Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
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I'm always curious about native foods so I looked this up. The plant is probably Peltandra virginica, which was supposedly eaten by indigenous people.
> The plant is rich in calcium oxylate, this is toxic and if consumed makes the mouth and digestive tract feel as though hundreds of tiny needles are being stuck into it. However, calcium oxylate is easily destroyed by thoroughly cooking or drying the plant https://practicalplants.org/wiki/Peltandra_virginica
I assume they mean calcium oxalate, which is also present in many food crops that must be cooked (e.g. taro root and the fruit of the peach palm).
Can I ask more about your curiosity about native foods? It's been a big interest of mine as well ever since I found out about NUS[0] and the general realization that edible plants exist everywhere if you have enough knowledge about your environment
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglected_and_underutilized_cr...
I got into it by wandering around the SF Bay Area and looking up plants with fruits on them to see if they were edible. That was how I ended up cracking open hollyleaf cherry pits and leaching the cyanide out of them, and roasting and grinding bay nuts to add them to chocolate cake.
There are indeed a lot of interesting native and introduced edible plants. It causes me to pay a lot more attention to the nature around me and to learn a lot of new things. I've thankfully avoided a visit to the hospital so far :)
Our stories are not actually all that different haha. I started the same way, mostly from getting into iNaturalist. I'm in SoCal right now and the landscapers seem obsessed with planting Natal Plums everywhere. I get some weird looks by people seeing me pick these big bright red juicy fruit next to their parking lots but they've become one of my favorite fruits, haha
If you're interested in this type of data, I've also been collecting resources like this. One of my favorites is the FAO's EcoPort[0] which has some of the most bizarre web design I've come across, but has really rich data. There's also the NAEB DB[1] which is the most complete collection of documented edible, medicinal, and other plant uses by Native American groups that I've come across. And since you linked PracticalPlants I'm guessing you're already aware of PFAF and related projects haha
[0] http://ecoport.org/ep?SearchType=displayMenu&menu=Basic_Sear... [1] http://naeb.brit.org/
Account of how native people used various plants: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65605/65605-0.txt
Simple guide to indigenous foods of California: https://www.kcet.org/shows/tending-the-wild/a-guide-to-some-...
Food Plants of the North American Indians (sorry for the terrible Google PDF link, it's hard to get the real link on mobile): https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
Aside: the first random fruit I tried was Arbutus Unedo (strawberry tree), which is not native around here but is planted very commonly as a landscaping tree. Tastes kinda like a bland peach.
Maize is another good example of this. When white people took corn with them and forced parts of Africa to grow it from them, they didn't take along with them the knowledge of the complex process of nixtamalization. That's the way native peoples prepared corn to make it edible. It removes aflotoxins and makes nutrients in the maize more accessible.
In areas in Africa where maize replaced what they'd been growing, famines skyrocketed because they didn't know how to eat/process the corn
A lot of my family in the Philippines have pigs in their back yard. It's not a set-and-forget affair. You like cleaning up kitty litter? Times the cleanup job by about a million, with a hose, and gumboots.
What I remember as a distinct challenge is the horrible experience of killing them and then butchering them. That was the worst “clean up”. Pigs are really wonderful animals when given the right treatment and environment. They’re very sweet, excitable, intelligent beings. They’re also maybe the hardest thing to catch when they inevitably escape their pens.
My grandparents had about 3 pigs, 2 cows and one horse in a common animal yard, covered in large, raised river stone, and a yard within the yard just for the pigs. The pigs also had a separate stable room for sleeping (really dirty indeed) and the cows and horse would sleep together in the same stable room (even though they had available individual rooms, I guess the horse didn't like to sleep alone).
I think they cleaned the pig yard every couple of weeks; they had to clean the stables every few days and the common animal yard once per season.
It was common in older days that pigs were raised in communal mountain herds, they were semi-wild, foraging in the woods, mostly on beech nuts, but they would return in the evening at a common stable/den.
Anyway, cleaning wasn't the hardest part, imho, but bringing water and hay/food for the larger animals was, especially in bad weather.
I find it astonishing how little "foreign" food the pigs required. It was scraps from us and special nutritious weeds from vegetable gardens. In later years people started intensively feeding the pigs and they do get higher yields/less work.
We're also lucky in that our village butchers also has an abattoir round the back so they only need to be taken two miles away to be killed.
I think that a goat might be a better idea. I love goat milk products, so no killing is necessary to make keeping them worthwhile. They are also cute!
My grandfather used to do it for the whole village and his only reward was the testicles themselves, which I remember were quite tasty when properly grilled :)
I exited after 15s of watching the embedded, auto-loading video at the top of the article. Around then, I realized this video was irrelevant.