Nature

9 Simple (and Free) Ways to Celebrate the First Day of Fall

The first day of fall, or the autumnal equinox, is September 23 in the Northern Hemisphere. On this day, the sun hovers above the equator, and most of the world enjoys nearly equal amounts of light and darkness.

In traditional agricultural societies, the harvest season was drawing to a close, and people were working overtime to prepare stores for the winter months. The equinox was a time to relax, celebrate, and enjoy the bounty of the harvest, while people anticipated more scarcity or monotony in their winter diet. In modern times, autumn is a time for new beginnings – a new school year, new clothes, new friends, or a new outlook.

Cultures around the world celebrate the first day of fall.

Asian Moon Festivals

Asians have been celebrating the equinox with Moon Festivals, or Mid-Autumn Festivals, for 3000 years. In China, families and friends gather to admire the mid-autumn harvest moon, light lanterns, burn incense, and plant trees. They prepare mooncakes – noodle-like dough filled with bean or lotus seed paste and duck egg yolks or other fillings, which are steamed, baked, or fried.

Japanese Autumnal Equinox Day

In Japan, the fall equinox is a national holiday. The seven days starting three days before the equinox until three days after is called Higan. During Higan, families hold reunions and visit graves, offering flowers, cleaning tombstones, burning incense, and praying. Ohagi, sticky rice covered with adzuki-bean paste or soybean flour, is a popular offering to the deceased.

Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah is a two-day holiday that falls on the first and second day of the month of Tishri on the Jewish calendar – usually between September 5 and October 5 on our calendar. Rosh Hashanah is the “day of judgment” in the Torah. Observers abstain from work and spend the day in the synagogue. A shofar (ram’s horn) is blown many times to awaken listeners to the coming judgment. People reflect on mistakes made in the last year and plan changes for the new year. Many observers also practice Tashlikh, or “casting off” on the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah. They fill their pockets with pieces of bread, walk to a natural body of water, and empty the bread into the water, symbolically casting off the previous year’s sins. Apples or bread dipped in honey is common Rosh Hashanah fare.

Native American Harvest Ceremonies

Many tribes once celebrated the end of the harvest with equinox ceremonies. The Cherokee gave thanks to all living things at a Nuwati Egwa festival and the Chumash of southern California held a sun ceremony at the end of September. The Miwok of Northern California still celebrate the acorn harvest with a Big Time Festival on the last weekend of September. Traditionally, the Miwok relied on the acorn for food. In the fall, they harvested the fruits, cracked them, ground the meat into meal, rinsed the meal to remove its bitter tannins, and made acorn mush, bread, or soap. At modern Big Time festivals, Miwok and other California tribes perform traditional dances, play hand games, and tell stories.

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Create some autumn traditions

Seasonal celebrations can be fun and simple. Why not pick some activities you enjoy to celebrate the first day of fall? Here are a few ideas:

Make a seasonal display

Include leaves, ornamental corn, gourds, jack-o-lanterns, acorns, pine cones, or whatever symbolizes fall in your family.

Read books about fall

Gather books about the season at the library. Fall picture-books include: Leaves by David Ezra Stein; Fall Leaves Fall by Zoe Hall; Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson; Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White; Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert; Fall is Not Easy by Marty Kelly; and It’s Fall! by Linda Glaser. The Autumn Equinox by Ellen Jackson is a fun book to read aloud this time of year. Adults can celebrate fall’s cooler weather by grabbing an anticipated fall release.

Make Chinese lanterns

Hang them in the house or on the porch. Click here for a how-to.

Visit a local orchard

Pick apples, and make apple cider, sauce, or pie.

Prepare a harvest feast

Invite friends over and make foods from your garden or the farmer’s market. Traditional autumn foods include: pears, squash, pumpkin, apples, stews, and mulled ciders. Pumpkin bread is a delicious fall treat, and if you use this real-food recipe, it’s healthy too.

Tell stories

Bring a pile of blankets out to the porch, yard, or park and share stories about your best or worst back-to-school memories.

