Mrs. Brown part 2

When I first wrote that post about picking blackberries, it included these paragraphs:

As I gathered the berries a few people crossed the footbridge, grinning at my children but oblivious to me. Only one person, an elderly gentleman, stopped to chat, leaning over the railing as I looked up from the vines below. He told me about a plum tree which grows over by the bead store on Division. There's a plum and an apple tree there, he said; the apple tree is wormy but the plums, they're good.

I'm not familiar with that particular tree, but I've seen plum trees in the older parts of Bend. I suspect they were planted by early Bendites and now -- now that people buy plums from stores -- they're ignored. I am allergic to that kind of plum, unfortunately. I thanked the man anyway and he left.

Later in the afternoon I saw that old man again. He was standing at the entrance to the Mountain View Mall (or whatever they call it now), near the stoplights. He had a sign in one hand, the other outstretched. "Whatever you can give!" he asked passing motorists.

I cut that part because -- what am I trying to say? That only I and the homeless pick wild berries? That a subculture of foragers exists, and I finally met one of them? That Sawyer Park is sketchy?

*

If blackberries are rare here, squaw currant is common as dirt.¹ It's under the ponderosas, under the junipers and in the disturbed areas. In spring squaw currant has white or pink flowers as small as my fingernail and shaped like a trumpet. In July or thereabout a berry forms. It looks like the currants you sometimes find in the store: translucent, tiny, varying from bright red to bright orange.

Currants are edible. I read that in a few places online: All currants are to some degree edible. So I planned to eat them. When I told my sister-in-law my plan, though, she said to be careful; she said there's a berry that looks like a currant but is poisonous. So I looked around and asked around some more, and all I got were contradictions. The squaw currant is edible but it tastes terrible. The currant look-alike is poisonous. My mom has a book which says that "in sufficient quantities" the squaw currant causes burning in the throat. In sufficient quantities? What does
that mean?

I couldn't find out. So although this summer the squaw currant bushes were loaded with berries, I limited myself and my children to 10 berries per day ... and they never harmed us. They taste great, actually. They look like they'd be juicy but instead they're mealy, like a blueberry, and tart/sweet. My daughter loved them.

But! For next year! I found this yesterday (I thank thee, O googlebooks): American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest By Carolyn J. Niethammer, page 61: a recipe for wild currant preserves with a drawing of the squaw currant bush. She says that the Indians said that large quantities of squaw currants cause gastrointestinal distress, but she also says that this admonishment existed for other Indians, who might be tempted to eat every berry on a bush. Also, she says, they're fine in any quantity when cooked.

So! I know what I'll be doing next July.

*

See, here's what interests me. Central Oregon has what they call a short growing season. The last frost can be as late as the 4th of July; the first frost was this weekend, mid-September. The first frost killed my basil, tomatoes, beans and squash. People say it's hard to grow things here; they say gardening in Central Oregon takes a fantastic amount of work.

But, you know, lots of plants grow here despite the frost. It's not just dirt and rock, not even in the Badlands out east. Lots of plants grow, and surely some of them, like the currant, taste surprisingly good.

I'm not saying that berry- and root-gathering could or should replace commercial food production, but surely it's comparable to hunting & fishing. I know people who supplement their diets with deer, elk, trout, game birds, and they're proud of it, they're snobs about it. Why don't I know anyone -- except the homeless gentleman --who supplements his diet with wild
berries?

¹Ribes cereum