We have talked many times about our perennial agricultural vision. Today we harvested Tiger Nuts, also known as Chufa or Cyperus esculentus and it's a perfect example of our perennial food vision in action.
A perennial vision differs from annual agriculture because we are focusing on crops which return each year. This can be thought of as a living seed bank in the soil. While we are rampant seed savers of our annual crops, which is a fantastic form of security, we believe rooting perennial agriculture is even a step above this- or at least an incredible complement.
Crops must be tended and usually weeded. They require a lot more maintenance than perennials and basically a farmer must tend them, start them, and manage them the entire season.. year after year!!
Usually they also replicate themselves whether by rhizomes (crawling root structures which can be separated and planted elsewhere), tip layers, abundant reseeding, soft wood cuttings, scions (branches cut off of trees for example and grafted onto other root stock), and via propagation of tubers, in the case of chufa.
In a perennial vision which self replicates, as I described in the paragraph above, we are given the opportunity to start small. By having a host of diverse seeds that we plant one year, we're taking a small risk. We aren't planting out hundreds of annual crops which could all fail and which require a hefty up-front investment. Instead we are gathering many different plants and small numbers of them. This is a very accessible vision for the masses!
This way we can see what works in our region and on our specific plot of land. Some things fail- and that's okay, our investment was small. The things which survive or that we noticed produce a tasty abundance, we spread around. Each year that living seed bank or those choice genetics get moved around the homestead.
By year 3, the things which really produced well that we favor, we have a ton of! That's one arm of our perennial vision. With this in mind, we are far along creating a living, self-replication permaculture (permanent agriculture)! We don't have to do much tending besides spreading, maintenance, some mulching and amending natural rainfall with watering and our food plots take care of themselves!
The edible part is a tuber (often called a nut) from a sedge which is widespread across the globe, including most of North America. In many areas it is considered a weed, a characteristic that often inspires us to consider cultivating a given plant. Being a warm season perennial and growing in moist areas and a wide variety of soil conditions, chufa is a great crop.
The Egyptians were using the tuber for food and a variety of medicinal uses as early as 6000 years ago, and it factored into their diet and economy.
It is unclear weather it was cultivated in prehistorical Meso America or was introduced by the Spanish, but the best known historical use of chufa is in the making of a milky drink now known as horchata. In contemporary times rice, cow's milk and/or almond is used in place of chufa.
Tiger Nuts are THE original Paleo super food! They are THE most nutritionally dense tuber on the planet (1.) believed to be the main source of food and nutrition for our ancient ancestors. There is evidence from Oxford university that over a million years ago Tiger Nuts were the staple food of our ancestor the ‘nutcracker man’, and that Tiger Nuts were eaten regularly as part of the stone age diet. In fact some scientists believe Tiger Nuts were an important source of nutrition which helped our brains grow and develop as human beings. *
It is commonly used today for wildlife food plots where land is seeded in hardy crops that will perennially feed wildlife. It is reported that wild turkeys love chufa and thus many wildlife conservationist and hunters choose to plant this sedge to encourage healthy populations of wild birds.
