Hilda Joy
Originally Published 6/28/19
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​Many years ago, I read a magazine article entitled In Defense of Stinginess, clipped it, and pasted it into an album I had started of words I wanted to reread.  The premise of the article is that we benefit from making things ourselves and primarily we benefit by foraging for food.  When we moved from an apartment to two acres Northwest of Chicago, I finally had the opportunity to start foraging.  Our property abutted an abandoned railroad right of way that had been built to assist dairy farmers in two counties to move milk to market.  Though rails and ties had been removed, occasionally a spike would appear.  This narrow-wooded area was home to a host of wild foods.

This was about the time that Euell Gibbons published Stalking the Wild Asparagus and other books about looking for wild foods.  Spying a few stalks of wild asparagus growing under a river birch in our front yard, I immediately bought this book, which became a food bible of sorts.  Other teachers were neighbors, friends who grew up in rural environments, and the landscape architect who was charged with laying out the path of a paved bike path through the right of way.

Soon, I was finding and utilizing chokecherry, elderberry, red sumac, raspberries, both red and black, chicory, dandelion, day lilies, ground cherries, wild onion, wild grapes, and, most flavorful of all, wild strawberries.  In retrospect, I realize I bypassed plants.  One of my daughters once said, “If I have children, I shall send them to you so they can eat things like day lily buds, which you say taste much like green beans when steamed, buttered, and salt-and-peppered.”  The local forest preserve provided us with black walnuts and hickory nuts and, when springs freshened, watercress for a short time.  Our property was planted with many fruit trees:  apple, apricot, peach, pear, plum, crabapple; there were also five long rows of Concord grapes.  We were blessed.

In New Mexico, I am finally learning to forage for wild foods, having in Spring been taken on a hunt for chimija and just recently being given a large haul of wild spinach—aka, lamb’s quarters and pigweed—so I could cook delicious quelites.  A friend promises me he will soon help me find sorrel along the Abiquiu roadsides.  This summer, I shall dig up chicory root and roast it to add to coffee.  Right now, I am expecting a windfall of verdolaga, most of which shall be cooked in the local style with bacon and onions.  Some of it will definitely go into the Bode family recipe for verdolaga salad.  I hope our readers will try this salad.  If so, please let me know.

​​As I said in last week’s article, I received my 2 boxes of ‘Dirty Quartz’ from the Jim Coleman mine. I emailed with Terri Coleman, and she could not be more helpful.    I was very excited to open the box and find some crystals on the top. The dirt settled a bit so I grabbed some of the quartz on top that looked nice and put it aside. I carefully poured the rest of the contents into a bucket so I could do a cursory cleaning of the batch.

I rinsed some of the dirt out of the bucket ‘o quartz and then took out some handfuls of crystals/mud  and put that into a large colander/strainer. I began rinsing and stirring and picking out the crystals, separating the nicest ones into a box, and the broken ones into another strainer.

​​I was thrilled at the variety of crystals, and the clarity of some were just amazing. It took at least 45 minutes to clean up that box, done in two batches. Ultimately, I had a box of ‘keepers’ to sort through, and the rest which I wasn’t sure what to do with.

​I brought the box inside and sorted the crystals onto a tray, by size, shape, clarity. Ultimately, I found some favorites which I put aside.

​All in all, I had a great time ‘finding’ these crystals. It’s quite a bit easier to find them in these bushels that they sell than at the mine itself. I loved both experiences, but Arkansas is quite a ways away from Abiquiu and sometimes you have to bring the fun to your home. I am already planning a trip to the Jim Colemen Mine to do a dig at their site. That will be next summer. I’ll save the second box I have for now, we have some grandkids coming later this summer. 

Brian Bondy
My usual rockhounding is northern New Mexico but this past week my rockhounding took me a little further.  Carol's made me promise to write about some rock and fossil collecting closer to home in the future.

​Moving on from there I went to the Ron Coleman Quartz Mine in Jessieville Arkansas. If you didn’t know, Arkansas is home to some of the best quartz crystal mines in the world. Several of the mines offer the opportunity to find your own crystals by digging through dump truck piles of dirt they bring up from the mine. Some of the mines have special offers where you can dig in a quartz crystal pocket in the mine itself. That’s quite a bit more expensive.

I had a great time digging through the piles and found some beautiful crystals. We were pressed for time and I probably only looked for about 90 minutes. Next time I’ll spend the day.
Ron Coleman’s mine is fantastic, but there is also a Jim Coleman. They have a fantastic rock shop at the turnoff for the mine. I went on their website later and bought a half bushel of mine material from them. I just received the 2 very heavy boxes from them about 10 minutes ago, so I’ll write about that experience next week.

​Google Quartz Crystal Mining in Arkansas - 
You will get several options for digging for your own crystals. I highly recommend it if you have the means.

Part 2, next week