Middle Earth Ranger Forum

https://www.shelterwoodforestfarm.com/b ... -of-europe

I really wanted to share this article about the food culture and diet of early Europeans. To me the forest gardens sound magical, but are a very grounded, real world history, that would fit very well into early Middle Earth. I imagine rangers would do some work to cultivate wild forest gardens in areas they range. Knowing your patrol will lead you through hazel groves for nuts, or season berry patches would help to lighten your load and extend your trek in the wild. It's a great read and has very much influenced how I think of food while trekking in the wild. I always carry hazelnuts!

Yes! I absolutely think this could be a thing that the northern Dúnedain would do, Rangers specifically. Along with perhaps the Woodsmen and Beornings. It's funny that you bring this up because my best friend actually just moved to Canada to earn his master's degree in archaeology studying exactly this. The Pacific northwest has a very long tradition of the Indigenous peoples doing exactly this and he's studying their techniques using the latest in phytolith analysis. How very cool to see the same tradition across the pond.

More reading for the Pacific northwest here.

https://www.science.org/content/article ... ous-people

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/envi ... tdo-nature

Thank you so much for sharing, that was the best article I've read in a long time! I've always associated 'forest gardening' with Eastern Woodland (American) cultures, but I'm not at all surprised to see this evidence for Mesolithic and later Old European groups doing something similar...makes total sense that hazelnuts are at the heart of this culture. There's something about a basket of freshly gathered hazels (or big fat acorns!) that always speaks to me on a deep level. I could definitely see Beornings, Mirkwoodsmen, various pre-Numenoreans, (especially down in future-Ithilien!) doing things similarly. Not sure about the northern Dunedain but it is certainly an intriguing idea!

Personally, I see it less like a Dúnedain innovation but more of an adaption of indigenous knowledge from the pre-Númenórean cultures. Heck, they might not even deliberately cultivate the gardens and instead just know it as "that place that always has the hazelnuts", not knowing that it's a remnant from days long before they arrived. According to my friend, there are still forest gardens dating from before the Columbian contact period in the Pacific northwest. Easy to see a cultivated garden growing wild after abandonment but still surviving into the Third Age. As redhand says, it would really lighten the food stresses of traveling especially if a Ranger had a certain set loop they followed in their travels. Part of the Ranger's local knowledge along with the "understanding the languages of beasts and birds" I suppose.

That is a fascinating overview... one worth a couple re-reads to digest properly I think. Very cool, thank you!

... and fun timing. I planted quite a few hazelnuts in the back woods this near, albeit more for poetical reasons than foraging ones. It just seemed the right thing to have hazels leaning out over the creek.

More to Middle-earth, I've wondered about how much the Dunedain of the Angle manage the near forest. I'm sure they - and the Breelanders - must keep near woodlots for coppice and timber and firewood, and it would make sense for any of the northern peoples to run pigs where they could feed them from nut fall. Past that though, I've no idea.

Neat thing to think about - thank you again for the link!

Here’s a potentially fun little addition: what about the Entwives’ gardens?

I seem to recall something (a section I read recently in the Silmarillion maybe? It’s been a busy couple months for me and things have gotten a bit jumbled) about the gardens of the Entwives being obliterated by Sauron at some point - but maybe some portion(s) of these survived? Hell, maybe some of them even had dealings with the early Elves and Men of Middle-earth, even before the return of the Noldor, and passed some of their knowledge down?