On The Caveman Channel

I recently had some fun when I was interviewed for the Caveman Podcast.

It was a pleasure to be interviewed by Joel, and filmed by Tony.

Episode 7 is an hour and seven minutes long. We cover subjects as diverse as my trek along the US-Mexico Border, Longleaf Pine and Fire Ecology, and a whole bunch of mushroom stuff. Enjoy!

fresh mushrooms and herbs

Local Farmers Approach to COVID-19

As many of you know, a few farmers including ourselves and Carl Stewart, have been setting up at East Hill Market 1216 N 9th Ave, Pensacola, FL 32501 on Saturday mornings between 8am and 1pm.

We have a good deal of fresh and dried mushrooms. Remember those are great for your immune system.

Mark Hainds

Other vendors will have fresh vegetables including carrots, collards, salad mix, elderberry syrup, honey and fresh cut flowers.

Mark Hainds and the Hainds Family

Continued Delivery to Pensacola – East Hill Market Tomorrow

As you may have heard, the Palafox Market has been cancelled, at least through the end of March. This season had started as our best ever, so we are very disappointed to lose the Palafox Market downtown. 
We have been in the process of inoculating more logs than we’ve ever attempted before, and no matter how this pandemic plays out, people will need food. We plan to continue delivering to Pensacola as long as we are allowed to do so. We anticipate large quantities of mushrooms from our inoculated logs, with big harvests starting in May or June.  

Susan at the East Hill Market on 9th Avenue is allowing us to set up our tables tomorrow, Saturday the 14th, in her parking lot. If a sufficient number of customers show up to purchase our fresh mushrooms, herbs, eggs, turmeric, and other products, we will plan on returning most Saturdays for the remainder of the year, regardless of Palafox Market closures.  Here is the address 1216 N 9th Ave, Pensacola, FL 32501

Our mailing list only includes about 230 people, so please spread the word that Sweetbill’s will be at the East Hill Market this Saturday from 9:00 AM until 1:00 PM.

We’ll also be informing our customers as to our location and products through our Facebook page.

If there are any extra steps we can take to minimize your concerns about the Corona Virus, please let us know. 


Tomorrow, we will have the following:
Mushrooms: shiitake, oysters & Combtooth, turkey tail 
Inoculated Logs: I will bring some inoculated logs to the market tomorrow. We are offering what we call the 4-Seasons Bundle: It will include 5 different types of mushrooms that fruit throughout the four seasons. It will include 5 different strains or species of oysters and shiitake. The 4-Seasons Bundle cost $60.00  These logs can be purchased individually for $15.00 each.  
Shiitake: $9.00/quart or $5.00/pintOysters: $9.00/quart or $5.00/pintTurkey Tail $5.00/containerCombtooth: 4 oz for $8.00
Fresh Turmeric:  5 oz for $5.00Usnea:  Quart container for $5.00
From the Garden:

Spinach $2.50/quart  Turnips $2.50 bunch

Herbs:  Oregano, Mint, Lemon Balm, Rosemary, Cilantro, Parsley for $2.00/container
Eggs: Quail, chicken, & Duck
Quail & Chicken for $5.00/dozenDuck eggs for $7.00/dozen.
We’ll bring our normal selections of smoking woods, jams/jellies/preserves, and lumber. 
Weather:  The Saturday forecast if for mostly cloudy skies and temperatures around 70 degrees F. There is a 5% chance of precipitation throughout market hours, and winds should be out of the South to southeast around 5 mph.  

Praise for Border Walk Book

I’m very excited about praise for the Border Walk book (expected publish date, March 2018) from the following two authors, both of whom are informed and noteworthy in considerations of the Mexico/US border.

Reed Noss is the author of numerous ecological texts, and Keith Bowden may be the first contemporary person travel the entire length of the Rio Grande as it forms the border between America and Mexico.

Noss’ work is focused on conservation planning. He has designed and directed such studies in Florida, the Pacific Northwest, California, the Rocky Mountains, and several regions of Canada, and has been an advisor to similar projects throughout North America and parts of Latin America and Europe.

