Foraging for edibles

This was originally written in April - thought I'd have photos to go with it. Having so much fun trying new foods. Some are quite yummy. Details to follow!

In my quest for finding new edibles I have been doing quite a bit of foraging lately. Unfortunately I have not had my camera with me on all treks.

I have found and tried the following:
Japanese Knotweed, Stinging Nettles, Chicory, Milkweed, Wintercress, Burdock

Monday

Had a very busy weekend. Gardeners starting to visit to get plants, getting new raised bed #1 filled with planting mixture, a trip to the Sugar Shack in New Hampshire, and a visit to a conservation site to check out Japanese Knotweed.

I am ready to get half of bed #1 planted. WHEW!! Lots of shoveling and hauling, getting the compost from my main bin!! I can now drive a truck!! Got a load of straw, peat, cow manure and mulch for this process.

First thing this morning I will be getting my seeds ready for planting then I'm heading over to Crocker Pond to get a few Japanese Knotweed sprouts to try out at lunchtime. According to the seminar and hike I went to they are supposed to taste like Artichoke hearts. We shall see! Everything else he recommended has been very tasty, so I am definitely looking forward to trying this. We all love Artichoke hearts here.

Until I get #1 planted I will be cutting down on gardeners coming in. Just too much to get done.

I am also fitting in significant blocks of time for one of my sisters who is very ill.

Wednesday and Thursday, as I will be watching the kids would be days that I would be able to give plants out. I don't know when I will get back to the computer, so please be patient with me!

New edibles from my foraging hike

These are several of the new edibles I learned about on my foraging hike in Birchwold Farm. This is Indian Cucumber Root. It is a plant that is not very common, so it is not to be harvested for more than a taste. The root is very small, so it is just enough to get a taste of the cucumber richness it possesses. I have it in my woods, but the group has only about a dozen plants, so I won't be harvesting it any time in the near future.



These are acorns from various Oak trees. I was looking for softer wood Oak trees, which have the rounded leaves, but was unsuccessful in finding any acorns from them as I was looking too late in the season. Next year I will have to scope out these softer wood trees sooner so as to harvest some of the acorns before the squirrels get them all. The softer wood acorns are sweet enough that you can eat them raw. The other, harder wood acorns need to be processed, which is a longer process I just didn't have the time for this year, what with getting my new edible beds ready.



These are Salsify, or Oyster plant seeds. I was able to harvest the seeds, and planted them in anticipation of tasting the roots next spring to see if they really do taste like oysters or not. Mia loves oysters, so I think it will be interesting to try them. In any case, the spring leaves are used similar to dandelion leaves, so I will be picking plenty for salads, soups and stews.




The seeds have a fluffy parachute, similar to those of the Dandelion.



This is the stalk from Burdock. I had picked these to try and never got around to it. You put them in a batter of egg and flour and saute, as they do in Sicily. I harvested some seed and planted it, and then discovered that I have it all over the side area of our yard, so will be sure to try it next year.



These are the berries and raisins from Viburnum. The berries are very pleasant and you pick the raisins from them right off the tree in late September. I have been adding them to granola. They are tiny, but a nice addition.




These are blue and black huckleberries, which taste similar to blueberries.



Now what I need to do is remember to keep track of the calendar for these tasty wild edibles. I have two new guidebooks that both have calenders for easier foraging.

"Wild Plants I Have Known and Eaten", by Russ Cohen (who led our foraging hike) is specifically about plants of our area.

"Edible Wild Plants, A North American Field Guide", by Thomas S. Elias and Peter A Dykeman, has terrific photographs of all the plants in it. It is one of the best guides I looked at since so many of them use only sketches. I find the photos so much easier to use for identifying purposes.

So now I am armed with the guides and information I need to get my foraging going first thing in the spring. This fall I was quite pleased with the mild weather as I have been out gathering lots of leaves from Dandelion, Plantain, Violets, and other spring greens for soups and stews. I have noted where these plants are coming up so that they don't get killed off or mowed down in the future.

Exploration, research and learning, even at my age!!

My days are now filled with research, learning and first hand experience. I am hot on the trail of all kinds of edibles. Have been picking Autumn Olive berries, Eastern Prickly Pear fruits, harvesting acorns, Groundnut and Yucca tubers and cleaning, peeling, cooking, dehydrating, and taste testing them all!! Having fun with the entire process. My foraging skills are expanding, as are my Google skills! I am doing more research on all of the species that I am learning to be edibles. There is so much more right around me than I had imagined.

In only 30 minutes I picked about a gallon of Autumn Olive berries, which I cleaned, cooked, pureed and made into fruit leather that Mia and the grandkids love!! Who knew, a free snack, growing right in my own gardens, and which is plentiful all around the area!!

So I have become very busy with all of this process. Today it is sunny so I want to get out to do more picking. I have lots of photos to upload, but need to get a few more for a complete post. I have lots also of late season happenings in the gardens. I need to edit and sort the photos before I can do more posting with photos, but need to get myself moving outside today.

