A Simple Tool for a Simple Snack

[PatrickM]

I'm sure many of you are familiar with this, but I thought I'd share this morning's outing with you as I enjoyed it so much.

Spring is a great time to be out and about on the trail, checking up on the new growth emerging everywhere.
It's also a good time to gather some tasty trail snacks, but it helps to first make a simple tool that can help with
the task. The digging stick can be used to break and loosen hard soil when you want to get at roots or tubers
such as burdock, ramsons, silverweed, lesser celandine etc.

Around this area there I found an abundance of hazel, ideal for making digging sticks and many other tools.

First select and cut a suitable hazel sapling, trim to size and whittle a point at one end.

Chisel shape the opposite end. You could then fire harden this if you like.

By careful selection of the hazel sapling, I managed to get enough wood for a fire bow, several spindles,
a digging stick, a pot rest and a ground hook - with very little wastage

If we look closely we can locate the humble pignut, which makes a tasty and nutritious trail snack. These
can be gathered very early (pre-flowering) to very late in the season, if you know where to look - from
careful observation of it's life cycle the year before.

Push the point of the stick in about 2-3 inches from the plant and lever upwards, repeat this on the opposite side.

It doesn't take long to gather a few of these tasty nibbles. The pignut can be the size of a pea to the size of a golf ball.

You need to be careful when digging the pignut up, as the stem bends off to a ninety degree angle
and tapers to almost thread width.

Simply scrape the brown outer skin off.

Clean and ready for consumption.

As always, never eat anything you're not certain is edible and sow a few seeds in place of what you've gathered.

 

[BorderReiver]

Thanks once again Patrick.

 

[Stew]

I've looked for the pignut many a time but never found one. Identifying from a book to the ground is difficult. Maybe I'll find one this year...

 

[SoloBoy]

Is the pignut native to a certain area,or can it be found elsewhere

 

[ilovemybed]

Cheers Patrick. Good tips!

But remember if you're digging up roots you need the landowner's permission!
(and this is how you suck an egg....)

 

[Pignut]

Had to reply to this one!!!

Had a couple of these this year already!!! yum yum!!!

How do you fire harden you digging sticks? scrape under the fire or holding it over the embers?

 

[match]

Pignuts are very distinctive later in the year as they have a solitary flower stem with a single umbellifer on the top, unlike other members of this family (amongst which there are several fairly toxic members like hemlock

You quite often see huge patches of pignuts on road verges - lots of single umbellifer flowers sticking up a few inches apart. (The picture above is actually two pignut plants side-by-side.)

As to digging sticks, I usually shove the stick into the coals near the edge of a fire and leave it there for a while - saves the effort of having to hold it over flames, and the ash etc keeps the air out, meaning it gets heated without risking bursting into flame. Of course you can get away without fire-hardening, provided your ground is nice and soft. (Did I mention that the tastiest roots always seem to be under 3 feet of concrete-hard clay soil... )

 

[pierre girard]

Around this area there I found an abundance of hazel, ideal for making digging sticks and many other tools.

.[/I]

That's hazel? Looks nothing like our North American hazel. Do they produce hazel nuts?

PG

 

[sargey]

hazel nuts? yep!

the hazel is probably my favourite tree/bush.

cheers, and.

 

[JimH]

That's hazel? Looks nothing like our North American hazel. Do they produce hazel nuts?

PG

Yup, generally

It's probably an old coppice stool - it's relatively rare to find it uncoppiced growing as a tree (at least in my bit of UK) - hence the multiple stems.

Jim.

 

[JonnyP]

Thanks for that Patrick.............I can identify all those you have mentioned, but at this time of year I would not be able to positivley identify a pignut over any other of the carrot family and even in flower I would have to look it up to make sure. Do you have any info that you could put down in writing that would help me identify one.
Cheers...........Jon

 

[pierre girard]

Yup, generally

It's probably an old coppice stool - it's relatively rare to find it uncoppiced growing as a tree (at least in my bit of UK) - hence the multiple stems.

Jim.

I'll have to get out with the camera and take a photo of some of ours. It grows much differently and has male and female plants. Each clump has some of each. In our forests it is omnipresent.

I still have no clear idea what "coppiced" means, though I get the impression it is something to do with thinning or pruning the forest.

PG

 

[bambodoggy]

I still have no clear idea what "coppiced" means, though I get the impression it is something to do with thinning or pruning the forest.
PG

It's a method of maximising wood output from broadleaf trees.

Once the single stemmed tree gets to a certain size you fell it and use the wood leaving the stump in good order, the following spring several shoots come off the stump and grow as "trunks" in their own right, in time you harvest these and then more grow from it and so on, sometimes you thin out the shoots as it grows and use that wood too.

Pollarding is the same but done at about head height or just above instead of ground level like coppicing is.

It was done rather a lot in the UK for a long time to produce the wood to make charcoal....it slowed when we found coal worked better

Hope that helps explain a bit mate,

Bam.

 

[Joeri]

pollarding is very common in the Netherlands. But it is done with the willow. it is typical for the dutch country/farmer areas and can be found in rows along little canals and streams...