Reed F. Noss
Reed Noss

The U.S.-Mexico border is one of the most politically contentious regions of North America, and potentially one of the most dangerous. Mark Hainds quit his job and set out in the fall of 2014 to walk the border between Texas and Mexico. And he did it – all 1,010 miles, mostly on his own. This is his story of that remarkable journey, replete with engaging narrative about the places, flora, fauna, and people he experienced. One finds many life lessons here. –Reed Noss

Keith Bowden teaches writing in Texas and has traveled extensively throughout Mexico as well as South America. His The Tecate Journals: Seventy Days on the Rio Grande documents his travels along the Mexican/US border.

BORDER WALK takes readers on a remarkable journey along the front lines of a misunderstood and misrepresented frontier. Check your border hype at the door and discover, as Mark Hainds does, the rich tapestry of life along our border with Mexico. –Keith Bowden

Keith Bowden
Keith Bowden

Please share this. Peace.

 

A Stranded Motorist and a Hitchhiker

A few weeks back, a friend called because he was short-handed, and needed help on his shrimp boat. My family had eaten all our shrimp from my last time crewing, and by chance, I had that Friday off, so I readily agreed to meet him in Louisiana,

That Friday morning, I left our house near Andalusia, Alabama at 3:00 AM. Three miles out, a man was standing beside his car, parked on US 29, with his hazard lights flashing. I pulled over and rolled down the passenger side window. He approached the car and said “I’m out of gas. I got out of prison and I’m on my way to a new job. My sister must have used all the gas last night.”

From that spot to the nearest 24-hour gas station was eighteen miles.

I told him, “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

He said, “I believe in you man.”

I turned the car around and drove back to my house, to retrieve a full, one-gallon gas can.

During that short trip, I considered the risk associated with this good deed. He didn’t have to mention his time in prison, his face told the story. The flattened nose and empty eyes spoke to: violence, decades of drug abuse, and moral vacuity. If I read him correctly, he may profess his undying loyalty at 3:45 PM, and cut your throat at 3:46 PM, after noticing that nice watch you were wearing.

I pulled over beside his car with the passenger window down, my seatbelt off, and the car still in drive. There was some space between us, and some freedom of movement. He approached the passenger side and I handed the can of gas out the window.

In the ten minutes required to retrieve the gas, his story had changed. “Hey man, I’m looking for a job. I’m a hard worker, anything you have to offer.”

When he turned to poor the gas in his car, I drove off, leaving him with the can and enough gas to get to Brewton, if he was continuing west.

I had mostly paid attention to his face in the beginning, but as I drove west I considered the car. It was a very nice, late model sedan, probably worth about twenty or thirty times the beater I drove. It may have been a hot, in which case I had just assisted a felon in the act.

I rendezvoused with my friend Paxton near Ponchatoula. We the crossed the Lake Pontchartain causeway and launched out of St. Barnard Parish. We shrimped though the day and night, putting back in at about 8:00 AM on Saturday.

I drove East on I-10. On Saturdays, my family sets up as vendors at the Palafox Market in Pensacola, Florida. We had a bunch of mushrooms to sell this particular Saturday, so I figured I’d meet the family on Palafox Street, and help with sales until the market closed at 2:00 PM.

I made it out of Louisiana, through Mississippi, and into Alabama. Just past the exit to Fairhope, a sharply dressed woman was standing on the shoulder of I-10. I figured less risk, offering a ride to a female, so I stopped again. By the time, I pulled over, I was about 100 yards past her. Rather than walk towards my car, she stared at her cell phone. That should have been sufficient warning that something wasn’t right, but perhaps my mind was addled from lack of sleep.

I slowly backed up on the shoulder, until I was directly beside her. She wore the skin tight black clothing, that I have seen many waitresses utilize in upscale restaurants. She looked to be about thirty, thin, with blond hair and a tongue-stud. She looked at my dirty old Buick with obvious disdain and asked, “Don’t you have something to put over the seat?” I placed my rain slicker over the passenger seat. She opened the door got in and announced, “If my uniform gets dirty, you are going to burn in hell.”

I thought, “Oh God, I’ve screwed the pooch again.”

I started driving east. I didn’t know how far she was going, so I asked, “Where are you headed?”

She turned to stare at me and spit these words out, “I don’t know you! It’s none of your business.”

This situation was going downhill fast.

I stared straight ahead and made sure I had the cell phone ready, if I needed to pull over quickly and exit the car.

Her hands didn’t stop moving: rapid darting movement, back and forth, as if she was in silent conversation. Without permission, she turned the heater to full blast. Then she turned the radio to maximum volume, and randomly pushed buttons on the stereo. She was either out of her mind, or tweaking hard on meth.

