Way Down in the Pawpaw Patch

I met Vickie Shufer three years ago, in September 2007, when I invited her to lead a Walk & Talk about foraging for wild foods at New Quarter Park. There are lots of Pawpaw patches at New Quarter, which I told her about. So we gathered Pawpaws during the walk and Vickie made Pawpaw smoothies afterwards.

The program was such a success that I signed her up to lead another walk the following year. Unfortunately, we had to cancel due to a hurricane. It wasn't a memorable storm, but large enough to wash out our park program. Fortunately, Earl wasn't a big deal on Friday, so she was able to lead our Pawpaw Patch Walk & Talk again today. We had a great turnout! About 45 people.

Vickie is a naturalist, author, and wild foods expert. She's very excited about plants that are both edible and medicinal. As we walked along hiking loop 8, she pointed out a variety of foods that are available for the picking ... and could keep you alive in the woods if need be.

Among the most abundant in the fall is the American Beautyberry. The purple berries are edible and Vickie is working on a method to dry the berries for use as a spice. I couldn't quite imagine what it would complement and flavor, but I'll look forward to hearing how the spice development goes. The berries were ripe and as good tasting as I've ever experienced at New Quarter. I use them raw, sprinkled on salads. They don't cook up well.

The best thing about Beautyberry, however, is that the leaves work better than DEET as a natural insect repellent. I've been crushing them and rubbing them on my skin and wearing branches of leaves behind my ears for years. I think that Beautyberry leaves work much better than insect repellent to dull the senses of those irritating May flies in spring! Although they still can be seen flying in circles, they definitely slow down and keep their distance. I've been trying to grow some at home and have several healthy plants now, although I haven't seen any flowers or berries yet.

Today we found wild fox grapes that were dark-skinned, ripe, and tasty. The small grape has a large seed, so there's not much food value there. I can't see making fox grape jelly anytime soon, but I will look for them to eat as a snack more often now that I've tasted them at their peek. We found the vines growing up and under the low branches of understory trees like the dogwood.

A historical note here: It was probably the native Virginia fox grapes that Durand de Dauphine noted in his seventeenth-century writing, A Huguenot Exile in Virginia, or Voyages of a Frenchman exiled for his Religion with a description of Virginia and Maryland. He said:

"[G]rape-vines are found in greater abundance along the seashore & rivers than in the woods. They encircle around five or six trees & bear quantities of grapes, but the grapes are small as if the vines were never pruned or cultivated... Good wine could certainly be obtained if on arriving the branches were pruned and cultivated; at least there would be enough for one's own use, & yet low grape-vines could be planted, the wine would be better, & it would bring a very good income."

The Redbud Tree is also a Virginia native. We noticed that the tree's seed pods are past their prime. But I plan to pick some next June! Vickie says that she uses the pods as she would snow peas, in a stirfry or side dish. The Redbud tree is a beloved sign of spring in Virginia. Its pinkish-purple flowers are the first tree to come alive and are beautiful along roadways like the Colonial Parkway.

Another wild food that is, unfortunately, abundant at New Quarter is Autumn Olive berries. They look like tiny grapes and when they are ripe, they taste just like a red grape, although they do leave your mouth dry afterward (just like a persimmon -- which are in the park, but we didn't happen by any of them today). Autumn Olives are on the USDA's bad plant list, although I think the wildlife is happy enough to find and eat them after such a hot and dry summer. Food has been in short supply.

Back outside now to enjoy what's left of this beautiful day!

As Promised, I'm Learning More About Alternative Energy

After seeing the wind farm in Indiana last month, I was all psyched about the fact that Dominion was involved and that our energy providers are doing more than we generally know about developing alternatives. Those wind turbines looked so quite from inside the car. I hadn't considered what it might be like to live under one of them.

An article in the September/October issue of Orion gave me the opportunity to hear from someone who does. In the section of the magazine entitled The Place Where You Live, contributor Angela Cannon-Crothers wrote about wind turbines in The Finger Lakes, New York.

"Today the wind turbines, new to this landscape, churn slowly in a faded denim sky like goddesses dressed in white, flowing in some kind of prayerful meditation over the leafless wooded hills. I admire them, the hope they represent, the grace with which they move--never hurried, strong, assured. They symbolize humankind's ability to work with, and not apart from, nature. But I know that symbol is still an illusion, nothing is as it seems.

"They have risen over hills cleft with shale and slate ravines journeyed by the splash and pools of staircase waterfalls flowing out into the Finger Lakes of New York State. Four-hundred-foot-tall turbines, arching white wings two hundred feet wide, swirl sweet wind into a frosting we can taste. A reward our neighbors were paid dearly to host. High Tor Wildlife Management Area is a humpback genuflecting at their side. 

"You can see them for miles away. From my homestead I can count forty on a leafless day. Further away, along the stretch of Canandaigua Lake where the eagle nests, you can see them spinning in counterclockwise smiles of promises gone astray. 

"It is only the hill people who are disturbed--a constant noise like jet engines outside their windows, vibrations in their chest from low-decibel blade swagger, flickers like migraines, and blinking night lights in a cheery shade of Rudolf red, resembling some sort of UFO landing strip. 

