Category Archives: walks

Carmen Porter and Hemmingford

I’ve met some wonderful people on my journeys over the last 10 years. One of them is my friend Carmen Porter in Hemmingford, Quebec who kindly offered to put me up when I was invited to Canada in April 2017.  The reason for being in Hemmingford was for a meeting and to give a talk at La Ferme des Quatre Temps, the farm managed by author of The Market Gardener,  Jean-Martin Fortier,  which is just down the road from where Carmen and her mother Tamlin George live. 

Jean Martin Fortier at La Ferme des Quatre Temps

Carmen is a young singer-songwriter inspired by herbs and nature who is also a keen gardener. She has a wonderful podcast series called Songs and Plants which presents tunes where “the scientific names of species comprise the lyrical content”. I was recently in touch with Carmen again in connection with a music video of her song Botanical Berceuse
(a lullaby of sedative herbs!). I helped with a few plant pictures. This is real permaculture music that teaches as one listens! She joined us for the seminar and a tour of the farm with three young permaculturists including Jonathan Pineault and Alexandre Guertin from the company Écomestible (www.ecomestible.com), who had been contracted to grow perennial vegetables on the farm for sale! I wonder how it’s going almost 5 years later (wow, has it really taken me so long to blog about this!)
After the seminar and farm tour, Carmen drove me to her place and we had a tour of her garden, although it was very early spring and only a few sprouts had emerged. I think also it was only just the year before she’d started work (and the gardens have expanded greatly since I was there).

Have a listen to Amaranthaceae by Carmen Porter before reading more (who else could make “a sentimental ballad for lovers of spinach, quinoa and family”)?

A fig overwintering in the living room, just like home:


Thanks to Carmen for sharing the pictures of how her garden looked 4 years on!!! First, the front garden:

…and the back garden:

The next day we went for a walk in the Hemmingford woods in a nature reserve area, the path ending at a place they call the “Gulf” locally right on the US border and I went rogue and illegally stepped into the United States of America. Shortly afterwards we heard a helicopter and retreated quickly back into the forest as a raven flew ominously overhead!

So early in the spring there were only a few plants to see, although we did see a few Erythronium (trout lily) shoots, so it wouldn’t have been long after that the woods would have been awash with spring flowers! I’ve collected pictures from the walk below:

A short video of the Gulf: 

Who else than Carmen could have written “A love song celebrating the relationship between Cucurbita pepo and Peponapis pruinosa” (squash and a solitary bee)! Beeloved is great original permaculture music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoYO1mtg-HQ

Finally, a few pictures from the woods behind Carmen’s house including pitcher plants (I was surprised to see these out so early):

…and, approaching a pool in the woods with cattails, I was convinced we were hearing ducks calling until Carmen put me right. This is the call of the wood frog (Lithobates sylvaticus), a fascinating species you can read more about here


Many thanks again to Tamlin George and Carmen for your hospitality during my visit to Hemmingford :)
Listen to more of Carmen’s Songs and Plants blogs including an interview with Experimental Farm Network’s Nathan Kleinmann here


Walk and forage to Tripynten

Friday’s  forage (11th October 2019) was combined with a walk to the top of Tripynten (315m).

Please let me know if you can ID any of the fungi!

Home again

Great to be home again after my non-stop tour of Eastern and Mid-West USA. 12 talks and 2 walk and talks complete without any deviations from plan! Thanks to all for making it possible and to the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival and Atlanta Botanical Garden who shared my travel expenses.
However, much to do to put my 3 gardens to bed for the winter!

Foraging Alpine Bistort Bulbils

On Sunday, we went for a walk up to a mountain farm (seter) near to the lake Foldsjøen in Malvik with the main aim to gather alpine bistort (harerug) bulbils (Polygonum viviparum / Persicaria vivipara) to dry for the winter. This is one of the 80 plants in my book and I grow various accessions of this plant also in my garden! See also my post on 25th June: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=22680
Y
ou can often find large quantities of this plant in open sheep pasture and dampish meadows.  I hadn’t been to this “seter” before and right enough there were large amounts of this plant, although the bulbils were still not fully grown.  We walked from Verket, an outdoor museum on the site of Mostadmark Jernverk, the site of an old iron furnace (see https://www.malvik.kommune.no/mostadmark-jernverk.6168342-478994.html) up through the forest past Hulåsen to the seter, returning via Slåttdalen and returning along the side of the lake. We didn’t meet a single person or car all the way! At the end you can also see a number of pictures and films of nature and some fungi we found along the way!

Here’s a short film showing thousands of flowerheads in a damp meadow (the flowers are sterile, the plant almost only multiplying vegetatively by bulbils):

 

KVANN’s Annual Meeting Weekend: Day 4; Ostrich Fern hike along the Homla

On the 4th day of the Norwegian Seed Savers weekend (6th May 2019), the traditional spring walk along the Homla river and canyon was on the programme with the hope to find ostrich ferns at the right stage to pick. In the cooler parts near the river,  it was too early and too late away from the river. Nevertheless, everyone who wanted to picked a few fiddleheads!
It was as usual a magical walk which took some of us 8 hours to complete….as there was so much to see and enjoy!
Thanks to all the participants who also provided pictures: Berit Børte (third time participant), new steering commitee member Bernhard Askedalen, Elin Mar (from Røst), Inger Line Skurdal Ødegård, Meg Anderson and Tina Lambert!

Ostrich Fern Paradise:

 

Walks along Hampshire’s chalk streams

On 8th March 2019 I walked along the River Itchen in Hampshire between Shawford and Eastleigh, mostly along the old canal tow path:

…and a video of a large population of Elfin cups (Sarcoscypha coccinea)?

And now some pictures taken on 10th March from the Monks Brook, a stream behind my parents’ house in Chandlers Ford where a lot of foragables were already available (a full two months before our area in Norway!), starting with a video ending with Helleborus foetidus.

Wasabi shop, the Kawazu-Nanadaru Loop Bridge and the Kawazu Seven Falls

Last week, I blogged about a fantastic visit to a wasabi farm on the Izu peninsular in Japan during spring 2016, see

A visit to a Wasabi farm on the Izu peninsular in Japan

This was close to one of the world’s most amazing road bridges, the Kawazu-Nanadaru Loop Bridge,  a double spiral bridge finished 37 years ago in 1982, see https://www.dangerousroads.org/asia/japan/895-kawazu-nanadaru-loop-bridge-japan.html

Here’s a short video driving the loops:

Nearby was a shop selling a myriad of wasabi products! Let me know if you can translate any of the signs in the album! At the bottom are a few pictures from a popular nearby walk, the Kawazu Seven Falls.

We did a small hike along the Kawazu Seven Falls trail:

Beach Walk 30th December

On the Guadiana River

During my stay in Mertola, we did two short walks along the river. The first pictures are from near the town centre, the second group from Canais do Guadiana where we were joined by a local producer of essential oils, who showed us some of the plants they use. There’s a great little video of the area and plants on the producer’s website: http://dalenguadiana.pt
Vitor Menas and Fernando Garcia run the business and Fernando joined us on the walk and showed us around the workshop in the village.