A Late March Foraging Walk

Snowflakes have danced over the greening grass all day long.  At dusk, just after David and I came in from our venturing, a wall of white swept in over the neighbor's pasture from the southwest, making me glad for indoors and warmth.  Muddy knees.  A mug of tea.  A soft seat where I can watch the bread bake in the hot oven.  Simple pleasures work their magic on my soul.

The tail end of winter is the time of year that seems the hardest to eat locally, but I love to defy such rules of thumb. I took a basket and a trowel along when David and I went out to pull the taps on the Sugar Maples.  After we removed the spiles and thanked the trees, we stopped down to visit the hens and give them some stale bread.

Down by the chicken tractor, outside of the electric fence is a bed of Jerusalem Artichokes, also known as sunchokes.  A native to North America, the wild sunflower produces knobbly tubers that Native Americans cultivated and ate.  In just a few minutes, I had dug an easy handful of the roots, which I now munch on.  Crunchy, earthy and a little sweet, the tubers are surprisingly mild-flavored for a wild food.  Like most wild foods, the J-chokes are high in nutrients including iron, potassium, thiamine and fiber.  They are high in inulin, a carbohydrate that is considered diabetic-friendly (though consuming a lot of inulin leads to flatulence), and are a crunchy addition to salads, or may be cooked like potatoes.  I've even seen recipes for fried sunchoke chips.  As with all wild foods, positive identification is critical.  I had planted the Jerusalem artichokes in that spot and watched them bloom, so I knew what I was digging, but if you go hunting J-chokes, make absolutely certain you've got the right plant. This time of year, without flowers or leaves present, identification is much more difficult.  (My favorite field guide is the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants.)

The tops of the tall sunflowers still bear seed heads.

Digging at the base of the old stalks yields golden nuggets of wild food.

 

The product of 5 minutes of scratching the earth.

I suppose I could add the collection of some icy cold and delicious Sugar Maple sap to the wild and local food collection, as I kept some of the last sap to drink.  I pulled the taps because the red maples' buds are beginning to swell, which will make the sap taste bitter when boiled down.  And because with the thaw, my attention must go to the garden now.

The last of the maple sap.

I also collected 14 eggs from the hens.  Back inside Soulstice, lettuce greens growing under lights have sprung back from the last picking.  Maybe I'll make up a salad of lettuce, leftover carrots dug on my last foraging walk, hard-boiled eggs, and a maple syrup-based dressing!

Even if you don't have J-chokes to dig or hens on the yard, you can eat local food treats right now.  I'll leave you with an easy dessert recipe you can try this weekend:

Baked Custard

2 cups Brunton's milk
2 eggs from Shepler's Farm (if you don't have your own flock)
1/4 cup local honey or maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  Beat all ingredients together with a wire whisk.  Place four ramekins, small mugs or heavy teacups in a lasagna pan or other baking dish.  Fill ramekins/cups with sweetened milk-egg mixture and pour boiling water into pan to surround the cups.  Bake for 30-45 minutes or until a knife inserted near the edge of a custard cup comes out clean.  Remove from oven and let cool completely before covering and refrigerating.  Best served cold, and delicious plain or with fresh fruit.

In the end, eating wild and food you've collected from the land or purchased from a farmer produces a feeling of connection to the land, a sense of groundedness and gratitude.

May you find ways to connect with the land even on snowy, cold, blustery days like today.
Betsy