Jerry
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# Posted: 26 Feb 2009 04:40pm
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I remember the day I came to appreciate "weeds". It was about two years after I purchased 40 acres on a small lake. The land was nice for my needs; hunting, trapping, and possibly getting a canoe in through the weeds that stretched for 50 yards from my small shoreline access. It was just a quiet place at the end of the road where I could go to get my mind straight after days of the rat race. My access to the lake was minimal, therefore the price I paid was very reasonable. But the view from the ridge, of the lake and of the river flowing out, was great. The land was about 20 acres high ground and 20 acres lower separated by the ridge. The low ground was not swamp, but low enough to change the type of trees it held, and act as a natural travel area for all types of wildlife. Just what I wanted. Now if I could only figure out a way to get rid of these weeds in the water, it would be great.
I read that our state Department of Natural Resources had a program to help wildland property owners develop a stewardship plan for their property, so I called and made arrangements to meet one of their foresters at my site. After walking my property and taking age borings of trees, etc., we walked to the lakeshore. It was then that the forester said something that changed my life in a good way. "What a beautiful stand of natural wild rice" he said. What? Wild rice? Really? Well I thought, maybe I should learn more about wild rice. And I did. Now I spend each summer watching the rice develop, and waiting for it to mature in late August or early September. When I go out to harvest, it's always a great day. The sky is blue, the golden brown rice stalks stand about three feet above the canoe, and because you silently pole your way through the rice, the ducks wait until the last second to take flight. And as you pull the rice stalks over the canoe gunwales and gently brush the ripe kernals into the canoe, it gives you a feeling that you are somehow connected to nature in a way I have never experienced before. Is it a lot of work? Yes it is - and there are spiders and other bugs in abundance. And the work has just really begun. I could bring the green rice to a processor and receive payment or a share of the finished rice in return. But I choose not to, but rather I have studied, experimented, and learned how to process the green rice into finished rice that lasts indefinitely if stored properly.
The winters are long here in northern Minnesota, and by late February cabin fever has really set in. So to reconstitute memories of warmer days, I make a batch of cream of chicken wild rice soup, open a cold beer, and relive the previous year at the cabin in my mind. And yes, I now appreciate the weeds I formerly wanted to destroy.
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