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Fall Vibes and Plant Folklore
153 Plays2 years ago
Today we have a special episode for you. In honor of October being the spooky season, we're going to dive into some of the most intriguing plant folklore, superstitions, and other spooky topics that have shaped our relationship with plants and nature. From the deadly nightshade to mandrake root, we'll uncover the myths and legends behind these plants and how they influenced history, and culture. So grab your pumpkin spice latte and join us for this eerie episode of Hort Culture.
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Horticulture and Lard Cakes
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Horticulture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
00:00:15
Speaker
And welcome to this plant podcast that is about lard. That is the topic of the moment. So, uh, let's, let's throw it back to, uh, I'm sorry, lard cakes were the topic of discussion, I believe. Yes. Lard cakes. Uh, my grandmother would make on the old wood fire stove. She would basically take lard and some kind of very simple mixture and deep fry that. I mean, so far, so good, right? Lord and deep fry.
00:00:44
Speaker
I mean, chefs in France are just like rolling over in the grave. They know the value of lard. They know.
Lard Cakes and Fall Food Traditions
00:00:52
Speaker
Yes, it moves the flavor around, actually. But she would make these called lard cakes, and I guess it was sort of an Appalachian thing back in the day. And we would have those things. It was funnel cake-like, but at the same time, it was a bit different. It was a lot heavier.
00:01:08
Speaker
And it was so so good, but like any sort of sugar glaze on the outside. But it was the had the oil had to be just the right temperature and then Lord would interact with that and would form like a glaze on the outside and she would know when the stove was just hot enough because she had used the same store for.
00:01:29
Speaker
Coastal. Time out of mine, yeah. No electricity. Wood stove, no electricity. Grandmother never had electricity. But seeing that process was phenomenal for me. But I started this conversation because fall, I always think about all the festivals, and then I start to think about funnel cakes, and then I start to think about lard cakes, and one of them leads to another in my mind. But it's the fall season. It's this season not only of spookiness for me, but of eating and feasting.
00:01:56
Speaker
So as a dumb, dumb city boy by trade, would you say that? By nature. Is it typical that would the hogs be typically slaughtered in the fall or? Well, we did. We would normally slaughter out a couple a year and it was in the fall time of the year because that's when they're at the proper weight and they're ready to ready to go to market or not the market. They would go to the butcher. We never, you know,
00:02:25
Speaker
some years we would butcher them ourselves and hang them up and go through the whole process. And that was an interesting process in itself, talking about being close to your food. I love that process as a kid, but sometimes we would take them and actually have them rendered out later on. Did you all have like a, like a smokehouse to like hang hams and stuff? No, we had a tree that had a limb that came out at a 90 degree angle. And then we had a kind of a come along that we would, you know, dispatch the animal humanely.
00:02:53
Speaker
That was always important to my dad because he loved animals. My father actually loved animals. So we would, you know, the hog would be killed and hung up. And then it was like a gathering of uncles
Modern References and Folkloric Traditions
00:03:03
Speaker
and aunts. And we would have kind of a big day where we would get together, heat a bunch of water in large containers because there's this process to remove the hair that they have to be kind of heated in there and then scraped very quickly and cleaned up. And that very same day we would always have tenderloin.
00:03:19
Speaker
From us kids knew that that was coming behind tenderloin. My favorite thing was cracklings, which is basically the lard of the hog being rendered out and it's like a precursor to a pork rind. It's what pork rinds wish they were.
00:03:35
Speaker
cracklings. And I guess you guys, we can still get cracklings in the store. I guess I see them from time to time. They're, they're similar. They're like a pork crab, but they have more soft fat on them. Yeah. They're not as fresh as I'm accustomed to, but yeah, I love cracklings. I love the fall season because I'm associated in all this with when we were, you know, kind of, yeah, lard and go through and turn animals into lard. Yes.
00:04:00
Speaker
Lard cakes and pumpkin spice lattes, baby. PSL and lard, nothing better than pumpkin spice lattes and lard. If Ray Tackett was two things, it would be those two. Like when you get you a candle, it's like pumpkin spice lard. Yes, a lard, lard, pumpkin lard. I don't know what it would be called. I appreciate you sharing that because I mean- Lard spice.
00:04:21
Speaker
As far as Kentucky goes, you got the deepest, the deepest roots and, and, uh, particularly agricultural roots in Kentucky of any of us. And I don't know about that. You guys have awesome backgrounds as well. Oh, it's just, it's just my dining room. It's just your dining room, but those are my degrees. I love it. Yeah. I know hearing about that stuff is, is, is really grounding for me. And it just kind of reminds me that there are these really deep, uh, you know,
00:04:50
Speaker
traditions, folk traditions in some cases that define the year and help connect with seasonality and all that kind of stuff. And I think that's kind of along the lines of what we're talking about today is some of the folkloric, I don't know if it'll be too spooky for
Unusual Coffee Additives and Personal Anecdotes
00:05:06
Speaker
me. If it is, I'll just close my eyes. Some of the different folkloric things around horticulture. But before we do that, shout out to maybe my favorite specialty crop, which is coffee.
00:05:19
Speaker
Just made myself a coffee for a second. I was like, I thought you said, which is coffee. You said, which is coffee? I was like, Oh, which is coffee? Tell me more boil, boil, call in trouble.
00:05:33
Speaker
Well, I mean, if the witches just gave us regular coffee, they can call it witches coffee if they want. True, true. If it's more like, I don't know what that would be. Have you ever heard of a bullet coffee, I think is what it's called? With the butter in it? With the butter in it. What would it be called if you put lard in it? Better. Nuclear coffee?
00:05:54
Speaker
Ultimate. Bullet coffee? It would. Nuclear coffee. Nuclear coffee. I don't know. Footheels coffee, yeah. Oh, I like that. Just see that the former Kentucky quarterback, Will Levis, who now plays for the Tennessee Titans, puts mayonnaise in his coffee.
00:06:11
Speaker
He's now, he has a sponsorship for a lifetime supply of Hellman's mayonnaise as a result. Is that like a dietary lubricant? Or what would be the motivating factor? I don't know. Well, there's like fat and like some salt, salt to like open up, you know, a lot of flavors, but it's not something I've ever done. Yeah, I can't. I want to try it, but I don't want to hate myself. Until you really, really like kind of whisk it with the stirrer, it's like chunk.
00:06:39
Speaker
It's like a lot of it at least melts into it. Have you ever made the mistake on a table of mistaking something like butter for mayo or did one of those? Not good. Milk and water. It's like a cup you can't see through and you think my mom would always drink cold milk on a hot day and the rest of us are normal people who drink water. I try to forget you're from Northern Appalachia. You got to cool off.
00:07:06
Speaker
We had all matching like cups right and you had to remember where you put it so if you didn't you grab the wrong one and you take a swig and it's milk instead of water like it.
00:07:16
Speaker
Oh, that's the worst. The consistency of it and everything. Yeah, just everything is not right. I grew up with a long line of buttermilk drinkers, and I still don't get that. I was the one in my family that would back away slowly. My brother would drink it by the half-gallon quantity. And me, just the opposite. I'd rather eat my food than drink it. I was like, no, thank you. I had the buttermilk. Make buttermilk. Because it's got that sour a little bit, too. It's the sour, yeah. When I was younger, I would do
00:07:44
Speaker
like whole or like unprocessed kind of raw milk, but eat buttermilk is like a bridge too far. My grandmother would put like crack pepper in it and then drink it at that. And I was like, whoa. Interesting. Is that like the quick version of biscuits and gravy or something? I don't know, man. I don't know. But that was that was those are my Appalachian roots. Drinkable biscuits.
