Gone Picking!

Springtime is a great time of year to be outside: the sun is shining, leaves are returning to the trees, plants are growing and flowers are blooming, and all kinds of creatures are out and about. In the month of May, some very special plants are growing in our valley. A few weeks ago, Brenda and Irene took our Division 2 class out to the Botany Valley to pick sTweta and Tatoon: wild spinach and wild potatoes. What an adventure we had! 

 As we soon discovered, picking Tatoon is harder than it looks. We came with spoons and sticks and even some crow-bars to dig up our Tatoon. The first thing you need to do when picking Tatoon is look for patches of white flowers. We were lucky, because the field we found was just covered in blooms! It was like an ocean of tiny petals.

Check out this video of a Division 2 student digging for Tatoon. She is using a spoon to try and wedge the roots of the Tatoon plant up and out of the soil. 

Here's the potato she ended up uncovering from the Tatoon plant she dug up! 

Even though the digging was tough, we had a lot of success. The Tatoon we found varied in size from potatoes as tiny as peas to ones as giant as baseballs. When we cooked these up later, back at school, we discovered that they tasted a lot like the potatoes you can buy at the grocery store. We boiled them and then fried them in margarine to make them crispy on the outside! Mmmmm!

A crowbar makes a great digging tool.

Teamwork makes the job easier!

 

We also found an excellent spot for picking sTweta. sTweta is easy to spot because it has bright yellow flowers and very distinctive leaves. The leaves are long and rounded - they look a little bit like fingers! sTweta also has a really delicate sweet smell, so it's easy to tell if you're picking the right plant! It tastes great freshly picked, especially the white root tips, but it also tastes yummy when it's steamed with a little melted butter on top. We tried it both ways, and it was delicious! 

The sTweta grows on hillsides.

This student picked a whole bag full!

We were very fortunate to have an elder join us on our picking trip. Ellen showed us how to dig up Tatoon and how to spot sTweta. She shared some stories with us about picking when she was growing up. Thank-you, Ellen, for teaching us about picking! 

Ellen holds up a sTweta plant. You can see its white roots and long green leaves.

Thanks also to Irene and Brenda, who organized our trip! 

Leave us a comment:

How many Tatoon did you dig up?

What is your favourite traditional food?

What other things do you like to pick in the springtime?