CALENDAR

Sunchoke Persimmon

Hickory nuts Dandelion greens

Morels

Spicebush

Continued from page 32 But hickory nuts, unlike pecans, are time-consuming to shell, even when done by machine, so the nuts have never caught on on a large scale, despite the taste. If you have the time to spare, then get your hands on some Ohio hickory nuts and start shelling; you’ll be rewarded.

Even the pawpaw, for all its versatility and fruity splendor, is tough to make commercially viable on a mass scale.

“They are super fragile and bruise eaily, so it’s hard to get them to the grocery store,” Chmiel says. In addition to their fragility, their window of ripeness is narrow — so that combination means most people haven’t heard of pawpaws and wouldn’t know what to do with them if they got some.

Chmiel says the secret to enjoying pawpaw is to eat them at the right time. If they aren’t ripe, they’ll taste horrible. “When they’re ripe, they’ll fall from the tree, and that’s when you have to get them,” Chmiel says. Eating them fresh is best (“It’s like eating tropical pudding,” Chmiel says), but if you have enough, you can freeze them year-round for smoothies, ice cream, and other desserts.

Tanner Filyaw is the sustainable forestry program director for Rural Action, an Athens County nonprofit that develops sustainability in the region’s forests, where conditions and culture have long made native edibles valuable. He says that just about any Ohioan with some natural habitat on their property can usually find something to cultivate and forage, even in Ohio’s glaciated north and west, where native edibles have mostly been cleared for farming over the years.

However, he says, the native plant life and biodiversity of Ohio’s Appalachian region have remained mostly intact, and that has created a veritable salad bowl in the hills of Athens, Gallia, Meigs, and other counties in the area where chickweed, wild greens, and violets beckon.

“Every property is different, but every property has at least some habitat,” Filyaw says. Much depends on “microclimates” unique to each property: a cool creek bed, a sunny slope, or a dark forest floor.

Upon a property owner’s request, Rural Action representatives will come out to a parcel and develop a management plan, matching the best habitats with the most suitable native elements. Many times, the property owners will already have foragable native plants on their property.

As a general rule, the north and east slopes of hillsides are where you find prized plants like ramps, morels, sunchokes, and medicinal herbs like ginseng. Pawpaws tend to favor shady stream corridors.

Ohio’s Appalachia is steeped in deep traditions surrounding medicinal and food folklore, so there is a receptive audience to Chmiel’s message. “The native-grown foods really bring people together,” Chmiel says.

Above, from left: Spicebush leaves steep for a calming cup of tea. Chris Chmiel sorts homegrown hickory nuts on this Athens County farm. Chmiel checks his farm for wild edibles — he cultivates native plants while also enjoying the natural bounty on his farm. Bottom photo: Chmiel checks out a pawpaw tree growing on his homestead where he has native thickets as well as some planted rows.