This was scary shit.

We approached the Florida line, and an overpass came into view. She said, “Pull over, now.” One way or the other, we were rapidly approaching the end game.

I stopped beside the overpass with my hand on the seat-belt release. She opened her door, stepped out, and looked at me, “You are going to kill Paul White. There is no doubt about it.” She waved me off saying, “Go.”

I went.

So why tell this story?

In the fall of 2014, I walked the length of the Texas-Mexico Border. Along the way, I was assisted by dozens of strangers. People that offered rides, money, food, even spare bedrooms while I was passing through town. I started that walk on October 27th, 2014 in El Paso, Texas, and finished on Boca Chica Beach on December 21st, 2014.

I learned many things during that 1,010 mile trek, but perhaps the most important lesson, was the restoration of my faith in humanity.

In less than a week, I fly back to El Paso. On December 21st, I’ll catch a ride to International Mile Marker #1, where I will start walking west, into New Mexico and Arizona. Once again, strangers will come to my aid. They will see an unshaved transient with a backpack, and accepting the risk, they will stop to offer assistance. This election didn’t change who we are, or who they are.

After my first walk along the Texas-Mexico border, I swore to repay the many favors bestowed upon me. So, I give food to the homeless in Pensacola. I stop to help stranded motorists, and sometime in the next year or so, I hope to publish a book with the working title, “Border Walk.” I will let the world know that we must consider how our border policies affect the millions of people who call the border their home. Author Page on Facebook

In the meantime, there is a film about my Texas-Mexico walk titled La Frontera. It was produced by Rex Jones with the Southern Documentary Project. It has played on PBS stations from Florida to California.

With just a few days until my walk, I feel buoyant each time I strap on the pack for a conditioning hike through the Conecuh National Forest. A funk has been hanging over me since the election, and another three-hundred miles along the border: it’s just what the doctor ordered.

The Walk West

On December 21st, 2016, I fly from Mobile, Alabama to El Paso, Texas, and begin walking west from International Mile Marker #1.

intlmikemarker1December 21st marks the two-year anniversary of the completion of my trek along the Texas-Mexico Border.  That walk also started at International Mile Marker #1, but the initial route led south and east on October 27, 2014. The eastern half of the US-Mexico Border trek ended at Boca Chica Beach, near Brownsville, Texas on December 21, 2014.

On the Texas-Mexico trek, I was supported by the Tex-Mex Compadres for all but a few days of the one thousand ten-mile hike.

My walk west, will be unsupported.

I will utilize my two-weeks of vacation and paid leave from LBWCC (Lurleen B. Wallace Community College), to walk the border between Mexico and two states (New Mexico & Arizona).  Much of this stretch is very sparsely populated. For example, it is seventy-five miles between my starting point, at International Mile Marker #1 in El Paso, and the next small town, Columbus, New Mexico.

I carry a pack that weighs approximately thirty pounds, before adding food and water.  To complete this journey, it will be necessary to restock supplies of food and water every two or three days. The only feasible way to carry the necessary calories is to pick up supplies at small post offices or community centers along my route.

At the recent screening of La Frontera at Constant Coffee and Tea in Pensacola, Florida, a young woman asked, “How can we support you in this trek?”  After a moment’s thought, I remembered that my good friends, Johnny Stowe, Jeff Thurmond, and Arthur Hitt had mailed packages of food for my retrieval during the Texas walk.

For those with inclination, time, and forethought, feel free to mail care packages to the following locations.  Be sure to allow plenty of time for the package to arrive BEFORE I get there.  I can’t backtrack to pick up packages that arrive after I have passed through town.

This page has some simple directions for how to address the packages, but as an example:

Mark J. Hainds
C/O General Delivery
Trail Town, VA 12345
Please hold for Border Walker
ETA Dec 2??, 2016

These are best guesses on arrival dates at these small communities, and addresses for mail drops.

Updates will also be posted at my author pages on the Mark Hainds Facebook page.

To verify my progress, location, and schedule, contact my wife Katia at: katiabeli@yahoo.com

A little bit of direction for people who send me a care package for the trail:

Regarding preferred food items, the overriding concern is packing lots of calories into a small space.
Rigid containers are problematic, and variety is nice.

