Wild Food Foraging | Incorporating It Into the “Everyday”
We made this video this morning while we were on a run! Yesterday on a run we had spied a very special wild plant with gorgeous and USEFUL flowers.
We decided to come back to forage it for some wild flower champagne!
It’s amazing how something as simple as a walk, run, bike ride or even looking out the car window can connect us with nature right outside our back doors. Each year we have learned new plants that are a walk away! Now every year it’s like adding “layers” to our understanding of the areas.
“This plant blooms at this time, these mushrooms come up here in this season, that tree has the most prolific fruit set, etc!”
Today we collected some elder flowers. We of course left some for them to become elderberries (another delicious and useful fruit), but took enough to make champagne (video on that tomorrow!).
It’s also great to get out when things are flowering as we can easily see them and then when they have their fruit on. Flowers are usually easier to see than fruit.
Which are some wild plants you’ve discovered while out and about?
Anything in your neighborhood that you look forward to year after year?
Forage on Steemians! Take part in that wild food love!!
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Elder is such an awesome and useful plant... we have quite a bit of it around here; always brings back memories of my childhood in Denmark-- harvesting both flowers and later the berries to make various foods and drinks... and the eternal warning to never eat the berries without proper preparation. I think one of my aunts also dried the flowers to make teas.
One of my favorites around here is salmonberries. Pretty short-lived season and the birds love them so we don't often get many, but they are a marvelous treat while they last.
OH salmonberries! those are on par with thimbleberries in my book which are basically mythical foods as i've only ever found a few during travels to the pacific coast! makes each one all the more special.
cool to hear your aunt dried the flowers for teas- i was just wondering about that today as they smell sooo good. i'll look further into that. i imagine the tea is really nice. i love how plants, like elder, are known around the world and make it into so many memories for humans of all cultures. that makes me happy! :)
I always look for the Saskatoon blossoms so I know where the good patches for berry picking are. It looks like this year will be a good year for Saskatoons as they are filling out nicely. The morel mushrooms are out now too!
awesome! ini (the guy part of this partnership) is from manitoba and i've heard so much about saskatoons, i can't wait to try them sometime! we have a similar species here- the serviceberry- and we also planted a relative called the juneberry that's a common cultivar along here. glad to hear it will be a good year! we had a 100 yr flood last year and it was a very bad year for fruit and mushrooms. happy morel hunting, too!
Cool! I didn’t know you could make champagne from the blooms. Learn something new every day! My friend’s dad lives outside West Plains. He’s just a good ol’ boy hippie type (lol) and he makes the most amazing elderberry wine from the plants on his property.
awesome!! i love wild wines. we'll be sharing the recipe tomorrow- including sanitization tips- a big determining factor in final flavor profile as the wild yeasts can sometimes not be so tasty lol eldeberries are such useful and amazing plants!
Elderflower fritters are good too!!
Nice tip! Thanks! What’s your elder flower champagne/wine recipe? Do I do a wild yeast ferment?
Yes, wild yeast. If it doesn't kick off in a few days you can add some brewer's yeast to it but we never did. Haven't made it in ages!!!
There's lots of recipes online - I'd go with any of those! Basically sugar, elderflower heads (just shake the insects off, poor buggers don't want to drown) and water, maybe some lemon zest. Let us know how it turns out - I'm going to make some rhubarb champagne soon!
Nice! Yeah what u listed was basically what we did except went straight for the champagne yeast (as we added a lot of sugar and wanted a yeast that could handle that!). I did look it up but wanted to see your recipe!! ☺️. A neighbor was just talking to us yesterday about an amazing rhubarb wine he had! What’s it taste like? He said not “sour” at all.
No not sour ... rhubarby without sour! Delicate. Did you plant gooseberry?? As gooseberry wine is amazing. Once you start country wines you won't stop.. it's addictive huh @digitaldan ?
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Yum yum. We have one gooseberry that I layered 5 times so hoping for many more. I'll have to try it when they yield. We also have black currant, mm. The possibilities are endless...
@riverflows It's addictive already got 6 bottles of elder flower done, two demijohns of rhubarb going and two gooseberry bushes filling up for a batch. I hardly drink alchohol but its just to much fun 😆
Great post 😀 We have, elderflower, wild garlic, damsons, crap apples and a decent selection of herbs like sorrel, forget-me-not and borage on the doorstep only recently starting looking for these things but its great fun thanks for sharing
awesome! love to hear of the plantitas growing around you! saw your reply to riverflows above, you've got a lot of batches going! that's awesome!!
Thanks, it's a very recent interest to develop, and i can't wait to taste the finished products.
@digitaldan not sure about how tasty those crap apples will be 😉🤣🤣🤣
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Haha! 🤣 good spot.
Crap apple wine,??? Won't take off mate. 😉
I wait for these torch lilies early each summer in my neighborhood. Torch lilies aren't native and don't grow wild here. This summer I have been hiking the local regional parks a lot exploring for native plants and flowers. Not foraging but I will definitely be back next year for the spring and early summer wildflowers I am finding.
nice! each time you go back, you add more understanding of the layers of plants there. one plant at a time :) what a stunner, that torch lily!
I've wondered where around here there might be elderberries. I'd like to make cordial/syrup for during the winter.
i'm sure they're in your area! definitely a blessing to have that syrup come winter :)
Oh, I know they are around. I wish I had someone who could show me where and exactly which ones they are.
mmmm! Wild Flower Champagne. That sounds dreamy.
I don't have an extensive knowledge base when it comes to wild edibles, especially not in this area, so every "aha" moment when I finally make that connection is so thrilling.
My favourite find is a big old apple orchard in the middle of the woods! It's so cool because not far away there is an old cellar, all that remains from an homestead that once stood there. I always feel so exhilarated filling up buckets of knobbly/scabby/perfectly imperfect apples from these old trees.
hey dear good to hear from you! as summer gets busier and busier, sometimes it feels hard to keep up on here ;)
OMG everything about this is SO COOL! that is absolutely a dream!! ahh!!
Hello and warm hugs to you! :) I am in the weeds completely right now and I am not doing a very good job of keeping up on steemit. You've been doing a phenomenal job as always, I am loving your posts!
I'll have to re-watch your video on grafting (I have it book marked) I have never done it before. I've been meaning to take cuttings and do some grafting so we have these varieties growing protected on our land. There's definitely the Duchess (called the Brunswicker here) that dates back to the 1600's Russia. The rest I haven't been able to figure out but I'll take cuttings anyhow. They are certainly resilient!
Wonderful I am still learning foraging but hope to be chomping away on natures gifts soon 💯🐒
:) yay! yeah it's all about slowly familiarizing! each plant adds to that simple compendium of knowledge and connection!
I'm curious about foraging but I'm in the city, which means a) it would 99% of the time be in someone's yard and I'd have to ask, "Heyyyyy, can I absconded with some of your plants?" which is a probable no; and b) there's a lot of not only regular pollution from traffic and the like but certain people spraying Roundup and who knows what. I kinda fear for the purity of anything I might find. :/
yeah for sure that is a huge concern. sometimes plants far enough off the road are safe (if there's no big polluting happening nearby) and most times people are friendly, but it's always good to ask! there are little niches you can look like community gardens or even parks usually have a lot of edibles! curious if you come across anything on any jaunts :)