Susan Smith: North Woods ricing ‘not for the weak of heart’

Originally published Sept. 28, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

HAYWARD – For those of us who buy wild rice in the store, Chris Smith has nothing but pity.

Pity, and a few choice words.

“It’s hybrid crap,’’ she said. “It’s not even real wild rice. It’s wild rice crossed with brown rice, then treated to look wild.”

Wild rice, called Mahnoomin by the Ojibwe, and celebrated this month during the Wild Rice Moon, is another thing entirely.

“It’s a treat, and a good staple,’’ she said. A true grass, not a cereal crop, it grows in lakes across northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, both of which have regulated wild rice gathering seasons.

To get the real thing, you have to do what hundreds of Wisconsinites do every September -- take to the shallow waters of the Northern lakes and rivers.

The 2008 wild rice season is winding up, and it has been a decent one.

“It’s not a real top-notch year, but it’s better than last year, which was the fifth year of a five-year drought,’’ Smith said.

Smith and Paul Vallem run The Rice Shack on Highway 63 just north of Hayward, where the region’s ricers bring their prize to be parched and threshed.

Vallem and Smith grew up ricing, and inherited the Rice Shack business from their fathers, along with a love of this special season in the north.

“Most of the people we deal with grew up ricing and learned it from their parents,’’ she said. “It’s not just the Native Americans who go ricing, it’s anyone.”

Sam Thayer, who runs The Forager’s Harvest in Ogema, teaches beginners to rice, but he said it is not for everyone. “If people aren’t used to physical labor, it can be very hard for them,’’ he said.

Anyone can buy a ricing license from the state Department of Natural Resources for $8.25. Thayer estimates the DNR sells about 500 licenses a year, and the tribes issue another 300 to their members.

It takes a canoe and two people: one to stand and pole the canoe through the rice, and the other to sit in front with two sticks called knockers, and whack the ripe grains, which fall into the bottom of the canoe.

Ricing takes some skill – most beginners will wind up in the water – and some fortitude.

“This is not for the weak of heart,’’ Smith said. “If you don’t like bugs and spiders and worms, don’t pick rice.”

To remove the bugs, hulls and moisture that will spoil the rice, the Rice Shack crew first parches or dries the rice in a 50-gallon cement mixer that rotates over heat, then threshes it in a second machine. The Rice Shack charges $1.75 a pound for its services, and will trade for rice. But most people keep their hard-won treasure.

“You have to pick twice as much as you want, because you only get half the weight back after it’s threshed,’’ Smith said. For her, about 40 pounds will last until next year’s rice season.

PHOTO INFORMATION: Chris Smith (front) and Paul Vallem check wild rice after threshing. If they find more than one husk in a handful of rice, they continue threshing for another minute and check again./PHOTO by Dennis Harnden

Dennis McCann: Please, honey, let me be a man of Stihl

Originally published Nov. 19, 2008

While I have always thought of myself as a knowledgeable and wordly guy, I’ve long been secretly embarrassed at being undereducated. Credit-wise, I mean, and we can probably forget the “secretly” part now that I’ve shared my shame on the world wide Internet. While many of my friends and former colleagues have advanced degrees or law degrees or medical degrees of every sort, I left the University of Wisconsin-Madison with exactly 120 degrees on the head, not one more than the bare minimum for entering the workaday world with a college degree. And while I often thought I should do something about that I never found the right opportunity.

Well, pull my cord and call me Chipper because now I have. I was going into Hayward the other day and passed by the campus of the Wisconsin School of Chainsaw Carving – “the only state licensed chainsaw carving school in the United States.”

Is this a great country, or what? Who knew there was a school offering “in-depth chainsaw carving training to the career oriented student.” As adrift as I am employment-wise these days, a new career turning tree stumps into fierce little black bears sounds pretty good.

It turns out the school has been around for a few years. The school (http://www.chainsawcarvingschool.com/) was started by a former taxidermist-turned-chainsaw artist and offers weeklong classes several times a year. Instead of a couple of No. 2 pencils and a box of crayons students are required to show up with a chainsaw or two, steel-toed boots, chainsaw protective shirt, leg chaps, gloves, goggles and helmet – not to mention your own gas and oil and $1,850 for tuition – but nobody said education comes cheap. If I can only convince my wife to let me have an actual chainsaw I can get to work on the prerequisite 20 carved mushrooms, a photo of which must be included with each application.

That could take a lot of convincing, though. Whenever I bring up my need for a chainsaw – and I am one who lives in the woods, by the way – I always end up feeling like poor little Ralphie in “A Christmas Story.” As Ralphie’s mother feared he would shoot his eye out with a Red Ryder BB gun, my wife contends I would cut my leg, or worse, off with a chainsaw. When I say “not bloody likely,” she only hears the “likely bloody.” And she doesn’t care if I’m the laughingstock of the local tavern.

But man, look at that course schedule. After the safety instruction (See, honey?) the class gets right to work on an eagle bust design and layout, then carving an eagle out of soft material and by the end of Day 1 each student has chainsaw carved an actual eagle. By Day 2 it’s on to carving the eagle’s eye, lip, beak and feathers and, in the afternoon, chainsaw carving a standing bear.

And who would dare play hooky on Day 3 when we get to make a death mask of either a carved or frozen bear.

The day I stopped to take a photo of one of the carved bears along the highway – that’s a salmon it’s holding up, of course – I could see a group of carvers in one of the outdoor carving booths and hear the manly whine of saws turning chunks of wood into high art. It was music to my ears. I tell you, I love the sound of a Husqvarna in the morning.