Pawpaws
The land is bountiful with food native to the region if you know what to look for and when to look. Yesterday was the 1st big Paw Paw harvest. About 15 pounds. I have recently discovered the mango/papaya/banana taste of Appalachia's own tropical fruit.. PawPaws are extremely healthy providing as much or more vitamin c, potassium, magnesium and amino acids as bananas, oranges etc. Having never picked Paw Paws I was maybe a little to lenient with what I picked up. Paw Paws go rotten in a flash and the very ripe ones are hugely messy to cut up (because they got squished in the bag on the way down the hill). This is why they are not a very commercially available food. So, I spent about 5 hours last night peeling, removing seeds and pureeing PawPaws. We got about 5 pounds of frozen PawPaw puree. There are many more Paw Paws ripening but the time commitment is daunting .. maybe we have enough.
Rose Hips also seem to be ready, we have yet to pick them. They are a rich source of vitamin c and good for a tea that helps mostly stomach problems. We found what we believe to be wild grapes in a few places on the land. They are very small with a large seed. We haven't tried to process them in anyway; it seems like too much work.
W's got some Golden Rod drying for medicinal purposes. We also are beginning to collect walnut, hickory nuts, hazelnuts and chestnuts in small quantities (most aren't fully ripe yet).
I'm excited by the forage harvest because it is the natural offering of the land. As we work toward establishing a forest of food here and learn what plants are good for food/medicine, there should be more forage harvesting each year. It is a lot to keep up with, especially the processing for later use part. We're still collecting peeling and drying apples about every other day, Stirring wine about every other day and about once a week we've collected enough veggies from our "regular" garden to freeze another pot of soup. The work is constant and never ending. I'm slowly accepting that we're not going to get everything put up for winter. Hell, we don't even know what "everything" is yet. The work will obviously never end so now the challenge/goal is to make sure it doesn't always feel like work. I like foraging the land for natural food sources because it feels like a game of hide-n-seek... at least until you get home with the food.
Rose Hips
Wild Grapes
Golden Rod
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