The Evolution of Sweetbill’s

Mushrooms at Palafox Market
Mushrooms at the Palafox Market

Our website was originally intended as an author blog, and a place to advertise/publicize products from our business.  An earlier incarnation of our business was called “Deep South Nursery”.  We grew hardwood seedlings, shrubs, and native herbaceous species.
After about one decade, we started taking firewood and smoking woods to the old Port City Market in Pensacola.  I came up with the name “HHHH Nursery and Wood Products.”   The four H’s stood for “Hainds Hardy Hardwoods and Herbs.”  While I found the name brilliant, Katia wasn’t impressed.
We continued growing seedlings and plants, but my interest shifted to other products.  Meanwhile, the Port City Market went away and we started attending the Palafox Market year around.
My first book, Year of the Pig, was published in 2011.  I generally have a few copies at the market, and ever since it was published, I’ve looked forward to having a second book beside it.
We got some chickens, and started taking foraged mushrooms, herbs, berries, and nuts to the market.  Florida changed its law, and that allowed us to add jams, jellies, preserves, and marmalades.

lumber at the market
Shelving anyone — Raw Lumber at the Palafox Market

At Katia’s wise insistence, and with consultation from our customers, we changed our name to Sweetbill’s.
We wore out on the nursery, and then we wore out on the chickens.  We’ll probably get some more hens in 2017, but we’ve further shifted our priorities towards mushroom production and lumber.
In the fall/winter of 2014 I walked the length of the Texas-Mexico Border.  A manuscript detailing this walk is in the final editing process.  In the near future, Border Walk will be handed over to an agent or a publisher.  Hopefully, it will get published in 2017.  A documentary about my walk became available in early October, 2016, and La Frontera will be playing on multiple PBS stations this fall (2016).
When I returned from the walk along the border, I spent an entire month (March, 2014) inoculating logs for mushroom production.  The following winter 2015-2016, I again devoted an enormous amount of time to inoculation, and we are now witnessing the fruits of those efforts.

Mushroom Farm at Home
Marissa and Joseph enjoying the Mushroom Farm at Home

Although I grow the mushrooms, Katia is the woman who packs them so carefully in the containers.  When you purchase a pint or quart of our: shiitake, chanterelles, oysters, nameko, olive oysterling, or lion’s mane, that container will hold some pretty mushrooms.  It is not uncommon for me to arise at 3 AM on a Saturday morning, and find Katia still cleaning and packing the mushrooms.  That’s a lot effort to get you bring you some fungi!
You may have noticed some attractive lumber and slabs propped against the trailer we pull to the market. I have been cutting and hauling logs to various mills for several years.  But production picked up substantially when I located enormous amounts of cedar, oak, pine, pecan, cherry, and other woods, that in many cases, would be piled and burned were I not salvaging the logs.
In December I fly back to El Paso to attempt another leg of the US-Mexico border.  This time, I’ll be tackling New Mexico and eastern Arizona. If all goes well, I’ll be back at the Palafox Market by mid-January, with more stories to tell.

Wild Blueberries

Wild Blueberries
     Many people are working to restore the native, fire-maintained, longleaf pine ecosystem of the southeastern, US. Land managers and locals with some botanical skills know one of the important plant families contributing to the wonderful diversity of the longleaf ecosystem is the Heath Family, or Ericaceae.

     Across much of the south, a healthy longleaf forest will contain a very diverse community of blueberries and huckleberries, which are two genera of the Heath family. Blueberries are Vacciniums and huckleberries are Gaylusaccias. In a typical lower Coastal Plain longleaf forest that has never been converted to agriculture or subjected to an intensive mechanical or chemical site preparation, it would not be uncommon to observe half of the understory covered with blueberries and huckleberries.

     For the last couple of years, we have put my plant identification and foraging skills to use by harvesting wild blueberries and taking them to the Palafox Farmers’ Market in Pensacola, Florida. First to bear is Elliot’s blueberry or Vaccinium elliottii. Elliot’s blueberry is one of the first shrubs to bloom on the Conecuh National Forest and the Blackwater State Forest. You will find native pollinators working Elliot’s blueberry bushes in February and March. The small fruits range from bb size to slightly larger. It takes a long time to acquire a significant volume of Elliot’s blueberries.

