Go to the grocery store and buy a package of raspberries or blueberries for $3-4, or find them locally in season for free? First, why it is not good to buy fruit out of season and second how to eat locally, in season by foraging for wild edibles.
If you have a mid-winter hankering for blueberry muffins, you might just have to put a lid on it. Buying blueberries mid-winter means they are not fresh from Maine, for example, but rather from South America or somewhere else far away where they can be grown off-season. When you buy them you are voting with your dollars to say that it is acceptable to use lots of fossil fuels to ship food to your grocery store half-way across the country or the world. What you should do is pick plenty of blueberries fresh in the summer or at worst buy them from the store or farmers markets then and in any case freeze them for use later. They will last just fine. A trick to make them easier to cook with is to place individual berries on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and freeze them that way and then put them into a container. This way they will not clump together, when frozen and you can pour out just the amount of individual frozen berries you need for your recipe. Another trick is to use an ice cube tray to freeze individual berries.
Mostly, I eat in season. You wont see me with an apple in February or blackberries in March, a fresh tomato in January or a pear in July. Besides its more fun when you can have seasons of eating. I cannot wait for every summer where I get to pick berries. My family and I have a summer tradition of putting fresh berries into plain cereal with sugar. In the fall I love apple picking and all things apple flavored.
So, this blog post is going to be about foraging for wild edibles. This will be the first of many posts on this subject, since this is a lengthy subject. In that regard I think I will break my posts up by season and post at the beginning of each season about that seasons wild edibles and how to ethically harvest them. It will be good for you to know what to look for when each season starts, so you can make the most out of enjoying your local edible flora. I will even try to cover the wild edibles I do not like, so I give a bigger unbiased picture of foraging for wild edibles.
Why do I forage for wild edibles? There are many reasons. First I save money on produce. Secondly, I enjoy Mother Nature`s bounty. Third, I like eating closer to the earth. Fourth, if my food comes from a local park where harmful pesticides and other lawn chemicals are not used then the food can be considered organic and finally if the species I am eating is invasive (like wineberries) I am doing my part to remove their seeds, etc. from the picture.
First, one package of raspberries, which you can purchase right now at the grocery store (and I would not advise doing) costs about $3-4. I can gather about 10-15 of these size packages in a year and eat them fresh and freeze the rest. That is a savings of about $30-60. It may not seem like much, but every bit helps. A wise man once said a penny saved is a penny earned. Thanks Ben Franklin!
Secondly that package of raspberries may not be organic and grown on a monoculture farm as a hybrid species, instead of growing naturally wild. By foraging for wild edibles I am eating food as Mother Nature intended. It also shows how I can use whats in my own neighborhood to eek out an existence. I think we could all learn something from that, because most of us are so reliant on technology and convenience that we wouldn't know what to do if the power went out or if our grocery store suddenly closed. Any homesteader or survivalist would. That is why I love the show Survivorman.
lesstroud.ca/survivorman/home.php
I think the second also explains number 3 and 4. Eat closer to the earth, eat more plants, and not highly processed plants (like strawberry-flavored skittles, nothing but sugar, chemical dyes and no strawberries anywhere but in the name, lol). Eat the food as mother nature has intended, eat organic. And reason 5 is self-explanatory too.
I think one barrier to eating wild edibles is knowing what to pick and where. I think most people would be surprised that most of these things they can find in their own backyard. I love plants, so its easy for me, but I admit, yes you do have to be a bit of a botanist to know what you are doing. You do not want to eat something poisonous. My thoughts are to start off with a small amount of items to try and to start with plants you know are safe like grapes, blueberries and raspberries. You should be easily able to identify their wild counterparts if you know what the store bought kind look like. Then once you pick a few species to try, try them in small amounts, so if you do happen to get sick it will only be a mild case. Even if a plant is not poisonous, that does not mean some people may not be allergic to them and the only way to know for sure is to try them and find out. So, what is an acceptable size to start with a side dish portion or a 1/4 of a cup.
If I were starting out I would probably make my list of initial things to try look like this:
wild blackberries
wild blueberries
wild grapes
dandelions
wood sorrel (shamrocks)
wild Violet
That is enough things to start and try. Then you can expand upon that. Find recipes online on sites like:
Hunter Angler Gardener Cook
Then you know they are tried and true and should be safe for you to try and you know the proper applications for the plants you've chosen. For example make jello out of violets, but eat dandelions in a salad, etc.
I also have many books on wild edibles such as these two:
So, this blog post is going to be about foraging for wild edibles. This will be the first of many posts on this subject, since this is a lengthy subject. In that regard I think I will break my posts up by season and post at the beginning of each season about that seasons wild edibles and how to ethically harvest them. It will be good for you to know what to look for when each season starts, so you can make the most out of enjoying your local edible flora. I will even try to cover the wild edibles I do not like, so I give a bigger unbiased picture of foraging for wild edibles.
