I’ve written about foraging so much lately, I’m not sure what to say anymore other than: do it. A couple notable things about tonight:
First, I was *this* close to staying home and doing nothing, really. Maybe read stuff online. Maybe watch a movie. But I couldn’t do it. I had to go do some more exploring. Yes, I was like this as a kid. There’s lots of time to sit around in the winter. Within the first 5 minutes I wasn’t so tired any more, the fresh air woke me up, and now I’m home with a basket full of food with some exercise and fresh air rather than the opposite.
Which leads me to: that’s some basket of food. I finally found a serious source of saskatoons in the river valley. I knew tonight I’d have to pack it in when I ran out of room in my pail or daylight, whichever came first. Pail space came first. I also came across a serious ring of Agaricus Campestris – I harvested about 30 and had to have let behind 30-40 more because they were over-mature. The cool patterns on the caps are from adjacent specimens spore-printing onto their neighbor – bottom right one being most evident in the photo. Clearly brown, saved me some time at home spore printing them.
While out there I considered the frequent argument that if I took into account the value of my time, my food would be costly. I understand the point. But it seems illogical to measure the time when the opportunity cost of that time was TV watching or something similar, and when the activity yields so much good. Some pay for a gym membership and buy organic whole foods retail, and work a lot to pay for them. I do this.
5 Comments on “The Evening Walk”
Yeah, it’s very rewarding to train your eyes to recognize new things in a previously indistinguishable collage. And then to eat some of those things.
Despite the fact I am pretty sure you totally stalked me yesterday ;) I am glad you found berries! There are more than enough to share and I kindly left the mushrooms for you, nice of me, eh?
I don’t buy the time making your food more costly. Getting my kids out there for an hour or two roaming like the wild feral creatures they truly are is priceless. They can- right in the middle of a city- feel like they are plunked into the wilderness, help their mom pick berries, eat until their faces are purple with berry stains, throw rocks in the river and generally be more active than 98% of their peers. You can pay for a summer camp counselor to do that with them, or we can get off our lazy duffs and do it ourselves.
Oh wait, or I COULD pay someone to watch them and then go to the gym.
Sarcasm aside, I am off to STILL clean the berries I picked yesterday. Sigh. THERE’S the problem with child labor! Pounds of stick, leaves, bugs and good/bad berries to sort out. Perhaps not so priceless ;)
I understand how you feel. I was absolutely exhilarated when after my meeting at the Selkirk Hotel at Fort Ed Wed am I came across a TON of Saskatoons… and I could not leave until I had every single one I could possibly reach all along that road. Came home with a BIG bucket of wild Saskatoons (much smaller than those in my back yard, on average, through there were some HUGE ones). And, MOST of them were withered and sundried when I got the branch down to me. Still tasty though, but sad to see them not tended to! This will not happen next year!
:)
V
Regrettably I paid to pick Saskatoons out in the country near my place of work. (only eight dollars a pail which I think is much cheaper than elsewhere but not as cost effective as your methods. They also tell you to eat as much as you want while picking) Of interest though is that the berries were no where near as good and juicy as in previous years so they required much more cautious picking and searching. The farmers theory is that because there was so much rain the berries filled out too much and then when it warmed up they just shrivelled. They were planning to shut down as not wanting to have dissatisfied customers.
I have the theory that Saskatoon wine would be wonderful but I like eating them too much to sacrifice them to wine.
PS. I love that you use a basket for your picking.