by Winding Pathways | Feb 23, 2015 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Foraging, Nature, Weeds
Although the northern and mid sections of the US are still bitterly cold and blanketed by inches of snow or ice, the south is beginning to warm up. That means the Greening of Springtime!
Following a long winter, a plate of steaming ultra-fresh greens from the yard is a delicious and nutritious treat.While most Americans consider stinging nettles weeds, Europeans enjoy them as an early spring food that is delicious, abundant and free for the picking.
Stinging nettles are one of the first plants to green up in early spring. They pop from the ground shortly after the snow melts and are ready to harvest about the time gardeners plant spinach, lettuce and other early cultivated greens. Winding Pathways is in Iowa, and we can count on harvesting nettles by early April, but the season starts sooner in warmer climates.
Nettles grow in all states except Hawaii and are common across much of Europe, Asia and even Northern Africa. They thrive in rich moist soil where there is partial sun. Seek them on the edge of suburban lawns and along rivers and streams. Nettles have high nutritional value and are sold in tablet or liquid form in vitamin shops. As described in the International Journal of Food Science, nettle “Results show that processed nettle can supply 90%–100% of vitamin A (including vitamin A as β-carotene) and is a good source of dietary calcium, iron, and protein.”
Stinging nettles are named for numerous tiny spines that can inject a chemical into the skin. The sensation is uncomfortable but quickly fades and is not dangerous. Some people call the plant the “seven minute itch”.
Before collecting nettles, or any other wild food, for dinner be sure to positively identify the plant. Photos of nettles can be found online and are in nearly every wild food book.
There is a trick to harvesting them. Use gloves to protect the hands and scissors to snip off the top few tender leaves. Alternately, gently put your thumb and index finger just below the top few leaves and slide them up, pinching off the top, rinse and drop a few cups of them in water. A few minutes of boiling neutralizes the sting and results in a delicious high protein vegetable. Enjoy them covered with melted butter and a dash of vinegar. Save the water that nettles have been boiled in as a stock for soup or to drink as a delicious tea.
Pinching off tender young leaves encourages the plant to produce new ones, so by harvesting nettles from the same patch about every week the collecting season is prolonged. Don’t even try eating tough mature nettle leaves or stems. Early settlers once used the fibers of these rough stems to weave into a linen-like cloth.
By early summer in the upper Midwest, the nettles have “gone by”. But, we let them grow up because many species of butterflies are attracted to the yellow-greenish flowers of the nettles. Stinging nettles are a wonderful plant that we enjoy having on our property at Winding Pathways.
by Winding Pathways | Feb 18, 2015 | Nature
At Winding Pathways we often sit in cozy warmth created by our furnace and wood stove and watch tiny birds outdoors struggle in subzero wind and deep snow. Just how do tiny chickadees, juncos, and other animals survive?
Every animal has an energy budget similar to a family checking account. When possible they eat as much as they can and put on a layer of fat or store seeds in the nooks and crannies of nearby trees. Fat and stored food is their cash cushion that tides them over should bitter cold or long blizzards make foraging impossible.
With people, maintaining a cash cushion in a checking account lets a family occasionally spend more in a given month than it takes in. As long as the trend doesn’t persist and funds are restored checks won’t bounce. It’s almost the same with wildlife. If a tiny bird, deer, or squirrel has a cash cushion in the form of body fat or stored food it can simply wait out severe weather in a sheltered place. Winter warm spells enable foraging to replenish reserves.
Deep snow makes it hard for animals to find food and intense cold requires burning additional fat to stay warm. If severe weather persists for weeks, as it has in recent winters, many animals simply reach the bottom of their checking account….their energy reserve…. and starve. It’s a sad fate but one of nature’s ways of trimming wildlife populations.
Although human skiers and snowshoers relish deep snow it presents an extreme challenge for many species of wildlife. They must carefully monitor their energy balance to make sure there is enough fat or stored food to tide them over until spring. 
by Winding Pathways | Feb 2, 2015 | Birds, Nature
Show Birds Some 
on Valentine’s Weekend:
Join the Great Backyard Bird Count!
This in from The Audubon Society. Join other birders for this family event from the warmth of your home! You cannot beat that!
“New York, NY, Ithaca, NY, and Port Rowan, ON —Give Mother Nature a valentine this year and show how much you care about birds by counting them for the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). The 18
th annual count is taking place
February 13 through 16.”Anyone in the world can count birds at any location for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count and enter their sightings at The Audubon Society
Backyard Bird Count. The information gathered by tens of thousands of volunteers helps track changes in bird populations on a massive scale. The GBBC is a joint project of the
Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the
National Audubon Society with partner
Bird Studies Canada.
 |
| Snowy Owl by Jane Ogilvie, VT Click image to download for print |
Bird watchers fell in love with the magnificent Snowy Owl during the last count when the birds were reported in unprecedented numbers across southeastern Canada, the Great Lakes states, the Northeast, and down the Atlantic Coast. Expect Snowy Owls to show up in higher numbers during this year’s GBBC, too. “”It’s called an ‘echo flight,'” explains Marshall Iliff, eBird Project Leader at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “After a huge irruption like we had last winter, the following year often yields higher-than-usual numbers as well. The abundance of lemmings that produced last year’s Snowy Owl irruption likely continued or emerged in new areas of eastern Canada, more owls may have stayed east after last year’s irruption, and some of last year’s birds that came south are returning.” “”This may also be a big year for finches,” notes Audubon Chief Scientist Gary Langham. “GBBC participants in North America should be on the lookout for larger numbers of Pine Siskins and redpolls. These birds also push farther south when pine cone seed crops fail in the far north of Canada.”
