The Art of Foraging

While hiking in the backwoods of British Columbia a few summers ago, I often came across patches of red huckleberries in the sunny patches along the trails.  I would fill up my t-shirt with them and continue plodding down the path, juice staining my hands and face.  My friend, Aya, a local to the Vancouver area and an avid backpacker of the British Columbian mountains, pointed this shrubby bush out to me while hiking one day.  At first I was timid to consume such a foreign substance — it didn't come USDA approved from a grocery shelf, how could I trust it!?!

Many people are not confident in their foraging skills, myself included.  Others view the art of foraging as too "hippy" to even consider participating, especially when a fully stocked grocery store is a quick fifteen minute drive away.  However, meals abound in our backyard forests, especially in the Adirondacks.  And with fresh greens and berries waiting to be picked, foraged food offers a new variety and more micronutrients to your plate than many supermarket foods ever will.  

With the ever-so-slightly rising temperatures in Upstate New York, plants will soon begin to peak through the snow.  The slender shoots and curled leaves of ostrich ferns will soon emerge, identifiable by its smooth stalk and the brown papery coating surrounding the top of the fiddlehead.  These seasonal delicacies are high in fiber, vitamin C, vitamin A, and omega-3 fatty acids, and can be cooked either by steaming, or boiling them.  The roots, leaves, or fruits of many wildflowers are also edible.  Bunchberry, wild strawberry, and wintergreen are small plants that all produce edible berries. Only the young leaves and shoots of trout-lilies, blue-bead lilies, Solomon's seal, False Solomon's seal, and trillium are edible, but the leaves, shoots, and roots of the Indian cucumber-root are all edible.  In late summer, some of the real treats of the Adirondacks are the wild blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, gooseberry, serviceberry, and hobblebush patches that rim mountaintops and trailsides.  Each of these species produces berries throughout the summer, so keep your eyes on the shrubbery during your backcountry hikes.

If you want to spice up your cooking, try grinding the inner bark of balsam fir, eastern white pine, tamarack, and spruces into a powder, and bake bread either using just the bark flour or mix it in with grain flour.  Though this type of bread is commonly referred to as "famine bread", since bark is usually more often more readily available than grain during times of famine, this food contains micronutrients such as zinc, magnesium, and iron.  The best time to harvest the inner bark is during the spring, when the vitamin content is highest.

As with all of the plants mentioned above, make sure to refer to the field guides linked to below to ensure you not only picked the correct species, but that you prepare it correctly.  Many of these wild plants require cooking first in order to deactivate any toxins, and many toxic berries also look like edible ones.  The woods of the Adirondacks, or any forest, offers many more wild edibles year round.  The trick, however, is finding the right ones before the deer and bears get to them.



Field Guides to Foraging:
A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and Central North America:
http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Edible-Wild-Plants/dp/039592622X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386853849&sr=8-1&keywords=a+field+guide+to+edible+plants

Feasting on Wild Edibles:
http://www.amazon.com/Feasting-Free-Edibles-Bradford-Angier/dp/0811727548/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386853892&sr=8-1&keywords=Feasting+Free+on+Wild+Edibles






Sources:
http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2013/12/dan-crane-edible-adirondacks.html
http://foragersharvest.com/fern-fihttp://umaine.edu/publications/4198e/
http://umaine.edu/publications/4198e/