Going into the mountains to harvest gallnuts for dyeing

"It's good to harvest gallnuts around the autumn equinox."

Ms. M, who is in charge of dyeing, explained this to me.

We use plants around us as dye materials.

Some of the plants are listed in plant dyeing encyclopedias, but others are things that are all around us and no one else needs, so I thought I'd try using them for dyeing.

What was collected this time was gallnut, a typical dye material used in plant dyeing.

To be honest, I had no idea that gallnuts were found in the mountains in this area. I knew that gallnuts existed as a dye material, and since they could produce the colors we were looking for, I thought that if the opportunity arose someday, I would like to try dyeing with them.

Two years ago, when I happened to be taking a walk in the mountains, I was surprised to find a Chinese gall nut hanging from a tree.I searched thoroughly along the forest road and found many other Chinese gall nut-bearing "sumac" trees in the area.

I was so surprised that I continued to go into the mountains frequently after that. That year, I noticed it was late autumn, well past the ideal harvest time for Chinese gallnuts, which is around the time of the equinox.

So this year, I set my sights on the right time, and was finally able to enter the mountains at the right time.

This time, there were four of us in the mountains.

It took about 10 minutes to drive along the bumpy forest road in a light truck.

We arrived at the mountain where the mulberry trees are. Every time we found a mulberry tree, we carefully examined the tree branches to see if there were any gallnuts on them. Even if there were, they were often quite high up, so we had to desperately cut down the branches to harvest them, and if they were thick, we had to climb the trees!

I worked very hard to collect the samples.

They work together like this: one person looks from a distance, one shakes the tree, one picks the fruit, and one puts them in a bag!

The total amount of gallnuts we collected was 2.5kg. I don't know if that's a lot or a little, but anyway, we picked as many as we could from the pile that we could reach. (However, we left the smaller ones because we thought that if we picked them all, we might not be able to pick them next year.)

Along the way, one of the group's smartphones went missing while they were frantically harvesting, but it was found safely and they returned from the mountains with a sigh of relief.

The collected gallnuts are steamed, then dried in the sun and stored for later use in the winter for dyeing.

We are truly blessed to have such high-quality dyed materials in the mountains so close to us. We would like to use them carefully and without leaving any waste.

Our joy was further magnified by the knowledge that there were such lush mountains nearby and we could dye in such a wonderful environment.

This trip was a lot of fun. I hope that one day I can go to the mountains with my guests and enjoy a bountiful harvest together. I hope that such a project can be organized someday.

I will report back on the blog as soon as I have finished dyeing the gallnuts!