Go on a nature hike

What better way to enjoy the crisp air and colorful leaves?

Talk about balance

Day and night are equal, so it’s the perfect time to talk, as a family, about the importance of balance and how to create more of it in our lives.

Star gaze

After the sun sets, grab a pair of binoculars, cuddle under blankets, and look for constellations. Taurus, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, and Ursa Minor reappear in the night sky around the equinox.

No matter how you celebrate, I hope you a have a happy first day of fall.

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(Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a post originally published September 15, 2010)

Are you planning to celebrate the first day of fall this year? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

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9 Simple (and Free) Ways to Celebrate the First Day of Spring

By Abby Quillen

The spring equinox is March 20 in the northern hemisphere. The sun shines directly on the equator, and day and night are nearly equal. For centuries, people have marked the occasion with celebrations.

How Did Ancient People Celebrate?

Fires

In Iran, people purified their homes and leapt over fires.

Gathering at Monuments

The Mayans gathered around El Castillo, a ceremonial pyramid. On the day of the equinox, the sun runs down the northern staircase, giving the illusion of a snake descending. Because of this, their celebration has been called “The Return of the Sun Serpent” since ancient times.

Honoring Ancestors

The Japanese spent the day cleaning and bringing flowers to their ancestors’ graves.

Celebrating Mothers

In parts of the Middle East and Africa, people celebrate Mother’s Day on the spring equinox.

Benefits of Modern Seasonal Celebrations

The first day of each season is a great opportunity to pause and connect with nature. Seasonal celebrations are affordable, nature-based, and as easy or elaborate as you want them to be.

It’s nice to take a time-out from the clock’s relentless march forward occasionally to appreciate what’s happening in the natural world: What the sky looks like, what local wildlife are up to, which birds are hanging out at the neighborhood pond, and whether the leaves are budding, falling, or mulching the gardens.

Seasonal celebrations are also a good time to reflect on the lessons the season imparts. Fall teaches us about the inevitability of loss. Winter shows us the importance of dormancy, darkness, and stillness. Spring shows the possibility of rebirth. And the bounties of summer are endless – light, warmth, and lush crops.

Create some spring traditions this year!

What better time than spring to start some new family traditions? Pick activities that you’ll want to do year after year and ones that will make the day relaxing and special for you and your family, but not overwhelming. Here are 9 ways to celebrate:

Decorate

Collect spring flowers, cherry buds, egg shells, a bird’s nest, or whatever symbolizes springtime in your family and display them on a mantle or tabletop. Place bouquets of crocuses, daffodils, tulips, or dandelions around the house. Or surprise your family members by placing bouquets in their bedrooms while they sleep, so they wake up to fresh flowers on the first day of spring.

Observe

The days are getting longer. Go outside on the first day of spring to watch the sun rise and set. Find out what time the sun will rise and set where you live here.

Explore

Go on a walk or hike and identify wildflowers if some are already sprouting in your area. Or visit a local farm and see if you can get a glimpse of calves, lambs, or chicks in the barnyard. What better symbol of spring?

Feast

Make a spring meal with the first crops of the season. Dandelion leaves, steamed nettles, asparagus, new potatoes, dill, mint, and chives may be springing up where you live. Make your dinner more special than usual by adding something new. Eat by candlelight. Eat outside if weather permits. Or have a picnic on a blanket in the living room.

Make

Twist dandelions or clovers into chains, and wear them as spring crowns.

Plan

Gardening season is here! Spend some time planning your springtime garden.

Sow seeds

Have each family member pick a favorite flower or plant to sow in honor of the first day of spring. Designate a special garden, and make a ceremony of it.

Read

These spring picture books are great for little ones:

The Gardener by Sarah Stewart
Grandma Lena’s Big Ol Turnip by Denia Hester
Marty McGuire Digs Worms by Kate Messner
Wanda’s Roses by Pat Brisson
And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano

The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth by Ellen Jackson is fun to read aloud as a family on the first day of spring.