     Next in line are our low bush blueberries. I believe most of our low bush blueberries are Vaccinium myrsinites. The fruit from low bush are roughly equivalent in size to the Elliot’s blueberry, but the bush is much lower to the ground and sometimes the low bush are much more prolific. A one to two foot tall bush may have a hundred or more bb sized – sweet blueberries. The fruit ranges from almost black, to dark blue, to glaucous light blue berries.

      When there is a good crop of Elliot’s and/or low bush blueberries, we harvest what we can. We collect enough to fit in a baby food jar (4 ounces) and pour it into a ziplock snack bag for sale at the farmers’ market. This is a low-wage endeavor.

     We do much better when the high-bush start producing. Although there is tremendous variation in the height, foliar, and fruiting characteristics of high-bush blueberry, I believe all of them are the species Vaccinium corymbosum. High-bush are less common in our forest than are the low-bush and Elliot’s blueberry, so I take note anytime I find a stand worth harvesting. We previously collected most of our berries from the Conecuh National Forest in June & July, but the foresters finally got around to burning the stands where we collected most of our berries and it may be a few more years before the bushes recover enough stature to produce harvestable quantities of blueberries.

      One high bush-blueberry is equivalent in volume to several Elliot’s or low-bush blueberries. When we find a dense stand of high-bush blueberries, the Hainds family can collect several pints per hour. Last week we collected 51 pints of high-bush blueberry from the Blackwater State Forest. We also had seven pints of wild-collected blackberries (Rubus spp.) and our normal selection of smoking woods, jams, books, and a few potatoes and tomatoes. I thought it may be our best sales day ever, but it was not to be.

     Waking at 4:45 AM on Saturday morning, I immediately checked the Pensacola forecast. The Weather Channel predicted wind and rain all day and unfortunately, their prediction was accurate. I arrived at Palafox Street at 7:45 AM and sat in my Jeep until 8:00 before the rain let up enough forme to set up our stand. I made it through the next three hours with precipitation ranging from a light mist to outright downpours.

     A scattering of customers wandered through until the lightning started cracking all around. I took shelter in the Jeep as the bottom fell out. Water was running down my side of Palafox Street nearly 1 foot in depth and at a rapid clip. A gust of wind blew over our shelter, bending rods and potentially destroying our canopy frame. Our merchandise got soaked. Instead of making a few hundred dollars, this trip cost at least a couple hundred dollars in damaged goods.

     After packing up our waterlogged merchandise, I stopped by a local vegan eatery named “The End of the Line Café”. A friend, Christian Wagley had suggested they might pick up some of our wild-collected blueberries. Like several other businesses and houses downtown, the End of the Line Café had been flooded. Although they had a “Closed” sign in the window, they bought a dozen pints of blueberries to use for the coming week. Thanks for the tip Christian!
 

    I filled the Jeep with gas, stripped off my soaked clothing, and drove home in my underwear. After a good night’s sleep I prepared a breakfast of blueberry pancakes for Joseph, Katia, and myself. Then I got to work cranking out blueberry jam. I’ve already made 21 jars and I hope to make one or two more batches before I call it a day.

Speaking at the Alabama Book Festival

Alabama has one of the better book festivals in the Deep South http://alabamabookfestival.org/welcome.html . This year’s book festival will be held on Saturday, April 21st from 9:00 AM until 4:00 PM in Old Alabama Town in downtown Montgomery.

I’ve attended the Alabama Book Festival for several years as an exhibitor for The Longleaf Alliance http://longleafalliance.org/. Every time I have attended the festival there have been: thousands of attendees, dozens of authors, and a fun-literary atmosphere.

This year will be different, because I have been invited to speak as a Featured Author!http://alabamabookfestival.org/past-festival-authors_1.html. But don’t worry. The Longleaf Alliance will still be an exhibitor. Vernon Compton is stopping to man the table in Montgomery before traveling back to Milton, Florida from another engagement.

I’ll drive up the night before the Alabama Book Festival to attend an authors’ reception where I’ll rub elbows with some fairly big names in contemporary southern literature: Wayne Flynt  http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Keeping-the-Faith,5207.aspx, Rheta Grimsley Johnson http://www.rhetagrimsleyjohnsonbooks.com/, Lisa Patton http://lisapatton.com/, Gin Phillips, http://www.ginphillips.com/ and many, many more.

Thus far, this is the high point of my tenure as an author. Now, if we can just get Don Noble to review my book on Public Radio…..