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May 17, 2005
Wildcrafting Season Begins!
Here are some pictures from our recent juniper harvesting trip - wildflowers are out in force this Spring folks!
Juniper country in the California's southern Diablo mountains - notice how thick the Juniper is in the hills. In this dry country, even oaks are hardpressed to eke out a living and are few and far between. Juniper, on the other hand is fat and happy with the meager winter rains. In these dry foothills Junipers are often the only trees for miles until you get up into the higher, cooler terrain where you start seeing Oaks, Coulter Pines, Buckeye, Moutain Laurel etc ...
This is what most people think wildcrafting is - sitting in the sun and flowers. It's really not like that - it's hard work! But I guess these pictures aren't going to help to dispel that myth, since they mostly feature us sitting around enjoying the incredibly beautiful day.
Here I am actually doing some work - we harvested about 1500 lbs of Juniper on this day, or about enough for 4000 bars of soap. We only harvest about 5% or so of a tree's foliage, and the pruning stimulates new growth so the trees will quickly put on new growth where they were trimmed.
Nice view huh?
One last picture of me next to a cool looking bonzai juniper jutting out of rock. Older California Junipers such as this one have great twisted, tangled branches.
Posted by juniperridge in Wildcrafting
Comments
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