Regional Food Traditions and Debates
00:08:10
Speaker
I like it. It's a crazy how, you know, regionally.
00:08:33
Speaker
people eat different as far as locally and at which time period they used to, you know, they at one time ate locally. I know that when I was in Northern Kentucky working for the extension service, they had kind of a neat sort of niche up in Northern Kentucky that they ate. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. I didn't learn about. They had their own little niche up next to the river of, I guess, the Germans. It was really interesting, the different foods that they had up there that was normal to them. Then that wasn't to me.
00:09:03
Speaker
I think the brand is called just like Getta, but it now sponsors, I think US Bank Arena is a sponsor. So like when you go to US Bank Arena, you can get Getta say like on different things and like Getta nachos and stuff. Cause they're a sponsor. I typed it into a popular search engine and it auto completed with Getta Fest. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's a huge thing. I'm from that area. So, uh, like everybody I know goes to that and it's pretty cool.
00:09:33
Speaker
I like the definition because I mean, you know, I've had it tell everybody what the oats mix, but the first sentence is get a is a meat and grain sausage or mush of German inspiration. Popular Metro Cincinnati. It's ground meat with steel cut oats and spices. You're stretching how far the meat can go by adding oats in. It's like adding noodles to your chili. Yes, but better stretching it because or rice to anything.
00:10:00
Speaker
I know. I had multiple people who do listen to this podcast be like, message me with either two or four noodles in the chili. That is what they honed in on was like, noodles do go on chili or agree. Noodles do not plan anything, just the noodles and the chili. Give us your take on get it, people. Well, I made chili the other night and I unbeknownst to Annie laid a trap where I said,
00:10:28
Speaker
Now you could choose what you would like to make, what grain you'd like to have with it. It's totally done when you get home from work. Just choose if you want to make rice or you want to make pasta. She chose rice. Nice. So let's not take what she says too seriously.
00:10:46
Speaker
That's my noodle. I mean, that just proves it, right? My mother's from Pennsylvania, right? Even when you go find something else, you see the rice, you know, the rice is good. Yeah. That was good. That was a lot of sugar. I mean, the only way I ever had rice growing up was with lots of sugar. We had that as kind of a dessert that was sitting on the table at almost every meal. There was fried potatoes, soup beans, cornbread, and usually some kind of rice with sugar on it.
Eggnog and Alcohol in Traditions
00:11:13
Speaker
Maybe we need to do a whole, you know, cuisines intersecting with horticultural products at some point. I would actually, it's not horticultural, but I'd like to, have you ever had like true, like real eggnog?
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah. The way you said it makes me think I haven't. Yeah, you can't buy it. I'm questioning. You can only get it for one man who lives in a shack. It's kind of a white knuckle process, I think a little bit. It's slow, but it's white knuckles for that whole period of time because it's like raw eggs and you're just letting it sit and kind of hang out with alcohol and other stuff. So anyway. I could go wrong.
00:11:53
Speaker
I guess the alcohol prevents some bacterial formation, right? I don't know. Again, a lot of that stuff was was like they had alcohol in it because it would make it so it wouldn't give you gerardia or whatever. But I don't know that I would drink. So you wouldn't die. Well, like the beer would be safer than the water, that kind of thing. And gerardia, we don't mean gerardia butler either. We mean the other kind of stuff from season one, episode one.
Folklore and Plant Superstitions
00:12:22
Speaker
But we're talking today more about folk traditions and stories and narratives and that kind of stuff for fall. Who wants to crack this open? It's not necessarily dealing with fall, but it's one I've heard all my life and I can't not pin down. I think I know what it's going to be, but go ahead. Knock on wood. Is it going to be about the moon calendar? No, it's knock on wood.
00:12:48
Speaker
It's plant based. But I want to hear about what you were asking about. Do you guys know anything about the origin of knock on wood? I've read multiple accounts, but never can get a definitive answer. I've read everything from the cross and crossed and good luck and tree spirits and the Celts and that would keep away evil spirits because they were trapped within the wood. I've heard lots of things, but I've always wanted to know the
00:13:17
Speaker
The reason they say touch wood in Britain, but it's the same thing. It's a concept. Yeah, I always thought that was a cool one, but I don't understand why I'm saying knock on wood.
00:13:29
Speaker
I never understood that. Why am I knocking on the wood? It depends on where you're at in the world that everybody's got their own version of it. I wonder if it's similar to one that I read specifically about bay trees, which is not going to be. That's like your boyfriend or girlfriend tree? Yeah, bay. It's the tree before anyone else. Tyler tree.
00:13:55
Speaker
your bay tree, which we don't have here. But supposedly, and I think I love this because of all the things it protects you against. But if you stand by one, you don't even have to touch it, apparently. But if you stand by a bay tree, you cannot be hurt by witches, the devil or lightning. OK.
00:14:17
Speaker
It actually also said thunder and I was not aware you could be hurt by thunder. So that was news to me. Maybe you like traumatize. Yeah. So, but it's interesting. I wonder, you know, you read all of these and you see how they all kind of relate back. So like knocking on wood, touch wood, stand by a certain type of tree. Let's see what you're saying. Yeah. Like if it's.
00:14:41
Speaker
I bet it has kind of those pagan. Yeah, some kind of protection thing, right? Like that's the common theme that you get protection against bad luck or against lightning. Well, that's sort of like the Kelter's version was kind of that because spirits are embodied within trees and trees are made out of wood. So there was a tradition of knocking on the trees to wake up the spirits when you're getting ready to ask for something. Yeah. So the knock on wood, that was one version.
00:15:10
Speaker
Don't knock on my door when you want something. You will not get the good spirit. Also, I love that. There is this kind of common thing with protection and plants and that even like some of the, let's say, mythological origins of medicine are these like relationships that people have with plants. But that's like garlic, is it not? I want to hear you guys take, I know you guys praying the whole vampire and garlic thing. Isn't it sort of like that is the medicinal value somehow tied in with that?
00:15:39
Speaker
That is the big garlic. I just opened it. So many medicines that are critical today come from plants, right? There's like that direct connection, but, you know, and kind of pre-modernity, there was just the association of like herbs and plants and what they can do for us. Or the way that they looked even like ginseng. I think of ginseng looking like a, or mandrel. Looking like a dude or a person. Yes, yes. And I hadn't even thought about ginseng, which I dug a lot growing up, you know, always in season, mind you.
00:16:08
Speaker
But for the wild ginseng, because it had more contortions and had more resemblance to a person than cultivated ginseng, which was not typically grown in rocky environments. So it was smoother. It would not bring a tenth of the price for the buyers of that. But yeah, I never thought about that. But it's sort of like you're saying, how it ties back and how the associations work.
00:16:34
Speaker
with medicine or whatever. Or protection in the broader sense, right? Yeah. Well, I was reading on garlic and why that's my ultimate spooky thing because I mean, Bram Stoker's Dracula, you know, hey, garlic was in there several times.
