“Living in sync with the cycles of the land can build a powerful connection with your local environment, and incorporating locally harvested wild foods in your diet is a wonderful way to celebrate and create local food traditions. In an effort to document and share the experience of following the gathering cycle, Kaare Melby compiled a series of monthly articles about his experiences living through the 2020 Gathering Cycle. These articles first appeared in the Finland Food Chain newsletter.” Kaare has given me permission to excerpt them here as a guest column for Grown on the Range. After all, wild food is the original and enduring food grown on the Iron Range!
Here are Kaare’s writings from May through December 2020, quoted by month. You can find a summary of all the foraging opportunities up north at the Finland Food Chain website http://finlandfoodchain.org/wp/resources/the-gathering-cycle/
May
“Winter has given way. The maple sap season is well over, the birch sap season is coming to a close, the fishing season is starting, the snow is mostly melted, and it’s time to start gathering roots! This time of year, wild roots are still sweet from their winter slumber. One of the most widely known wild plants is the humble dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), and right now is the best time to harvest dandelion roots and their tender young spring greens. Another root you can harvest this time of year is wild ginger (Asarum canadense). In order to harvest wild ginger this time of year, you need to know where it is growing, because there are no leaves growing above ground to find yet. Another thing to keep your eye on are sucker fish. The local wisdom is that the sucker fish start running in creeks when the aspen leaves are ‘the size of a mouse’s ear’.”
June
“The world has turned green! With the warm weather, and some rain (finally) all of the plants are booming with growth. The dandelion greens are getting bitter, but they are putting out their beautiful yellow flowers. These often despised or ignored flowers hold delicious culinary opportunities, such as jelly, wine, or even battered and fried! Another wild food that has sprung forth is spruce tips, which are the new growth at the ends of spruce trees. These yummy tree-greens are high in vitamin C and taste slightly of citrus. You can eat them raw, cook them like a vegetable, dry them for tea, or make them into jelly. And last, but not least, the plantain leaves have started to appear. Plantain is a very useful medicinal plant that helps with pain, cuts, and burns. But it is also an edible green. Add it to salads or cook it like any other leafy green.”
July
“As summer starts to ramp up, we are on the verge of the next great gathering opportunity: berries! While we wait for that bounty to arrive, there are a few other yummy wild treats waiting for us out there. Due to dry conditions, there have not been many wild mushrooms around my neck of the woods yet. I have seen a few Oyster Mushrooms around, but they have been few and far between. If we get some rain, I really suggest you go out and look for them, I am sure they are ready to explode once the rain finally comes. The Wild Mint is still going strong and will continue throughout the summer. It’s the perfect addition to drinks, cold and hot alike. The Clover has started to bloom. Clover is great for tea, or a foraging snack. For tea, pick the flower heads and either use right away or dry. As a foraging snack, just pluck the purple parts out of the flower and eat raw. Lambs Quarter is a great wild green that can be used like spinach, kale, or swiss chard. Also called goosefoot, fat hen, and many other names. Lambs quarter is from the Chenopodium family which is the same family as quinoa. The seeds can even be collected later in the season and cooked just like quinoa. But right now the part of the plant to collect are young green leaves that are really good cooked or fresh. Fire Weed is another wild edible the is thriving this summer. It’s not quite blooming yet, but soon we will have a sea of green and purple to harvest!” You can use every part of the plant!
