Wild foods

[DCAN]

In the late 80's I lived in the north-east corner of the state (Oregon). Every so often I'd come across an old homestead up in the hills. The apples and plums were like nothing I've tasted since. Huge patches of huckleberries too, just had to keep an eye out for bears.

 

[Rató:rats]

Love ramps when I can get them. I pickle the bottoms to preserve them. I saute the tops for excellent greens or chop them into salads.

I always get a ton of ramps when I’m out during spring turkey season. love pickled ramps on a burger.

 

[Rató:rats]

Nettles are abundant along the river I live on. Great in soups and stews or dried and made into tea.

 

[Ames]

Used to get prickly pear in New Mexico. My mother didn’t trust any wild food hardly. But after I left home my dad talked her in to trying one. She did, she didn’t know you needed to peel it first…

Oh, I got one for you. Those pink, red fleshed prickly pears. My wife and I used to turn them into prickly pear margaritas in the Jimmy Buffet margarita machine and watch the sunset in the hot tub! Now that's some good wild food!

 

[tenngun]

Sort of a wild food. In the Superstition Mountains here in AZ, there is an old homestead in the wilderness that was inhabited by a hermit named Elisha Reavis. When I was in my teens, my pop booked a trip through parks and rec to pack to Reavis Ranch with llamas carrying our backpacks. The abandoned ranch had an apple orchard and an old rickety two story house. We had as many apples as we could eat and checked out the farmhouse which was occupied by a group of Boy Scouts when we were there.

I’ve always wanted to trek there. I grew up on land that was an old apple orchard in New Mexico. Most of the trees were dead. Made good fuel for cooking trout on the habachi
Looking at photos Im
surprised there was enough water near the superstitions to support an apple orchard

 

[pilot]

I found Pawpaws growing at my farm this fall. I had no idea they were there, in fact I tried starting some ten years ago and they all died. The new ones are 8 to 10 feet tall now, so I could be getting some in the next few years.

As for foraged food, I really like giant puffball mushrooms when I can find them. Elderberries and black raspberries are very good, too. I tried the wild strawberries that grow here, but they are pretty tasteless.

Walnuts are everywhere and we find pecans on occasion near Truman lake, too.

 

[TDM]

I did. But, in the context of the fact we don't have them here.
I have thought of buying a couple trees and planting them in some of my more frequented hunting areas....

American persimmon trees are fairly common on my property but only the female trees produce fruit and some years they do and some they don’t. About 6 years ago I planted a Japanese Persimmon by one of my food plots and it’s done well. The deer love them.

 

[Ponderosaman]

I’ve always wanted to trek there. I grew up on land that was an old apple orchard in New Mexico. Most of the trees were dead. Made good fuel for cooking trout on the habachi
Looking at photos Im
surprised there was enough water near the superstitions to support an apple orchard

Technically there is no year round water in all of the Supes, but that spot has Fish Creek running through it, which runs more then any other source. It is high enough there that there are some pines if I recall correctly, like juniper and piñon. The house was burnt down by the forest service because the ranch is in designated wilderness and it had become dangerous. Some folks tried to trim the apple trees, so they would produce better, but the forest service got wind of it and didn’t let them, so the trees don’t produce every year and they go more years without producing as time passes. Great hike though and was really fun with the llamas.

 

[sheriff john]

Management (wife) is, among other things, a master jelly-maker. Wild plum, elderberry, wild grape, dandelion, wild cherry, paw-paw, from the wild side. Obligatory grape jellies, cherry, strawberry, pepper, etc. Normal year - 11 different ones. Broke her arm this summer. Missed the wild cherries.

IF (big "if") you know what to look for and what to do with what's out there, lots of edibles in the outdoors for free. Most are seasonal, but that's part of the fun. Persimmons and alum have a lot in common.

 

[DuncNZ]

Field Mushrooms , Giant puffballs , Boletes . Blackberries , rose hips , dandelion, elderberry wine , juice and jelly , elder flower cordial and wine , wild cherries , various sea weeds, nettles in beer and bread
The wild fruit trees you find near old houses / settlements are valuable genetic recourses as they are old fashioned breeds ,and may be no longer commercially available and they posses a natural resistance to disease and insects having survived a hundred or more years with out spray or fertilizer. They are worth marking on your GPS or map and collecting scions when the time is ripe .