00:16:49
Speaker
while I was in there. So I started looking, trying to track down the legend of garlic. And I guess the only thing that I could come up with over several sources, and this was even as a kid trying to read, now it's much easier. You've got the Google and the internet to do research. Hopefully you're using good sources, but garlic and all of its antimicrobial properties, and it's just one of the most ancient horticulture crops, five, 7,000 years old, Babylonians and the whole garlic crescent thing. But it goes back so far into antiquity.
00:17:19
Speaker
But because of its properties of being able to cure certain diseases that was associated and vampirism, I guess, uh, was associated to be like a malady or a disease. And I guess that's why it's associated with that. But there's different stories. Once again, today we're talking about folklore and myth. So there's probably more or less no definitive answers, uh, for some of these things. But I thought it was pretty interesting. Why is garlic a, you know, associated with a whole vampire mythology? So yeah.
00:17:52
Speaker
This is an interesting this whole conversation, it's making me think that you all are crazy. No, it's making me think that Welcome to the podcast. I'm gonna take some Andre group. It's making me think that about
00:18:10
Speaker
Uh, you know, we're, we have this role in extension and part of what we're doing is to work from, you know, science-based recommendations and all of that. And we talk about all that stuff and, and, you know, to take a little bit of a heady step out of the conversation, science is just one of one epistemology. It's just one way of knowing about the world.
Balancing Science and Folklore
00:18:33
Speaker
It's one that's really good, it's really helpful, and it informs a lot of good decision making. It's also informed a whole lot of bad decision making in some of the darkest periods in human history, to be honest, but shout out Oppenheimer. Have you guys seen the movie? I was saying, have we seen Oppenheimer? Shout out Barbie as well. It's because you can, doesn't mean you should. Barbie and Oppenheimer, the highs and lows of the scientific paradigm.
00:18:57
Speaker
But I think that it's important to, you know, Josh has already started talking about this idea of just acknowledging other epistemological viewpoints, other ways of understanding the world that they may be less precise in a scientific sense, or they may be less, you know, definable in some ways, and there may be challenges, they may be wrong, you know. But to sort of dismiss them out of hand or talk about them in some sort of disparaging or condescending way is just so counter
00:19:27
Speaker
to the flow of human history in a productive way in my opinion. A lot of these things are the basis of modern inquiry as far as way back when you made observations, you didn't always have the instrumentation to draw an empirical connection or quantifiable connection, but you knew through observation that
00:19:47
Speaker
You know, this equaled that. Yeah, you made observations and before, you know, modern medicine, modern equipment, and, you know, ways of looking at tiny little things like viruses. Before all of that, you just had observation. You had these astute observers that said, hey,
00:20:05
Speaker
I noticed that when I rubbed this on my arm and I got into stinging nettle, which is, I hate that plant. Oh my gosh. But they would rub certain plants on there and it would ease the pain. It would have an analgesic effect. So it was observation. So Brad, I think you're on to something. Now, later on, those
00:20:25
Speaker
Some of those things led to more experimentation and refinement of dosing and things like that and distillation of medicine. So that's still the foundation of a lot of our modern discoveries and like antibiotics and things that we used. I mean, the precursors to all that were just people using things because they observed that it had the effect that they wanted.
00:20:46
Speaker
So, yeah. Yeah. There's just a rich, a rich, you know, longer term. Maybe we can move faster through uncovering new knowledge through science, but, you know, sometimes a thousand years of experience is more worthwhile than, you know, a year of clinical trials in some cases. And, you know, a classic example is like the microbiome.
00:21:08
Speaker
our understanding and germ theory and eradicating all microbes as if we do that, then we won't get sick anymore. And then you have all of these extensive traditions of fermentation and of living in harmony with the microbiome and understanding things about the birth process that might have effects on that later in life, et cetera. All of those things that are
00:21:36
Speaker
In terms of human life and the outcomes that they experience, enhancing quality of life, in many cases far ahead of our ability to grasp exactly what's happening. There's just something there, I don't know, that's worth exploring and thinking about. I try to take the best of both our all worlds and perspectives as much as possible.
Persimmons and Native Fruit Traditions
00:22:00
Speaker
So to pull us back from whatever, I just took us down from the precipice. Let's go into the woo woo. That's what I was like. Persimmon seeds. Oh yeah. Can they or can't they tell the future? Tell us more. The idea here, so if you're not familiar with persimmons, interestingly, the
00:22:27
Speaker
often referred to botanic or referred to, they are related to the ebony tree. Persimmon trees are related to ebony sometimes called white ebony. Well, a bougie of them. Yeah. Yeah. Contradiction in terms, I love it. White ebony.
00:22:43
Speaker
They have a fruit that they produce late in the season. There's all kinds of thoughts about the best persimmons are the ones that you pick after the frost in terms of taste and all that kind of stuff. It's a native fruit to this part of the country. You only make the mistake one time ever if you eat them before the frost. Right. All the moisture is gone.
00:23:06
Speaker
They're very stringent, if you're wondering what that means. Like in your mouth, all of the moisture is gone. Is that what you mean? No, just in the world. You are a husk of a person. Oh my God. This sounds like folklore. No, no. It is the native percentage. You only make the mistake for one time. I couldn't talk for 15 minutes. It was interesting. It's the longest I ever went without talking. Wow.
00:23:31
Speaker
But sorry, Brett, you were saying. Well, that's okay. And so anyway, I think Pawpaws get a lot of acclaim in the native fruit world. And I'll just say, I know it'll get some hate. I'm not a big Pawpaw fan. I don't really like them that much. That's fair. I like it. We're distinct. But anyway, Pawpaws related to bananas. It takes all kinds of people to make a world. That's right. Even if you're wrong. All kinds of things.
00:23:59
Speaker
Just saying, take a look at some of the evidence about Pawpaws and Ananesan toxicity, neurotoxicity. I'm just saying. They also push everything right out of you in case you were wondering, they're diuretic. Okay.
00:24:16
Speaker
Persimmons, I think are the, to me, the underdog native fruit that is a pretty cool one. And there is a folk tradition of if you take and cut the seeds of a persimmon in half and you look at that cross profile, it will give you an indication of the relative mildness or harshness of the winter, depending, and or snowfall.
00:24:44
Speaker
And so the way that it manifests, and you can look up pictures of this online, if you cut it, and if it looks, now I'm going to get them mixed up, but if it looks like a knife, it will be a, I think, the wind, hard, harsh winter, slicing, frigid wind. If it's a fork, it will be a mild winter.
00:25:07
Speaker
because the wind will only fork through you. No big deal. Yeah, totally. And if it's a spoon- Interesting. I'd never heard that one. The spoon is like the scooping dynamic of having to shovel snow.
00:25:22
Speaker
So if there's a spoon in it, it's going to be a big snowfall year. So, uh, it's actually kind of cool. And some of the, you know, as you can might imagine with a natural seed product, some, some of the revelations, depending on the cut and everything else are clearer than others, but there are some of them where it is very clearly a spoon or very clearly a knife, which is pretty cool. I don't, I don't know that there's been, what's that? It's the embryo. Yeah. The embryo. Yo.
