Collard Shack Revisited

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.]

A trip to the small town of Ayden is usually for wood-cooked barbecue because it’s the home to two of the state’s premier BBQ establishments – Skylight Inn and Bum’s Restaurant. However, when I traveled there, I was searching for The Collard Shack as much as I was for chopped whole hog barbecue.

Yellow cabbage collard bedding
 plants come in multiples of 25 at
The Collard Shack.

In 2011 when David Cecelski wrote about The Collard Shack in one of his legacy posts on this blog, he peaked my interest in its yellow cabbage collards. This type of collard is considered milder and more tender than most collards....

As a novice collard grower, I sought the wise counsel of Benny Cox, who manages The Collard Shack and advises beginners as well as expert gardeners. Talking to him was the highlight of the visit. He’s very entertaining and obviously loves his plants. His years of experience in the collard fields are evident in the lines and hue of his face. The bundle of 25 plants that I bought were light green with moist root balls and lengthy but fragile stems about four inches long. Cox explained how far apart to plant the collards and showed how much of the stems should be covered with soil.

Continue reading at the NCFood blog ...

Keeping Wild Foods in Our Culinary Culture

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.]

Is cooking with wild foods out of place in today’s modern society? Because it’s so old-fashioned, I was surprised by how many kids had entered the Wild Food Cooking Contest in RichmondCounty.  It’s the event of the spring in Ellerbe, NC, when youth and adults show off their skills for cooking deer, moose, rabbit, beaver, squirrel, and other wild game. After the judges have scored each entry, everything is served buffet-style as a tasting party for the participants, their families and friends, and others like myself who attend to see how wild our food once was and still can be.

Rabbit pot pie was one of the many
tasty entries in the Richmond County
Wi

Dishes prepared by kids age 16 and younger were the most interesting. They included teriyaki rabbit, beaver pot roast, rabbit pot pie, duck and dumplings, Eastern wild bear and wild hog sausage, and catfish stew. When I had the opportunity to sample them, each was so good that I could have made a complete meal of it.

My first surprise was not so much that young people had prepared tasty food; it was that the game, fowl, or fish could not have been purchased. It had to be hunted, trapped, or caught legally or received as a gift. The actual step of cooking is only the final stage in the process and only the visible one at the contest.

Continue reading at the NCFood blog ...

A Plant That Bites Back

Carnivorous is such a hard word to spell, particularly when a child is in the fifth grade. That is when my class and I were introduced to one of the unusual plants of the South and particularly the Carolinas – the carnivorous Venus Flytrap. It attracts, catches, and devours insects and other tiny creatures.

In fact, Charles Darwin labeled this plant as “one of the most wonderful in the world.” When he wrote Insectivorous Plants in 1875, he brought plants that entrap insects to the world’s attention. The video below by UNC-TV helps to understand why the flytrap itself is so amazing.

However, the Venus Flytrap is not naturally a worldwide resident. It lives in only the South and only two states – North Carolina and South Carolina. In fact, its native locations are limited to within 60 miles of Wilmington, NC, where it survives in wet sandy and peaty soils. Because these areas are nutritionally poor and do not contain adequate nitrogen and phosphorus, the plant digests animals to gain nutrients for protein formation that the soil does not provide. In addition, the flytrap tolerates fires well and benefits when its habitat burns, particularly during controlled burns of longleaf pine forests, because the fires eliminate its competition.

Park ranger at start of hike

Although several hundred plants are carnivorous, the Venus Flytrap probably is the best known, particularly by school children because many see this plant in action in elementary school as I did. When I was in the Wilmington area with my school-age grandkids, rangers at a nearby state park were offering a “carnivorous plant hike.” Because they were not yet in the fifth grade, I hoped that the hike would teach them something new. In addition to the Venus Flytrap, the park is also home to pitcher plants, butterworts, sundews, and other “plants that bite back.” The starting point of the hike appropriately was the Flytrap Trail Parking Lot.

Sundew, the first carnivorous
plant on the hike

Literally in minutes we saw our first carnivorous plant — a sundew. A few steps away was a pitcher plant. Although both were easily spotted by the ranger without leaving the trail’s pathway, a casual observer probably would have missed them without being told where to look because they blend so effectively with their surroundings.

Pitcher plant seen on hike

Closeup of Venus flytrap at state park

The highlight of the walk was finding a Venus Flytrap. The first one was smaller than I had expected. Because a plant can live for more than 20 years, this one was probably very young. However, its trapping mechanism with hair-like edges was clearly discernible to us but ready to spring shut on any unsuspecting prey. Because the trap can shut in 0.1 seconds, the plant’s trapping movement is remarkable but is common knowledge to as young as now a first grader. Only during the program did I learn that my granddaughter, then entering the second grade, had already seen a flytrap in school – she was clearly less impressed with the hike than I had hoped.