I planted tons of seeds on Tuesday, but now am concerned they may have been washed away in the downpours of yesterday. Oh, well, that is the life of a gardener!! I am also gearing up for more baby sitting as my older daughter is getting ready to go back to work - So need to maximize these good weather days before they are gone.

Will have lots of time over the winter to share all that I am learning with all of you, as well as get the photos of all things gardening into lots of informative posts!

Have a great day in today's glorious sunshine - for who knows when the next downpour will spring up!!

Edible foraging

So I had this all set to go and previewed it and then lost it - my system must be sluggish ti=his morning - took a bit, but finally found it. WHEW!!!!! I need to go get Mia up!

Went on a great hike in Birchwold Farms in Wrentham yesterday. We were led by Russ Cohen, the author of, "Wild Plants I Have Known ... and Eaten", who also gave a great slide presentation of the same topic Tuesday night at Fiske Library. This was all sponsored by the Open Space Committee.

So you need a little back story here. I had spent the morning getting a boundary plastic thing put into the back of the new herb bed ten inches from the house so as to not have any of what I am planting interfere with the foundation of my house. I had mistakenly planted pachysandra in their from where the ugly initial landscape shrubs had been planted and gotten way too overgrown and unsightly over the years. So Thankfully one of our gardeners, Sheila, who is a Realtor, pointed it out to me as a potential huge problem.

So as I also needed to get the soil level lower, as there is now a regulation amount of space that is supposed to exist between the ground and the house shingles, (go figure!), and my soil (who knew) is so fertile that it is very heavy even by the smallest of shovelfuls, and I did it. I was on the ground on my knees (my favorite position for gardening). And I oh, so innocently took my half length size shovel and started taking up shovelfuls and putting it into a container to get it out of the garden. Well, evidently I must have moved in a manner that my back was not too happy with it. You know how it goes, you reach to pick up your pocketbook, or you sneeze, or whatever, and BAM - there goes the back! Yup, I pulled my lower back out. Now if it had been thter on. But, no, it had to be the lower, so I had to pay attention to it. Mind you, I also had not finished what I was working on, so I did get it done, loaded up the cart with soil, measured and marked where the plants were going to go.

Okay, so I probably should have stopped everything and taken immediate care of the back, but that is not how I deal with it. I do continue on with any activity I am involved in. It does take a bit before it freezes up entirely. BUT, I did not try to maneuver the heavy cart to where it needed to go I left it for hubby to handle later on. And I did go and get myself into the hot tub. But did I go lie down and rest to try to get ready for the two hour hike I was due to go on in the afternoon?? Of course not, I had my first Knitting Club meeting at the high school that I had to attend.

The hottub gave me the continued mobility I needed to get to that. Went to the club and headed to the hike, with only minimal pain. AHA - the old body was not failing me yesterday. No, not the body, just the brain!!

Got to the hike. Learned so much and took so many photos my battery ran out in the middle ! (did remember to have extra batteries with me). Walked up and down and up and down paths through the wooded area for 2 hours, learned all sorts of useful information about edible plants, even got seeds for one of them. Had lots of tast tests for many of the edibles we learned about. Got back to my car after 2 1/4 hours of hiking, .... and realized I had lost my glasses on the hike. (that's the brain part). Still able to move without too much pain, I figured it had to Have happened when I bent down to get a picture of wintergreen. hiked/sort of ran back to that spot as it was beginning to get dark, the glasses weren't there. Could not go on as the rest of the walk had been in the deep woods, and it was dark in there when we were in it, so I knew I would not be able to even see them if I found them. So I headed back, trying hard to stay on the right path to not get lost, and guess what - I made it back to where I needed to be. I could imagine me getting lost on the paths, as I had not been there before, but I had called my hubby to keep him informed in case I needed him to bring Abby over to find me!!!

So got home, frazzled, was unsuccessful in helping Mia with her homeowrk. Now, I majored in math in college, no matter that it was almost 4o years ago, I should have been able to help her with her homework, and Freshman Physical Science, shouldn't be beyond me. Well at after 8 PM funcion, domain, range, SI, derived units, and on and on were not words that I had any comprehension of. Even with the textbooks in front of me I had no clue how to hep her with what she needed to do. So Melt Down City, for both of us.

So I will do a really nice post on the hike, and on my new herb garden, have lots of photos. But not this morning. I need to get my self ready, with my stiff back, to get back over to the hiking area to find thsoe glasses!

Heard from someone at the hike that there might be a frost last night. It is too dark out right now for me to see if indeed we did. If so, I am up a river in a canoe with no paddle. I have so much more I'm trying to get moved so I can develop the new beds, I am praying that it was not a hard frost. Once that happens it will be very hard to move anything else.

Have a better day than I had yesterday!!! LOL