Why do I forage for wild edibles? There are many reasons. First I save money on produce. Secondly, I enjoy Mother Nature`s bounty. Third, I like eating closer to the earth. Fourth, if my food comes from a local park where harmful pesticides and other lawn chemicals are not used then the food can be considered organic and finally if the species I am eating is invasive (like wineberries) I am doing my part to remove their seeds, etc. from the picture.
First, one package of raspberries, which you can purchase right now at the grocery store (and I would not advise doing) costs about $3-4. I can gather about 10-15 of these size packages in a year and eat them fresh and freeze the rest. That is a savings of about $30-60. It may not seem like much, but every bit helps. A wise man once said a penny saved is a penny earned. Thanks Ben Franklin!
Secondly that package of raspberries may not be organic and grown on a monoculture farm as a hybrid species, instead of growing naturally wild. By foraging for wild edibles I am eating food as Mother Nature intended. It also shows how I can use whats in my own neighborhood to eek out an existence. I think we could all learn something from that, because most of us are so reliant on technology and convenience that we wouldn't know what to do if the power went out or if our grocery store suddenly closed. Any homesteader or survivalist would. That is why I love the show Survivorman.
lesstroud.ca/survivorman/home.php
I think the second also explains number 3 and 4. Eat closer to the earth, eat more plants, and not highly processed plants (like strawberry-flavored skittles, nothing but sugar, chemical dyes and no strawberries anywhere but in the name, lol). Eat the food as mother nature has intended, eat organic. And reason 5 is self-explanatory too.
I think one barrier to eating wild edibles is knowing what to pick and where. I think most people would be surprised that most of these things they can find in their own backyard. I love plants, so its easy for me, but I admit, yes you do have to be a bit of a botanist to know what you are doing. You do not want to eat something poisonous. My thoughts are to start off with a small amount of items to try and to start with plants you know are safe like grapes, blueberries and raspberries. You should be easily able to identify their wild counterparts if you know what the store bought kind look like. Then once you pick a few species to try, try them in small amounts, so if you do happen to get sick it will only be a mild case. Even if a plant is not poisonous, that does not mean some people may not be allergic to them and the only way to know for sure is to try them and find out. So, what is an acceptable size to start with a side dish portion or a 1/4 of a cup.
If I were starting out I would probably make my list of initial things to try look like this:
wild blackberries
wild blueberries
wild grapes
dandelions
wood sorrel (shamrocks)
wild Violet
That is enough things to start and try. Then you can expand upon that. Find recipes online on sites like:
Hunter Angler Gardener Cook
Then you know they are tried and true and should be safe for you to try and you know the proper applications for the plants you've chosen. For example make jello out of violets, but eat dandelions in a salad, etc.
I also have many books on wild edibles such as these two:
I have tried many recipes from both of these books and I love them.
After deciding which plants to try then decide where to find them and how to harvest them safely. If they are in your own backyard, then no big deal. Just go out there and pick them! However, if you have seen them somewhere else, make sure you are allowed to pick them there. If it is a public park the chances are no one will care if you pick there. I have a park like that by my house where I pick black raspberries, blackberries, cherries and wineberries. However, make sure the places you go are not being heavily treated with pesticides. You should know because most places will put up little yellow signs like these below when they are spraying areas.
Then if the area is a state park or wildlife refuge, make sure to read the regulations on foraging. In wildlife refuges foraging is generally not allowed, because the wild edibles are there to support wildlife, not humans :). However, there are a few refuges where this is not the case because they have over abundance of something like blueberry bushes, so it may be allowed. This just goes to show you should check your local state park and refuge regulations closely to know what is allowed. In some refuges like the one I used to work at, it was illegal for folks to harvest fiddlehead ferns and those regulations were enforced. They may have also been enforced for other plants, but this is the one example that I am aware of. Again, check your state park because they can differ from state to state, based on their mission, whether recreation or natural preservation.
If foraging is allowed on a property it is still always a good idea not to over harvest and leave some for other potential foragers and hopefully in the long run if we all practice this, we will always leave some for the wildlife.
These are the key things I wanted to mention for now. Here I leave you with a link to winter wild edibles of the Northeast. Go have some fun out in this cold blustery winter and find yourself some good eats. Always remember though the wildlife you will enjoy on your foraging trips will also enjoy the food you have foraged, so leave some for them as well. Especially now that it is winter and for some animals food can be harder to find in this time of year. Later, I will post more about wild edibles when they are in their peak in spring, summer and fall. But here`s a place to start.
Thanks for reading this long, long post and have fun foraging!
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