality recedes from above the ground, and sinks deep into the subterranean world of roots, corms, and rhizomes. We slow down, and become conscious of our internal energy, as we enter the time of reflection and introspection.
Earthskills… In October we spent a week at the Falling Leaves earthskills rendezvous just a couple hours away from Wildroots. Some among us fashioned Seminole-style moccasins, made a bow-drill fire kit, and crafted Atlatls (primitive spear throwers), and weaved a Cherokee-style rivercane basket. Assorted friends and fellow-work exchangers dyed locally spun wool with plant dyes, carved bows, tanned deer hides, and shaped and fired wild clay pots. One of us co-facilitated a wild foods cookery project with kids and adults using acorns, wild meat, feral apples, and some not-so-wild fresh, handmade corn hominy. Between trading at the barter blanket, staying up late playing, dancing, and listening to homemade music, attending workshops, and putting in work-exchange hours, we were busy. Check out www.earthskills.net for details on the spring gathering, Rivercane Rendezvous.
Deerskins to Buckskins… Before winter descends, we're planning one last learning opportunity at Wildroots: A Deer hide tanning workshop, from November 11-15. The upcoming workshop will take participants through the multi-step process of making buckskin out of deer skin, using the wet-scrape method. The person teaching learned hide tanning at Teaching Drum outdoor school. The workshop will offer a work-trade opportunity, but otherwise we will ask $100 to compensate the instructor, who is raising money to attend the year-long program at Teaching Drum next year. Contact Wildroots for details: wildroots@riseup.net.
As hunting season begins, we start contacting taxidermists and butchers for hides, and already we've received 50 fresh deer hides from a local butcher, many of which we freeze at our neighbor's house for later use. We have fleshed many hides in great efforts that sometimes last into the night, a group of a few of us compiling buckets of fat and scrapings, happy in contradiction as a car blasts light and music onto our efforts. We have also managed to scrape and tan some hides while dealing with the general inundation.
An increase in roadkill also provides us with abundant meat and hides, as animals begin a feeding frenzy, often wandering far and wide to find enough food to store energy for winter, and to nourish a pregnancy. Feral foraging… A few days after returning from the rendezvous, we set out for yet another 3-day Wild Foods walk on the Appalachian Trail. We went with with several folks from Asheville, and botanist/herbalist Frank Cook. We started with a wild plant walk around the land, revisiting plants on the Wildroots plant inventory we drafted last fall with Frank, and adding new ones. We also compiled a list of edible or medicinal plants and mushrooms we encountered while on the hike, including white, shaggy Bearded Tooth mushrooms, hickory nuts, and a rare Appalachian Osha relative also known in the mountains as “Boar Root” (probably referring to the word for a male bear!). A m�ange of wild mushrooms and a wild green called sochan and a feral autumn olive, apple and acorn “compote” topped off the hike on the last night.
Harvest time… Harvest time applies not only to the horticulturalist, but also to the forager. Cold-hardy green leafy wild plants like watercress, nettles, dock, chickweed, and toothwort embark on a second run of growth. Acorns, Chestnuts, Beech nuts, Black Walnuts, Pecans and Hickories fall from the trees by the bucket full. Feral autumn olives bushes on the nearby National Forest (planted by the Forest Service) give us endless gallons of sweet, tart lycopene-rich fruit, which we turn into wine, fruit leather, chutney, and jam. Feral apples and pears planted by homesteaders a century ago, ripen and fall to earth. Persimmons soften and turn purple, as we scamper to find them on the ground before the raccoons. Feral Visions… A couple of us are currently traveling around the Midwest on a slideshow tour entitled “Feral Visions: Breaking free from the tentacles of Civilization, and realizing our wildest dreams.” The presentation uses slide images to illustrate a critique of Civilization, and to show examples of people de-civilizing through rewilding and radical homesteading. So far, we've stopped in 7 places -- mostly large midwestern cities. In each place, interesting post-slideshow discussions have taken the edge off of being in these metropolises, where humans have dominated the landscape so completely. Check our website for our itinerary: www.wildroots.org Not coincidentally, Feral Visions was also the name given to the last green anarchist gathering out in Oregon this past summer. Next summer, folks in the Southeast will be hosting Feral Visions in August 2005. Contact feralvisions@greenanarchy.org to get involved with planning and setup for this 3rd convergence of the Black and Green network. Next Spring at Wildroots should be full and busy. We have plans for another wild foods hike, more hide and pelt tanning workshops, tulip poplar bark harvesting, and a 3-week primitive living immersion experience in the National Forest adjacent to Wildroots. Contact us if this sounds like something you'd want to participate in.
As always, we're looking for long-term collective members, especially folks who have experience with cooperative, primitive living and/or radical homesteading. We're also open to visitors and short-term residents (who don't mind winter camping in the mountains!). Our schedule is very full for the next few months, so if you are wanting to come visit, please contact us well ahead of time.
