Foraging

[PNW Naturalist]

Stinging nettles are an important food source for the indigenous people along the Salish sea, and they are everywhere around here! I harvest some when they first started coming up last month for pesto (in the freezer) and dried some leaves for tea. Just don't harvest nettles after flowering, they can be hard on your liver or so I have heard.

I'm getting excited for berry season. The blossoms are starting to fall off the salmonberries, so we should be able to collect some of these soon.

Thus far this spring we have foraged dead nettles (a different plant entirely from stinging nettles) and watercress. We also managed to collect some bigleaf maple blossoms after a windstorm -- they are lightly sweet and floral, and delicious in pancakes. We'll be collecting dandelion blossoms this weekend for a batch of wine!

[Brady]

Stinging nettles are an important food source for the indigenous people along the Salish sea, and they are everywhere around here! I harvest some when they first started coming up last month for pesto (in the freezer) and dried some leaves for tea. Just don't harvest nettles after flowering, they can be hard on your liver or so I have heard.

I'm getting excited for berry season. The blossoms are starting to fall off the salmonberries, so we should be able to collect some of these soon.

Thus far this spring we have foraged dead nettles (a different plant entirely from stinging nettles) and watercress. We also managed to collect some bigleaf maple blossoms after a windstorm -- they are lightly sweet and floral, and delicious in pancakes. We'll be collecting dandelion blossoms this weekend for a batch of wine!

I'll second the berry season excitement. I'm fully aware it's too early for me (in North Idaho) but I'm getting excited anyway. Can't wait for the huckleberries to come out and stock up for pancakes and huckleberry mead. And we've already had a couple successful morel hunts, so I'm happy with that.