Harvesting Spruce Cambium/ Inner Bark.
Yesterday, after 3 days of above zero Celsius temperatures, i suspected the spruce sap to be flowing.
And it was, as i sliced of some bark, beautiful bright green sap appeared, the colour exquisite, i had never seen it like that, because i used to do most my harvesting in other seasons often after the tree had been blown down by a big wind.
But yes peeling the tree like that , on this beautiful day, felt very wrong.
In the photos i added, you will also see last year's scar, it did not kill the tree, but a little scrape like that is not much of a harvest.
What to do, this tree is on my property, i am not breaking laws, but still i am the care taker here, the keeper of my wild place.
For Fire Smart around the house, this tree eventually should be cut down for firewood.
I do believe we could eat much more food straight from the wild.
Buying in the grocery store does not feel painful, or growing vegetables in our garden even feels satisfying at the least.
But when harvesting wild it does feel invasive. Yet a tree probably did grow where your shopping came from originally and that tree was killed for you.
The dilemma that we all have to eat.
Maybe if you live in a neighbourhood were they are planning to cut life trees for what ever reason, and you can't or do not want to stop the killing, maybe yes we could at least eat from those trees before they go.
This morning i chewed and eventually swallowed some of the fresh inner bark. I like it. It takes a bit of getting used to, like i have said before, it tastes like wood!
( i have written previously about the many uses of inner bark)
And today i will try harvesting from branches. Way less invasive! yes?
2 comments:
What do you do with the spruce sap after you've collected it? I grow some trees in my garden and harvest the leaves and/or fruit from them. I have not collected any inner bark from them.
Yes the needles and the cones, awesome. I did not collect this green sap. I do daily chew gum from the slightly hardened sap, which is dripping down on the outside of the bark on some trees. Do your trees have that?
I did yesterday collect some of the inner bark from the branches that you see in the photo, the tool (log peeler) is a bit to heavy for the branches, today i will use a knife. And probably saw off some of these lower branches for fire smart and sit on the porch in the sun and peel the whole branch.
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