Once again we are nearing the change of seasons. This week I began again to make soup as I do each year when Autumn approaches. This time turkey and wild rice were the prime ingredients. I purchased the dried rice when I was out in Minnesota just a few weeks ago. It's the official State Grain out there, and for good reason.
For thousands of years the first Americans dried and stored it to provide food and nourishment for the long, cold winters. The Ojibwa nation called it Manoomin, meaning "good seed." They, along with the Sioux and the Chippewa, would collect the rice kernels that grew on the edges of shallow lakes and slow moving streams as a part of the seasonal rhythm of their culture. Ricing season began during the transition from Summer to Fall when their villages moved from the interior woodlands nearer to the open waterways.
Wild rice isn't really rice at all but an annual watergrass seed with a chewy outer sheath that shields a tender inner nutty, earthy grain. It is a member of the zizania family. At harvest time members of the community would go out in their canoes and gently tap the flowering heads of the slender stalks as their boat passed by. That tapping would cause the wild rice kernels to fall, most of it into the hull of the canoe. But some would end up in the water, seeds for the next year's future harvest.
In Minnesota it is still hand harvested at this time of year by that same time-honored method as a part of the seasonal rhythm of life.
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