Spring Breakup: Two weeks from snow to edible wild plants

(The prior article focuses on the Breakup's lake ice and water fowl.  This one focuses on rapid changes on land).

Breakup, our term for spring, is FAST.

After a long winter, the snow melts several inches a day in April and May, leaving increasing spaces of muddy soil shaped by serpentine tunnels of voles (meadow mice) and punctuated by 8 months of dog poop.  A Southern relative asked me why I wait until spring to pick it up.  Why not do so every day?  Perhaps she has not spent much time in snow.  Warm excretions sink through soft snow.  So in spring, we find the scat of moose, coyotes, spruce hens, and our dog, Buddy. 

Note how red the calf is.  The cow blends into the spruce trunks.

I shovel his winter poop into four small, galvanized bucket loads and dump it beneath a tree at the edge of our woods, in a low spot behind the berm that edges the lake so it will not defile that water source. On our muddy paths, we find the distinctive oval tracks of 1000 pound + moose along side branches of new cranberry growth snapped off as tasty snacks by these hungry, herbivorous ungulates.  It is usually not until early June that we open the curtains in the morning to see a cow munching bushes a few feet away, with one or two gangly little calves nursing beneath her big belly.  I look forward to that.

In early May, we harvested about 20 gallons of birch sap before the leaves emerged, but the sap turned milky (bad) fast, and my effort at birch sap wine molded.  By mid-May, the first flowers are always those of wild currants, their small and modest mauve and white flowers emerging above snow covered root stock.  By the end of May - only two weeks after the yard was mostly covered with snow, I harvested dandelion leaves, flowers, and fireweed shoots for our first fresh salads, accompanied by biscuits flavored with citrusy larch tips.  Far less useful growth is the wild sweet grass that reached shin height in a week which, if left alone, would ascend to 6 feet by July and flop over and strangle all plants nearby.  So, an urgent, annual spring task of mine, while growth is emerging so quickly, is to weed whack tough, spiny devil’s club, wild raspberries and the wild grass over 7 days, one hour per day to make space and sun for more desirable opportunistic plants. 

Birch sap tap

Why raspberries, you might ask?  Who doesn’t like raspberries?  Here, they grow in thick stands  through underground runners as well as animal and bird spread seeds.  The dense growth is not allopathic chemically, but physically.  They deter any other plants except nettles and grow tall enough to entangle the branches of nearby shrubs and saplings. (Elsewhere, we grow five rows of domestic raspberries for fruit)

To reduce the population, I have to use a weed whacker blade to cut through dozens of canes per square yard the first year, after which I can shift to a weed whacker line for several more years.  This multi-year effort opens up space for more desirable ground cover to naturalize.  It delights me to see the dappled shade beneath birch and spruce populated by graceful ferns, white dwarf dogwood and starflower, pink prickly rose, (which is related to raspberries), and the wild currants, which tumble over and around spruce stumps.

I love my first morning sniff of the outdoors as soon as new growth emerges.  Every day smells sweet, and different, as a succession of plants come into leaf or bloom.  Even the sweet grass, as the name suggests, and alder leaves have a delicious scent.  

As I look through the windows of our log cabin, and walk up and down our paths through the property, I enjoy the evolution of two rather large and tangled rose gardens, and large expanses of “lawn” lovely all summer with white starflower and dwarf dogwood as well as domestic strawberries that naturalized into a ground cover along the lake shore.

My weeding efforts generate not only beauty but food and habitat.  I increase the number of cranberries I harvest from those pretty shrubs for juicing every fall.  The rose bushes grow nearby, where I gather petals for salads and hips (the fruit that follows the flowers) for vitamin C additions to winter teas.   Those little spruce and birch grow slowly for about the first 6 years and after that about 2 feet per year, for shade and windbreaks for us, and habitat and food for birds and martens.

This successional development of plants has developed into an enduring interest for me. Although I rather ruthlessly cut raspberries and devil’s club to the ground, I weed whack the wild grasses several inches above, in order to scrutinize what wants to grow here or there if given some sun and space.  I wander slowly with a roll of blue flagging tape, leaning down to mark tiny spruce and birch, as well as other slow growing, desirable plants.  My goal has never been a suburban lawn of grass.  I love the wild plants – but I admit to favoring the ones I extol here vs the invasive growth of alder, devil’s club, and sweet grass, which I endeavor to reduce, but not eradicate, in number and influence.

My newly published book can be found here:   https://www.amazon.com/Log-Cabin-Reflections-Off-Grid-Homestead-ebook/dp/B0BZN1FZR9/ref=sr_1_1   I hope that you enjoy it!