Foraging for Food

[worth1]

Somehow we've managed to forget rose hips.

[svalli]

I have only ever seen a few of those local bog cranberries, they are not enough to be worth picking in our area either.
Blueberries (V. angustifolium) are by far the most common berry picked, followed by partridgeberries (V. vitis-idaea). In some parts of the island, mainly further north, bakeapples (Rubus chamaemorus) are plentiful. One of my aunts and her family lived on the Northern Peninsula for years, and they always had a lot of them. Also in the north, when my Mom was growing up they picked Squashberries (Viburnum edule). I have seen a few patches of these in our local area. They are uncommon enough that I wouldn't mind planting a patch if I could find some again. She really enjoys those old tastes from her childhood.

Bakeapples aka. cloudberries are the best ones of our wild berries. Last year I was at the right spot at right time and picked them. They get soft and dripping juice, when ripe and best tasting. They ripen in July and it is usually hot and the bog area is full of blood sucking flies and mosquitoes, so picking them is not easy.

[bower]

@svalli I remember it too well! Blackflies and mosquitoes are terrible in the cloudberry habitat.
There was a bakeapple marsh at quite a long hike from our homes here, which my father used to take me to when he was alive. As a farmer's son in the 1920's, he and his brothers would pick bakeapples at the 'forty acre marsh' every year to sell them and buy their shoes for the winter. We didn't get a lot of berries on our hikes, as there were at that time several ATV trails leading to the marsh, and those people always seemed to get there to pick before we did. It was always an interesting trip though, because this marsh was also full of orchids and unusual things, my father was very excited about. He was such a nature enthusiast, and taught me to recognize every plant that grows here. We enjoyed those long walks and never hurried, because there was always something to see along the way. All the same I came away with more insect bites than berries, and it seemed comical and futile, taking three wobbly steps in your rubber boots to pick two berries and swat ten flies.
On our last hike to the marsh, our road came to a dead end where it was crossed by the vast wasteland of highway construction, which we could not cross. I believe there is a second highway now crossing the same area, but I haven't been on it and don't know if any parts of the old marsh still remain. There was a fantastic hill above the marsh where you could look out over all of St. John's to the ocean. That is now developed as a commercial area. These changes are inevitable when you're close to a growing city. In my father's youth it took them a full day to travel to St. John's by horse and cart. All of the wild areas in between were their stomping ground, for hunting, fishing, picking berries. Now it's 15 minutes by car on a summer day, so we have to be thankful for the bit of wilderness still close to home. I am luckily right next to and partly inside a protected watershed area for the city, so this at least won't be lost to buildings and roads. But we have to go further afield to look for berries nowadays.

[worth1]

Poke salit.
Family used to gather and eat it every spring.

[karstopography]

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Picked 13 1/2 cups of blackberries today.

[MarkAndre]

Great haul! I need to look and see if there is anything worth picking in my wild berry thicket. I never fertilize them, so they’re usually too small.

[karstopography]

Great haul! I need to look and see if there is anything worth picking in my wild berry thicket. I never fertilize them, so they’re usually too small.

These are what I call beach berries as I forage for them in the public spaces at either Surfside or Quintana Beach. These berries, blackberry or dewberry, whatever they might be, are usually pretty early in the spring and I’m sort of at the tail end of prime time. I’ve been getting these about every year since I lived at Surfside fifteen years ago.

There’s areas closer to the house to find blackberries, but the amount of the harvest seems more subject to how wet or dry things are and the number of berries per area tend to be less. I also think the beach berries are sweeter and intensely flavorful than the ones in the wooded areas nearby.

These beach berries get bathed in abundant morning fogs in March and early April when they are developing and ripening and the fogs help them not burn up in the intense sun as there isn’t the benefit of much tree canopy filtered light out behind the dunes. But by now in the year, the fog is coming to a seasonal end and the berries are in danger of burning up with nothing between them and the sun. Last night’s rain surely helped, though.

I freeze them for cobbler. I may go back and get some more, but I had better hurry. Five cups per full sized cobbler. If I got 6.5 more cups, that would be 20 cups or 4 cobblers.

[MarkAndre]

That’s fascinating. It’s good to know about the distinction.

Surfside is my favorite of the local beaches I’ve experienced, or at least it was before all the storms. I travel very poorly since the lockdown, so no beaches since then.

[karstopography]

That’s fascinating. It’s good to know about the distinction.

Surfside is my favorite of the local beaches I’ve experienced, or at least it was before all the storms. I travel very poorly since the lockdown, so no beaches since then.

