Found this interesting page on how to harvest cattails and recipes:
Cattails (Typha species)
The cattail is one of the most important and common wild foods, with a variety of uses at different times of the year. Whatever you call it, a stand of cattails is as close as you'll get to finding a wild supermarket.
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One of the new shoots broke off yesterday during transplanting and it really does taste good. I think we'll expand our garden cattail pond or have several. They'll make a nice fence, provide shade and a wind break and grow really fast.
I enjoyed that as I had tried making flour out of the fuzz on the flower and found it —yuky. Now I will look at the stems for some good food.
I just finished a second little pond at the bottom of the lot by the lower garden and put in some of the cattails yesterday. Put it right under the barbed wire fence so the animals can escape the dogs and escape to either side of the fence. I know they’ll be stalking the rabbits and squirrels.
But it also occurred to me right after I planted that the RABBITS probably love the cattails too. Haven’t looked yet to see if they’re still there.
Probably have to expand this project to have enough water AROUND the cattails so the rabbits can’t get it. Would they walk through water? That would suck.
Well, maybe I just have to put a little fence around it. I was hoping not to need a fence there.
The bentonite is definitely working GREAT. I like it much better than pond liner.
I just came across a web site that has information on getting grants for off grid and organic projects. If you scroll down to the second article the details are there.
http://offthegrid.posterous.com/
I had a look around and the grants are mostly for non profits and co-ops, established “small” businesses and in disaster or very poor areas.
We talked about forming a co-op last year. If we had a bunch of people like us we organized as a co-op we might well qualify for a grant.