WILD RICE
Wild rice sells for two or three times the price of ordinary rice and the supply never meets the demand.
"But who wants it and what for?"
Wild rice is not likely to become a popular breakfast food except among the Ojibways, yet a lot of time and effort have been spent on trying to find out how to grow crops of it. The reason for this is that nothing fattens wild ducks, geese, and other game birds quite so satisfactorily. Where the wild rice flourishes there is the hunter's paradise in September. This is reason enough for wanting to grow wild rice. When our true American sportsmen awoke to the fact that game was scarce and realized why, they set about protecting the wild fowl and studying their habits so as to better supply ideal conditions for the remnant to increase. This is conservation and boys that help in such enterprises are truly patriotic citizens.
Wild rice grows in swamps, shallow lakes, and sluggish rivers covering immense areas in the Mississippi Valley and the middle North-western states. Mud is a necessity to its growth. It grows taller than a man's height above the water and its seed comes in a loose spray at the very top of each stalk. The plants die every year and new ones come up from seed. The grain begins to ripen early in September and keeps on until heavy frosts. This is all right for ducks but it makes harvesting a very difficult task. The Indian women of the wild rice regions go out and shake the heads over their boats. They have to go again and again. If they left it till all the grain had ripened they would get very little seed, because the wild rice falls as soon as it is ripe and lies in the mud till spring. The long-hid secret of the many failures to get wild rice to grow from seed was discovered by some scientist to be this habit of lying in the mud over winter. Thoroughly dried seed does not germinate.
Wild rice is queer looking stuff. The grains are black and very long and slender. Some of them are an inch long. It is said by some to be very good eating, especially as prepared by the Indians. They parch it usually, but sometimes it is made into a sort of porridge and eaten with maple sugar.
Practically, the best market for wild rice will always be amongst the wild fowl and it is a sportsman-like act to gather the seed and propagate it for their sake.