"Coyote doesn't make his tracks here anymore because he doesn't recognize the roar. The bluebirds found new fields to nest in many wing beats away. These Appalachian sugar-maple ridgelines, this Concord-grape pie town, once known for its quiet, its rural appeal, and its night darkness, sold out our wind for the Light." (emphasis added)

The noise. No bluebirds? I hadn't considered the vibration. In listening to the pros and cons of wind turbine development I hadn't heard this, but it is indeed something to consider.

Our energy needs came up in another context this week, too. My stepson is an engineer. Because I drive a Prius and am interested in the topic, he sent information to me about an upcoming lecture on electric cars. Because it's for engineers and has more to do with the energy grid that needs to be developed in order to fuel electric cars, I'll pass on attending. However, I did look up the presenter, Saifur Rahman, and discovered that he is a professor at Virginia Tech and director of the Center for Energy and the Global Environment. I found my way to the Smart Grid Information Clearinghouse, where I learned more about our aging energy infrastructure and the critical need to update it.

For more information, visit the Smart Grid site. Watch the YouTube video, below, that explains a modern grid. 

Williamsburg Pottery

Williamsburg Pottery, 1978
Photo by Doris Benson Wildenberger,
descendant of early property owner. 

The rebirth of the Williamsburg Pottery is all the buzz this week after yesterday's big press conference. According to the founder's wife, the Pottery will be reborn in 146,800 square feet of retail space sandwiched between Richmond Road and the railroad tracks.

What's going to fill up the three and a third acres? All of the stuff that's made the Pottery famous, including ceramics, custom framing, floral arrangements, and low priced imported items as well as some new retail categories. Food will be an important part of the plan, with a cafe, bakery, and deli with indoor and outdoor seating. The across-the-tracks property will be used as warehouse space.

Since researching and writing Images of America: James City County last year, it's hard for me not to see traces of the past and think at what lies beneath newer developments. As a new Pottery is proclaimed, I find myself remembering the history of that land.

In the late nineteenth century, much of James City County was sparsely populated. The central part of the James-York Peninsula, approximately 12 miles across, had been twice ravaged by war. In the built up to and following the last significant battle of the Revolutionary War at Yorktown, the area was occupied by French and Continental forces as they waited for George Washington. British troops coming up from the south had marched, camped, and fought through the area, most famously against Lafayette and "Mad Anthony" Wayne at the Battle of Green Spring in July of 1781. Less than a century later, in the 1860s, the future Williamsburg Pottery land was trampled by troops during the Peninsula Campaign, as they fought their way from Hampton to the Confederate Capital in Richmond. Union forces occupied the City of Williamsburg during the Civil War and old families along Forge Road tell tales of unhappy cooperation, intrigue, and survival in the surrounding countryside.

About 15 years after the Civil War, the poor and largely unoccupied land was noted by entrepreneurs. Coal was coming out of the mountains to the west. The Chesapeake and Ohio Rail Railway extended its line down the Virginia Peninsula from Richmond to Newport News, where coal was deliver to the Hampton Roads port. Land agent Carl Bergh hatched a plan to build a town here, about midway between, so that the train would also be used to transport crops and people. He enticed Scandinavians who had settled in the Midwest to resettle in Tidewater Virginia, where the climate was mild and there was plenty of cheap or abandoned farmland. The town of Norge became a center of Norwegian settlement. Others resettled nearby. They could take their crops to railway stations at Lightfoot, Norge, and Toano for shipment to distant markets.

The Benson Farm

Ingeborg Houg, a Norwegian emigrant, resettled from Wisconsin to Lightfoot on an 80-acre farm in 1907. She left the property to her son, Bennett Benson, who had taken care of the farm for her after her husband's early passing. Benson's brother, Alfred (pictured on the cover of James City County), lived a short distance east on Richmond Road. He was the Lightfoot railroad station agent and brother of Bennett.

While collecting photographs for Images of America: James City County, I had the pleasure of meeting Doris Benson Wildenberger, daughter of Alfred, niece of Bennett, and granddaughter of Ingeborg. You can still see two large trees in the median just east of the Pottery entrance where Doris and her siblings caught the bus to Toano School. The Pottery land is right in the midst of what was the happening end of James City County before Colonial Williamsburg came to town. Back then, Toano was downtown and the largest and most lively settlement hereabouts.

It was in 1938, shortly after the two-lane road was paved, that Bennett Benson sold Jimmy Maloney an acre of land along the Richmond Road frontage of his farm. Maloney built his first pottery kiln and sold pottery seconds to tourists who had recently rediscovered Jamestown and Williamsburg. Maloney bought more land and eventually he bought the farm. He added seconds of clothing and decorative wares that kept growing and growing until the outlet became a multimillion-dollar business and a leading Virginia tourist destination.

When I drive through Lightfoot these days, I look toward the Pottery and see the ghost of an old four-square farmhouse. I image the Bensons and their family and friends. Other times I see soldiers walking and riding along the muddy Old Stage Road. Finally, I think of a time when Native Virginians used the well-worn path along the Virginia Peninsula's ridge to make their way through thickly forested land.

