For healthy living it pays to be attentive to the kinds of food we choose in our daily living. This tome is not about weird, wild diets, nor funny ways of eating. Basically I am reflecting on foods that grow in the wild. The climate of Georgia welcomes a wide variety of wonderfully tasty, well, some not so tasty, but nutritious; and desirable—to one degree or another—foods that grow uncultivated.
I grew up on a farm that was plenteous with wild foods; I always looked forward to their ripening to enjoy them.. Wild plums (both yellow and red) grew throughout Grandaddy Veal’s farm. Around the time school ended for the summer, those luscious plums flourished; they were abundant along the terrace rows on the hill above his house. It was so fun to seize a handful of those colorful, delightful plums; I preferred the red ones, but also happily snapped up yellow ones I occasionally found .
Blackberry bushes grew prominently along the dirt road through grandaddy’s farm as well as in the edges of his fields. It was a hazard to pick blackberries; 1) blackberry briars are rough on human skin, clothes—and bare feet. 2) Snakes; at first I was puzzled that snakes liked blackberries. That wasn’t it. Birds like blackberries. Snakes like birds; the warning was well taken. Ilooked forward to Blackberry pie, blackberry jam, well, just eating plain blackberries off the vine—-delicious refections, all!
A large mulberry tree grew beyond the cornfield near my house. Climbing the tree turned out to be safe from the aforementioned hazards—-unless you consider a small boy climbing the mulberry tree a hazard. Well, I did it anyway. Often. I could prop myself in the embrace of a couple of tree limbs and feast to my heart’s content. I don’t ever remember eating too many mulberries, or getting sick of them. I do remember the sheer pleasure of lying high up in that tree, popping juicy mulberries into my mouth while surveying the sweep of the farm beyond. It was a magnificent view.
When I was a toddler, I learned about the May Haw tree just beyond our cow lot. Unable to go to, or climb the tree, I depended on my mother’s generosity to bring those delicious red berries to enjoy. It was several years after I was traveling across South Georgia; at one event I learned that in Southeast Georgia an industry has grown up around May Haw jams, jellies, and, of course recipes. .
As a teenager, I developed a keen taste for Wild Cherries. My Uncle T. Jeff hired me to help till his fields. At a gate on Tucker Road grew a large wild cherry tree. We stopped for water one day and he stripped off a frond of wild cherries, popped them in his mouth. I tried it. They were tart, and there is more seed than flesh in each one—but they were delicious. When Paige and I bought our house on Regal Way, I was delighted to discover a wild cherry tree on the lot; it had limbs low enough that I didn’t have to climb to get my delight of wild cherries. Paige didn’t care for them, but every spring as they produced, I got my fill of those tasty tart berries. .
A persimmon tree graced the edge of a tributary to Deepstep Creek, at the edge of the farm. After the first frost of fall, climbing the persimmon tree granted unlimited access to that wonderful fruit; the seeds were big, but the flesh was a good balance, and enough to make it worth the climb. My First-grade teacher, Mrs. Renfroe lived on the farm next to grandaddy’s; she introduced me to another wild—well, kind of wild—fruit. In the edge of her pasture was a fallen cow shed which had been taken over by currant bushes. She generously offered ot us abundant picking of those tasty berries among the rubble.
As a child, when I read that John-the-Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey, I was skeptical; how can a man live without ham, eggs, biscuits, barbecue, and corn-on-the-cob. Well. You can see that naiveté—and limited culinary scope. While his diet was not exactly wild fruit, he did find, in the wild, all the nourishment he needed to live a full and healthy life. (Anyway, it wasn’t his diet that killed him; it was the result of making a woman angry—and a greedy man.)
©Copyright Willis H. Moore 2024