A Natural Evolution To The Art Of Foraging

Morel mushrooms, wild violets and nettles fill Nicole Zempel's foraging basket. A natural curiosity and love for the outdoors has led her to the prairies and woodlands found in our area. Photo courtesy of Nicole Zempel.

Natural curiosity is all it took to lead this outdoor enthusiast on a journey of exploration. Nicole Zempel has turned her passion for all things natural into art while also introducing others to the natural world through presentations on foraging and cooking with native plants and mushrooms.

Charles Darwin had to sail halfway around the world to the Galapagos Islands to discover that his passion in life was to be a naturalist, not a clergyman or physician, careers for which he had studied.

Nicole Zempel only had to buy a house in the town she grew up in to discover her true passion. Her new home abutted a native prairie on the edge of Granite Falls, and she began exploring it to identify the plants it held.

“I didn’t realize how much fun,” she said of learning about the natural world around her. “Now it’s like an obsession.”

To say the least: Today, her entire lawn consists of native plants, hand-planted by Zempel. “I can literally eat my whole yard,” she said, laughing.

Her spare time today is devoted almost entirely to exploring the prairie and woodlands she finds close to home. She’s become a forager for mushrooms and native plants; some familiar, some exotic.

She picks dandelions and wild violets to make jellies. She collects the fallen buds of cottonwood trees to make an antimicrobial salve.

This outdoor enthusiast has her secret locations to sustainably pick the leaves or parts of wild plants such as ramps, nettles, wild onion and garlic and lambsquarter to add to the stir-fry dishes she concocts on her own. She has a secret “jelly fungus forest,” where she harvests this edible fungus to add to her dishes. And, she knows where native enoki, morel, chicken of the woods and other highly-coveted mushrooms are to be found.

It’s where they are found that matters most. For her, it’s all about getting out in the natural world, she said. “I didn’t realize how good it would make me feel,” she said. “I’ve come to crave it. It’s a mental, spiritual thing.”

It’s also something she loves to introduce to others, both through her art and through writings and in-person and virtual presentations.

It all starts with that move seven years ago to a new home. She said it was mushrooms that first caught her attention as she began exploring the natural world outside her door.

Learning to identify mushrooms is no small matter, she quickly discovered. There are over 80,000 known species, and some are lethal. There are galerina mushrooms found in this area, and ingesting one cap of the wrong one will kill you, she pointed out.

To identify the mushrooms she discovered, she began photographing them as well as making impressions of them. The color of the spores, the patterns under the cap, the plants and environment around a given mushroom are all helpful in identifying an individual species, she explained.

This pursuit soon led her to capture the imagery of the unique microhabitats, cracks and crevices in which she found many of the mushrooms. She posted her images on a blog and on social media. About two years ago, the Granite Falls Arts Council asked her to exhibit them in a public showing.

Her works have been gaining attention ever since. An exhibit of her works at the Southwest Minnesota Arts and Humanities Council’s Gallery in Marshall will run through June 25.

Others are fascinated by her adventures in foraging and cooking wild foods. She is frequently asked to give presentations. “I think mushrooms initially grabbed people’s attention,” she said. “They’re mysterious. We’re taught not to touch them.”

This may explain the popularity of a current series she is offering in partnership with the Bluenose Gopher in Granite Falls called “WILDLY Unique Pairings!” Participants enjoy pairing locally crafted beer and wine along with edible mushrooms while learning about jelly fungus, slime mold and mycelium, all of which are also edible.

Many of her presentations are on the more familiar plants she forages. She has been offering a “Backyard Live” series on Facebook in which she and helpers introduce viewers to foraging and cooking with natural plants and mushrooms.

She is a student enrollment specialist with the Minnesota West Community and Technical College system, and her employer has tapped her knowledge as well. She has given presentations on foraging and cooking with natural foods for “Wellness Wednesday” and other workshops held for employees of the system.

She considers the presentations to be a way to return something to the natural world for all it provides her. By her reasoning, the more that people come to appreciate the natural world, the more they will do to protect it.

Zempel is a 1995 graduate of her local high school and earned a two-year associate degree in liberal arts at Minnesota West. She did not undertake any formal studies to be the naturalist she is today.

As was Charles Darwin, she is driven entirely by her interest in the natural world that she has discovered. “It’s like endless discovery,” she said. “I’m never going to be bored as long as I live.”

Asked how it all came to be, she answered simply: “It’s the natural evolution of where curiosity led me.

Dandelion jelly created by Nicole Zempel. Photo courtesy of Nicole Zempel.