And cold days aren’t over yet, so adults may also want to stock up on the season’s most anticipated reads.

Craft

Decorate hard-boiled eggs with natural dyes. Try beets, cranberries, blackberries, or raspberries for red; yellow-onion skins or turmeric for yellow; parsley, spinach, or red-onion skins for green; blueberries for blue; and coffee, pecan hulls, or black-walnut hulls for brown. Or experiment by trying whatever’s coming up in your backyard.

To make a natural dye, combine:

4 cups of chopped or mashed fruits or vegetables or 4 tablespoons of spice
4 cups of water
2 tablespoons of white vinegar.

Bring to a boil, then let simmer for 30 minutes.

If these ideas don’t resonate, create your own traditions to welcome spring this March 20! I hope you’ll celebrate for years to come.

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[Photo credit: Jeff Kubina, Marco Verch]

Simple (and Free) Ways to Celebrate the First Day of Winter

By Abby Quillen

December 21 is the first day of winter and the shortest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. Parts of Canada, Alaska, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Greenland, and the northern tip of Iceland will experience 24 hours of total darkness.

Winter could be a long, dark, and difficult time for many of our forebears. The solstice provided an opportunity to celebrate the return of more daylight.

How did ancient people celebrate?

Gift-giving

The ancient Romans exchanged candles and other gifts during Saturnalia, their week-long solstice celebration.

Role-switching

In Persia, the king changed places with one of his subjects on the winter solstice, and the subject was crowned during an elaborate street party.

In Rome, masters and servants switched roles; senators wore simple, rather than elaborate togas; men sometimes dressed as women; fights and grudges were forgotten; and other everyday conventions were put aside.

Candle-lighting

In England and Scandinavia, people lit a Yule log, or oak branch, which was often replaced by a large candle that burned throughout the day.

Bonfires

Japanese Shinto farmers lit fires on the mountainsides to welcome back the sun.

Mistletoe and Evergreen Trees

The British Celts put mistletoe on their altars. And the Germans and Romans decorated their houses with evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands as a symbol of life and renewed fertility.

Sun Festivals

The Hopi celebrated the return of the sun with ceremonies. Priests dressed in animal skins with feathers in their headdresses to look like the rays of the sun.

Why celebrate the first day of winter?

The holiday season is busy enough for most of us. Why add anything else to the to-do list?

Celebrating the first day of each season offers the perfect opportunity to:

Note the cyclical changes in the soil, sky, trees, plants, and wildlife.
Reflect on the lessons each time of year imparts. Winter reminds us of the importance of quiet, rest, and dormancy.
Learn about different celebrations around the world.
Celebrate! Seasonal celebrations are affordable, nature-based, and as easy or elaborate as you want them to be.
Be grateful for the gifts of food, family, and friendship.

The key to celebrating the first day of winter, when most of us are busy planning other celebrations, is to keep it simple, and choose traditions that give you time to relax and reflect.

Simple (and free) ways to celebrate winter

Observe

Watch the sunrise and sunset. You probably won’t even have to set an alarm. At our house, it will rise at 7:44 and set at 4:37 on Tuesday. (The good news is longer, brighter days are coming.) You can find out what time the sun will rise and set where you live here.

Wander

Take a hike, go cross-country skiing, or go for a walk and look for signs of the season. Listen to winter’s music. Compare winter’s textures: dry bark, soggy leaves, and spongy moss. Notice winter’s distinctive scents.

Give

Find gifts for each other from nature. Exchange small handmade gifts. Make maple caramel corn for friends or neighbors. The key is to keep it simple.

Feast

Serve up your favorite winter crops: beets, winter squash, potatoes, onions, kale, cabbage, or parsnips. We’re fans of stuffed squash and homemade sauerkraut this time of the year. Lighting candles can turn an ordinary meal into a celebration.

Reflect

Spend some time relaxing together in front of the fire. Share one thing you’ve lost and one thing you’ve gained over the past year. Tell stories about your best and worst holiday memories. Make wishes for the coming year. Reflect on the lessons of winter: the importance of rest, dormancy, and stillness.

