The Wild Camano tour is over. On Saturday a small group of us gathered on the future site of the Mustard Seed Village on Camano island to tour the land, identify edible species and plant a beginning garden. It was an amazing experience.
With the help of Nancy and Greg from Shambala Farms and Nursery we identified and sampled a broad variety of potential additions to our diet. The rich abundance of God’s world is incredible. There are so many edible, nutritious and delicious plants around us that we don’t even notice. Wild salad greens like purslane and miner’s lettuce. Wild berries like strawberries, salmonberries and elderberries. Nettles and ferns. It is so easy to pass them by without even noticing. It is even easier to ignore their potential as part of our diet.
Yesterday I published two posts on simplicity. In Simplicity isn’t Simple I stated
I’m not sure that it is really possible to simplify one’s food budget and remain healthy, unless one produces some of one’s own food.
As we walked on Camano I realized that gardening is not the only way to supplement our diet, however. The art of foraging for food in the wild is becoming more popular as people open their eyes to the amazing bounty of God’s world. Nuts, berries, greens and mushrooms are but a few of the delicacies we can enjoy. Seattle, Denver and Los Angeles are but a few of the growing numbers of cities that provide residents with the opportunity to map their fruit trees and share their produce with others.
Of course wild berries will not sustain the hoped for community at the Mustard Seed Village for very long. So it was a real delight to be able to put another small stake in the ground and get to work on a kitchen garden. We moved ferns and native plants to a mound of dirt close by the new construction. Then we added herbs like rosemary and lovage, with an aronia berry bush to crown our achievement. Not much and it may not survive the summer but it is another small step in our dream for the development of the Mustard Seed Village.