Foraging

Today Matt and I spent from 8am in the morning until 6pm in the evening driving the back roads of Muskoka picking the abundance of ripe fruit we found a long the way.  I think that wherever you live there is probably a wealth of food right at your finger tips; we just need to know what to look for and what to do with it when we find it.  Fortunately for me Matt grew up interested in his surrounding environment and spent time getting to know which plants, leaving, roots etc…are eatable and which are not.  And, whenever in doubt do some research…there is no need to put yourself at risk by eating something toxic.

Foraging is so fun!  Searching for food, picking it and making it into something tasty is so rewarding.  We went out to look for blackberries that are normally ready at this time. But after finding our regular patch dried up too much sun and the lack of rain we figured we’d have better luck elsewhere.  So, we just drove around some of Muskoka’s beautiful back roads and we came across lots and lots of elderberries and several crab apple trees just ladled with food…but we only found and picked 4 cups of blackberries.

The best elderberry tree that we found was on a tiny island in the middle of a pond but it was so heavily ladled with fruit that Matt refused to pass it by.  First, he attempted to build a bridge out of thin trees and when they snapped and he fell into the pond up to his waist he decided to just go for it.  The funny part is that it was already a wet and rainy day and we both thought that we were soaked but it wasn’t until after failing into the pond that he realized he hadn’t been that wet.  As you’ll see in the photos he’s wearing his rain jacket…some good that did.

Here are some of the shots I took.  It was so funny.  Only two crazy people would do this for some berries…I guess that’s us!