Welcome to Forager's Harvest
Whether you are a seasoned food gatherer or just beginning your adventure with wild food, you have come to the right place.
Our mission is to promote foraging – the pastime of responsibly harvesting and utilizing wild food - by providing knowledge. We do this through articles, publications, classes, workshops, presentations, and consulting. At Forager’s Harvest we look at wild food from many angles of interest: health and nutrition, gourmet cooking, wilderness survival, thrift, self-reliance. We also believe that responsible foraging builds environmental awareness and is the most ecologically sustainable method of procuring food. But more than anything, harvesting wild food satisfies a deep desire to connect with our roots and participate in Nature. We forage because we love to, and invite others to join us.
What's New?
Check out the new wild food interpretive trail that I set up.
Last week we found hundreds of king boletes - brought home 30 pounds!
Black huckleberries are beginning to ripen, and there's lots of them. Wild rice is ripening early and beaked hazels are loaded in some areas.
Found my first prairie onion (Allium stellatum).
Autumnberry, Autumn-olive
ripe autumnberries on a typically loaded branch
Elaeagnus umbellata
Elaeagnaceae
– Oleaster Family
It truly baffles me how the autumn-olive remains one of the biggest wild food secrets in North America. Over vast regions of this continent it is our most common wild fruit. I have seen entire pastures overtaken with it, one after another, sometimes forming autumn-olive thickets covering twenty, forty, or even a hundred acres. In much of the country this is a regular sight; in fact, it is considered a noxious invasive weed in many areas and efforts are being made to eradicate it. Oftentimes, a single bush may be so loaded with fruit that several gallons may be picked from it, and this can be harvested with surprising efficiency. I have seen bushes so laden that their limbs rested solidly on the ground under the weight. Recently, I picked eleven quarts from a super-loaded bush—in less than fifteen minutes! The autumn-olive has received some attention for its content of lycopene, a chemical known to promote prostate health. Tomatoes are generally considered the standard source for this nutrient—but autumn-olives contain about eighteen times as much lycopene as tomatoes (Black and Fordham, 2005). But the most incredible fact about autumn-olives is their flavor: almost everybody loves them.
Recent Articles
Black Nightshade
/ March 24, 2010Into the Wild and other Poisonous Plant Fables
/ March 24, 2010Fern Fiddleheads: The Succulent Stalks of Spring
/ March 16, 2010Why God Put Those Bumps on Your Tongue
/ March 16, 2010Basswood: The Ultimate Wild Salad Plant
/ March 16, 2010Making Your Own Apple Pectin
/ March 16, 2010Milkweed: A Truly Remarkable Wild Vegetable
/ March 16, 2010