I wish the new Pottery well. However, I doubt that it will be as famous as it once was. Today it competes in a Williamsburg arena that features more than one such outlet complex. Tourists have lots of options and Wal-mart fills the needs of locals looking for a bargain. A trip to the Pottery isn't, and hasn't been for the last decade or two as essential as it was back in the day.

Constant Craving for Blueberries

"The blueberry of the genus Vaccinium, is a native American species. In fact the blueberry is one of the few fruits native to North America." (U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council)

That's it! No wonder I love blueberries: they're native plants! Truth be told, they are my favorite fruit, followed by peaches and strawberries. I'm one of those weird people who prefer fruit to chocolate! There's nothing better than fresh and local blueberries, peaches and strawberries. (Have you tried my peach salsa recipe?)

I planted two blueberry bushes in my garden last year, late in the summer. They were just beginning to produce berries when the drought and triple-digit heat set in, so needless to say I didn't enjoy more than a handful of fruit from them this year. They started to wilt too, so I've had to water them every day or two to keep them alive this summer. Maybe next year. (But I've read Heatstroke, and I'm just a wee bit concerned.)

So I've bought blueberries at the Williamsburg Farmers Market and I've noticed more and less expensive blueberries in the stores this year. I found some industry data that indicated blueberry production is growing. Terrific! My stepson and daughter-in-law in Chicago went blueberry picking in Michigan last year, came home with about 15 pounds of them. As true foodies, they commenced making blueberry preserves from various recipes. All of us back in Virginia loved their blueberry and other fruit preserves offered as Christmas presents. We told them that we're expecting more blueberry preserves this year!

I bought a big container of blueberries at Trader Joe's last week, and made a blueberry cobbler. By the weekend I'd had my fill of fresh blueberries on cereal and they were getting a little limp. It was time to make more baked goods. My husband has a favorite blueberry muffin recipe, which I share below. There are no directions because he's made them so many times that he neglected to record them. Basically, beat the eggs by hand for a bit and mix all of the ingredients except the blueberries until the ingredients are well blended. Add the blueberries last. Spoon the batter into 18 muffin cups, bake, and serve. Enjoy!

Blueberry Sugar Tops

1/2 cup and 2 Tbsp. oil
1 1/4 cups of sugar
2 eggs
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup milk
2 cups blueberries (in 2 Tbsp. flour)
1 Tbsp. sugar

Bake in 375 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Sprinkle tops with sugar.

P.S. Constant Craving? I'm taking some classes and might end up with a Speech-Language Pathology degree. In a recent course in Anatomy and Physiology, I used Constant Craving to illustrate great vocal chords. k.d. lang has a beautiful voice and she appreciates that to keep it that way she has to take care of those delicate vocal fold membranes.

2010 New Quarter Park Bluebird Year in Review

July was very hard on our
bluebird babies

While we’ve enjoyed learning more about bluebirds this year, the team of New Quarter Park bluebird box adopters discovered that the weather was not conducive to nesting success. Late first clutches and second clutches had fewer hatchlings and fewer birds fledged. There have been no third clutches.

Lois Ullman and Shirley Devan were happy to watch their first clutches of birds hatch and grow in boxes 3 and 6. All were banded by Allyson Jackson, our W&M graduate student advisor, on July 5. Three of four eggs hatched in Shirley’s box; one egg didn’t hatch. Dean Shostak also had one nest of hatchlings. I had a first clutch in my Box 9, but the eggs did not hatch. Approximately 10 birds fledged.

Nancy Norton, Jeanette Navia, Ted Stevenson, and I all had second clutches in our boxes 2, 8, 11, 12, and 13. Twenty-two birds fledged from these second clutches.

Because of the smaller number of hatchlings and fledglings since late June, I e-mailed Allyson Jackson to ask how the heat was affecting the bluebirds’ nesting behavior. She e-mailed back while settling in to her new job at the BioDiversity Research Institute in Maine.

“I totally think that they could be affected by the hot weather,” she said. “They take cues from the environment about food availability before starting their last clutch, so with it being so dry and hot, I imagine there was a lot less food around at the end of the season, which may cue them to not try for a third clutch this year. And if there really is less food, it makes sense that there would be more brood reduction (less nestlings surviving) because the parents can't feed them all.”

Several of us enjoyed watching as Allyson clipped numbered bands around the ankles of bluebirds between the ages of 8 and 14 days at New Quarter Park on Monday, July 5. I hope we’ll be able to band more of them next season. Graduate students like Allyson have been using the data collected from banded bluebirds as the basis for research that increases knowledge about birds and their habitats to support management and conservation efforts.

So, for the 2010 bluebird season at New Quarter Park, we can add 32 birds to the 46 I announced in the June Master Naturalists newsletter for a grand total of 78 bluebirds fledged this year! We look forward to next spring when we will add the boxes at York River State Park to our list of boxes up for adoption. If you are interested in helping with the 2011 season, please let me know. We’ll meet in February or March to plan a new strategy.