A grandfather’s 1884 homestead on the Pilchuck River held a garden patch with an earthen pit, the “root cellar” in a bordering side bank. One walked into a cool, partly dry dugout with a split cedar, grass covered, roof channeling rainwater away. Planted around it were Self-Heal and Spearmint (Prunella vulgaris and Mentha spicata) that discouraged a variety of small mammals. The former, Self-Heal’s young leaves were used for salads.  Unlike most neighboring farms, this cellar was far away from the dairy barn (where other pioneers used these cellars to also store milk and eggs, but never meat). Dirt shelves existed to tuck in Pioneers’ carrots, potatoes, radishes, parsley, rhubarb, turnips, and onions that could grow in Cascadia’s acidic soil. Other European vegetables had to wait for lime to sweeten the soil (from Roche Harbor mines, the mine in Bryant, or the ground-up shells of a nearby ½ mile long Native midden). And if ever starved for “greens,” pioneers would gather the leaves of both mints and use them in salads, soups, and stews. NW First Peoples also used root cellars; having lived in settled areas for 1,000s of years, they knew where each plant species grew, what to gather, bake and store, and where certain marginal roots existed to prevent starvation. When our area’s Native Indigenous were moved to Fox Island and then reservations, they were truly uprooted.

https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IndianNations.pdf
https://www.dnr.wa.gov/publications/ger_b52_limestone_res_western_wa_1.pdf
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Reservations-before-the-Civil-War.pdf
https://tawnysthrivinghome.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/history-of-food-storage-the-root-cellar/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunella_vulgaris
https://burkeherbarium.org/imagecollection/taxon.php?Taxon=Prunella%20vulgaris

Self-Heal was used by both pioneers and the Indigenous peoples in:

salads
decorations
pest repellant

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