The key to seasonal celebrations is to make them simple and relaxing. The last thing most of us need is another stressful winter tradition.

What’s your favorite thing about winter? Leave me a comment. I’d love to hear about it!

(Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a post originally published December 14, 2009)

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How to Thrive During the Winter

By Abby Quillen

Chances are, winter’s not your favorite season. Only 11 percent of people prefer winter over other seasons. More than a third (36 percent) of people prefer spring, 27 percent prefer fall, and 25 percent are keen on summer. Today, we’re mostly protected from winter’s harsh elements, and our lives may not look much different in winter than in spring or summer. But the cold, dark, short days are still challenging.

Our distant ancestors’ lives were far more dependent on natural elements. And amazingly, they survived (even thrived) during long, cold winters without modern amenities. Read on to discover three lessons we may want to heed from past generations about thriving during the coldest season.

Pay Attention to Natural Rhythms

The bears, bees, and bats are slumbering. Many plants are dormant. What about us? Humans don’t hibernate, but should we be catching more Zs in the winter? When the sun rises at 7:30 a.m and sets at 4:30 p.m., the nights are long and cold. If I didn’t have Netflix not to mention indoor heat or electric lights, I’m sure I would turn in much earlier.

Up to 25 percent of people today experience some form of Seasonal Affective Disorder, depression that occurs during one season, typically winter. Moreover, winter is peak season for colds, flu, stomach viruses, ear infections, and cardiovascular disease. Could these maladies be due in part to us ignoring nature’s call to rest during the winter?

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a 2,000-year old healthcare system, seeks to harmonize the nature inside of us with the external natural world. Practitioners advocate people adjust their sleep patterns to reflect the seasons and advise going to bed early and rising late with the sun during the winter.

A study of 12 Equatorial tribes suggests humans who live closer to nature sleep longer during the winter even near the equator. On average, people in the study slept about an hour more per night during the winter. In some tribes, people slept up to two hours more per night during the winter.

I’ve never heard a Western medical doctor advise people to sleep more in the winter, but that may change because our scientific understanding of the human circadian rhythm is still in its infancy. The three scientists who won the Nobel Prize in 2017 study circadian rhythms (how plants, animals, and humans sync with the movement of the earth.)

Increasingly, health experts understand that staying up late or doing shift work may be harmful to health and contribute to the development of illness. In one study, people who slept fewer than seven hours a night were three times more likely to catch a cold than those who got eight or more hours.

This winter, try to stay in sync with nature’s day-night rhythm and see if you feel better rested. Here’s how:

Go outside early in the day after the sun rises
If you work indoors, sit next to a window and go outside during breaks
Dim indoor lights when it gets dark outdoors
Install a blue light filter on laptops, tablets, and phones
Go to bed eight or more hours before you need to wake up
Sleep in a dark room

Eat for the Season

Nutritionists are beginning to catch on to something traditional cultures understood well. The foods in season where you live are the perfect foods to help you adapt to the season. During the winter, seasonal foods help your body adjust to colder, darker, and drier conditions.

Winter squash and root vegetables are loaded with vitamin A, an essential nutrient for the immune system. Fish, a widely available food in northern regions, is loaded with omega 3s, which help to prevent seasonal depression. Mushrooms, which are available in fall and winter, are some of the only foods that contain vitamin D (as well as many other immune boosting properties).

Trust nature’s wisdom and make a variety of seasonal foods your winter staples.

Winter foods include:

Pumpkins
Squash
Sweet potatoes
Carrots
Kale
Spinach
Squash seeds
Persimmons
Pomegranates
Apples
Mushrooms
Beans
Whole grains
Seaweed
Garlic, onions, and leeks
Fish
Meat
Wild game

If you crave warm foods in winter, there may be a reason for that too. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, warm, cooked foods are easier to digest and obtain energy from. Bring on the soup and stew!

