Ann and I love to forage for wild foods. A lot of people eat a few wild foods, wild raspberries or blueberries, maybe a wild black walnut or hickory nut, even maple syrup might be called a wild food. It does come from wild maple trees after all, but those common wild foods are just the tip of the foragers iceberg of wild foods.
One wild food most people have heard of is wild rice. It is one of our favorites. It can be gathered in an amount that is meaningful in reducing your food budget, it is delicious, it lends itself to many traditional recipes, it stores well, and we think gathering it is fun.This year we gathered about 170 pounds dry weight. We spent about14-15 hours, spread over three days ,to gather that amount. There is a downside of course,we have to thresh it out yet, but that can be an enjoyable job too.Some people have their rice threshed out commercially but we prefer to do our own. I'll be doing a in depth blog on wild rice at some point in the future.
The wild food we are hunting now is a common plant but not one that is eaten commonly. The acorns from all oaks are edible,though admittedly, not with out some preparation. Acorns have too much tannin to be eaten as they come. In order to remove the excess tannin, the acorns are hulled, ground,and then leached by repeated bathes of cool water. Once enough tannin has been removed the nut meats are dried and can then be stored to use ground as a flour additive or they can be pressed for a edible oil.
We have made several jaunts in search of lush acorn pickings but have not found much yet.We have found several other select wild edibles while out looking for acorns though. Mushrooms! Yummy mushrooms of several varieties have sprung up in the last week. Ann found a few of our much relished honey fungus yesterday and that sent us into the woods in search of more. We didn't find any of those but did pick a ice cream pailful of
Entaloma abortum,or pig snouts as we call them. They will make some great mushroom soup.
I would not pick any mushroom to eat until I had been out with someone knowledgeable for several seasons. We only pick six mushrooms and none of those have any poisonous lookalikes, assuming you look at them closely and have learned what to look for.Eating wild mushrooms is like parachuting, if at first you don't succeed, it's not for you! Wild mushrooms are great, you just have to do your homework to get the reward.
I'll be adding a lot more foraging blogs this winter after we get the garden to bed. Lots to do there yet. The horses and pigs have finished off the sweet corn. Now we have to get every thing cleaned up and prepped for spring.