August
“When I close my eyes, I see nothing but blueberries. Blueberries are only ripe for a short period of time, but we want to be able to eat them year-round, especially in the winter. So we must go into “blueberry mode” to harvest and freeze enough to last a whole year. Juneberries are a little hit or miss this year. The drought we had earlier in the year really hurt some juneberry bushes and the berries just dried up before they were ripe. But in other places where there was a little more rain, the juneberry bushes are just filled with berries! You can freeze juneberries for winter use, but they really are best fresh. Thimbleberries and raspberries are also ripe. Chokecherries are just starting to ripen now. I like to wait until they are very dark – nearly black – before I harvest them. They make wonderful jelly, and excellent wine. The chanterelles are here! It’s a dry year, so the wild mushrooms are struggling. But there is still a bounty to be found. If you want to go out mushroom harvesting, your best bet is to go out after a good rainstorm. In addition to chanterelles, I’ve also seen lobster mushrooms and boletes out there. If you have never harvested wild mushrooms before, it’s best to go with someone who has experience. Wild mushrooms can be a tasty and bountiful wild food, but picking and eating the wrong ones can have unpleasant, and even deadly results. Hazelnuts are ripening, and the game of letting them get as ripe as possible before they fall and are eaten by squirrels has begun. Technically they can be harvested now, but the longer you wait, the better they are. They are covered with tiny little stickers that poke your skin. If this bothers you, you may want to wear gloves when harvesting these nuts. Hazlenuts are one of the few tree nuts that grow in our area, and some years they can really produce a sizeable bounty.”
September
“Mushrooms and wild rice have consumed my life for the past few weeks. This year, the mushrooms came late, but they came on strong. Interestingly, the drought seems to have helped the wild rice this year. Too much water at the “floating stage” of wild rice development can actually uproot the plants. The experience and connection to the land that comes from gathering wild food in such abundance is awe-inspiring. Being able to harvest enough food in one day to feed your family for a whole year is a magical experience. As the nights get colder, new opportunities arise. Some of us have already seen frost! But with the frost comes the highbush cranberries. So keep an eye out for bursts of red in the forest. And now that the frost is coming, it is time to harvest roots again – the cold triggers the plants to transfer energy down to the roots in the form of sugars and other compounds. If you have found a good patch of wild ginger during the summer, this is a good time to start harvesting some roots for the winter.”
October
“This is the time to go grouse hunting. Grouse are fairly large forest-dwelling birds that eat berries and tree buds – thus transforming wild plants that we can’t (or don’t want to) eat into nourishing and tender meat. Grouse can often be found along trails in the morning eating small pebbles that aid in the bird’s digestion. If you want to go grouse hunting, you need to get a license from the DNR. It’s also a good idea to learn how to hunt from someone who has experience. Another wild food that can be gathered this time of year is acorns. Acorns are an ancient food source that has been consumed by traditional people all over the world. In Europe, it was mainly replaced with grains, but there are some areas that still make acorn bread and acorn porridge to this day. Acorns are a complete food, and they provide a healthy balance of protein, fat, and starch. But, they do require some processing to remove the unpalatable tannins. Check out this video to learn more about processing acorns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QitkIGNwUgs “
November
“It’s hunting season. Deer hunting is like an annual meditation. You get up early and trek out into the middle of the woods, then you sit silently for hours. And if you are EXTREMELY lucky, you might see a deer. Deer or not, I always enjoy the time I spend in the forest hunting deer. Walking in the woods to and from your hunting spot is a good time to spot chaga. Chaga is a medicinal fungus that grows on birch trees. Folk medicine describes all sorts of reasons you might want to drink some chaga tea. Another fun winter tea is cherry bark tea, which is made by simmering chokecherry or pin cherry twigs in water. And, of course, you can make evergreen tea, which is particularly good for treating those respiratory sicknesses that are common in this season.”
December
“As the darkness settles in, and we begin to get used to the early sunsets, you might think that there is no more wild food gathering to be done. But grouse hunting extends until the beginning of January and there is still time to get out and harvest them. Another way to gather wild food this time of the year is to go ice fishing. And as the ice gets thicker on the lakes, more and more people will be flocking out to set up their ice houses. Remember, you need a fishing license to go ice fishing.”
“It’s fun to get creative with the flavors of our local wild foods. I encourage all of you to experiment with these wild foods, find ways you like to eat them, then let us know what you find! Together we can develop what the Japanese call Kisetsukan, roughly translated as “the celebration of seasonal produce”. Each day has it’s own special flavor, just waiting for us to discover it. So go out and find the abundance that surrounds us! Happy foraging!”
