An Exercise in Foraging

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Watchman
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An Exercise in Foraging

Post by Watchman »

This is an exercise in foraging for food - on your property! Are you interested? It might prove helpful to anyone reading this. Do some research and see what edibles are growing wild on your property and report back here. So far, I have found: staghorn sumac, dandelion (leaves, blossoms, root), and purslane. In early spring, summer young shoots of the staghorn sumac are edible and in mid-late summer the clusters of berries are okay to make a healthful lemonade-type drink. Dandelions, the common weed, have many uses. The young spring leaves are delicious in salads. The young open blossoms can be battered and deep-fried. The root can be dried in the oven then ground as a substitute for coffee. Purslane is a very common weed and it's leaves can be used in salads.
Toepopper
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Post by Toepopper »

Many years ago my wife and I did a search to catalog all the wild edible foodstuffs on our property, to find out if it would be possible to actually keep from starving during a S.H.T.F. type of event. We found wild huckelberries and blueberries, some miniature strawberries that required a lot of time to pick, milkweed and dandelions, acorns from tan oaks, live oaks and white oak trees, bracken fern shoots which can be eaten and taste like green beans, but only occur during the spring time, and we made flour from the wild grasses growing here. The acorns had to be soaked in water for 24 hours to leech the tanic acid out of them so we could tolerate the taste and even then they were hard to get down our throats. The flour tasted very bitter but was at least edible. In a pinch you can eat the raw grain but doing this will cause copious amounts of intestinal gas, and an unprescidented series of decrepitations. Without the addition of fish, venison, rabbit and squirrel meat, foraging for food in this part of the country will not sustain a human for very long. That is why it might be prudent to have enough multi caliber hunting ammunition stored away to last a considerable amount of time and also keep your pantry topped off. We have planted grapes. apple trees, plum, pear, cherry and apricot trees and have a huge vegi garden to supplement our food supply.

Toepopper
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dejure

On eating the forest and other things ungaurded

Post by dejure »

An excellent thread too often ignored on other “survival sites.” If times go the way they look they might, I must wonder, how many will starve while living amidst abundance?

I have been trying to convince friends of the value of becoming familiar with foraging for some time, if only for the survival value. In the course of my attempts, I push the purchase of books covering the topic. We have a couple and they do a great job of identifying “good” and “bad” plants through both descriptions and quality photos. As well, they give both the nutritional values and the medicinal uses of various plants. A very good investment, which should be considered a tool.

Here in the Northwet (not a typo), we have a lot of green. The closer to the coastline, the more abundant it becomes. All that is for naught in times of hard if we cannot identify what will keep us alive, or kill us.

On foraging in your own back yard, my ex’s latest ex, Frank, cut a deal with me and my neighbor whereby he established a garden in the neighbors empty lot. I provided the water and the wood for peas and such. While the garden was maturing, we would drive Frank nuts when we would pass up the not-yet-ripe garden produce and wander off with the lambs quarter, young dandelion leaves and so forth.

Too, since wild raspberries are in great abundance here, we had to remove many to allow for the garden. We kept some. Not just for the berries, but also for the tea the leaves make. Many of those we dehydrated. At any rate, we were never wholly successful convincing him all these things had both taste and nutritional value.

We were lead to these moments by history. Approximately ten years ago I was helping a friend operate his Eastern Washington farm (200 acres under irrigation circles). While there I made the mistake of trying to clean up around the pump house. He caught me in the act of murdering a lambs quarter plant. That resulted in a [mental] cardiac arrest. Fortunately, he recuperated fully, in seconds, and went on to educate me on the value of “these are not weeds” if outside the fields.

Moving on to only six or eight years ago, this crazy lady I live with, and whom I call my wife, started eating parts of the forest adjacent to our home (I confess I may have let slipped the lambs quarter thing). Her “problem” progressed and she even began bringing it (the forest) home and tried to feed it to us. At the time, we lived a mile from the ocean, so this habit had the potential for growing at an alarming rate. Realizing it is dangerous to impede the progress of crazy people, I, wisely, pretended this eating of the forest a piece at a time was a good idea. I even went so far as to focus my keen skills of sawdust making to promote her endeavor. This resulted in a walking stick, which she dubbed her “foraging stick.” The foraging stick, shown below, has hooks at the end to allow her to coax branches to her. As well, it has hooks higher up, on which she hangs bags and things in the course of her safaris.

Image
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WillyPete

Re: An Exercise in Foraging

Post by WillyPete »

This is a neat thread. I've been looking around my yard a bit ad have found some flora that would suffice for a short time, in season of course, but not all of it.
I have a pear tree next to the house that produces a few pears each season eventhough it is choked with underbrush and brambles right now, some muscadine vines growing next to the house, dandelions all over the place, oak trees that drop acorns year round, a patch of may-pops in the back yard (Passioflora incarnata), pine trees all through the back back yard for an occasional "needle tea" to get some vitamin C, various grain producing grasses that I'm not yet certain are edible, and some small, what I know as, sparkleberry bushes behind the garage. I also planted some berry bushes in the front yard this spring, they won't do much until next spring though.
None of these plants are enough at the moment to provide decent nutrition but, if I get my act together I may be able to get the plants into a better production capacity to help provide for some of our dietary needs.
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dejure

Re: An Exercise in Foraging

Post by dejure »

Having bought my share of vitamin C over time, I've had opportunity to purchase several bottles "with rose hips." On a jaunt over the mountains some years back, I stopped for water and ended up beside a large crop of wild roses. As fate would have it, they were loaded with large, ripe rose hips. Prone to whims and to acting on them, and inspired of the many swallows I've had of commercially process antioxidants formed with the aid of rose hips, I harvested a few and nibbled them. They were excellent and would have competed with fresh strawberries, or the like. I would suppose they would make a great jam. As such, we now try to coax wild ones to prosper at convenient locations near us (e.g., the back yard).
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Re: An Exercise in Foraging

Post by Toepopper »

Rose hips are plentiful here in the fall. They are usually growing and picked off of bushes at a convenient height so you don't even have to strain your back. They will keep all winter if dried off and stored properly and contain high levels of vitamin C. We make rose hip tea to take the chill off and hopefully build up our natural immune system to ward off colds and flu. I have read that during WW2 the people in the Norwegian resistance relied on rose hip tea brewed from foraged rose hips and this helped keep them going during the winter months. Right now the wild "blackcap" rasberries are ready for harvesting in this area and about the time they are done, the wild "Himalayan" rasberries will be ready to pick. :mrgreen:
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whitewolf

Re: An Exercise in Foraging

Post by whitewolf »

Remnant,

On the east coast (OHIO ) we have been enjoying sassafrass, dandylion green in salads, or wilted ( My persoal favorite), prickly wild blue lettice, and wild poke greens ( seasonal only ), and its about time to transition from poke which in the summer becomes poisonous, and the dandylion greens which become more bitter as the weather gets hotter and lean more toward a diet of wood sorrel, goose foot, fruits and berries and garden oriented fare which are just becoming available this time of year.
Also thank GOD for those plants that are usefull for drinks, which can make a survival type existence more tolerable like various mints,red clover flowers and pine needles to make teas, and last but not least wilderness coolaid summack berries put up from last fall....

Whitewolf
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