Fall colors on the Huron River, a recent canoe trip resulted in a few foraging finds.

Linda Diane Feldt | Contributor

It has been a busy week, and I’ve been twittering more than blogging. The final harvests are so abundant this time of year! The possible fruits and berries and greens to put away seem infinite. It is great to be surrounded by an abundance of food, but also a constant reminder that I could be doing more. Finding the balance between the pressure of preparing and just enjoying can be tricky. Here are some of my recent experiences and adventures.

***** Prickly pear Opuntia vulgaris fruit. A friend had some picked south of here. Tasty, a bit slimy, and then there are the seeds. They seem to be in the way of enjoying the fruit. There sure are a lot of fruits in this world!

***** Autumn olive Elaeagnus umbellata berries are still tasty, if you can get to them before the birds. They are easy to freeze as well. Just put them into bags as is.

***** Saturday I tried to harvest or at least see cattail Typha latifolia roots, but the stalks were too rotted to pull. I saw only dead parts, so I’m not sure if anything is edible.

*****

Ugly apples make great cider. Simple, tasty, and with foraged apples the cost is just right.

Linda Diane Feldt | Contributor

My foraging friend and I made cider from some ugly apples he picked at Pioneer High School and on the meridian on Eisenhower Blvd. My nearly 30 year old year old Champion juicer got a workout, but did great with lots of fruit. In 2 hours we created over 2 gallons of apple cider and also pear cider (can there be such a thing?), also crabapple juice which needs some sweetening I admit. But overall - wow. We went through at least two grocery bags of apples, 1/2 again that much in pears. Over a quart of crabapples picked last week. The crabapples were easy, they were juiced whole. Some will be frozen, some was enjoyed that night by dinner guests.

These crabapples were really tart and great tasting for crabapples. They ended up being additions to the apple cider.

Linda Diane Feldt | Contributor

I think of making juice as somewhat decadent, so much of the fruit is composted rather than eaten. But using foraged fruit that would have otherwise rotted eliminates any guilt, or thoughts that it should be used more efficiently.

***** I picked a lot of Comfrey Symphytum officinale leaves to make herbal vinegar. My back yard is full of it. I’m teaching a class at the UM Medical School on Botanical Preparations, so I brought it to class so that they helped make it. The class also learned about and tasted ginger root decoction and stinging nettles as infusion. Vinegars help bring out the minerals from the plants. The mineral rich result can be used for salad dressings, over grains, or just added to water for a quick calcium addition. The concern for Comfrey is in the roots, which have Hepatotoxic pyrrolizidines.

***** Picking up acorns. Picking up acorns. More acorns. I thought they were done, I was very very wrong. Lots more work still to do!

***** Every maple tree in color makes me think of maple sugaring to come. I’ve been enjoying the syrup I made last year. I also froze a couple gallons of pure sap. Normally the sap is cooked down to make syrup, it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. But the pure sap, straight from the tree, can be used as is. It is amazing to use it to cook oatmeal. I also use it for making bread, or just drink it straight. It is fun to be using that sap saved from last February.

***** My dog and I went for a walk with someone I hadn’t walked with before and I was tasting sumac, picking up acorns, and otherwise acting like a forager. The person I was walking with seemed uncomfortable. He wouldn’t taste anything. Hmmmm.

***** I normally try to always use plant common name and Latin so there is no confusion. This is hard to do with twitter - I would run out of space so easily. So I do it when I blog. It is really my only big concern with twittering. Sometimes things need more explanation and care, and twitter doesn’t allow that. So sometimes I make a couple of tweets on the same subject.

***** My foraging friend shared acorn flour “acornbread” with me earlier. Dark, richer than normal, very nice and different. Interesting. He made it with half wheat flour, half acorn flour.

*****

The Huron River, late afternoon, coming back from an afternoon paddling and foraging.

Linda Diane Feldt | Contributor

I was able to fit in a canoe trip on the Huron last Sunday. We harvested crabapples, Pickerel Weed seeds Pontederia cordata, Cattail root tips, found watercress, but still no Wapato. These are large tasty crabapples, I ended up juicing them. I like juice more than jam, and so many of these fruits jam is the suggested product.

***** The recent rains washed away a lot of the flavor from the Staghorn Sumac Rhus typhina fruit. Still a hint, but not the explode in your mouth tartness that is so enjoyable. Some years are good for this fruit, others you just miss coordinating the perfect time to harvest with no recent rain, and of course also having the time to get out and do it.

***** The pears are softening but the root cellar is too warm at 60 degrees. They are in the spare refrigerator, but they don’t seem happy there. So most of them turned into pear juice. I could have made pear butter, but juice was easier with so many. I may not have man for my root cellar at this rate. Every year is different.

*****

Wild roses full of rosehips.

Linda Diane Feldt | Contributor

The frosty nights are improving the taste of the rose hips. Last week though these were pretty dull tasting.

Linda Diane Feldt is a local Holistic Health Practitioner, "providing an integrated approach to holistic health care since 1980". Linda Diane is offering two upcoming free classes, on Herbs and Menopause Thursday Oct. 22 offered through The People's Food Co-op, and a workshop on Root Cellars at the Reskilling Festival Oct 24. For more information ldfeldt (at) holistic wisdom.org