Rose Hips from FortWhyte Alive
Last September I had the pleasure of partaking in a forage expedition with Savour Winnipeg, in conjunction with outdoor educator Barret Miller of FortWhyte Alive. In honour of their new season, here are some pictures and reminiscences. While most of the forage experiences take place in the Assiniboine Forest, the season’s grand finale is at FortWhyte Alive.
Saskatoon Bush
We started off from the main building, wandering into the forest and stopping along the way to admire various edible plants – wild licorice, wild sunflower and a saskatoon bush that was unfortunately already finished.
We did, however, find a few wild hazelnuts that were still edible. The chokecherry tree is given that name for a reason, but the fruit actually is edible. I was excited to be able to pick some oak leaves – I put them in with my pickles and the tannin in the leaves keeps them nice and crisp. Grape leaves will do this, too.
Dandelion!
The willow is a natural analgesic. Cattails are edible for a good part of the year, but alas in September they had gone to seed and Barret advised against tasting them. If you are lost in the wild, you can always go for duckweed on the pond – ducks eat it and we can, too. Of course there is always the humble dandelion. This time of year I am buying dandelion greens from the grocery store, but I am looking forward to being able to forage them in my own yard – or anywhere else I can be sure they have not been sprayed with nasty stuff.
Ahhhh.
I was surprised to learn that wild plantains grow in Manitoba, although of course they don’t look like bananas. The wild sage smelled wonderful. We ended up by collecting wild mint and rosehips for our tea. Ben had lit a fire while the rest of us were foraging, boiled water and now we triumphantly dumped our treasures into the pot. A refreshing glass of rosehip tea was a wonderful end to an educational and deeply satisfying experience.
A Fabulous Giveaway!
Savour Winnipeg has kindly partnered with me to offer you the chance of winning one of their Fantastic Forest Forage Experience dates for free! It’s already an amazing value at $25 for the whole series, but wouldn’t it be fun to get 20% off? Just leave a comment on the blog before April 30 and I will randomly choose a winner at that time. The first forage is May 25 so don’t delay!
I have always wanted to this, but could never afford it! This is perfect!! 🙂
This looks like a lot of fun. I remember learning some of these things at summer camp when I was a kid. I keep wanting to go to one but last year it seemed I was always busy.
Thanks, Lori!
New to all this wonderful stuff and would love to take part so I can share with my friends and family!
Thanks, Shalla! You are entered!
Wow! What a wonderful experience! We’ve been trying our novice hand at foraging for a couple of years now. While collecting some books on the subject. We live about 6-7 hours north of Winnipeg now, but do come to the city every 2 months or so. Last year we discovered wintergreen, wonderful delight in Canadian Shield areas.
Thanks, Patty-Jean! So, do you want to be part of the draw? I would love to see you when you come to the city!
Halyna, what a beautiful response!
Hadass Eviatar recently posted…Fantastic Forest Foraging with Savour Winnipeg
Jo, thanks for your response. Just checking – did you want to be included in the draw? You’d have to come into the city for it ;-).
Hadass Eviatar recently posted…Fantastic Forest Foraging with Savour Winnipeg
We forage more and more every year and now use quite a wide range of wonderful outdoor edibles including the ones mentioned above as well as some others – burrdock, nettles, purslane, dock, shepard’s purse, lamb’s quarters, mallow, oyster mushrooms, sheep sorrel, clover, wood sorrel, fiddle heads, elderberry….and the list goes on! All of those wonderful things are always up long before I can ever even get into the garden to plant! 🙂
Often, we’ll just pick and eat things while we’re moving about outside! It’s a wonderful bounty God provides!
My baba was a forager extraordinaire though I did not appreciate her skills growing up. Would love to experience the joy of gathering food for my family the way she did.