Foraging in Muskoka

Despite the fact that Matt and I have way too much on our plates right now and our time to enjoy the days is limited to completing the most basic tasks it is hard not to take a minute to be thankful for such a beautiful fall day.

This morning Matt and I went over to The Godson homestead to continue our photo shoot with Scott Turnbull.  He wanted some pictures of us harvesting in the garden.  Scott’s wife, Miranda, has a green thumb and going to their garden is a huge treat for me.  I practically start to drool when I see the abundance of food that they grow and with great success.  Last year, Scott and Miranda kindly gave us a whole big box of carrots that we happily accepted and then proceed to jar into dilled carrots.  Now, a must have staple in our house…which is odd, considering the fact that carrots were never a favorite of mine.  But, I can not resist a jar of dilled carrots.  Truly a treat! 

Hard at work, Turnbull, busily took photos of Matt and I pulling the largest carrots I’ve ever seen from the cool dirt.  The size of these carrots was completely shocking and I couldn’t help wondering how they were going to fit into a 500mL jar…the answer was, they weren’t.  They were HUGE!  We pulled about 30-40 carrots out with plans of making them into dilled carrot something.

Then we moved our photo shoot to the back roads of Muskoka where we could do a little bit of foraging.  Foraging has become one of our greatest joys.  It is so fun to come across that special bush full of eatable berries and know that you will be able to create something truly unique from its’ bounty.  Earlier, I’d seen a wild rose-bush growing in a swampy ditch and decided that it would be interesting to pick the hips and try making them into something.  Turnbull felt it would be great to capture some of our collecting on film as this year we canned a number of different foods that grow wild in our area.  You’d be surprise to know how much is out there when you really start to look. 

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of our adventures climbing in the ditches.  In fact, Scott ended up getting down there with Matt to help collect the hips while I watched.  What a trooper! 

Here is a picture of just some of the wild things we foraged and canned this summer…excluding our recently found wild rose hips.