Look for Opportunities

Imagine winter in northern Michigan and Alaska before indoor heat, automobiles, and imported foods. The words bleak, foreboding, and dangerous may come to my mind. That’s why I was surprised to learn that northern Natives may have looked forward to winter.

“Northern peoples have always found an ally in winter,” Steven Gorman, author of the book, “Winter Camping,” told the Northern Express.“The season makes their lives easier, not harder.”

Why? Because dense vegetation makes traveling, hunting, and fishing difficult during spring, summer, and fall. But packed snow during the winter makes overland travel faster and hunting and fishing easier.

European observers were in awe of the northern tribes’ winter hunting. The Chippewa of Northern Michigan trapped animals and traveled to trading forts. Alaska natives crossed the tundra grasslands on dogsleds.

I don’t hunt or fish. But winter brings unique opportunities to my life and probably to yours as well. You may be inspired to take advantage of winter by embarking on any of these wintertime activities:

Bird watching
Whale watching
Hiking
Ice skating
Sledding
Skiing
Snowshoeing
Snowboarding
Sitting next to the fire
Reading novels
Playing cards
Making bread
Making soup, casseroles, and stews

Conclusion

I’m grateful to live in a warm house when the temperatures dip below freezing, but we may have much to learn from our ancestors who thrived during winter without modern amenities.

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(Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article first published December 19, 2017.)

Local, Seasonal Foods are Superfoods

By Abby Quillen

What should you eat for optimal health? That question has inspired wildly contradictory dietary trends from Low-fat to Raw Vegan to Paleo to Keto, each backed by health claims and scientific studies. However, nobody will ever discover a one-size-fits-all optimal human diet because we didn’t evolve to eat the same thing. Throughout most of history, whether humans hunted and gathered, raised animals, or cultivated crops, they ate a menu of local foods that shifted with the seasons. All traditional diets emphasized seasonal eating.

In the past hundred years, the industrialization of agriculture and the invention of refrigeration radically remade our diets. Today, 70 percent of the American diet is processed, and the fresh foods in your grocery store were likely imported from all over the globe. However, locavore, Farm to Table, and Farm to School movements are flourishing for good reason. Exotic superfoods may be trendy, but the foods grown near you are usually the freshest, most nutritious, healthiest, and most flavorful foods you can eat. Even a modest change to eating more local and seasonal foods can bring health, environmental, and culinary benefits.

Eating seasonally may require a mindset shift and some effort, because most modern Americans weren’t raised doing it. But the benefits are worthwhile! Keep reading to learn why local, seasonal foods are superfoods and discover ways to shift to a more seasonal diet.

The Case of the Missing Nutrients

The industrial food system has brought convenience, but the price tag is high, both for human health and the health of our ecosystems. First of all, we’ve lost an incredible amount of food diversity. In 1903, 408 types of peas were available in commercial seed catalogs; by 1983, there were 25 available pea types. More than 300 varieties of sweet corn in 1903 dwindled to 12 in 1983; 544 cabbage varieties in 1903 diminished to 28 in 1983.

Here’s the problem: Modern crops are significantly less nutritious than the crops our grandparents ate. Farmers must select crop types for yield and their ability to be transported and stored, rather than for nutrition. Moreover, soil depletion and rising carbon levels in the atmosphere may further contribute to the declining nutrient values of our food. The USDA has monitored the nutrition in crops since the late 1800s, and the data is troubling. According to one analysis, an orange today contains eight times less vitamin A than an orange your grandparent would have eaten. Broccoli contains less than half as much calcium as it did in 1950.

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To complicate the problem, nutrients degrade quickly after produce is picked. Conventional produce is often picked before it’s ripe, is shipped an average of 1494 miles, and is handled frequently and stored on shelves for days.

For obvious reasons, local produce is nearly always fresher than produce shipped from across the world. And it may contain more nutrients in the first place because farmers growing food for local markets can choose crop types for nutrition and flavor, such as antioxidant-rich purple carrots and potatoes. Moreover, there’s a less understood reason to eat seasonal foods; by doing so, we tap into nature’s wisdom about what’s best to eat when.

