Wednesday, July 23, 2014

These are a few of our foraging things

It's been a busy Spring/Summer for us transforming our wild spot into a sweet boondocking space. It's been a flurry of road development, garden and orchard planting, well and irrigation system set-up, and septic dump station building to name a few things. And taking classes through the University of Idaho in sustainable/healthy forest management reminds us of the wine industry ag classes we took at UC Davis so long ago (minus the high cost and wine-related pretentiousness).

In addition to all of the hiking/fishing/swimming activities around here, one of our favorite activities has been foraging for food and other items. It's like a great big Easter egg hunt. Knowing where your food comes from is a good thing. Basically most of the "food" in the middle aisle of a grocery store is a poisonous cocktail of bad carbohydrates and chemicals. Even the meat, vegetables and fruit found around the perimeter of a grocery store can be a minefield of bad farming practices that diminish the nutritional value of these generally healthy, single-ingredient food choices. Michael Pollan wrote an incredible book called The Omnivore's Dilemma that describes the variety of food choices we all face each day. He also does it without being judgmental or preachy about food choices (unlike most people are with their diet "religions").

Here are some of the items we've been foraging on and near our property:

Mushrooms
Most everyone seems to appreciate morels. They come out here in the spring and sometimes in the fall.

One of the most interesting mushrooms we've found is the the puffball. That's a local name for the beast. They are as big (or bigger) than your head.


These guys have the texture and the look of mozzarella cheese. We slice them about a half inch thick and lightly saute them in butter. It's a wonderful, mild flavored mushroom.

Wild Asparagus
The fun in foraging is the hunting. Wild asparagus grows on the slopes of the old railroad bed alongside our property. They are tender enough to eat raw all the way down to the stalk. They melt in you mouth.


Elk
This may be our favorite red meat. leaner and more flavorful than fine grass-fed beef.



Putting it all together
Puffball mushroom on the left, wild asparagus in the middle, grilled elk tenderloin on the right, and a fine Napa Valley Cabernet to wash it down (that looks like Jake's junk standing in the background there).

Wild Rocket (aka Arugula)
This may be the perfect climate to grow arugula. Toss it with some olive oil, rice vinegar, salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese shavings for one of the best salads out there.

Saskatoon Berries
The Saskatoon berry (AKA Serviceberry) was a new one for us. They grow like weeds around here and the deer love them. They have a very different rustic berry flavor and stain your fingers when you eat them. They're not as renowned as the Huckleberry, but still tasty (and easier to find/pick).

Farm Equipment
Being surrounded by farmlands, there is always a piece of old equipment around. This old John Deere combine has since been moved and donated to our local Future Farmers group. It will make a nice educational project for them to restore.


We're keeping this old horse drawn tiller. It will be an interesting piece once we clear out the weeds around it.

Newest addition to the foraging family
It became clear early on that doing everything by hand with a shovel, rake, and wheel barrow would be too much for us. Our new Yamaha Viking will be a good workhorse to help us access and work on all parts of the property. It's also the perfect vehicle to get up into the national forests in search of trout and huckleberries!


Other sundry foraging items
We're always collecting interesting rocks for the fire pit and dutch oven cooking area.

Between local estate sales and even the local dump, there's a lot of interesting outdoor furniture to be had for almost nothing. This is a handmade combo bench and picnic table.

We found this chair at the local dump while we were recycling some old barbed wire from our property. After a new coat of stain and a new $20 seat cushion it looks pretty good. It turns out this is from a company called A, Brandt Ranch Oak that has a fascinating history. It's apparently a sought-after collectors item...free from the dump.


With a few loads of local manure compost... 

and some rototilling of weeds and gopher mounds...

we've been able to so far go from this...

to this...

Orchard on the left, garden area on the right (our first large heirloom tomatoes and pickling cucumbers were ripe in mid-July without a greenhouse).

RV pad, irrigation tank, fire/cooking pit and dining areas.


And finally, for the Boonster, some pretty rainbows...


   










8 comments:

  1. I have to hand it to you for having good taste with land. I had visualized your area as being monotonous and dense forests. Balance between fields and trees sure makes a difference.

    They have those yellow-blooming fields in the Palouse. I forgot what crop it is.

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    1. There are a lot of densely forested, steep areas in MT and ID. It took a long time to find a place that has good access, is private, has great views, is nicely forested and filled with wildlife, and has no road or railroad noise, That's a canola field in the background.

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  2. What a great spot to "live off the land," especially if the Doomsday'ers prove to be correct. I take it you will be hightailing it out of there before winter. Hope to see you down south and hear all about your plans for "The Land."
    mark

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    1. We don't subscribe to all that doomsday stuff, but it is satisfying to have some self sufficiency in your life. If things do get strange in the world, I do hope we're closer to ID than AZ at the time. Although, there are a lot of our neighbors who spend the winter near Salome/Wickenburg. If we had to, we could always seek refuge there in the winter. :-)

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  3. We are impressed. Will there be anything left for us to do?

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    1. We'll run out of summer every year before we ever run out of things to do around here!

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  4. Great travel "tease" for my 2015 travels. My kind of natural scenery. What's not to like. Time to firm up my plans for 2015. Is the yellow a field of rape seed?

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    1. Rape seed aka canola. Don't forget to enjoy the rest of summer 2014 before thinking too much about summer 2015 :-)

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