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When Carl and I came to the cabin, we intended to stay for a while, and we didn't have much money, so we bought some cheap bulk food, like oatmeal, rice and beans. We also tried to grow a little garden, and find as much wild food as possible. I think we had a guide book for edible plants, or maybe we just took some notes from one in the library. Not only was finding food in the forest appealing because it would save money, but also because the idea of "living off the land" seemed pretty cool. We never really got too much food from the wilderness though, compared to what we had brought with us. But it was fun and educational to make the effort.
Grandad once told me about fiddle heads, which were the tops of ferns which were just coming up, so named because of their resemblance to the top of a fiddle. I thought we might have some of those, but when I was reading through some book, it mentioned that some species of ferns were poisonous, and I wasn't sure if the ferns around the cabin were the non-poisonous variety or not. We didn't eat many fiddle heads, not only because they might have been poisonous, but also because they tasted awful.
There were dandelions around, so we harvested the leaves of some of those, but most of them were too old, and were very bitter. Somewhere we read that the roots of dandelions could be harvested and roasted like chicory to make a coffee substitute. We tried that, and the roots of the dandelions around the cabin were rather small and inconsequential, and when roasted and brewed like coffee, made a most vile tasting liquid.
We didn't bother trying to make a kind of flour out of the inner bark of pine trees, which allegedly kept people from starving during some stretch of hard times. We didn't see too many mushrooms, and didn't know them well enough to be confident about which were edible.
One minor success we had with forest products was pine pitch. It's not edible, but at least it was something we had heard about, tried, and it worked. We collected sticky chunks of dried pine sap from the many pine trees near the shack. We filled some cans with the chunks of sap and heated them for a long time. The sap melted and eventually turned a dark color. When it was warm, it was sticky, and easily spread, and when it cooled, it hardened, and was a bit tacky, but not really sticky. We didn't really have much to use it for, but it was satisfying to have tried to make something and succeeded to some extent.
Eventually I started trying to think of possible uses for the pine pitch. I finally came up with one that seemed practical and reasonable. The north and west sides of the outside of the cabin were covered with tar paper which was held on by strips of wood. Grandad told me that before that tar paper was added, the wind from the north would blow through all the cracks between the logs, and the cabin was much colder and draftier on windy winter days. There were lots of little to medium sized holes in the tar paper, and I figured if I patched them, maybe the inside mosquito population would be reduced.
I unrolled some tar paper from a roll that was on the porch, heated some pitch in a can, and went out with the step ladder to start patching. I cut patches of tar paper big enough to cover each hole as I got to it, spread some pine pitch on the edges, and pressed it against the wall over the hole. It seemed to be working pretty good. The pine pitch adhered really well as it cooled, as long as i put enough on the patch. I had to stop and reheat the pine pitch can a couple of times as it cooled and hardened.
I had worked my way around past the west window, and had patched what I could reach from that position, so I got down from the ladder, and moved it about 3 feet, then climbed up again. My head was almost as high as the top of the tar paper. There was a little puffed out section of tar paper, and I pushed against it to see if it was brittle, or if I could flatten it out. Just as I pushed against it, a tiny black face appeared over the top edge of the tar paper. I was startled, and stopped moving. I was face to face with a small bat. I think it had been sleeping, and its eyes were closed when it appeared, and they slowly opened. It started to slowly close its eyes again, and lower behind the tar paper when it abruptly did a classic comedy double take. Its eyes sprang open and it popped back up, as if it suddenly realized something wasn't as it should be. It actually had a startled look on its face. After a moment of staring at me, it popped back down behind the tar paper. I was startled at first too, but then I started laughing to myself at the behavior of this tiny creature. I figured I had done enough patching for the day. I quietly climbed down the stepladder and left so the little bat could get back to sleep.