Did you realize that rhubarb is classified as a vegetable? 

And while we eat the stalks the leaves are quite toxic?

 Did you know that Washington State has 175 acres of rhubarb cultivation? Some 92% of those acres are in Pierce County. Sumner boasts to be the Rhubarb Capital of the World. 

Who remembers sitting on the back stoop eating a stalk of fresh rhubarb dipped in sugar or honey? I surely do, as do my children. 

The Chinese called rhubarb “the great yellow” and have used it for medicinal purposes for nearly 2000 years. Yes, this hardy plant has been around for a long time. Bet you have a patch growing in a corner of your yard.

Rhubarb was used medicinally as a laxative. Back in the day, purging one’s system was a common component of many treatments…. riding the body of ill humors it was thought.

Rhubarb was harvested in Scotland in 1786 and came to America in the 1820s through New England. Rhubarb grows best where there is a few months of cold weather. 

Whether your favorite is rhubarb sauce or rhubarb pie, my guess is that rhubarb has a love-hate relationship with most people.

There are dozens of YouTube videos, and several websites, teaching how to grow, harvest, cook and prepare those delicious red stalks. 

During the long history of Egypt, many millions of people (and animals) were mummified. “Far rarer are mummy portraits…detailed paintings of the living, buried with their mummies when they died.” (Thanks to National Geographic Magazine bit by Daniel Stone and photos from Google.)

The portraits were mounted on bands of cloth used to wrap bodies (mummies). Some 1300 mummy portraits are known to exist and most have now been removed and placed in museums. 

Egyptians spent up to a year’s wages to arrange funeral ceremonies and goods, often including portraits. Such portraits reveal the melting pot of cultures living in Egypt between the 1st and 3rd centuries. This was when Roman culture predominated and this is reflected in the portraits. Some of these portraits are identified!

Imagine having an image of your ancestor’s face who lived 2000 years ago???

For more information, click to:

BritishMuseum.org/blog/depicting-dead-ancient-Egyptian-mummyportraits

Just a piece of tin, lying in the dirt.

To the finder it meant nothing, to a family, more hurt.

For removal and return proper steps were to follow.

To a community back home more pain, grief and sorrow.

A journey of  time and in decades lost

Of a round trip in miles and of the thousands it cost.

Of the man who had worn it so many of us knew,

A young man on our streets just like me and you.

Of a life never lived, or adventures untold

Of one life to give, a young never to grow old.

Just a piece of tin, lying in the dirt.

I photographed this  poem framed and on the wall in a museum back east while on a trip. It was penned by Charles Stage, 30 May 2016. It quite touched my heart and I saved it to share with you in our “memorial month.”  

Ask Google if you’d like to know more fascinating history of U.S. military dog tags. 

****Bet you didn’t know this “dog tag” trivia: People in the 1950s lived under constant threat of nuclear war and had tags made for their elementary age school children in districts across the U.S. New York City was the first public school system to issue the “identification tags” in Feb 1952, spending $159.000 to provide them to 2.5 million students. 

We eat wheat most every day in some form or another. And mankind has been eating wheat for thousands of years. (Did you have toast, bagel or cereal for breakfast?)  How many types of wheat are there, would you guess? How many types are grown in Washington? Well, there are six main types or classes of wheat with many sub-categories under each of the six.

Wheat was first planted in the U.S. in 1777 and is still today the primary flour for U.S. grain products. Wheat is grown in 42 U.S. states with Kansas as the largest producer. Our own Whitman County produces on average 32 million bushels of wheat annually. Lincoln County produces 22 million bushels. (Need I remind you that many of our ancestors came to Eastern Washington back in the 19th century primarily to grow wheat?)

What’s the best wheat for what product? 

Hard Red Winter wheat: general all-purpose

Hard Red Spring wheat: breads, rolls, croissants, bagels, pizza crusts

Soft Red White wheat: cakes, pastries, Asian noodles, flat breads

Hard White wheat: Asian noodles, tortillas, flatbreads

Durum wheat:  with a high protein content, perfect for pasta 

It’s a real science to today’s wheat farmers to know what to plant, where and when. Which type is best for their fields; which types best resist disease. Each farmer has to make a decision, sometimes field by field, about which wheat variety will work for  them. 

**Amazing wheat factoids: In 2022, the U.S. shipped 205.3 metric tons (about 250,000 pounds) of wheat overseas; this wheat export had the value of $7.3 billion; and the U.S. is the 5th in the list of wheat exporters. There are about 100 different varieties of wheat crackers to be found in your favorite supermarket. 

(Thank you Facebook for the photos.)

I confess that I only read the human interest stories in our local newspaper. (And the funnies, of course!)Those are usually so heart-warming. So I will share two recent ones with you today.

Originally from the Washington Post:  John Mills never gave his surname much thought until he learned that many of his ancestors were enslaved. His great-great-great grandfather, Ned Mills, was the first of the name which was given to him by the man who enslaved him. Ned Miles grew up on a Georgia plantation in the 1830s and after the Civil War, when he was a free man, spent the rest of his life as a farmer and blacksmith. 
After finding his own family history, John Mills founded an organization to help other previously enslaved people to find their family history too. “My great-great-grandfather lives on in me,” and gives Mills the inspiration to help others.

Story #2:  Sandra Poindexter was at an auction in Lynchburg, Virginia, when she spotted a pair of bridal portraits and was “just mesmerized by them.” Sandra won the portraits for a bid of $5 thinking “these are special to somebody.” So Sandra began her search to find the couple or a descendant.
The photo was taken in 1959 and wonderfully the bride’s name was written on the back: Harriet Elizabeth Marshall (Galbraith). Enlisting the help of a more seasoned genealogy researcher, Harriet’s son was located in one day! And Harriet was still alive and living in Texas!
Sandra and Harriet exchanged many phone calls and stories concerning the back story of the “travels” of those portraits. “Seeing the portraits again brought back wonderful, happy memories,” Harriet said. “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person and I’m glad to have been a little part of it,” said Sandra.

This is Part 3; parts 1 and 2 were in the immediately-previous posts. 

The travelers remarked on the lovely larkspur flowers but quickly learned that wild larkspur was very bad for horses but okay for oxen and that chockcherry was bad for oxen. Animals, being animals, too often just munched away but were too important and valuable not to be watchful of.

The Oregon Trail travelers eventually learned about other plants:

• Western Buttercup – Indians used it to poison arrows
• Snakeweed – toxic to kidneys and liver
• Death Camas – white ones WERE deadly but BLUE ones were okay; only way to tell was when they flowered in spring, a luxury the immigrants did not have.
• Selenium – an element in the soil taken up into the plume grasses which cause digestive problems for the animals.
• Greaseweed – they started seeing these plants about Chimney Rock and quickly learned that it was good/safe for animals to eat in early spring but poisonous in summer.
• Horsebrush – this was toxic in many ways to animals
• Locoweed – there were many kinds of “loco weed”
• Texas Blue Bonnets – very toxic, producing birth defects in both men and animals
• Water Hemlock – growing vigorously along rivers but toxic
• Wild Parsnips – ditto
• Wild Milkweed – ditto

By the time they reached Owyhee County, Idaho, “there was scarcely a train without sick oxen on it” due to the many bad plants in the alkali areas which they couldn’t keep the animals from eating. In the Blue Mountains of Oregon, the journal entries were pretty routine by this point. Little mention is made of plants except poison ivy. “They must have encountered this all along the way but only here is it often mentioned,” Ms. Packard said.  
Following Grandma’s advice that “if you don’t know it don’t eat it,” was sound advice but to hungry people, they had to learn on their own. Children helped show the way!