Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden

Last night I bought a new book on dehydrating. Drying With an Attitude By Mary T. Bell. At the start of this book she states "One of my mentors has been Buffalo Bird Woman."  She describes this book as "a rare and valuable window into the past by clearly documenting specific details of how Native Americans grew, harvested, dried, stored, and cooked their food." 

This reminded me that A while ago when I read The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe. Carol frequently referred to Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden.





Buffalo Bird Woman, a Hidatsa Indian born about 1839, was an expert gardener. Following centuries-old methods, she and the women of her family raised huge crops of corn, squash, beans, and sunflowers on the rich bottom lands of the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. When she was young, her fields were near Like-a-Fishhook, the earth-lodge village that the Hidatsa shared with the Mandan and Arikara. When she grew older, the families of the three tribes moved to individual allotments on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.In Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, first published in 1917, anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson transcribed the words of this remarkable woman, whose advice today's gardeners can still follow. She describes a year of activities, from preparing and planting the fields through cultivating, harvesting, and storing foods. She gives recipes for cooking typical Hidatsa dishes. And she tells of the stories, songs, and ceremonies that were essential to a bountiful harvest.A new introduction by anthropologist and ethnobotanist Jeffery R. Hanson describes the Hidatsa people's ecologically sound methods of gardening and Wilson's work with this traditional gardener.

After reading reviews of this book that glowingly state testimonials such as "As a messenger of the old ways, she detailed how to build drying platforms, the best days to dry corn, beans, squash, buffalo, serviceberries, prairie turnips, and more. She cached food for two years in case the next growing season was a failure."  I knew this is a must read for me.

Each of the pictures of the books in this post are links to amazon where you can purchase them. But if your cheap frugal like me, I wanted to share a link I found where you can download a copy of Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians for free from the 

Digital Library

 

  Click here to go to book http://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t0sq90970

New Seeds Ordered And Garden Plan Done

It's funny, for all the gardening I do, I don't really like to garden. I like the planning, and the seed saving, and love the picking, canning, dehydrating, freezing and of course the eating. I'm just not much for the in-between. But hey, dusting, floor washing and toilet cleaning are not my favorites either, but providing us with a clean, healthy and nourishing life makes it all worthwhile.

2012 Garden

Do you Re-grow your garbage?

We have been eating the same green onions I bought at the store all winter long. No I don't have a corning wear dish of mushy green onions sitting out at every dinner. But I do have a beautiful pot full of lush green onions growing on my windowsill. Here's a quick pin I found on pinterest to show you how to grow them. The only difference from how I grow them is after mine had a nice root system going I potted them.

Source: plumsintheicebox.typepad.com via Pacy on Pinterest

I had a bunch of celery that needed to be used up quickly before I was ready to cook with it, so I chopped it up leaving the bottom stub intact. Dehydrated the chopped up stuff for the spice rack and I am going to re-grow more celery from the bottom stub. Here's a great how to re-grow celery pin.

Source: chickensintheroad.com via Pacy on Pinterest

Next neat regrow pin I want to try is re-growing ginger from store bought ginger roots. Check this one out.

Source: tropicalpermaculture.com via Pacy on Pinterest

 

 

I did find this neat book with loads of plants you can re-grow from your kitchen garbage.

Happy New Year

I'm still here

This old year has had a lot of ho hum, good, hectic, happiness and sadness in it. On Halloween after many months of preterm labour, Our new darling granddaughter arrived in this world. She is such a light for us. Then November hit us with my dad in and out of the hospital. Thanksgiving was spent with him in the hospital on isolation while they tested for TB and Legionnaires disease.  Samples were sent to the CDC and the Mayo clinic. The next day my daughter was in the ER passing 3 kidney stones. Dad was taken off isolation but they still really didn't know why he was so ill. One of his doctors told us they might never know they were just trying to treat the symptoms so he could get better. 3 days later with a lot of fluid in his lungs, bags of medicine and on oxygen they sent him home. His 3rd morning at home he passed away.
We are so grateful for the time we had with him, He got to meet is new Great Granddaughter and his last 2 days were at home, with him feeling better and laughing and reminiscing at the good old memories with us. When his time came, It was fast ...and not painful, which is more than Mom and I could wish. Even with his passing he still kept on giving. Dad had signed up to be an organ donor. I got a call that night from the hospital. They had just finished surgery and now because of Dads gift of life a young man can see again. I think it kinda fitting that some of Dad is living on in this young man with a whole new lifetime to see the wonders of the world.