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| Common Redpoll by Helena Garcia, Quebec Click image to download for print |
“Bird watchers from 135 countries participated in the 2014 count, documenting nearly 4,300 species on more than 144,000 bird checklists–that’s about 43% of all the bird species in the world! In addition to the U.S. and Canada, India, Australia, and Mexico led the way with the greatest number of checklists submitted. “”We especially want to encourage people to share their love of birds and bird watching with someone new this year,” says Dick Cannings at Bird Studies Canada. “Take your sweetheart, a child, a neighbor, or a coworker with you while you count birds for the GBBC. Share your passion and you may fledge a brand new bird watcher!” “The Great Backyard Bird Count is a great way for people of all ages and backgrounds to connect with nature and show some love for the birds this Valentine’s Day. Participation is free and easy. To learn more about how to join the count, download instructions, a slide show, web buttons, and other materials, visit http://gbbc.birdcount.org/. While you’re there, get inspired by the winning photos of 2014. “The Great Backyard Bird Count is made possible in part by sponsor Wild Bird Unlimited.
by Winding Pathways | Feb 2, 2015 | Mammals, Nature
Relatively warm snow free winters make life easier for most species of wildlife. Deer, raccoons, wild turkeys, pheasants and other animals easily move around and find food on bare ground.
The pocket gopher is an exception. It prefers deep snow. During warm months this common animal tunnels through the soil seeking roots that form the bulk of its diet. Cold weather makes the ground as hard as armor plate. Since tunneling in frozen dirt is nearly impossible a hungry gopher must emerge above ground to find food.
That’s not a problem if there’s a heavy snow cover that enhances gopher safety. Few animals are as tasty to a hawk or owl as a plump gopher, but when the animals are under the snow they are invisible to even these keen eyed predators. During snow free winters a gopher foraging on the surface stands good odds of becoming a raptor’s lunch.
Snow probably doesn’t protect gophers from mammalian predators like red foxes or coyotes. These members of the dog family can detect movement and smell the tasty gopher trying to hide in the snow. They happily convert the hapless gopher into a meal.
As snow melts people sometimes find gopher snow tunnels, which often melt a little slower than surrounding snow.
by Winding Pathways | Jan 15, 2015 | Nature
A showy winter sight is deep orange to scarlet bittersweet berries dusted by snow. Often they are picked for holiday decorations.
Parts of North America are home to two wild bittersweets. One is a beautiful native that’s in rapid decline. The other is a fast spreading exotic that overwhelms even large trees.
Bittersweet can wrap around and smother a tree.
Oriental bittersweet is an aggressive twining vine that can climb a 60 foot tree and smother its foliage. The woody vine is sometimes upwards of four inches in diameter at its base. Oriental bittersweet thrives in open woods that allow sunlight to filter to the forest floor. It grows amazingly fast and produces yellow berries along the vine that split open to reveal scarlet fruits. The plant has bright green leaves are roundish.
In contrast, American bittersweet is neither invasive nor aggressive. Its leaves are oblong, and it produces flowers and fruits at the end of its vine. But, telling the difference between native and Oriental bittersweet is difficult. Buying at nurseries is not recommended.
Aggressive Oriental bittersweet hybridizes with and outcompetes its American relative. Unfortunately, the foreign species is becoming common as the native retreats.
Controlling Oriental bittersweet isn’t easy. Vines can be cut with shears or a hand saw. Small vines can be pulled from the ground, but rootlets remaining in the soil will sprout. Some herbicides will kill it.
People can help contain this aggressive plant by recognizing the difference between the American and Oriental species and not moving the seeds of the latter or using them for decorations.
by Winding Pathways | Jan 13, 2015 | Nature
People often tell us that they regularly see does and fawns in their neighborhood but hardly ever see a buck. “Where are they?” they ask.
Deer thrive in suburban and urban areas throughout the country. Although does are often seen, sighting antlered bucks is rare. Even massive ones with wide spreading antlers have the uncanny ability to stay out of sight in the midst of the city.
The best evidence of big bucks is a shed antler. Male deer begin growing them in early spring. By September they are full size and are used through the fall for sparring with other males and to bang against trees. Often the mere size of a buck’s antlers intimidates smaller rivals.
A male fawn is called a button buck and its antlers are tiny stubs that rarely protrude above the hair. For the next four or five years his antlers will be bigger every year but as the buck reaches old age his new antlers decrease in size each year.
Antlers are firmly attached the skull, but by late December the bond begins to weaken. Sometime between Christmas and late March they fall off the deer’s head, and for a short while the animal is antlerless. Most antlers drop in February and March, but usually the largest bucks drop theirs in late December and January.
Antlers are mostly composed of calcium. Rodents love chewing on them and recycle the minerals into their own bodies. By summer most shed antlers are gone.
Hunting sheds is a popular mid to late winter hobby. Some homeowners are lucky enough to discover one in the back yard, but usually it takes a search through an area with a high deer population. Predicting where sheds will be is difficult but often they are near a ravine or fence where the deer jumped. The slight jarring during a jump causes the antlers to drop off. Best shed hunting happens right after the snow melts in late winter. Shed antlers are usually white and get buried in fluffy snow. As soon as it melts they are visible from a longer distance. Binoculars can help find one.
So “Shed” your mid-winter blues, bundle up the kids and go outside on a deer “shed search.”