Tap into Nature’s Wisdom

Because of the tilt of the earth, seasons exist everywhere, except for a small tropical band near the equator, which has minimal seasonality. In some regions of the earth, seasonal changes are extreme. In parts of Alaska, summer and winter temperatures vary by 100 degrees. Flora, fauna, and weather vary widely by region and and season, and it makes sense that our diets would vary accordingly, since they were once dependent on the local environment. The bottom line? We evolved to eat certain foods at certain times. And now that we’ve lost touch with which crops grow when, we may have lost a natural way to stay healthy during each season.

Consider these examples:

Summer crops (berries, fruit, snap beans, corn, cucumbers, melons, peppers, tomatoes, and summer squash) provide energy, hydration, and antioxidants to help people deal with the potentially damaging effects of summer sunshine.
Fall and winter crops (sweet potatoes, winter squash, chard, spinach, bok choy, and kale) provide large amounts of vitamin A, a nutrient that supports the immune system, just as seasonal illnesses are circulating.
Spring crops (watercress, pea shoots, wild nettles and greens) have anti-histamine effects in the body, which helps fend off spring’s seasonal allergies. (Nettles worked better than allergy medication in one study.)

The health benefits of seasonal eating go beyond ingesting antioxidants and phytochemicals. Eating is not only about nutrients; it’s about our relationship with the natural world, the source of all real food.

Humans are wired to be outside. Spending time in nature is therapeutic, healing, and necessary for human health. Reconnecting food to its true source by hunting or gathering wild foods, gardening, or visiting farms or orchards can be a powerful step toward better health. When you adjust your diet with local conditions, you must observe and relate with the environment outside the climate-controlled homes, buildings, and cars, where Americans now spend 90 percent of the time.

Invest in Healthier Ecosystems

The industrial food system, which was developed in the decades after World War II, features enormous single-crop farms and animal production facilities and relies heavily on chemical fertilizers. The system has been successful at increasing crop yields, making food cheaper, decreasing the need for farm labor, and increasing the availability of off-season crops. Unfortunately, the environmental costs for industrial agriculture have been huge and include mass extinctions, a biodiversity crisis, contaminated water ways, the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and pesticide toxicity.

In wealthy nations, food consumption is estimated to account for 20 to 30 percent of each family’s environmental footprint. Environmental life cycle food assessments are complicated, and it’s important to factor how the food is grown and transported to market. However, many studies suggest that even a small shift to local and seasonal eating may make a difference to the environment. A research team found the conventional food distribution system emitted 5 to 17 times more CO₂and used four to 17 times more fuel than the local and regional food distribution systems in Iowa. A Canadian study estimated that replacing imported food with locally grown food in just the Waterloo, Ontario region would save transport-related emissions roughly equivalent to taking 16,191 cars off the road. According to another analysis, if everyone in the U.S. just ate one meal a week consisting of local and organic produce, we’d reduce our national oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels a week.

Step Outside of the Grocery Store

Seasonal eating goes against our always-available, fast-food culture, and it may not be intuitive if you weren’t raised doing it. Growing up in rural Colorado, nearly all of my family’s produce came from refrigerated cases at a national grocery chain. My dad grew a small vegetable garden one summer (an experience that had an enormous impact on me). Other than that, we didn’t grow food or visit farms or orchards. Most years, the apples and plums on the trees in our yard fell to the ground and rotted, as did the fruit on the trees around our neighborhood. Little of the wisdom my ancestors must have possessed about hunting or growing, storing, and gathering food was passed to me. However, I’m committed to eating more local and seasonal foods because it feels like the most nutritious, sustainable, and nourishing way to eat.

These days, my family and I garden, gather food, belong to a Community Supported Agriculture program, and regularly visit farms and orchards. We don’t stick to a 100-mile diet or eschew all imported foods. We enjoy coffee and imported oranges and bananas as much as the next family. But we do our best to heed some traditional wisdom and stay connected to our natural environment as we live our busy lives in the modern world.