00:25:51
Speaker
That's a tradition kind of, I guess in a sense, it's a look ahead on Punxsutawney Phil's outlook on things in the fall to be able to fall in early winter to be able to see, what's this winter going to be like? Did you find out which region or part of the world that one came from, Brett? Any idea? That's pretty interesting. I believe it's like a central Appalachian thing. Okay, got you.
00:26:19
Speaker
because persimmons are all over the place, native persimmons. So it would make sense that a lot of those traditions are drawn on what's around you. So that would kind of make sense. I could see that. There is a persimmon tree at the Arboretum.
00:26:31
Speaker
And I have yet to time it right to go get myself some, but... It seems like the cultivated persimmons, you can eat those before the frost, some of those, but the natives, you don't want to do that. Definitely don't want to do that. And Alexis said, if you eat it, there's another folkloric issue. If you eat it, all of the water goes out of the world. You're having a lot of rain. Literally, we'll only do that once. Nobody do that. I have created Ragnarok.
00:27:00
Speaker
How about guys and I did not look this up and I should have. I know there's lore behind it, lots of lore, but how do we get to pumpkins during Halloween? How do we get to that? Somebody mentioned that the last show or so we were having a conversation maybe before we even started recording. What's up with that?
00:27:18
Speaker
Alexis, what did you say? Turnip the volume. Wasn't it something to do with turnips? I thought like the first pumpkin jack-o'-lanterns were turnips. Yeah, they were actually turnips. It seems like our history channel had a Halloween special maybe a few years ago, several years ago. I believe that there was a strong tradition and just like most of the things we know about Christmas or Easter or everything else, they are these
00:27:47
Speaker
Christianized pagan practices, so to speak, but I think there was a long history of carving, not just turnips, but other types of vegetables, particularly in parts of the British Isles.
Pumpkin Carving and Fall Plants
00:28:00
Speaker
You know, because you get to a certain point and it's like we've got enough root vegetables to save for the winter. And this one's huge. It's going to taste terrible. So let's make a base out of it. Yeah, exactly. This is me, me, you know, editorializing on the process. But that's probably what it would be like if like me and Josh were there growing these. Maybe it'll keep away evil spirits. Pick it out. That one's the size of my head. Yeah. And the rest is your face into it. And I think that that that
00:28:31
Speaker
tradition and process was then interpreted or was taken, you know, rolled into, I would guess like a Celtic kind of tradition, if I'm remembering correctly, was then rolled into more mainstream British culture and then American culture. But as far as the leap from turnip to pumpkin, that much I'm not exactly sure, I don't know if there is a clear historical jump.
00:29:01
Speaker
I mean, you got to scoop out the guts anyways, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. Makes me wonder, too, if. Well, it's like if maybe pumpkins as we know them originated in North America. So it's probably some kind of a change. That's what I'm just now seeing. And I'm just looking through one of the Britannica sites, which, you know, is usually a pretty good source of info. It says in Ireland, people started to carve demonic faces out of termics to frighten away the legend of Jack, the wandering soul.
00:29:30
Speaker
Oh, Irish immigrants moved to the US. They began carving jack of lanterns from pumpkins as they were native to the region. So there you go, Josh, you hit it. So that's why I'd often wonder, I'd never stopped or, you know, put a lot of thought into that. How do we get from the turnips? I do remember something about that being their traditional.
00:29:47
Speaker
you know, carving and lantern holders, you know, that would be carried around, you know, during the Halloween season, in all of its different versions. But yeah, I'd never say that was an upgrade going from turnip to pumpkin. I think so. I think so. In some ways, but I mean, on the other hand. Noodles to rice.
00:30:05
Speaker
Oh, that's a big turnip. If you've got enough to carve a face in a turnip, the terms can be pretty big. To me, if you want to eat that turnip, the turnip would be more, more analogous to like carving out of wood. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so in that regard, you could do it, you could have some detail and things, but I will say I've seen some crazy. In a in a of Bella rooms and her dad and their family,
00:30:35
Speaker
Have done some crazy pumpkin carving, like large pumpkins. Uh, because the, the side walls of the pumpkin are so thick, they have a lot of relief and things that you can have the light shine through. If you carve it just at the right, it has the big Jack O'Lantern festival. Hmm.
00:30:54
Speaker
You can drive, or I think now they reverted back to walking through post COVID, but the carvings are absolutely art. It's a form of art, what they've, what, you know, can be done with a pumpkin. And I guess guys, that's specific types of pumpkins, isn't it? Pumpkins that have probably what a thicker rind. They're not necessarily pie pumpkins, I'm guessing. Not bread specific, probably bread for a specific purpose, I'm guessing. Yeah. Those selected for certain qualities. I'm not a pumpkin expert.
00:31:23
Speaker
No, I just know that they're different because of the walls of those things when you go to get, you know, if that's what, you know, farmers typically grow if they have a farm and they know people are going to be carving jack-o'-lanterns. The thickness of the sidewall on those pumpkins are three times thicker than pumpkins we grew growing up. So I just have a feeling that I know that modern, you know, pumpkins are also grown for transport and they have to be a little tougher because pumpkin bins are large and
00:31:53
Speaker
These bins are heavy and you don't want the bottom layer of pumpkins to crush down, but they also carve very well. But another question for you guys. I know we're on folklore, but I'm thinking all things fall and seasonal sort of Halloween, but what other plants scream like Halloween or fall to you guys that when you think of fall, you think of that plant besides pumpkins. That's already taken. We've talked about that. Do you guys have anything that just jumps to the front of your mind?
00:32:24
Speaker
I mean, I'll throw one out there. I think of not pumpkins at all, but cushalls. We used to grow cushalls and we always decorated that at the farm. We didn't have a lot of trick-or-treaters. We were sort of remote, but we would put a fodder shock up.
00:32:36
Speaker
cut corn stalks that were dried and they would be bound up and we would put kushaws around those. Of course, we ate a lot of kushaw because they were easy to grow. But that's, I think of kushaws even before I think of pumpkins when I think of fall. Delicious. But plants like that, anything that kind of defines. Apples. Yeah, that is a good one. Yeah, nothing better than apple orchards in the fall.
00:33:01
Speaker
I have a Yankee story for you that reminded me of, so my parents are from New York and Pennsylvania and my mom's from like the Appalachian side of Pennsylvania, but they grow different stuff there, right? And I remember when we moved to our farm in quote unquote Northern Kentucky, it's not really Northern Kentucky, but close enough.
00:33:21
Speaker
We lived on like a dead end road and bought a piece of a farm from the farmer who essentially used to own the entire road and they were still alive and lived in this little white house and they were real sweet. And I remember I would have been like, I don't know, 10 or something like that. And I remember the
00:33:40
Speaker
farmer's wife came over and brought my mom some kushaws and was really excited to give her some kushaws as her neighbor and mom was like, thanks.
00:33:53
Speaker
I mean, as a horticulturist now, remembering it, I'm pretty sure it was like one that you can make a kushar pie out of. But my mom was like, no idea what this is. Never heard of a kushar pie. No idea what that was. And they're wild looking, if you're not familiar. They're wild looking, yeah. Look them up there. She was just like, thank you so much. And then was like, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this. And it was just like a funny thing looking back now.
