Foraging and Gardening Update

It's been a while since I've posted a foraging update... but I have still been eating those wild things. Here's an update:

I made grape juice again. I think that is the last batch of the big grapes in my area. I've exhausted everything, except those bunches that are higher than my reach. I've made four batches of juice this year, for maybe a grand total of 3 gallons of juice, and each time I've learned a little more about how to do it efficiently. My wife bought me a good strainer for my birthday, and that has been a big help. But I think these big beautiful grapes have spoiled me. Now I'm simply too lazy to try to make grape juice from all the little grapes that are abundant around here.

I've been eating Nannyberries for the last week or so. My children all hate them, but I sort of like them. They have the texture of something like a banana, and they have a subtle flavor of something like a fruity almond. They're good!

Last night, my wife brought home a strange fruit she found dangling from a tree. After a bit of research, my eldest son determined (correctly) that it was a Kousa Dogwood. Surprisingly, we also determined the fruit was edible based on Steve Brill's book. So I tried it. It won't say it was bad, but it wasn't exactly good either.

I found a walnut tree which has started dropping nuts all over the place. I know nothing about gathering and using these, but now's a good time to start.

In addition to these highlights, I've been munching on wild apples, evening primrose flowers, foxtail seeds, wild amaranth seeds, autumnberries, and ground cherries.

In other news, Thing #1 and I broke ground on the new garden.

I set up a tiny little garden last year inside our pool fence. Tiny as in 3ft x 8ft. I grew peas (semi-successfully: I didn't really stake them up and the slugs had a field day) and kohlrabi (a little better: I planted them too close together I think) and carrots (even better: but they still were too close together). My wife planted tomatoes (and these were a great success) and sunflowers (these were a bust. They were completely devoured by chipmunks.)

For this new garden, the plan is to have six 3x8 plots in raised beds. Thing #1 and I build the first bed this weekend. The plan is to do one or two a week until we're done. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Grape Juice

Yesterday evening I told the kids about my find. So the three of them and I trudged up the hill and picked a small pail full of grapes. There are a lot of grape varieties, so I'm not sure of my identification of the exact species... But I'll put my money on what Steve Brill calls "Fox Grapes". They were big, delicious, and very similar to Concorde grapes.

Thing #2 was especially interested in making juice out of them, so that's what we did. We weren't sure exactly what we were doing, but in the end we had about 12 oz of grape juice. (I think now that I'm slightly more experienced, I could have gotten like 30% more juice from the same batch...) Thing #2 wanted to drink it right away, but based on the advice in Thayer's book, I insisted we put it in the fridge overnight. Sure enough, by morning there was a small layer of sludge at the bottom, which according to Thayer is all the nasty tartrate stuff. I poured the good juice off the top and everyone in the family, except Thing #3 who is shy about new things, had a taste. Everyone gave it two enthusiastic thumbs up!

Thing #2 is all excited and is asking if we can go pick some more. I think the patch I found yesterday probably could give us at least as many grapes as I already harvested, plus I remember seeing another patch of big grapes closer to the main road. I may pick those myself, since I'm uncomfortable having the kids so close to a road where the cars are going that fast.

Grapes!

This morning I biked to work on a different route than normal. Normally I ride in the trail that runs between my house and downtown. This route is wonderful (no cars!) and beautiful, but sometimes if I'm in a hurry I take the road. The trail takes me 20-25 minutes or so. The road takes about 15. I haven't taken the road in a long time, but today I did.

I was paid for my efforts because I found a large collection of grapes. And not just any grapes. All the wild grapes I've found to date have been small little things that were incredibly sour. That hasn't preventing me from eating them... It's just prevented me from eating them in quantity. But these beauties were big. Like the size of grapes you'd find in the grocery store. Beautifly purple. And here's the key: they weren't sour. They must have a little tartrate in them because my mouth is slightly sore, but not like when I eat other wild grapes. While I won't say the patch was huge, my guess is I could pick a few gallons of fruit.

I'm very excited.

Persimmon Tree and a Foraging Update

Today on my lunchtime walk I discovered a persimmon tree. I had been given a tip that there was one in the area, but not its exact location. I tasted a not so ripe fruit and it was horrible. This made me very nervous that I had the wrong plant. So when I got back to work I checked on the internet. Nope, I was right: it was a persimmon, but what I didn't know is best summarized by this quote from John Smith of Jamestown fame (I got the quote from Steve Brill's website):

"If it be not ripe it will drawe a mans mouth awrie with much torment; but when it is ripe, it is as delicious as an Apricock."

