[Garden] The wild corner. Burdock and wheat lore. Praiseworthy Saskatchewan.

[gcmichal at envmail.uwaterloo.ca]

Dear Farmer Jason,

There is plenty of wild burdock around here, so if you are hungry you  
can start eating it right away.  In fact, sending out scavenging  
hordes of enthusiastic locovores would be a good way to get this pesky  
weed under control.  Have you ever tried to pick the burdock burs out  
of a dog's coat, or even from your socks? But, on the other hand, it  
did give the inspiration that resulted in the invention of velcro.   
Too bad plants can't earn royalties - then we could send all the local  
burdock to Disneyworld for a vacation.

I'd give up on trying to be a wheat farmer.  You're not from  
Saskatchewan; I am.  But if you do succeed, despite your genetic and  
cultural impoverishment in wheaty matters (fairly normal in Ontario),  
I can teach you how to separate the wheat from the chaff with your  
bare hands.  Then I can coach you in the appropriate jaw motions to  
masticate the wheat and how to use your tongue to get the bits of bran  
away from the rest of the cud until you have a salubrious wad of pure  
gluten -- what those of us privileged enough to have had rural  
Saskatchewan childhoods refer to as "wheat gum".

I have a wild foods recipe book that could provide you with some  
burdock suggestions.  For wheat, I suggest the Ukrainian Christmas  
pudding called kutya which is made with finest Marquis wheat (from  
Saskatchewan), poppy seed from Turtleford, Saskatchewan, ground  
walnuts (unfortunately it doesn't grow in Saskatchewan), and rapeseed*  
flower honey from Nipawin, Saskatchewan.  It's delicious. I can give  
you the sacred recipe, a family heirloom**.

* A degraded version of rapeseed is called "Canola" by Easterners.
**  Yeah, I know that Saskatchewan is more than 161 km from Waterloo,  
but I say screw the hundred mile diet, it's for boringvores.

- Greg
Quoting "J. Rochon" <jrochon at uwaterloo.ca>:

> Gardeners,
>               It seems that I planted my winter wheat too late. If  
> there are no objections, I'm going to plant the feral corner of the  
> garden with spring wheat and a small number japanese burdock. The  
> burdock is a biennial, so it's a commitment thing.
>
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