Edible Mountain — How To Make Wooden Spoons

In our latest edition of Edible Mountain, we meet Lynn Kettler of Wheeling, West Virginia, a skilled spoon carver with a huge heart who loves to share the art of her craft. She makes her spoons from locally foraged wood, often using mulberry, maple, cherry and walnut.

In a wisewoman fashion, Lynn always asks permission of the trees before cutting a branch and says sometimes the permission is not granted!

Lynn never sells her unique and beautiful spoons; she mostly gives them a way with the occasional barter or trade, but her woodworking skills aren’t limited to spoons. A few years back Lynn built her own log cabin, all by herself, with wood from her property.

Chuck Kleine

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As a founding partner of a community outreach initiative called Street Moms, you’ll find Lynn reaching out to people experiencing homelessness every day of the week. She takes the skills she’s developed over years of woodworking and outdoor life, and shares them with displaced folks who are trying to survive outside.

Lynn helps with setting up tarps and tents, tying proper knots, and foraging for edible plants are skills that truly make an impact on those who are living in these camps.

The Street Moms help facilitate supplies and advocate for the unsheltered community for what ever is the need at the time.

I recently talked with Lynn while she was on her way to buy galvanized sheet metal to show some of the folks living in the encampment how to make a wood burning stove and how to properly install it in their tents. What a difference that makes!

Chuck Kleine

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Edible Mountain is a bite-sized, digital series from WVPB that showcases some of Appalachia’s overlooked and underappreciated products of the forest while highlighting their mostly forgotten uses.

The series features experts, from botanists to conservationists, who provide insight on how to sustainably forage these delicacies. It also explores the preparation of these amazing delectables, something that many could achieve in the home kitchen.