00:34:16
Speaker
that we had those and then she, I guess we put them on the porch for decor or something like that. They last a long time. They do, they last a long time and then we had them coming up where the animals eventually got them and we had them coming up in the pasture one year.
00:34:32
Speaker
We always divided those up. There was the hard ones that you couldn't cut with an axe. Like we would test to make sure that we did not have the thick grind cushaws that were just, they were almost all shell. All hard, no good stuff on the inside. Then there was the softer cushaws. Just for ladles.
00:34:48
Speaker
Yeah, but if in doubt, if it's a cucurbit or something along those lines, like a kushaw, brown sugar and butter. Just take a chance. Roll the dice. It's going to be amazing. And then bake it. Just bake it. You know what I've been doing with winter squash for the last few years? What have you got? I smoke them. Oh. Never done them. Peel the butternut. Like any kind of winter squash?
00:35:12
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much anything that you would put into like, yeah. So like I like we have butternuts, for instance, right now and some acorns and a couple other things, but I'll take and peel peel them, scoop out the seeds and then put them on the I just use a Weber kettle with some charcoal and some applewood or whatever you want to do and let them smoke at 250 degrees for a number of hours and they get this like sweet smokiness and then you can
00:35:41
Speaker
take those and you can put them in the fridge, you can put them in a plastic bag and put them in the freezer, and then take them and chop them up and put them in a stew. You can... Wow. Make them bowl and stick them in the stew. Yeah, exactly. I have. I have. I'm cutting those up before you grill them or smoke them. Are you cutting them in any way before you smoke them? If I'm gonna use them for a particular way, I'll just cut them to whatever size I want. If I'm just gonna use them, like prepare them to be used for something later, I just cut them in half, just two big halves of it. I gotcha, yeah.
00:36:10
Speaker
So you don't have to like cube them or anything like small, like cut them up. Yeah, I don't. And you know, you can then cut it up and put it, it's a nice filler for things like, you know, beans for beans and rice or nachos or whatever. Put it in, like I mentioned, a soup or stew. Do it as just a mix in for like a alternative stir fry or something like that. But it just enhances, like it draws out a little bit of the moisture.
00:36:35
Speaker
And so it makes it a little bit sweeter, a little bit more intense. Probably when you cook it doesn't fall apart or just hold together very well, I imagine. I'm into this. All right. Good to know. That's interesting to me. There's thoughts going through my mind right now about trying this. All right, Josh, do you have some folklore? I was going to bring up the one about
00:36:57
Speaker
caterpillars, the wooly worms.
Folklore and Natural Observations
00:37:00
Speaker
I was kind of wooly bears. Anybody else call them wooly bears? Yeah, it's kind of wooly bears. Which as I heard it, you know, they have the brown band in the middle of the caterpillar. And if the wider that band is,
00:37:17
Speaker
The more mild the winter will be. That's what I had heard. That's what I had heard. And then the more black they usually the colder it was. Right. Right. Yeah. Like the more the brown part is the better or easier the winner will be. Cool. The blacker it is the rougher. Well, I did you. Has anyone seen a Willy worm?
00:37:39
Speaker
Not recently actually. I saw my first one of the year. It was very brown. Yeah. It was kind of crawling in my back porch and I was like, Hey bud. And I tried to, you know, let him get on something that, or let it get on something that it wanted to get onto and it didn't want to. And then I went to pick it up.
00:37:56
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure dumped all of its equivalent of adrenaline or whatever into its body and just like acted dead. And so then I went back on a plant. So poor, poor guy terrorized him, but he was better off there than on the back porch. It's mostly Brown though. It's interesting because I was, I saw a video, um, a girl who makes like content about just like some cool Appalachian stuff in Eastern Kentucky. And, you know, she shows her going out and foraging and what she makes with all of her, her tinctures and ball of walking.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah, and she did the persimmon thing that we talked about, and the persimmons also were saying a mild winter, so at least in Eastern Kentucky. Interesting. If the woolly bears on the persimmons are green, maybe.
00:38:39
Speaker
Maybe they're in agreement. I have a list. I have a couple. I have a whole list. It's my whole couple. You know, I hadn't consulted the farmer's almanac in some time, but I did for this. And it's saying, like, cold and snowy. Brett's showing his. Cold and snowy. Yeah, yeah.
00:38:57
Speaker
You know, interestingly, it's like going to their site, they make a lot of references, like they pull in all this information now from like El Nino and stuff like that, or the Southern Oscillation, which this is like an El Nino year and it can be like kind of variable. There's like more of a likelihood of having those periodic cold blasts from like the polar vortex due to like that destabilization. So it's, you know, sort of the pharmaceutical neck isn't really agreeing with the woolly worm.
00:39:27
Speaker
I guess we'll see. Yeah. We shall see. What do you got Alexis? I have a few, but I'll like, I'll share the love and only talk about a couple and let you all go.
00:39:39
Speaker
What do you mean you all go? We've already gone. Talk Alexis, that's whatever. I just figured I'd get out of the way. I'm ready for your filibuster. Get out of my head. No, I would love to hear what you, what you pull together. Mine are, um, I don't know, almost more like statements or cool things that you can do. I don't know if they're fun story. I love this kind of stuff. So more of a comment than a question.
00:40:08
Speaker
more of a comment so one honestly most of mine are so this is coming out shortly before halloween i'm gonna prep you all with this one first so apparently all right listen on halloween night okay if you catch a falling leaf any falling leaf you want but catch it falling before it hits the ground you will have good fortune for the next year
00:40:32
Speaker
For the next year? Yeah. Wow, that's a lot of return on investment. Very important. If the leaf touches the ground, the magic is gone. Okay. So you need to really be diligent. You got to be hot on your feet. Get you some coffee. Oh, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it before it hits the ground on Halloween night, because as we know, the veils between the worlds are thinner. So you're going to get all those good forges. That's good to know.
00:41:00
Speaker
So that one's fun. Another one. So we're talking that we talked about planting some cool flowers for spring. You know, we want spring flowers. One of those flowers that you can plant in the fall and probably still have time for because it's very cold hardy is foxglove.
00:41:14
Speaker
Mm-hmm. That's a good palace. So a lot of people are digitalist, very familiar with fox love. It is poisonous. Just, that's why I, it is poisonous. It is deadly poisonous. Deadly. Not just like, we'll make you a little sick. It's a deadly poisonous, but it's beautiful. And if you've ever seen it, so it's got a spike and it's got these little, um, what look like little bells with little spots in the throat. And I always thought they looked like someplace that a fairy would sleep in. Definitely.
00:41:38
Speaker
Yes. Right? Exactly. Little fairy houses. They do invite fairies into the garden, supposedly. I thought it was interesting. The name Foxglove, I read two different things and they're not sure where it comes from. One thing I read was that it's always related back to fairies. Fairies were called the little folk. Foxglove was like, yeah, it was like folk.
00:42:07
Speaker
A full club, something that like became fox club. The other thing came from, from, from fairy. Yeah. Yeah. They're folk. Yeah. Like the word, like little folk. Like little folk. Got it. Yeah. Which is what they called the fairies. Or I also heard that the fairies trained, um, foxes to ring, quote unquote, ring the fox gloves, like pull them and the little bells would shine. Like.