Even a little local and seasonal eating may make a difference to your health, community, and local ecosystems. And it’s an amazing way to connect with the natural world and glimpse the beauty and wisdom pervasive there.

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Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a blog originally posted October 3. 2017.

The Healing Power of Oak Trees

By Abby Quillen

Fifteen years ago, my husband and I stood under a massive, gnarled limb of an oak tree and said our vows to each other.

Oak trees are considered sacred by many cultures, but we didn’t know that then. Nor did we know they were traditionally used for spiritual and civic gatherings (like weddings) to offer strength and protection.

So we were fortunate fate brought us together beneath that majestic oak tree.

The oak tree is sometimes called the king of trees. About 400 species of oaks, including coniferous and deciduous species, grow in the northern hemisphere. There are 60 varieties of oaks native to the United States, and some live for up to a thousand years.

If you haven’t gotten to know an oak tree, it’s time you did. It may sound silly to get to know a tree, but remember, trees absorb and store our rainwater. They compost the ground to build healthy soil, which is essential to all life. They give us the oxygen we breathe. They’re the best allies we’ll ever have.

Humans and Oaks Helped Each Other

Sometimes my kids and I play a game called “Did a person make it or did nature?” My kids usually knew even when they were very young. A person made our Legos. Nature made bears. A person made Dad’s eyeglasses. Nature made our brains.

If I asked my kids who made the beautiful sprawling oak savanna near our house, they’d probably say it was nature. But the answer is more complicated than that. Native American people worked with nature to create Oregon’s oak savannas.

Oaks don’t grow well in the shade and can’t survive when Douglas Firs and Western Red Cedars crowd out the light. But they’re fire-resistant. So the Kalapuya and Chelis tribes set low-intensity fires to keep the conifers from growing in certain areas. The fires kept the Oregon White Oak and California Black Oak healthy and encouraged the growth of wildflowers, such as camas lilies, which Native tribes used for food.

In modern times, we’re rediscovering this ancient land management system. We’d also do well to learn from ancient food customs, starting with the humble but mighty acorn.

The Healing Power of Oak Trees #plantmedicine #heirloomfood

Acorns are an Heirloom Food

Acorns aren’t just for squirrels. They’ve been a staple food for people in North America, Asia, the Middle-East, North Africa, and Europe for thousands of years. The Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder said the sacred oak was the “tree which first produced food for mortal man.”

All acorns are edible, and they’re high in calories, fat, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, and antioxidants. But unlike squirrels, you can’t enjoy acorns just off the tree. They’re bitter when eaten raw, and they require low-tech processing to make them palatable for humans.

Here’s how to turn acorns into a nutritious flour. Gather whole acorns from the ground and bake them at 250 degrees for a half hour to kill any bug larvae. Shell them using a nutcracker (or a high-quality nut sheller, if you plan to shell large quantities). To leach the bitterness from them, boil them for five to 10 minutes, pour off the murky water, and repeat the process five or six times until the acorns are palatable. Dehydrate the acorns on a tray in a sunny location or in a food dehydrator. Finally, grind the acorns into flour.

Does this process sound difficult? Remember, flours made from tillage crops, such as wheat and corn, also require a fair amount of processing. But acorns offer a major advantage. You don’t need to clear the land of trees and wildlife or use pesticides and herbicides to grow oak trees.

Agriculture is one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss. Farming is what threatens three quarters of the world’s endangered species. If we could take advantage of a nutritious staple food crop without agriculture, it would be a boon for threatened ecosystems.

Lincoln Smith, a gardener in Massachusetts, is experimenting with using acorns as food at Forested, his 10-acre research garden. On one occasion, Smith gleaned 1,000 pounds of acorns from the trees on his busy street in four days. He makes bread by mixing acorn flour one to one with wheat flour.

