I live on a 15 acre mini farm. Half wooded / half prairie. I tend a large veggie garden & herb garden but my first love is hunting & gathering & studying the wild edibles growing on our property. Wild lettuce, dandelions, ostrich ferns, mushrooms, black raspberries, walnuts, ramps, sweet cicely, sassafras, chickweed, lambs quarters, nettle, burdock, red bud, black cherries.. The list can go on and on. Our yards are filled with food!
Yea sometimes but I never eat them (suburbs) Hey if you need ranch help I'm definitely qualified If you are near Colorado haha
Yeah man, honestly I'd major in Botany if I didn't feel like I'd be stuck with a degree and not a job lol.
It's great fun!...to me. . I'm in central Indiana... In the middle of corn,soybean & wheat fields. I am organic however our small acreage is exposed to plenty of chemicals from our farming neighbors. Lots of crop dusting every summer. I don't think you can really get away from it. I eat it anyway. I don't work outside the home so I have time and habitat for my own study. It's fascinating!
Im living on a organic farm at the moment, and even in winter the produce is amazing. Real farmers are wizards. As far as grazing goes, I'm all for it, but I seldom stray from the garden as my knowledge of wild fauna is limited. Which is something I need to learn,. and this post has just inspired me to do so.
Thats awesome sounds like you live a legit lifestyle OP. Im in the city now, but am from michigan and i can imagine some of those woods i used to go blaze in being full of wild edibles! Identifying edible plants is a skill i definately hope to learn some day!!
So many field study guides out there. That's all you need. Plus time & locale of course... Mostly a love of plants. Not only woodland.. Prairie holds plenty too. We've allowed our land to grow natural.. but we have carved trails throughout. I spend countless hrs just moseying & looking. Lotsa joy in discovering new edibles or whatever... I love insects too.. We have plenty of butterflies and praying mantis among the many. In the fall hundreds of garden spiders spin webs in the grasses & sunrise & dew/ frost makes for an awesome display. You can see hundreds of illuminated webs. We have a few distant neighbors who keep manicured landscape out here..they think I'm a lunatic. I am... Thankfully! I feel fortunate but it was my only dream as a kid & we worked for it.
Hey.. Don't get me wrong. I have plenty of shit in my life that makes its way less than perfect. This is my good thing.
I'm guessing the dessert is an awesome habitat itself. I'm weird. I find the city to be similar to nature or the country in the respect that one doesn't have to move his mind to participate. If that makes any sense. Observe. You can be passerby in the city. I love people watching. I just don't do very well interacting. Takes too much energy IMO. In the burbs you have neighbors who like socialization. That's my least favorite. I find in the city people don't interact but there is an underlying communion.. Like with nature. Observe.
I just picked this, I think it's wild asparagus I havnt eaten it yet but I probably will tonight with dinner!
[quote name='"BoyMeetsPearled"']I just picked this, I think it's wild asparagus I havnt eaten it yet but I probably will tonight with dinner![/quote] OMG!! Jealous Enjoy!
Just this past fall I found a little patch of wild asparagus on our property. It was seeding itself at that point. Wondering what it produces this spring. I have never gathered it but Asparagus is a fern and we do have ostrich ferns. Very early in the spring before the fronds have uncurled I gather the fiddleheads .. They taste like asparagus! Of course you have to be careful. Some ferns fiddlehead aren't safe. Ostrich is. Hard to identify tho.
Sow thistle is one of my favorite edible weeds. Tastes great in a burger. Ive made bread with scrub oak acorns. Was pretty good! I even leached the tannins just like the extinct acorn people did. lots of prickly pear around here, always a treat!
I'd love to make flour from acorns.. we have different oak species in our woods.. Did you boil the acorns in changes of water to leach? How do you eat the thistle with the burg?
No boiling necessary, it actually tastes better if you leach with cold water. All you have to do is grind it up and let it sit, then change the water, and repeat. You CAN use an old coffeemaker and a filter to quick-leach the tannins. If you have white oaks nearby, no boiling is necessary, those may be eaten raw. For the sow-thistle, I simply plucked the younger leaves and washed em. Some people are sensitive to the latex in sow-thistle, so eat a small bit first and see if it hurts your stomach. Older leaves are more nutritious, however they can be somewhat bitter. The bitterness can be removed with boiling in salt, like cabbage. The natives would grind acorns up, put them in a pouch, and let them sit in a stream to wash the tannins out
[quote name='"smokehound"'] No boiling necessary, it actually tastes better if you leach with cold water. All you have to do is grind it up and let it sit, then change the water, and repeat. You CAN use an old coffeemaker and a filter to quick-leach the tannins. If you have white oaks nearby, no boiling is necessary, those may be eaten raw. For the sow-thistle, I simply plucked the younger leaves and washed em. Some people are sensitive to the latex in sow-thistle, so eat a small bit first and see if it hurts your stomach. Older leaves are more nutritious, however they can be somewhat bitter. The bitterness can be removed with boiling in salt, like cabbage. The natives would grind acorns up, put them in a pouch, and let them sit in a stream to wash the tannins out[/quote] Awesome thanks. Sow thistle is one I don't believe I've seen on our property. However I've seen a similar flower that grows on the side of the roads.. Just not sure if it's the same. Does it look like a huge dandelion seed head when it seeds? It sounds very similar to what I refer to as wild lettuce. Only wild lettuce has several small yellow flowers on each head. It has latex tho.. Some say you can smoke the latex like poppy.. Which of course also messes with your gut.