Don't know about the second clause yet, but the first is certainly on the mark!

In other foraging news: The grapes are starting to ripen. I haven't found a huge batch yet, but several medium size ones. One is less than a mile from my house and is on the path I ride my bike to and from work. It may be too early, but everything else seems to be ahead of schedule this year, so I'm thinking of trying to make a small batch of grape juice this weekend with the boys.

Last weekend, the boys made sumacade. At first I refused to try it, because early this spring I tried a sumac shoot and my mouth and tongue broke out horribly. I'm allergic to mangos and I read later, if you are, beware! But after watching Thing #1 enjoying it immensely, I decided to try a small glass. No reaction. The next day I had a big glass. No reaction. I finally decided whatever it was I was allergic to in the stalk is not in the ade. Which is good, because I liked the flavor. We also picked about a quart of autumnberries and made juice from them. It was good, and I liked it even better when I tried Thing #1's idea of mixing it 50/50 with sumacade.

Today I also collection a handful of ground-cherries. I ate several, but I'm saving the rest for Thing #1. I collected some last week and everyone but him tried them. He was upset he missed out, so I'm making up for it this time...

Ground Cherries

Oh happy day. On my lunchtime walk, I did my normal foraging route. A handful of mulberries here. A wild apple there. A few floral nibbles from an evening primrose plant. A handful of wild grapes that made my mouth pucker. And then... oh happy happy joy joy... I found ground cherries. Just about a dozen ripe fruits. I ate two just now and they were wonderful.

Linden / Basswood Tree

One of my biggest frustrations with foraging has been with recognition of plants in the spring. In the later seasons, many edibles have some extremely obvious recognizable characteristic (e.g. the pods on a milkweed). But often the best time to eat these things are in the spring before they mature. Maybe that is why foraging takes so much time to get good at. You need to go through many complete seasonal cycles to really understand a plant and how to recognize it.

For example:
In Sam Thayer's first book, he raves about the linden or basswood tree. I looked for one all spring to no avail. But finally this past Sunday I found my first one at a park about 10 miles from my house. This is a pretty easy tree to recognize this time of year because of its funny leafy "bracts"... But the best edible part of the tree according to the book is the young leaves in early spring. I'm not sure I'd be able to recognize the tree at that time of year, without those funny bracts to help me out. So after Sunday, my plan was to remember to go back to that park and that tree in the spring again and study it as its leaves come out. Hopefully then I could get some practice recognizing it in that stage.

Today as I was walking to lunch, I found another linden tree around the corner from my office. On my first tree, I tried some of the nuts, which weren't too bad, although they were fairly small. I tried some of the nuts on this tree too, but they clearly were not ripe enough to be eaten.

Foraging Update

Here is a foraging update:

I picked about a pound of autumnberries on Satuday and made a small glass of juice from it. I will most certainly do this again. I have a "food mill" strainer I used to remove the seeds, which I then destroyed (the seeds not the mill, silly) because of the plants are considered invasive, but I read today that you can roast and eat the seeds, like you would for a pumpkin. I'll try that next time.

I also picked several more pounds of blackberries. I've never made jam in my life, but there are so many out there that I think I'm going to try it anyway. I have an old water-bath canner than I've only used a few times to make applesauce. I'll let you know how it goes.

I played around with winnowing plantain seeds this weekend. I found a patch of plantains that had really baked in the sun, stripped the seeds off and then winnowed them with the wind. You don't get much for the effort at the end... just a little handful of tiny black seeds... but they taste pretty good. I think they'd make a good topping for a bagel, like you would use poppy seeds. I make bagels once or twice a year, usually in the winter. I'm going to collect a bunch of these seeds, dry them out, and store them for just such an experiment.

On my walk at lunchtime today I found a perfect little apple tree a hop, skip, and a jump away from the mulberry tree I described last week in this blog. I tried an apple, expecting it to be nasty like most crab-apples are raw. Not this apple. It was wonderful. Why no one picks these apples is beyond me. I picked another for the walk back to work. Maybe I'll make applesauce too!