00:42:36
Speaker
move and supposedly chime to warn the humans that danger is coming.
Toxic Plants and Magical Beliefs
00:42:41
Speaker
So. That's cool. Fairies and Foxglove. There's so many legends around Foxglove. It's so cool. It's all really interesting. There's so many. There's so many. And I think the digitalis is used in like a lot of heart medications. But once again, very dangerous. It slows your heart. Yeah, they used to use it in medicine to like slow the heart down.
00:43:04
Speaker
I'm getting digitalists confused with Doctora, the zombie plant. Oh, yeah. It's kind of spooky. I wish I could write that up. Monksud? Is Wolf Spain? Yeah, Monksud or Jimson. Is it Jimson Weed? Jimson Weed? Is that Jimson Weed? Is that Jimson Weed? Is that Jimson Weed? Is that Jimson Weed? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If Doctora won't kill you, it'll make you trip like crazy, though. Yeah. Ask him how he met. Is that what they call the zombie? That is the zombie plant that has been used in different places around the world. I believe so. I believe so, yeah. Where it induces like a stupor.
00:43:33
Speaker
It can last for like two weeks. You can eat it and then trip for two weeks. Yeah. As I heard it, what is happening is that this is the mythology behind it or some folklore is that, you know, some, this is like kind of Northern Mexico, kind of like desert Southwest was that a like sorcerer put themselves in that plant. And when you eat it, it comes to you and like it's a,
00:44:03
Speaker
You have to do battle with it. And if you lose, it drives you insane. Like man carbs. The devil's trumpet. It grows as weed around here. And a friend of mine, the Mercer County horticulture agent, Jessica, her husband is a
00:44:22
Speaker
firefighter and was EMS. And she said he came in one day after weed eating the fence lines and stuff. And of course, gypsum weed is in the fence lines everywhere around here. And he came in because he was starting to freak out. His pupils were completely dilated and his heartbeat was like racing. And come to find out, they went back out and looked and that's what it was. And he was like, oh, yeah, that causes blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:44:52
Speaker
And so, yeah, I, uh, I want to revise my statement in enough quantity, it will kill you. Yeah. Well, I mean, I said it won't kill you, but in enough quantity, it definitely will. We're not telling you to do anything. Don't, don't eat it.
00:45:07
Speaker
There are easier, go see the Barbie movie. There's other ways to have fun. Other ways to have fun. Much safer ways to have fun. Oh, I've got another one. Easier ways to battle a sorcerer. I've got another one. Exactly. This one gives you eternal youth. Oh. Okay, listen up.
00:45:23
Speaker
Is this going to be? Ray already did it. Ray, tell us. There's so many that are supposed to give you eternal use. The Yew Tree is not a personal thing that I use, no. Well, this one is something we can grow here very easily. It's Ladies' Mantle, which is achamelia.
00:45:43
Speaker
A-C-H-E-I-L-L-E-M-A or something. Yeah. So it is a really pretty plant. It's great in shade areas. It's mostly foliage and has like a real big sort of heart shape leaf, but not like overly heart shape, but it's a big leaf. Not like a red bud. Not like a red bud leaf. Right. And so apparently on the 1st of May, I need you to get your calendars out and mark this. On the 1st of May, if you drink
00:46:13
Speaker
The dew drops from a top of a lady's mantle leaf. You will have eternal youth. Eternal youth. You wonder where the origins of that. I mean, it's always interesting if you could, if you know the origins of the youth. The origins are the person who's lived forever, right? I don't know why you're asking such silly questions. Outcomes. You should know. The eutry is supposed to do the same thing because eutries in Europe live like thousands of years and they just,
00:46:40
Speaker
Bring up a new tree out of the center of the the plant and they can be huge as far as the circumference of those things are just a bit similar kind of legend is it brings like eternal youth or prosperity and longevity but that's the European use but.
00:46:56
Speaker
Literally, there's trees that are over 5,000 years old, and they just keep rejuvenating themselves. The Phoenix, they'll just send up a new tree out of the center that's a clone and just keep growing. The only way you find trees of that age is like churchyards and things, but that's the European use. It's the similar thing, the longevity. They're cool looking. They're all weird and twisted. They don't look of this earth. Yeah, they're wild. They look like, I don't know, from some other place.
00:47:24
Speaker
See, speaking of fall stuff and trees, something I really dig is when the ginkgoes drop their leaves, they like do them all at once. And so it's like so dramatic. Yeah, it's just awesome. So vibrant. And their leaves are
00:47:38
Speaker
weird. It's cool. Exciting. And they're a dinosaur tree, you guys.
Ecological History and Planting Traditions
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah, they're living. It's like at one point they were like the tree. See, that's what you think of when you think of fall, Josh. That's a good one. That is a really good one, actually. I like that a lot. Yeah, the color and everything. Like you said, one day, no leaves. Next day, three feet of leaves. That Bria, there was a giant ginkgo behind the
00:48:03
Speaker
the science building and I would just go down there and just jump in this back because they would accumulate and blow down in this little. It's really crazy ecologically. I mean, there's an awesome photo of a leaf drop in some monastery in Asia or whatever. Yeah. But like, you know, they used to be the tree and then.
00:48:23
Speaker
You know, there was a big climate shift and they retracted to just a very small place in Asia where they started to kind of there's some discussion of how there was like an overlap with like monastic traditions, taking care of those trees and keeping them alive. And then now when you see ginkgoes around, they all come from like that when they call it like a refugia in ecology, but like the last place where they had survived. So interesting. Yeah, ginkgoes are cool.
00:48:52
Speaker
The next one, I'm going to kick the hornet's nest just a little bit because I know people have strong opinions in Appalachia. Some do, and certain generations about this.
00:49:02
Speaker
as far as water dousing. Is anyone familiar with that, divining for water using? I'm familiar with it. I wouldn't say I'm good. Either I've seen people do it and it's interesting. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, take either a fork stick that's sort of shaped like a wive, certain top like willow and sometimes other types of wood or two very thin sticks with an angle bent in them. And you hold those in either hand if you're using the thin stick method.
00:49:30
Speaker
And when they cross, that means there's water under the ground, supposedly. And with the Y-shaped stick, it's when it bends towards the earth. But there's like a long tradition of that. And I've seen people do that in older generations, you know, 200 years ago when I was living in, you guys, since you guys say I'm so old. But it's an older generation. When you were young and 16, we don't say that you're old, we say that you're eternally young. Yes. You've just been young for a long time.
00:50:00
Speaker
Yeah, caffeine is a yeah, it's a preservative for me. Yeah, all of these things. I know them because I hunt them down across the world.
00:50:13
Speaker
But yeah, I've seen people use that and it was fascinating. But I also observed like, you know, when they would, you know, be looking to dig a well, I'd watch, you know, when I was real little, I was lucky enough to watch people hand dig wells. But they were typically in areas that I suspect was pretty easy to find water in. But I don't want to discount that tradition. But that's just something that I felt pretty lucky to be able to kind of
00:50:38
Speaker
observe is water dousing. And everybody got real quiet. And then I've seen both methods used of the Y-shaped stick and then the two thin sticks that would cross. But it was interesting. And it was sort of a plant-based folklore sort of Appalachian tradition of finding water. And that's back before more modern geological methods, obviously.
