Preparedness: Wild Edibles

jelly ear fungi, found at a local conservation area about 10 miles away from me

As I do not like to keep all my eggs in 1 basket, I like to practice a variety of food storage methods in my prepping. I do store some bulk foods but also I save seeds, garden and wildcraft/forage for our food. I like having food stored away in case something happened in the dead of winter when not much is growing, we'd have enough food to tide us over until spring arrived along with fresh greens, lambs, kids, and gardening could commence.

elderberries, great for making syrup and jelly plus medicine

My kids are starting to get into foraging for food so I've started compiling a list of wild plants that grow on our property that are edible. My 14 year old is organizing a survival night/day for herself, some friends and the older kids here to participate in. They are allowed to take a few items with them but have to forage for all their food. She has been studying up. I've been helping out by cooking wild foods for them to try and get used to.

nettles, ready for steaming

The following grow wild on our property or in our gardens:

Daylilies - flowers, shoots, tubers
Spiderwort - I believe all parts are edible, know for sure leaves and flowers are
Burdock - roots, leaf and flower stalks, sprouts, seeds
Dock - roots, leaves, seeds
Cattails - all parts, shoots, tubers, pollen
Reeds - shoots, seeds, tubers
Wild Grapes - leaves, fruits, thick vines can be cut and drained for water
Roses - flowers, hips
Amaranth - seeds, leaves
Lamb's Quarters - leaves, sprouts, seeds
Violets - flowers, leaves, sprouts
Dandelion - leaves, roots, flowers
Chicory - leaves, flowers, roots
Nettles - leaves, tops, seeds
Wild Onions/Garlic - bulbs, greens
Mulberries - berries
Hackberries - berries
Blackberries - shoots, berries
Wild Cherry - berries
Chickweed - all parts
Ox-eye daisy - leaves, flowers
Asian Daylily - flowers, seed pods, leaves
Elderberries - flowers, berries
Morels
False Turkey Tails
True Turkey Tails
Poke - shoots
Purslane - aerial parts
Thistles - stalks
Garlic mustard - aerial parts
Autumn Olive - berries
Evening Primrose - roots, leaves
Wild Carrot - roots
Asparagus - shoots
Walnut - nuts, sap
Silver maples - sap, seeds
Milkweed - shoots, flower buds, pods

Each year I discover more and more wild edibles. If you are interested in finding edibles in your area, here is a list of some great books to get you started:

The Forager's Harvest by Samuel Thayer
Nature's Garden by Samuel Thayer
Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants by "Wildman" Steve Brill
Stalking the Healthful Herbs by Euell Gibbons
Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons
The Essential Wild Food Survival Guide by Linda Runyon

Not sure what to do with them once you have them? There are lots of great wild food cook books out there too. Here is a list of a few:

Free for the Eating by Bradford Angier
The Wild, Wild Cook Book by Jean Craighead George
The Edible Wild by Berndt Berglund

There are also a few zines on the subject:

Edible, Medicinal & Utilitarian Plants by Rowan Walking Wolf, PhD.
Feral Forager
Plants Gone Wild

Do you forage for wild foods on your land? What types of plants do you like to harvest from the wild? Do you have some favorite wild plant books or cook books that I haven't mentioned?

a new leaf

this fall finds me starting feel interested in homesteading again. after a summer of feeling burnt out, i'm now sad to see the garden going to sleep. today i moved our cold frame next to the back porch steps, dumped a 5 gallon bucket of compost into into, spread it around and planted some chard, kale and my 3 rosemary plants. later i'll go back out and plant some herbs, possibly bergamot and spearmint and any other small plants i can find. i also have a few sprouting onions i'd like to stick in there as well.the sweet potatoes are lying on the porch of the barn drying. in a week or less, depending on the weather, i'll individually wrap them in newspaper and box them up for storage up in our bedroom (cool and dry) for the winter. a few are sprouting so i'll bring them into the kitchen and let them go for the next few months to get a jump on next year's plants since this year i was way behind and dug up a bunch of undeveloped roots when i harvested them.
the luffas are hanging on the vine, recently touched by the first freeze of the year. i'm waiting for them to dry up a bit then i'll harvest and bring in to make into luffa sponges. i have about 20 or so. they will make great solstice gifts along with some soap and other herbal goodies.i've started craving wild food lately too. i dreamed of catching and killing some cotton tails and cooking them up for dinner. now i'm craving rabbit! i need to get to my dad's house to harvest some hazelnuts...hazelnut butter sounds delicious! i'd like to harvest some acorns but i don't know where the big ones grow that would be worthwhile for harvesting. i think part of my craving wild foods is from reading the delicious meal posts kiva and darcey have been making on facebook...they make me drool! i keep begging greg to go hunting this year so we can fill our freezer with venison. with the advent of the realization that i've taken on more than i can chew with our homesteading dreams, i feel turning to the wild for some of our food would help to relieve that burden...scrounging for food instead of having to spend several months cultivating it sounds marvelous right now. eating venison for breakfast every day sounds wonderful.

i'm hoping to find some autumn olive berries to make jelly with. the only jellies we have on hand are herb jellies and i'm craving some berry jelly. go figure. i broke open the last apricot jam i had today for an almond butter and jelly sandwich. delicious!

on the food front, i still haven't gone to the grocery store. greg has though. he tends to throw a monkey wrench into my plans and about the same time i put a ban on the grocery store, he decided to go back on the south beach diet. i'm happy that he's finally wanting to slim down to a healthier size but darn, it's hard to work around that diet given the food we have on hand! so, he's gone to the store a few times and purchased steak and pork chops, onions (even though we have onions here, he's enamoured by large red onions) and zucchini. i did kindly point out that him running his credit card up further with these purchases does not help out our current financial situation.

sharon has got me wanting to ditch my no spending mantra and join in on the pantry stocking. this is one thing i'm nervous about is whittling down the pantry while not spending money. i do so love the weekly suggestions of what to put by. oh, the torment!

i've started a batch of ginger beer using honey instead of sugar. we'll see if it works. it sounds divine and although we generally don't buy soda to have on hand, the kids would enjoy a treat occasionally!
i'm dreading this holiday season for more reasons than one. family issues, money issues, time issues are the main ones...although we don't buy a lot of gifts, i'm not sure we'll even be able to afford gifts for the kids this year. generally they each get just 1 so hopefully, we can squeeze something out. i'll just have to get more creative with the stocking stuffers. i tend to go overboard with those!

herbally, i'm hoping to focus on regional plants and plants that i can grow so i'm compiling a list of 100 herbs that i know grow around here to start studying in the next year. i started doing something similar a year or so go back but then got sidetracked. this is my way of picking back up on it. i'll be posting on this soon.

morel goodness

just a stone's throw from my back door we have a patch of morels growing...

the things i do for fellow bloggers...i lay on my belly for the above shot! the twigs in the foreground mark the morels...

yum...

yum...and more yum!

we discovered them last year. it appears they like our maple tree (the year before that we built a temporary fairy house in that area. i wonder if it's the fairies' way of thanking us?!)

right now they are tiny. yesterday, there were 2, today there are 7.