Flytraps for sale at farmers
market in Saxapahaw, NC

Children also learn about the plant because it is frequently seen for sale at markets and festivals, particularly in North Carolina. Although state laws prohibit removal from its native habitats, the plant is cultivated in many locations around the world. Although it does have the reputation for being tricky to grow, the flytrap is popular with many families to teach children more about nature and the dependencies that plants and animals have for each other.

Because Mother Earth has more than a million species of insects, the Venus Flytrap is unlikely to go hungry soon. It will also probably continue to be discussed in school programs and sold as novelty plants. However, be careful about trying to impress children how “wonderful” the plant is – they may have already learned by the first grade.

"Venus flytrap" on display at the River Walk
in Wilmington, NC, illustrates its connection
to coastal North Carolina

Strawberry Adventure: Finding the World’s Largest

Want to go on a strawberry adventure? As spring days become warmer, the trip can be a visit to a festival, a you-pick-it farm, or a noteworthy strawberry landmark. Strawberry ice cream, shortcake, or fresh berries themselves are the rewards for making the visit, particularly in the American South where one place claims to have the world’s largest strawberry.

A fruit with a long history

The only fruit with the seeds on the outside rather than the inside, the strawberry has been a favorite of not only Southerners but others around the world because its sweetness, juicy texture, and bright red color are unmatched. The history of the strawberry dates back to Romans who gathered wild strawberries, but it wasn’t cultivated in Europe until the 1300s. Although it had become a common garden plant by the 1500s, the strawberry from eastern North America, introduced to Europe in the early 1600s, is the variety that is credited by developing today’s big-fruited strawberry.

This variety was popular with Native Americans who mixed crushed berries with cornmeal that was baked as strawberry bread. After trying this bread, according to some scholars, the colonists modified the recipe and created an early version of strawberry shortcake.  

Strawberry shortcake is frequently featured at regional strawberry festivals. Michigan claims the “national” strawberry festival, although many states, particularly in the South, celebrate with at least one festival, such as in Georgia, South Carolina, and West Virginia, and some festivals were inaugurated well before Michigan began its event in 1976.

North Carolina even has two: the Carolina festival in Wallace and the N.C. festival in Chadbourn. In fact, Chadbourn, NC, considers itself as the strawberry capital of the world because it claims the largest one-day shipment of strawberries – 180 rail boxcar loads – picked by 15,000 workers between one sunrise and sunset as well as a historic festival that began as early as 1926.

Florida began its festival four years later in Plant City, which claims to be the winter strawberry capital of the world. Lasting more than 11 days with about half a million visitors, the Florida festival is not only huge but also the earliest of the year, sometimes starting as early as late February.

You-pick-it farms help promote
local economy.

Rather than being satisfied with attending a festival, many strawberry fans visit a you-pick-it farm to select fresh berries each season. Strawberry associations in states such as North Carolina help by providing strawberry farm locators online.

When I was searching for a “strawberry event” to attend, I became interested in finding the world’s largest strawberry at The Berry Patch near Ellerbe, NC (population of 1,021), and I made it my destination one day. Because The Berry Patch, which began as a small strawberry farm in 1995, is owned by a family whose last name appropriately is Berry, I thought that it should be worth the trip.

The world's largest strawberry (actually an ice cream stand) at The Berry Patch in Ellerbe, NC

All homemade -- but
strawberry tops the list.

What I found was not a farm but an ice cream stand in the shape of a huge strawberry about 20 feet tall. When I arrived, several people were waiting in line to place their orders while others who had already been served were walking with cones or cups and looking over fresh produce from the local area for sale in the market area. Although The Berry Patch offers 19 homemade flavors, why pick any other than strawberry? It was definitely a winner and the most popular choice.

Although easily seen from the highway,
signs point to the new location.

The Berry Patch is easily seen from the highway although it had been in a much more visible location near the Berry’s farm. The N.C. state government took that property by eminent domain to construct Interstate 73-74, and Lee Berry, the owner, had to move the huge strawberry stand, which had been built in 2002, two miles north to keep serving his customers, many who are on their way to or from the beach.  It took eight hours to get the four-ton berry stand onto a mover’s truck. Because it was so wide and no traffic could pass, state troopers had to escort it on the slow journey to the new location.

Market area with local produce

Visiting the “world’s largest strawberry” was well worth the trip because the homemade ice cream is excellent. It clearly surpasses a competing “world’s largest strawberry” claimed by Strawberry Point, Iowa, (population 1,463) that is only 15 feet high and stands in front of the town’s city hall without any homemade strawberry ice cream to offer. Knowing that the 20-foot berry stand required a police escort for its move made it that much more noteworthy to visit.