00:51:02
Speaker
So I will tell you that my husband is an engineer, very math science oriented, and he swears by it. What kind of train does he drive? What kind of... A cool one? A good one called the whole train. He's a civil engineer, and so they do a lot with like...
00:51:21
Speaker
Well, they use, they use it like he, like, like guys on his, their crew, when they are doing things and like putting in roads and all, like they, they use that, like they have dowsing rods and they're, and they're like company vehicles. Whoa. I swear. Where do you buy that? I mean, do they have to fund them? They have competitions for them too. There's like dowsing rod competitions.
00:51:47
Speaker
When we had new water lines put in for the farm, they were like patching them off of one that came from the barn and the guy with the plumbing company was using dowsing rods and like that's how he found the line.
00:52:09
Speaker
You're not talking about like a transfer case transfer case like surveying that is that this is a different thing from that this is loosely holding like
00:52:19
Speaker
Why shaped is what they probably were doing, I'm guessing. I've only ever seen them like loosely holding like two raw and like. The two got you. Where their branches and a lot of people say like typically like a willow or yeah, like a lot of water. Yeah, you're blowing my mind because I've seen that on like YouTube with like, you know. But like they make like metal ones too. Yeah.
00:52:41
Speaker
That's amazing to me that it's still being used I hadn't seen it in so long I'd seen people you know 35 40 years ago do that with witch hazel I mean they swore you had to use witch hazel and then some would say the y-shape could be you know willow whatever but they swore by the myth the guy I think it was the plumber I was talking to him and he was he was doing that and
00:53:02
Speaker
I think he said that his grandfather used to do these competitions and he would make his own rods. Yeah, they would swear by one word or the other. He would make his own and they still have them. These competitions were to find water. Who can be the most specific?
00:53:20
Speaker
I wonder how they could find, like then they would drill or whatever. I think they have like some sort of like geological map. I don't know. And they like place people, they don't know where they're going to be. And then they just like show up to a location that they don't get until like the morning. It's an interesting preservation of it's cool. It's so cool. That's interesting. Yeah.
00:53:41
Speaker
I hadn't even wanted to do that. I've just seen the ones that supposedly when it's going to rain, like that, so it's like a Y shape and you attach it to something and then it bends down when the rain is coming, like just a branch and it bends. I mean, when my like service line had a leak in it, they brought out a soil moisture probe and that's how that worked. Yeah, but it had to be blowing my mind. It's voodoo. It's some woo woo, but man, it's awesome.
00:54:09
Speaker
I mean, I guess in tradition, if you were going to hand dig a well, you didn't want to go through all that effort of digging a well that's three feet across and you have to hand rock that and then you go to the bottom.
00:54:21
Speaker
You wanted some assurances you're not going to waste a lot of labor. I suppose. Yeah. And if it didn't work, you would think they'd be like, we're not doing that anymore. We're going to try something else. Or you say like, that guy's no good at it. Throw him in the river. Oh, yes, the guy. He's the wrong wood. This guy's a weird trainee. This guy's terrible at dowsing. You're a pen witch, Hazel.
00:54:44
Speaker
There's a difference between the hazel tree and which hazel people Wikipedia defines it as a type of divination. Right. Water divining. Yeah. I've heard it as dowsing by Appalachians and other parts of the country divining. But I thought that was interesting. It's one of those kind of plant based sort of myths or folklore.
00:55:03
Speaker
Or, you know, however you want to couch that. So, yeah, interesting. Alexa's bringing up ladies mantle made me look that up the alchemila molus or whatever. Um, and that it looks like that name says this is another thought about the beads of water that are collected as due. So the bees of water were considered by alchemists to be the purest form of water. And they use this water when attempting to turn some base metal into gold. Boom.
00:55:32
Speaker
They'd have pure. I'm going to drink some of that, you know, see what happens. Never taken like honeysuckle and bit the stem off and pulled the little parts through to grab the honeydew. Yeah. Is that not the most purest form of sugar in the world? The tastiest form is very, very lovely. Uh, it is. It's got a floral bouquet. Luckily the, um,
00:55:55
Speaker
The homeowners of Lexington have seen fit to give us a bumper crop after bumper crop of those flowers. Yeah, lots of those. I always use the bonding top, but Bushtop works.
00:56:11
Speaker
Okay, so one more that I think is pretty popular and is very fascinating to me, I did a deep dive into this a couple of days ago, was the planting by the moon phases. That's so very, very followed, or at least in my neck of the woods, I know a lot of growers are.
00:56:35
Speaker
I went online and like there's like online calculators or whatever for each month and it tells you what days are what. And I was like, I wonder how this compares to what I was already kind of planning on doing.
00:56:46
Speaker
And for the most part, it was kind of like right on track with what I had planned for when crops need to go in the ground. So it was really cool, but it was a little bit off for like flowering plants versus leaf plants, but you know, whatever, flowers need leaves. So the thought process here is that you plant
00:57:08
Speaker
So you put in the ground, you seed whatever plants that produce above ground crops. So tomatoes, things like that, cucumbers, whatever. With a waxing moon, which is when the moon is getting larger. So the thought process here is that those plants need more light because they're putting on above ground parts, like a lot of fruit and things like that.
00:57:31
Speaker
And then you would do below ground crops, so your potatoes, your dahlias, things like that. I guess dahlias are hit or miss, but whatever, potatoes, sweet potatoes, garlic on a waning moon. So when light is decreasing at night, because that signals the plant to put more energy into a root system, which if you think about nature, right? You think about fall. Fall, we just talked about, it tells trees there's less light. And some places temperature is changing, but not always. It's a lot of it is about light.
00:58:01
Speaker
The that lower light is telling plants to start storing things in the root system start putting energy there. So, I mean, it makes sense. Yeah, but you have the logic to it. Yeah. But you wonder how much of that is based on like the observations we were talking about earlier. They just tried to correlate it somehow for remembering accurately. I wonder that. So we're assuming that the plant is going to germinate in the course of while the moon is still waxing. Is that the implication?
00:58:32
Speaker
I'm not sure. I guess it would over the course of a month. I was just thinking.
00:58:38
Speaker
Because if you put the seed in the ground when it's waxing, I guess by the time, it would be peeking out by the time. That's an interesting idea. So that's very general. So if you get into it, and this is what I did, I was like, how does what I was already planning match up with what these moon faces are? And so then there's like, I did plant, or I did start waking up. I don't wanna, I wanna use planting very loosely. I say, start waking up my corms, my ranunculus corms,
00:59:06
Speaker
during what is called a barren phase. And this is the time to rest to avoid sea sowing. This is when you would be storing those crops that you just harvested during the proper time. And it makes so much sense. So if people are thinking about their own sense of time, there's not clocks and calendars and all that. They're going by the moon phases. So they're like, OK, we're going to see now when the light is getting more
00:59:33
Speaker
Then when there's no light, we're going to store all that stuff we harvested and then we're going to plant another set of stuff. So it's just like this continual rotation of plenty of time to do everything. And I'm like, damn it. Why are we not doing this? Why do we not live our lives these ways?
00:59:49
Speaker
Yeah, I remember you had a meeting to go to if you didn't have the days numbered. Yeah, there's an element to have just like things fitting within a more human centric structure to like it's not doesn't always have to just be botanically. It could be that the reason why we do this is because it's easier on our bodies. It's easier. You know, we know we need the rest at this time or whatever it may be.