I loved living at Surfside beach. I rented a three bedroom house on a good sized lot year around for less money than what a one bedroom apartment went for in town. I was five blocks from the pedestrian beach. My backyard was a fabulous marsh full of redfish and blue and stone crabs. I fished in the surf or the bays nearby or the marsh behind the house. Cooned up the most delicious oysters from Christmas Bay.

The downside were the hurricanes. Ike washed away my stairs, I had to live in town for three weeks while the access got rebuilt. I had a great shell and fossil collection I had found beachcombing during the off season. Fossil teeth from extinct pleistocene fauna, bison, camels, horses, etc. that all got washed away in the 6 feet of rushing, churning water that demolished my storage area downstairs.

I’m still only 20 minutes from the beach, but 21 feet above sea level instead of maybe three.

[MarkAndre]

Sounds like an absolute dream. If you can live that way just once, that is what a lot of people are shooting for.
20 minutes is perfect. When you look at the little communities on the way to the beach, you dream about planting dates, freeze-sensitive fruit trees, and what could be overwintered.

[karstopography]

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About 1/2 the way to a pecan pie. Picked up several pounds of pecans today. Good year, lots of pecans in spite of the drought.

[karstopography]

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Tuna time. About 10 pounds of ripe wild and foraged prickly pear fruit. Going to burn off the little thorns soon, unless I can come up with something else to remove them.

My daughter is going to make jelly with as many as she wants since she’s the one that picked them. I’m going to make prickly pear syrup. Prickly pear has a flavor of bubblegum and strawberries or raspberries with the addition of a little citric acid or lemon juice.

[worth1]

I ate one in the wild once because I was hungry but didn't get all the small thorns off.

[karstopography]

Someone on another online site suggested rolling the tunas around in sand in a box to remove the glochids. Worked amazingly well and much easier and faster than burning them off.

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The syrup is amazing. Sugar 1/1 ratio by volume with the strained juice. Citric acid to taste. A bit over 1/2 tablespoon in this case for ~850 ml of syrup. Naturally, I spilled perhaps 15 percent of the juice prior to making the syrup. The made Syrup has a strong strawberry vibe with bubblegum and honeydew melon notes.

https://honest-food.net/how-to-make-prickly-pear-syrup/

Recipe in the link. Be very careful mashing the fruit. There’s a potential for magenta prickly pear splatter on the walls.

[worth1]

Us Texans got it all.

[Vanman]

Picked up 30lbs of pecans last week. Will pick up more later this week. They last for years in the freezer.

[karstopography]

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Picked out enough native pecans for a pie and then some, just in time for Thanksgiving. These are new to me pecans from new to me pecan trees. The majority, from one of the trees, have real thin shells which makes for easy picking out of the meat. Sat outside in absolutely splendid weather to do the picking out so it was a treat rather than a chore.

Native pecans have more oil and a richer flavor than the “improved” larger types.

[worth1]

Choctaw pecans are really good.

Choctaw Pecan - Texas Pecan Nursery https://www.texaspecannursery.com/produ ... taw-pecan/

[karstopography]

I’ve always wondered how breeders made these larger pecans. Did they find the one in a million native pecan tree with extra big pecans and work with that or get lucky with breeding two native pecans or what exactly?

The ones I have foraged from at least one tree this season have been especially good. The size is pretty good and the shells the thinnest I’ve experienced with a native pecan. Some land nearby I have access to got cleared of underbrush and grass so the picking has been easy.

When I lived in town I used to go over to the Baptist church behind my house and forage there. I never saw anyone pick up those pecans and no one ever tried to shoo me away. There was one good tree with good sized natives, but the shells were thicker than these this year.

I was out near Junction on the Llano river recently and there were pecans and black walnuts, but the black walnuts were so tiny and hard and the actual meat almost nonexistent that you’d starve to death trying to subsist on those. Must be a different species of black walnut. The trees were especially small, but they were definitely walnut trees.

We have bitternut hickory around here. They look a lot like a pecan tree and the nuts are about pecan sized, but flattened and very well named as they are bitter.

There’s some wild hickory trees over near halletsville and that area that produce delicious nuts, but they are dang hard to open. White looking hard shells.

East texas has some true native black walnuts with regular sized nuts.

[worth1]

@karstopography
More on pecans.

These people and my people go way way back in this area.
I actually ran across one in college station last year and we had a bit of a reunion.
And another person that knows my family is on the job site I'm on now.
Small world.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... IVZlvk4mR7