Join me we're gonna use this handmade Viking axe and a tree behind me and turn them into a meal That's right guys we're eating cambium Idea today is to cut down a tree to thin out the canopy and promote new life And new growth a lot of people have said you can eat cambium layer and survive No you can see why they never cut the tree down I'm hung up we have fire! Got the best compliment to cambium if you have it it's bear fat So let's find out how it really tastes before you go all crazy and start hacking down the whole tree do a test spot you want to see if this is edible You get that at the right time of year what'll happen is the inner and outer layer will separate very easily Just like so The outer garbage not edible, but the inner should be sweet Stringy but entirely edible Now you may be concerned with killing the tree The fact is is if you don't go all the way around the tree and girdle it It'll continue to live and Historical records have shown that Native Americans used to eat this very famine food when food was scarce in the spring by doing this Because he would find markings like this on Trees all throughout the forest and what they found was that the tree was still alive and thriving after many years the tree itself is Nourished by the cambium layer all the way around and as long as nutrients can be pulled up through the bark To the top the tree will continue to live now the problem with harvesting from these trees is you can only reach so high historical markings showed that trees were stripped up to 6 feet tall and For good reason you couldn't reach up further than that and it was a lot of work to cut a tree down So you'd find damage on trees scattered throughout the forest Where they would strip them down and eat them now you might be wondering? What would you eat it with well? They could be added with stews. They could be fried in oil or they could be dried and stored for later although rare Because they were famine food. They weren't something that was meant to be stored and over time they could spoil Which is the case right now if they're not properly treated the sugars in the cambium layer will spoil Rendering it totally useless in fact it turns yellow and rancid very quickly so the idea is to collect it and eat it as As you can see there's no shortage of pine in this forest the problem is none of this is natural this is the brainchild of our modern thinking a monoculture of pine devoid of any life completely open and Exposed to the wind and elements animals Despise this forest why because there's no place to hide. It's wide open Animals are nowhere to be found Because it would be easy for me to find them so the idea today is To cut down a tree to thin out the canopy and promote new life and new growth so not only will be getting a meal Out of it, but will also be producing habitat for new life Now you can see why they never cut the tree down I'm hung up so not only is it a ton of work to cut these trees down For the energy get back, but now I'm hung up on the tree, so now what am I gonna do? Not even the squats are helping me right now need to get me my horses And that doesn't put me any closer to a meal Now as you can see over a very short period of time have managed to collect a lot of the cambium layer Now not easy to collect, but the problem is is it delicious Not really This varieties kind of bare, taste like you would expect. Taste like it smells, a kind of pine sap. So would I recommend it? Not this particular variety, but I've had better right, huh, hey, aha aha I can't talk like that But it's very stringy And it's difficult to chew so you can imagine making use of this is kind of tricky right, you can't just eat it um I Would say I recommend probably cooking it into a super stew would be a good thickener you want to cut up into little pieces That's not all stringy Because you don't want to be pulling a big piece of stringy mess out of your throat it might make you gag so what I would recommend doing with this is cooking it up as a chip or crisp and some oil that way it will crunch up and Theoretically snap apart and break into your in your mouth and eat a like a chip But in order to do that you need to make a fire Next thing I want to mention is that this stuff's not good all year long. It would be difficult to harvest any other time of year besides the spring because the saps not flowing as much and It'll be difficult to separate the outer bark from the inner bark So that's a concern so people who say well, you could survive off cambium layer. It's everywhere Yeah, it is everywhere, and it is available all the time But this stuff is not the greatest stuff to eat difficult to process Difficult to turn in edible form and like I say it's not available all the time It's only available in the spring and any palatable way all right now that we got a bunch of cambium Let's make a fire and cook it up see how it tastes This whole wood lot, it's a tinder bundle now all the lower branches are completely dry so it's not hard to find your Kindling if I just grab these branches here snap them off You get handfuls of the stuff very easily all these lower branches are completely dry Thankfully the ground's still frozen You don't have to worry too much about the fire burning down. We'll make sure it's put out We've got