Acorn bread has a nutty taste and appealing hearty flavor, according to reporter Caroline Selle, who wrote about Smith for Civil Eats. Smith also makes baked chocolate and molasses acorn cookies, which are “sweet, rich, nutty, and good,” according to Selle.

Despite its potential merits, acorn flour isn’t readily available commercially. You can import it from Korea, where it’s commonly eaten, or pay a premium price from a small-scale producer. Otherwise, you’ll need to copy the squirrels and harvest and process your own.

Oak Medicine

Oak bark is an astringent, and it can be used to heal bleeding gums, sore throats, scrapes, or rashes. To make a decoction of it, cut a small branch off any oak tree. Soak it in water to clean it. Use a knife to remove the outer-most bark and discard it. Then shave off a tablespoon of the white inner bark and boil it in four cups of water for 20 minutes or more. Use it as a gargle, rinse, or compress.

Native Americans also used oak chewing sticks to clean their teeth. Unlike nylon toothbrush bristles, oak twigs are naturally antibacterial and antiseptic. In a study, nearly all (99.9 percent) of bacteria spread on various wooden cutting boards, including oak, were undetectable within three minutes.

That’s significant because toothbrushes harbor huge amounts of germs. Ten million bacteria, including fecal germs, live on the average toothbrush. Seventy percent of people’s toothbrushes are heavily contaminated with potentially pathogenic bacteria and viruses, such as Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Pseudomonas, and herpes simplex virus, according to a study.

Plus, unlike plastic toothbrushes, chewing sticks don’t pollute the environment by lingering in landfills for five hundred to a thousand years.

It’s easy to make an oak chewing stick. Remove a small twig from an oak tree, peel the bark off one end, and leave it in a glass of water overnight to soften it. The next day, chew on it until bristles form and use it to scrub your teeth as you would with a toothbrush, no toothpaste needed. Use the same chewing stick several times by breaking the bristles off and starting over again.

If you think this ancient technology sounds primitive (or even disgusting), consider the conclusion of a randomized clinical trial comparing chewing sticks to toothbrushes, which was published in the North American Journal of Medical Sciences in July 2014: “Chewing stick was found to be equally effective as toothbrush in terms of gingival status. On the other hand, chewing stick had shown even better results in terms of reduction in plaque scores than in subjects using toothbrush.”

Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that_ #quote #trees

Oaks Need Us

Now here’s the bad news. Oak ecosystems around the world are declining. Oaks once covered 50 percent of the Willamette Valley where I live, but their numbers have been reduced by 97 percent. Oaks are also disappearing from Minnesota and other states. A quarter of the oak trees in the U.S. are threatened.

Why are our oaks in decline? European settlers’ fear of fire helped transform sunny oak savannas into shady woodlands. Habitat destruction, pests and diseases, agriculture, and development are also culprits. But these are symptoms of the real problem. Now that we let the acorns rot on the ground and get our medicines from pharmaceutical companies, we’ve forgotten the value of oak trees.

Do trees matter? What do they do for us? Diana Beresford-Kroeger eloquently answers that question in her book The Global Forest.

Trees breathe, communicate, reproduce, filter pollution from the air, provide habitat for wildlife, flora and fauna, provide aesthetic value and beauty on the planet, absorb CO2 (greenhouse gas) and release life-sustaining oxygen (50% comes from trees and 50% comes from ocean plankton), provide shelter and provide a variety of food, such as fruit and nuts, as well as medicines. Trees connect elements of nature and we are connected to trees – we are one. Trees provide wind and erosion control, soil stability, assist in controlling the movement of water and in purifying groundwater. Trees provide branches for children’s swings, tree houses or for children to climb.”

Beresford-Kroeger goes on for several more pages about the virtues of trees. And even then, she can’t do them justice. They are — in a word — our lifeblood.

We need oaks and they need us. Enjoy their shade and beauty. Eat their food, and use their medicine. Fall in love with an oak tree. That’s how we’ll save them.

If you liked this post, you may enjoy these similar posts:

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Oaks Need Us

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