Tom Cherveny

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Derek Chauvin found guilty of George Floyd’s murder

Derek Chauvin has been convicted of murder for killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes, a crime that prompted waves of protests in support of racial justice in the US and across the world.

The jury swiftly and unanimously convicted Chauvin of all the charges he faced – second and third degree murder, and manslaughter – after concluding that the white former Minneapolis police officer killed the 46-year-old Black man in May through a criminal assault, by pinning him to the ground so he could not breathe.

Huge cheers immediately went up among a crowd of several hundred people outside the heavily fortified courthouse with people chanting “All three counts” and “Whose victory? Our victory!”

“Don’t let anyone tell you protest doesn’t work,” a man told the crowd through a bullhorn.

Chauvin guilty verdict a landmark moment in US criminal justice history

Floyd’s brother, Philonise, was the only family member in court. He sat praying in the minutes before the verdict and was visibly shaking as it was announced. As the guilty verdicts were proclaimed, he closed is eyes and nodded his head repeatedly.

“I was just praying they would find him guilty. As an African American, we usually never get justice,” he said immediately afterwards.

Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the Floyd family, said in a statement: “Justice for Black America is justice for all of America. This case is a turning point in American history for accountability of law enforcement and sends a clear message we hope is heard clearly in every city and every state.”

At George Floyd Square, the makeshift memorial that has grown up in the street where Chauvin killed him, Mileesha Smith welcomed the verdicts.

“This is just the beginning. God didn’t let him die in vain. We need the change and we got it,” she said. “It’s bigger than the verdict. What we’ve been fighting for this entire time. You’re telling us that we are right.”

The convictions sent a wave of relief across large parts of a city that was badly hit by riots and looting in the days after Floyd’s death alongside peaceful protests. Hundreds of national guard troops had been deployed in preparation for an acquittal.

Chauvin, wearing a grey suit with a blue tie, was immediately taken into custody to await sentencing. He faces up to 40 years in prison but is likely to receive a shorter sentence according to legal guidelines.

The conviction does not put an end to the highly charged case, which reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement, as three other officers face trial later this year accused of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter.

The speed of the verdicts, on just the second day of deliberation, suggests that the nine minutes and 29 seconds of video footage of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck – which sparked the protests that swept the US – was decisive in persuading the jurors a murder had been committed.

But many activists remain sceptical about the significance of Chauvin’s prosecution, in part because the case was built around accusing the officer of failing to follow procedure and training rather than examining the fundamental issues around policing in the US, including the use of force.

The second-degree murder charge required the jury to find that Chauvin committed a crime by kneeling on Floyd’s neck, which in turn led to his death.

The prosecution put a persuasive case to the jury as a string of witnesses – including Chauvin’s former police colleagues, medical experts and bystanders – built a picture of an officer who exceeded his authority and training in pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds.

Medical specialists described how the combined weight of Chauvin and two other police officers pinning Floyd to the street in a prone position would have had the effect of “grinding and crushing him until the very breath, the very life, was squeezed out of him”.

A pulmonologist, Dr Martin Tobin, gave graphic testimony about Floyd’s desperate struggle to breathe as the position he was held in, pinned between police officers and the street with his cuffed hands pushed into his chest, meant he could barely use one of his lungs at all.

“It’s like the left side is in a vice. It’s being pushed in from the street at the bottom and the way the handcuffs are manipulated … totally interfere with central features of how we breathe,” he said.

The doctor told the jury that for nearly five minutes under Chauvin’s knee Floyd was still speaking which shows “that his oxygen levels were enough to keep his brain alive”.

After that there is evidence of brain damage. The doctor said Floyd’s leg can be seen kicking out which is a sign of a myotonic seizure caused by lack of oxygen.

Tobin said that when Floyd lost consciousness the level of oxygen in his lungs was well below half the normal amount.

The defence attempted to claim Chauvin was following his training but in convicting him of second-degree murder the jury rejected the assertion that the former police officer was permitted to put his knee on the victim’s neck for an extended period of time.

The defence also attempted to claim that Chauvin’s actions had nothing to do with Floyd’s death, and that he die from a cardiac arrest caused by an enlarged and diseased heart, and exacerbated by drug use.

But that did not wash with the jury, perhaps because the excruciating video of Floyd’s suffering revealed an officer who showed cavalier indifference as he defied calls from bystanders and even one of his fellow officers to remove his knee and help the detained man.

Prosecution experts said that although Floyd had heart problems, he would not have died if it had not been for the police cutting off his oxygen supply.

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