a big spring storm coming in later today, which is gonna complete douse this area with piles of rain So I'm not concerned about that at all Got myself my tinder bundle I always keep this stuff dry it's cedar bark will add some birch bark to it you can see how powder dry that is I keep it nice and Safe and dry so it's always ready to go Now the spindles about had it But I think I got an ember. It's too smooth in the center now But I do have an ember People like to say I... Well, people have said I've done a cutscene, so, no cutscene. Ready? There's your ember Oh Yeah, we're going to move the camera It's really tricky to be moving the camera around while doing this by the way, and I did do it while nursing the flame It's still in there You can barely see it Yeah, maybe we'll do this here. You can see it's living happily in there I don't know if my cedar bundles big enough might burn my fingers Some people like some people have said you like to blow along so hey well blow along Almost there Just about Almost one more blow Magic we have fire! When I got fires I don't mess around when you got that flame use the heat get one on it and fuel it fast Now maybe hard to tell, but this is already starting to yellow And go off color like fruit does so it doesn't have a very long shelf life We've got a cast iron pot, pan Very handy for bush cooking you can shove this in an excessive amount of heat. Problem is it's heavy So it's not portable so the best compliment to cambium If you have it is bear fat Lard pure animal fat So what we're gonna do heat this up on the fire Once that's going we're gonna add our cadmium turn it into chips A lot of people have said you can eat cambium layer and survive. So, let's find out how it really tastes See it very much looks like a chip But more like a piece of burnt wood than a chip But the real question is can You eat it It's actually not bad but it's actually not great either It's a little bit like burnt wood The fats nice, and it could really use some salt some flavoring I Would say if you were in a famine you could eat it But It's not all that good, edible but not incredible So a couple things First is a different species might taste differently this one started off bitter it remained bitter So my advice would be to find something that starts off sweet And then go with it so the trick would be to find a tree Test it out find out how it tastes raw, and if it's good raw continue with it if it's not Abandon it completely because this tree hasn't improved in flavor by cooking it, so I'm not gonna completely write off all trees I've had another tree before that was sweeter this variety. Just happens to be not sweet So there is a chance of redeeming cambium and finding a tree with sweeter cambium so the question is is it possible yeah, it's possible You can eat cambium can eat in quantity probably not not this variety anyway, but maybe a different variety so let's reserve cambium layer as An emergency food a survival food if you're absolutely 100% need it and let's strip out the cost of fire Cutting a tree down. Let's say you have plentiful amounts of it And you can strip off the bottom six feet go right ahead eat cambium, but make sure you do it in the springtime It's not something you can eat all year long So there you have it cambium Edible, but not incredible Just want to finish this topic off by saying yeah, Native Americans did eat cambium, but the reports of it are slim meaning if you were a bark eater and You're native, and that's what you did You long ago went extinct. That's just a fact now beaver They can make a living eating cambium, but they have special digestive system, and they probably have a much different palate than we do Our palette is simply not designed to eat that bitterness cause a beaver can eat all year long It's something not we're not adopted to do so Yes, it can be eaten, but it's not something that I would encourage you to go out and do Maybe experiment for fun, but not something that I would rely on. In an emergency, yeah, maybe eat a tree. I mean beavers can do it. Why can't people? people aren't beaver and Beaver adapted to different environment than people Humans are predators Scavengers omnivores we can make use of lots of different things. We don't have to rely on trees and just Plants we can eat everything and we should eat everything so I'm gonna wrap this up. Thanks for joining me. I hope you guys enjoyed seeing that really cool Viking axe It was pretty neat and Join me on the next one feel free to subscribe or not. I don't care. I'd also like to thanks. Thank riot axe Chuck for lending me his Really cool Viking axe thanks a lot, buddy. He's uh Located in Guelph, and he's got out axe throwing company so if you guys want to come out throw some axes Give Chuck a ring again, that's riot. Axe in Guelph, just go put that into Google. You should be able to find a no problem Stick with me. I'm going to show you how I'm going to turn this Custom handmade Viking axe in the tree behind me into a delectable meal We're eating cambium
Will soon be available at Whole Foods for 17.99 a pound.
Sure you can eat it, but it tastes like shit. - Mick Dundee
That's what cinnamon is
Has anybody actually done this?
Ah yiss, the Wooded Beardsman.
Good, if a bit long, videos all through his channel.