Wild Rice----Bounty from the Marshes of Wisconsin

Now mind you, I am not promoting doing this because it turns out it is not real easy. I tried once before as can be noted in a post of a couple of years ago---and it was not pretty. I mean, the setting was sublime, if not bucoholic, the wind light and my lover resplendent in her native gear,  but getting only a paultry half cup for 10,000 callories expended was not the effort of sucess. Energy invested to energy returned was not high in rating. Had we depended on that harvest, it was poor coyote bait in a week.

However, I have not lost interest because at one time this area, and even to the south was filled with Wild Rice but the activity of gluttonous man and his perchant for ripping the piss out of everything did in the marshes and most of the stuff that went with them---like ducks and birds and those pesky Native Americans. We now have weed-filled lakes and sterile canals once used for the old stern wheelers that plied the rivers.

The good news is some marshes have survived and even flourished due to being out of reach from the wrath of pastie-white honkys. The cranberry marshes and muck farms didn't get them all, so up north and half, wild marshes are still to be found and interestingly Native Americans still harvest the grain. It turns out the stuff they harvest is actually different than the grass I tried, both wild rice but the up-north one has a shorter stem and bigger grain---like duh! My bad. (Older white man found floating in rice bed. Died from exhaustion)

So even if I am a geezer, or a coot, a shrive, I can still learn. This year my brother decided he would indeed go fetch up some Wild Rice and do it the Native way---which is really the only way. Crow and Rollie hit the marshes of the Wisconsin River with a canoe (hitting is a figure of speech),  paddles, and push pole, and beating stick in hand. Actually, I guess they were hitting it. The grain is bent over into the canoe and tapped ever so perfectly with a stick. The ripened grains fall into the boat--simple as that--except it is not simple. I was reminded after I suggested that I do it, is was not easy, at least the polling part. According to Crow, it takes a he-man and he admitted playing out in half a day. He was probably low on beer.

In the end, they rounded up more than 100 Lbs of rice. I was then processed by a local and half returned to the gatherers. What caught my eye was that the grains do not look like the mass produced stuff, the black type, but rather more brown and larger. The taste is also much more agreeable. Even if I am weak, next year I believe it will be time to harvest a portion for use in my attempt to be sustainable. I wish the canoe trip from Steven Point to Rhineland was not so long. Oh, we still have fossil fuel. No problem.