01:00:12
Speaker
There's also a lot of kinds of things that I feel that we don't yet understand about like the effect that the moon has on. We don't understand in a scientific sense that the moon has on.
01:00:25
Speaker
organisms here. I think some of the, not to make these necessarily connected, but I think another aspect is just the ways that we're starting to understand vibrational frequencies and the ways that they interact with our nervous systems. Be harmonics.
01:00:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. A friend of ours recently had a treatment. There's a treatment for alpha-gal, the tick-borne illness that doesn't let you eat red meat anymore. Well, you can eat it, but you'll have a bad time. And it's an acupuncture-driven treatment. Yeah, acupuncture, one of those
01:01:13
Speaker
approaches to health and medicine that has a very, very long track record in human history, but blending it with these scientific instruments that's able to measure a certain frequency and where that frequency passes through your body
01:01:32
Speaker
In other words, there's scientific evidence backing this acupuncture treatment as effective, and it's all based around placing a needle according to harmonic frequencies that exist within the body that are known to be related to the alpha-gal.
Vibrational Energy and Gardening Humor
01:01:50
Speaker
I don't know the protein or I don't know what. Yeah, whatever it is that weird. Yeah. And it's like literally vibrational. It feels almost, it feels like magic, right? If to a scientific mind, it feels like magic and it feels crazy. And I just think like frequency of sound and frequency of
01:02:08
Speaker
of energy and things like that. It sounds really woo-woo and in many ways it is, but there's also a whole aspect to it that we, you know, there's certain arrogance to science that if we can't understand it right now, then it's, ugh. If we lack the ability to measure and influence, it's like very hard for us to internalize it within like the scientific method. I mean, it's like a shorthand that I've heard so many times, like, well, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
01:02:39
Speaker
Okay. That being said, I don't know that we're ready to give any extension recommendations based on the content today, but we all have our own thoughts and our own minds and our own critical perspectives. I have one that you could for an extension really quick. If you're not sure if your soil is warm enough to plant your summer crops,
01:02:59
Speaker
It's really easy to go by air temperature, but really what's more important is your soil temperature. If you sit on the soil but naked and you don't get cold, then the soil is warm enough to plant your tomatoes.
01:03:11
Speaker
Oh, okay. Why did I do that? Interesting nudist recommendation. A lot of peppers, I mean. Hashtag extension lifestyle. I do that every dirty weekend, but I didn't ever relate it to planting tomatoes. That would be the full moon phase of the planting cycle. That's just how I figure out whether or not it's cold outside or not. That's how I take the temperature every day.
01:03:35
Speaker
Also, if you want your peppers to be hotter, plant them when you're mad. If you aren't mad, very often call me and I will make sure you get hotter. I will make you mad. Peppers are extra spicy. No, I'll just plant them for you. They'll be extra spicy.
01:03:53
Speaker
Okay i found like so many really cool ones that i was like you know i might just try that. Pretty awesome it's a deep dive what if you go down that hole you're gonna go down for a while into the ancient civilizations of the world plant more one on one.
01:04:12
Speaker
It's good stuff. Don't disregard the woo-woo, okay? Everything's woo-woo until we figure out exactly why, you know? And then we're like, oh, yes. I mean, technology is going to look like magic. We've been doing this for thousands of years. It should have been obvious. I am going to go ahead and personally guarantee that I am going to catch a leaf on Halloween right out of the air, a falling leaf.
01:04:36
Speaker
I expect a video. Have good luck, yeah. I mean, how could I have- Can I follow and break my ankle while I'm doing that? Alexis, I'm coming to you. Well, yeah, but then maybe that'll lead you to buy in a Powerball ticket and then you'll make millions of dollars. They're not looking long enough into the future. Listen, this is a full year of good fortune here, y'all. Break your ankle leads to the Powerball ticket? Obviously. Making leaps of logic here. Okay, before we go to the emergency room, let's stop and get a Powerball ticket.
01:05:03
Speaker
Yes. Or on the way back, you're like, man, I just it's been so rough. Maybe we should maybe we need a little bit of luck. It's all about perspective. I mean, I think we're all making pledges for plant stuff. I am going to make a tea out of Datura and wrestle the source. We've got any any, you know, which my witchy, witchy wife, she grows some so
01:05:31
Speaker
I'm drinking tea right now. Maybe I should bring, break the bag open and see what the leaves tell me, but they're chopped up quite fine in my eyes. My eyesight is not what I used to be. Oh, after thousands of years, your eyesight's starting to go, huh? It is.
01:05:44
Speaker
I'm going to start. He wasn't really, really concerned with the garlic earlier, now that you say that. Yes. I was. You know, the garlic and the garlic. It doesn't work at all. Also, I mean, speaking of garlic and things that taste good with garlic basil,
01:06:11
Speaker
Basil invites good fortune. And in India, people would sprinkle chopped off basil on the floor of their shop because it would ward away evil spirits and attracted customers. So there you go. There you go. Customers are the evil spirits. Well, then did you get the good customers who spend lots of money with you? That's what you get. And they pick up their items from the right spot. At the right time. They pay for the things they share on time.
01:06:41
Speaker
Yeah. What a fun conversation. I enjoyed the day. I, you know, I could, I could just deep dive this stuff. I do. I love it. I love the tradition. Yes. The joy of plants and all the lore and mystery that's out there. The mysteries, both we've solved and the mysteries that we still don't quite understand yet. So I love it all. I love it all.
Conclusion and Community Engagement
01:07:04
Speaker
And we love you and your eternal youth.
01:07:08
Speaker
About the time I get premature arthritis and crippling debilitating problems. We keep jinxing you every time we say it. You do. You do. Peter Pan is going to fall out of Neverland in there on October 31st and catch that leaf, baby. I want all of you out there. And that should hold you over till May 1st when Josh is going to be serving up with these mental doctors. I use unicorn blood. Thank you. I use unicorn blood. Thank you. Oh, OK. See you forever, curse. I see you. You're so evil.
01:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, emo with a splash of color. Oh, well, thank you all for being with us today. If you would like to hear more about plant folklore or any other deep dives you'd like for us to take, we're all about deep diving about plants. Okay, we're here for that. We will report back about the Halloween night slash May 1st.
01:08:02
Speaker
eternal youth. I mean, we don't even have to report. You're going to know, right? We're going to brag about it. We're going to brag about it. I'm going to post all the selfies. But anyways, you can follow us on Instagram at Hort Culture Pod. You can send us an email with all of your suggestions at hortculturepodcast.l.uky.edu.
01:08:24
Speaker
You can leave us a review and just tell us how much you love plant folklore and how much good fortune you have because you put basil down or that you're planted by the moon cycles now. So leave us a review. We would, we appreciate that. It helps other people find us. Makes the algorithm happy. As I always say, we got it. Maybe we need to give the algorithm some basil or something.
01:08:46
Speaker
Yeah. Give it a little bit of woo. Well, we hope you enjoy your woo woo and, uh, you know, don't be afraid to spread that far and wide with your plant woo woo out there. Uh, and we hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and that you will have a great time and join us again. Have a good one.