Foraging into Fall

TLDR:

Fall Books are Open!
• Join us for Wild Community Walks,
• Book a class for your school, homeschool, or any youth program,
• Or let us show you what’s edible and medicinal on your own property!

Find Foraging Home in New Places
• Explore a new eco-retreat with us,
• or Shop for foraged and handcrafted goods

Featured Wild Food
• Sumac berry lemonade!

This summer has been a whirlwind of heat waves, creek hikes, teaching & learning and walks in the woods- and as usual the first goldenrod blossoms to open their sunny heads have taken me completely by surprise. I can’t believe the season is already beginning to shift into cooler days!

I am welcoming the soon-to-come slow down, and looking forward to lots more walks with friends old and new. I hope you can join us and make some new floral, fungal, and human friends!

If you want to take some time slowing down with us in the evenings, to practice noticing and presence in tune with the seasons, and to join in community around care and connection for all our kin, get out to our Wild Food Community Walks.

We have started up again and will be gathering most Tuesdays now through October, so join us for one or many evening strolls as we feel into the shifting seasons.

Love this idea but unable to join us? We offer these (and all our programs) at a sliding scale for anyone who needs it, and welcome your support in keeping this important knowledge and connection open to all who seek it.

Learn with Us

Books are open for fall youth programs! If you, your child’s school, or your homeschool group would like to set up one or a series of Wild Food & Medicine/Nature Connection program, click the link below. We love collaborating with teachers and families to help get your kids/teens excited about learning, connected with nature, and feeling empowered to explore the abundant food and medicine all around us.

Want to learn what’s growing in your own yard? We offer botanical/fungal property survey to help you get to know the abundant food and medicine that’s all around you! We will get a lay of the land, show you what’s already thriving there, and can offer suggestions of other native plants to add, if you’d like. Afterward, you will receive a custom e-booklet covering each of the plants and fungi we covered.

New Places to Find Us

In addition to all our public and private walks and classes, we are now offering on-site foraging walks at the new Wunderland Eco Resort in Old Fort! Set on 35 wooded acres, Wunderland is a beautiful place to get off-grid for a day or two (and just a mile from the lovely Curtis Creek Trail system), and they have the sweetest glamping spaces to stay in. Want to check it out before booking a night? Take a walk with us around the property and meet all of the wonderful more-than-human residents of the land!

If you are looking for some of our wonderful wildcrafted goodies, you can now find our favorite teas, tinctures and elixirs alongside limited-edition seasonal salts, sugars, honeys and more at Ginny Lou’s in Marshall. Go check out the sweet sweet garden/ kitchen/nature shop and support the still-deep-in-recovery city of Marshall! They just opened their tea bar this weekend and have AMAZING hot and cold fancy drinks with local tea blends.

Sumac Berries

It’s time! Go quickly! Sumac berries are ripe and you gotta grab ‘em fast. These delicious clusters get their flavor mostly from the sticky coating on their fuzzy seeds - so once they have been rained on or exposed to the elements too long, the taste can fade away.

You may have seen this kind with their Olympic-torch style red berry clusters lining roads and highways, but have you ever tasted them? The sticky covering is malic acid - and it is shockingly tart and delicious! We love to save them every year for flavoring food and making a lovely “pink lemonade” drink for hot days. 

Sumac berries are often best known for their use in Mediterranean cooking, like in za’atar seasoning, but they have also been gathered for centuries their many medicinal applications. They are anti-inflammatory and cooling, antimicrobial, full of antioxidants and vitamins, especially vitamin C, but one of our favorite uses is sharing them with new friends for the first time to see the puckered up sour face they make. This year, we will be incorporating them into our seasonal cough syrup to help heal and sooth sore throats.

To enjoy the refreshing pink lemony beverage, it’s about as simple as it gets: just cover berries in a close-able container in cold water and leave to steep for an hour or two, shaking vigorously as often as you care to. Then strain and enjoy! If you’d like a little sweetness, you can dissolve a little honey in warm water, then let it cool before pouring over berries (hot water tends to bring out some bitterness, especially if there are any stems in the mix).

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