 

[David Veale]

Good post on wild meats got me thinking, what wild foods have you gathered
I’ve had wild nuts, hickory and walnut, made acorn flour, cat tail roots, poke, lots of berries. But pretty much leery about gathering

I've done a lot of foraging, both in Washington State where I grew up and also in Michigan where I currently reside. There's nothing I won't try if I can confidently identify it, but I've gotta admit that a lot of wild foods are so bad that I'd have to be starving to want to eat them in any quantity. A couple lesser known foods that I've found to be fantastic are both flower bulbs -- spring beauty (both WA and MI), and tiger lilly (WA). Spring beauty bulbs taste just like regular old potatoes. Only problem is finding big enough bulbs to make it worth the effort, as the largest I've found was maybe the size of a grape, so you have to collect a lot of them. Tiger lilly bulbs are bigger, but tend not to be found in large quantity. The tiger lilly bulbs taste similar to a potato but better imho.

While there are certainly mushrooms that need to be avoided, chantrelles, morels, chicken of the woods, and hen of the woods are all relatively unique and hard to mistake for others unless you're the type of person who can't tell the difference between a maple and an oak.

For anyone who wants to do more foraging, I *highly* recommend any of Samuel Thayer's books. Compared to most other books I've come across, the details that this guy goes into (where to find, what time of year, what to avoid, multiple ways to prepare, etc) are phenomenal! The detail he goes into regarding acorns is an order of magnitude greater than any others I've seen. He lives in Wisconsin so his books are heavy on midwestern/eastern species but forages all over the US. He also sells a lot of foraged foods that you will not find anywhere else. His website is foragersharvest.com.

 

[Packrat]

Ramps, boy ole boy, if someone in your group eats them you have to in defense.
Used to have Ramp festivals in West Virginia, I liked them but my wife didn't, of course I was a US Marine and ate anything

 

[LANEY REECE]

Boy i would love to know what is good to forage in my state, i know some, but not all. Hats off to you who do. Thanks Packrat for your service.

 

[Old Oak]

Had old homestead apples in the Sacramento mountains of New Mexico, as well as making a ton of elderberry jellies and pies from some of our hunting area bushes there.

 

[rmefbowhunter]

Field Mushrooms , Giant puffballs , Boletes . Blackberries , rose hips , dandelion, elderberry wine , juice and jelly , elder flower cordial and wine , wild cherries , various sea weeds, nettles in beer and bread
The wild fruit trees you find near old houses / settlements are valuable genetic recourses as they are old fashioned breeds ,and may be no longer commercially available and they posses a natural resistance to disease and insects having survived a hundred or more years with out spray or fertilizer. They are worth marking on your GPS or map and collecting scions when the time is ripe .

There is a group of scientists at Washington State University in Pullman, WA, who specialize in tracking down abandoned homesteads across the western US and Canada to catalog and gather/preserve the seeds from now lost varieties of orchard fruit. As you said, these have become very hardy varieties and some have even been commercially reintroduced.

 

[Bubajunk]

I am surprised no one mentioned wild persimmons. Very good when ripe.

Or even the paw paw tree .

 

[Tom A Hawk]

I'm not seeing that anyone has mentioned beech nuts. If you can manage to get these before the deer and turkeys, the triangular nuts are easily peeled with your fingers and are delicious both raw and roasted.

 

[TDM]

I have a few big Beech trees, but they’re off the beaten track and I never think to check them for nuts. I’m too far south for Paw Paws, but Persimmon trees are fairly common. Only the female American Persimmons bear fruit. And some years they do, some years they don’t. I love to eat them, but they have to be completely ripe. A few years ago I picked what I honestly believed to be a ripe persimmon for my Wife to eat. Well, it wasn’t quite ripe! Her mouth almost turned inside out! She could hardly talk for a while, but when she could I got a heck of a tongue lashing!

 

[appalichian hunter]

Persimmons, Paw Paws, Ramps, various nuts (have a friend that makes really good Hickory nut cookies) wild tea berry, licorice root, sassafras, morels. Spruce tea. dandoline, cat tail roots, land and water cress, fox grapes, various berry's (black and raspberry) wild onions and the list goes on. If one knows where to look and what to look for you can eat rather well. Especially if yer totin a rifle gun for an un-suspecting tree rat, rabbit, grouse or a turkey.

 

[Johnny Tremain]

The ole man brought us out here in 65.
He told us, and taught us to live off the land.
He would say there is so much food here, one could get fat, roughing it.