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Ginseng Hunting John Putnam: There use to be a road went right up just a little ways _________ a ways from the mill. My father and I use to go by there and there was an old big stump, old – it was cut off way here. It was a big one. Then my father says "Well, Captain Dickson went out there and cut that tree, chopped it down before breakfast one morning". (Laughs) He always said that. It was an old big stump, ya know. Oh ya, he said, "Old Captain went out there and cut that tree down before breakfast one morning with an axe". Now what were you and your dad doing up there? At that time, we was traveling. Pilky was hunting this ginseng. You ever hear of that? It's a medicine. Ya, Chinese, Chinese used it for medicine or something. Sure. Ya, this old fella down town here, his name was Fairbanks and he knew my father traveled and knew the ________ pretty well. He got talking to him and said, "I'll come up and help you hay, do your haying if you'll take me into Pisky hunting that ginseng. Ginseng, if that's the right word for it. So he did. After they got the haying done, they went traveling Pisky and my father, he kept-a going afterwards. The other fella, I don't know if he ever went again. I use to go with him. Ooh boy! Go in there all day long, fight mosquitoes, black flies it was fun. (Laughs) But the black flies weren't as thick as they are today. Mosquitoes… oh, they'd take ya and walk right off with ya, big ones! John, could you tell me about how you'd gather ginseng with your father? Well, we walked, we found a … look all around, all over in different places, ya know. You'd be in a ravine somewhere where it was low ground and sometimes you'd get it up the side of a hill but not quite often. You could see it. The vine looks like a sarsaparilla vine. You know what that looks like. Three branches with leaves but… the ginseng has a stock come out through the middle, the center of it and then the fall…now it'll have green… no, no there wouldn't be no berries _________ The stock comes up in the center there'd be a bunch of berries on top and they'd be green and in the fall, they'd turn red, see. And my father, when we dug it in the fall the berries would be red and where he took that root out he'd put them berries right back down in the hole. But by gees, I wondered now, if them berries ever come up. Oh, I'm sure they did. How would you gather them? Well, you just dig the fruit out With a shovel or something? No, no, no just he had a little something that we'd get it out with. Grows right on the top of the ground. Dig around it ya know, pull it out. Put it in the basket? Yup. I know we been over there one day, traveled all day long and we came home cross lots one place up here. And down on the back side of this farm, trees in there, a lot of butternuts, butternut trees. We got in there and boy, you never see such a ________. We took out 10 lbs of weed right off quick. There we'd been gone all day and this damn place was right to home. How much would you get out on a typical day? How many pounds? Oh, some days we wouldn't get a pound. It would take a lot of it to make a pound all dried. That's when they'd buy it. When it's dry. At that time I guess you didn't more then $4.00 or $5.00 for a pound of dry. And then what? Well, then you'd sell it. To…? Well, sometime I guess you'd send it somewhere. But it's the darned tasting stuff. I've heard the Chinese use it for tea. (Laughs) Ooh boy, it use to grow up here, sure. So, you would… he would sell it to, uh… perhaps he'd ship it to Boston or something or maybe he would sell it in town. Oh, I guess probably he'd send it to New York. Yup, he'd get so much. He'd do it up, ship it in a box or something, ya know. If you raise it you don't get so much. What is the difference, I wonder. I never could understand that. Now, my father, he had up on the old farm here, he had a little bit of it. A few plants, big stuff. But there was a lot of little ones coming up all around it ya know. He had one plant that he found right up here just a ways up in the woods, sugar lot. It had four branches come up from this one stock, see, and generally, there's only three but with this one, there was four. And he thought so much of that, by Christ, he took it up and brought it home and down below the old barn down in the bottom half, there's a place down there with rock maple trees and a little butternut trees and he took and set it in there in just the right place for it to grow and by God, it did grow and it seeded and spread all around too. After I left the place… it was there when I was there but gees after I left the place someone went in there and dug the whole damn business out. |
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