Crazy Foraging Weekend!

Regenerative Subsistence Flora Food & Medicine
#1

Sorry, I forgot my cell phone so I don’t have any cool pictures to share this evening but the next trip to the community center I will have it!

But anyway, found two buckloads of pawpaws today. learned why hunting and gathering should be done in groups larger than to, but also, where in the hell all the frost-resistant varieties of pawpaws have been hiding all my life! This year has been brutal on the early frtui, probably why persimmons are doing so well this year, with fruit production down and soil phosphate levels not being depleted by surrounding, fruiting plants, the persimmon trees are ridiculously fill with fruit this year. never seen anythign like it…

So with all this fruit, we started to get picky and only pick up ripe fruit…

last night, a bunch of friends came over and we bottled some old beer we made a few months back, and cleaned the carbouys for persimmon ale! Fuck ya, this is going to be good! with a few unripe persimmons in the bunch, no harvest is necessary, and I will bet my beer against anything anyone has made this year for it to be the crowning acheivement of foraging 2007! (really, it’s going to be that good…)

Then, having stuffed myself adn my friends with pawpaws so ripe you can eat the skin, we made chutney with the leftover and everybody got a pint to take home, I had to send them home with something, we spent a lot of human-hours on picking the pulp from the seeds (which will be used next year in a habitat rebuilding project).

Also, found some elegant baby reishi fruits, strangest fruiting I ever seen, and enough oysters perfectly dried on the tree to make tonight’s soup. It was super awesome and I wish you all could have been there!

Tony

#2

that’s awesome! ;D

i’m still looking for the frost-hardy pawpaws in my area… sigh oh, well, one day…

sounds like a great time, wish i coulda made it

#3

my cell phone keeps failing when sending the picutres. I wish I had one of those upload cable thingies. Maybe it’ll work whebn there is less traffic on the network…

I would love to send or physically hand you some pawpaw seeds. And persimmons, too, but it may not be wam enough, depending on where you live in ohio. I would like to see us get together, I love those kind of things…

#4

i’m living in central, oh, but we’re working on restoring a piece of land in the southeastern part (appalachian foothills, by muskingum r)

i keep hearing there’s pawpaws along the muskie, but i haven’t found 'em (yet ;D)

i keep expecting to find persimmons too, but no dice there either

on the other hand, you can’t turn around w/o finding autumn olives & wild grapes…

yah, we’ll have to get together sometime

#5

well I have a really good reason to go to Columbus once and a while, maybe that’ll be our best time to get together. My car has needed a new battery for 3 months now, but until it starts snowing and I can’t ride my bike cross-town, I don’t have much use for a car.

Are you saying you can’t find the fruit, or the trees themselves? I usually can’t help but be teased by all the fruitless trees around here.

#6

i have only found one pawpaw here in Arkansas – along the highway not far from my parents’ house. it got cut down when the county put in a new water line.

i discovered a persimmon in my back yard this year. i look forward to that orange mealy fruit. i haven’t had any since before i started middle school.

i could send you some persimmon seeds if you like, jhereg.

TonyZ, if you wanted to send some pawpaw sees my way, I would love you for it.

#7

cool, let me know, we (usually) have an extra room, but even if we have another guest up, we can find someplace for you to crash (if you need one).

can’t find the trees, actually

i’m a little surprised, really, the muskie not only seems like a happy place for them, but i’ve gotten several independent reports of them, but no good directions :-\

i’ll eventually find them, i figure i prolly have the next 30-40 years to look :smiley:

still, tho’, if you have extra seeds you’d be willing to part with… i wouldn’t say no ;D

that’d be awesome!

hmm, looks like i might want to get some overwintering pots rdy…

#8

I got those pictures as promised:
These are my share of the persimmons and pawpaws. The chutney was great! I still ahve a bunch of each of the fruit left

I was surprised to wake up to the sound of my ale bubbling, here it is in all it’s yeasty goodness:

I’m trying to get more images loaded, but it just started to rain harder (Amanita Moon) and I think my connection is bad, hopefully more later…

Send me a P.M. with your info and I’ll put the seeds in the mail. you’ll need to freeze them for a few weeks, they need to be stratified in order for them to be germinated.

#9
you'll need to freeze them for a few weeks, they need to be stratified in order for them to be germinated.

I have heard of freezing, but not of stratifying. What does that entail?

#10

just to expose the seed to a low temp

the low temp varies by plant, i think, but in this case, freezing s/b most appropriate

i was going to just pot them and leave the pots outside over winter, but i defer to TonyZ’s greater experience on this…

#11

thanks, jhereg. i thought maybe it represented a different step in the preparation process.

#12

see, who needs experience when you have reason and the Internet? :wink:

Sorry, can’t get these ‘high-res’(for a cameraphone) photos to DL, I’ll switch to a lower resolution next time…

#13

Yay! I really need to read up on foraging for food around here, that looks awesome! I can’t wait till I have photos to share! Yay Ohio!

-emily

#14

I thought stratifying also entailed scratching the seed . Like with wild rose seed I’ve heard you put it in a jar of wet sand in the fridge and take it out and shake it periodically.

#15

i think that’s scarification.