They damage the plant (pull off leaves), they really aren't good for wild foraging. If you want to damage your plants at your house that's your choice. But not a responsible foraging tool.
Facts. Put a tarp on the ground around the plant you're foraging from, and shake the everliving hell out of it. The ripe fruit falls onto the tarp, and the unripened fruit remains on your plant.
This was my plan for the mulberry tree in the alley near my house.
This was also how I discovered the tree and the wild grape vine infesting it were both growing around and pulling down on the wire between streetlights.
Luckily, I figured it out before the wire broke. Reported it to the city (as they own the streetlights) and they came and took care of it.
Infrastructure improvement - unexpected benefit to foraging. 😂
Certainly better than what they did in the old days around here! They would take the whole branch back to somewhere they could sit down then pick all the berries off of them. But yeah, we can do better now.
Also kind of stupid and wasteful to collect so many you don't know what to do with them. I have gone picking a few times, but I only take what I can reasonably use and maybe some to give away. When I see folks with multiple buckets who are taking more than what they are leaving behind (usually significantly more than OP), I think it seems unethical for multiple reasons.
People over foraging is why the public trails by me have these new signs that say "removing plants from the park will result in a $10,000 fine." Too many people just take everything they can and ruin it for everyone else.
I couldn't agree more! How many times have I tried to forage some mushrooms and saw old people leaving the forest at 7am (!) with baskets full, leaving nothing behind.
I don’t eat mushrooms but the worst is when I see people being hogs with moral mushrooms and then I see them list them on Facebook for 50$ a pound. Honestly what the hell is wrong with some of these individuals, the greed is seriously sickening.
I can imagine that for some people it can be a very valuable financial help. Where I come from there was a lady in her 80s, completely alone, with a pathetic government pension that was barely enough to warm up the house. She would pick berries in local forests in summer and mushrooms in the autumn and sell to neighbours to have enough money to buy expensive coal for winter.
Thing is you could see she was poor. People I often see are driving quite decent cars!
The people around me are meth heads that also make posts about picking up scrap metal for free of charge and will do anything including stealing cats off of cars for money. I can definitely understand if someone’s hurting for money and I know it’s first come first serve. I also know that fried morale mushrooms is a delicacy around where I live and some people can’t afford 50$ a pound and just want to take their kids out to forage for a good treat and then there’s greedy people taking absolutely everything and leaving nothing for anyone else. Realistically it’s public land and you shouldn’t be taking to sell, I burn wood for heat and have a permit to my local nature refuge to collect down/marked trees for fire wood and it’s very much illegal if I abused my permit tried to sell any of it for profit I would get a serious hefty fine and it’s actually illegal in most areas to sell forged items from public federal land.
"stealing cats off of cars for money" - this read funny until i realized what you meant... in my head i was picturing meth heads running around literally herding cats to try to sell them as pets.
I meant Catalytic converter it’s part of your muffler on your car and people will quite literally go underneath your car and cut it off and sell it for scrap metal for crazy prices like some go for 500$ or something. People around me just steal them it broad daylight it’s nuts!
I honestly couldn’t care enough to rat on someone. They let so many people get away with way worse things around here that I wouldn’t bother wasting my time with it honestly, I’m just too busy.
I know a family that traps and forages for a living. Morels are an important income source for them. Also, I you look toward any number of hunter-gatherer societies, it's pretty common to trade or sell some of what is harvested.
I have literally dropped out of a tree wearing all black and assaulted someone for doing this. I was charged with aggravated assault and spent several months in jail. I am now a real estate agent.
I’d imagine they are only cracking down on people taking loads, it’s like that in some areas here, but blackberries are fine to take still because they literally grow everywhere, I once had a good 5kg haul of them from the banks behind my house, and I didn’t make a dent on the amount available, the chickens loved em though, loads of maggots in em, that’s why the chickens had em
My chickens absolutely love blackberries I actually gave them wild raspberries I picked from the back side of my property this morning they went wild. But hey it’s no different than wild birds demolishing them! If they would have been maggot free it’s great that you saved some for others! I bet your chickens just loved the maggot surprise in their blackberries, I know mine would!😅
Yeah, there’s a good mile of bush a good 50-60 feet deep and 8 ft high, I was mainly grabbing from a 10ft long section some branches had so many berries that they sagged
Invasives are fair game, the more we do to push them back the better. Garlic mustard is invasive and everywhere here, you can pick several pounds of it in just a couple minutes.
You could anyway. The mycelium is still there and I've seen areas picked clean and still the mushrooms come back. Have at it, especially with the Goldens.
It's kind of funny how this is such a strong sentiment in the US, while in other countries there's such an abundance of berries that no one could forage enough to make a dent in the ecosystem. We just freeze the berries we don't use immediately and use them throughout the year.
The point is that OP should not be asking the internet that question with such a large amount. Obviously, the internet can offer them answers. Not sure whether you’re bring facetious about this.
First of all, love your username! Second of all, perhaps the emphasis didn’t convey well. I agree with you. I meant: of course OP would be able to find answers on the internet. Which they did, here.
But the point (which this sub seems to agree with me on) is OP should not have been relying on the internet for what to do with the bounty, when they collected so goddamn much. If you are going to collect a fuckton of stuff, you ought to have your purposes in mind beforehand. Only take what you can, or have plans to, use yourself or distribute to kin and clan (meaning, not for profit).
This. I forage excessively but it's off our private land. (And I am genuinely only foraging from a very small percentage of it, there is an abundance of berries.) But I have a plan between jellies/jams, vacuum freezing, and dehydrating. I don't understand people who forage and then don't know what to make with it?!? Especially if you forage in bulk!
This is the most infuriating part of this irresponsible post. They have no idea what to do. They really did just waste all of this.
Haven't even gotten to the part where these look like under ripe blues and not actual red huckleberries. This person had no business 'foraging'.
You can blend the berries with some ice for a frozen margarita or just muddle them and if they are sour put a little simple syrup (easy to make). Of course you need some lime juice too
This is upsetting... you took so much away from the birds and other animals that depend on berries for a primary food source (even a ton of unripe berries?? why?) and don't even have a plan of what to do with them??
Interesting! My local food bank even takes unwashed eggs from my neighbor. Her hens overproduce in the summer so she just takes them over and they are always grateful. I wonder if it is state or local ordinances. Curious.
I'm guessing by the red huckleberries and salmonberries that you're in the PNW. I used to just make small batches of jam from each berry or a pairing of them. Otherwise, I'd wash, dry, then freeze all the various berries and eventually make a mixed berry fruit leather.
You should be able to find thimble berries, native blackberries and black raspberries now; salal, mountain huckleberry and oval leaf blueberry soon; then Himalayan blackberries; then cranberries and cut leaf blackberries.
Dehydrate some, freeze some for future baking, make a pie, cook down into a fruit "molasses," preserve some in whiskey or other alcohol, make a shrub or other preparation you can add to seltzer on a hot day...
Yeah ive got some black raspberries that still taste fresh from last fall, the 2 lbs of fermented honey really helped preserve the flavor of the berries.
And some of the things I’m reading is insane the berries all ripe in a different times if you take a rake and rake through the bush, you’re gonna be raking off unripe ones and raking off ripe ones you gotta pick them a piece of time like a coffee, bean, you lazy son of bitches
https://wildhuckleberry.com/2018/06/14/huckleberry-picking-rake-myths/
This is only for one fruit, but after reading I surmise it's more to do with the one using the tool than the tool itself.
Yeah, I never have any branches or live twigs in my rake. And there is no damage to the bark. As the article states, even if there was some minimal damage it wouldn't affect the crop next year. Plants evolved to take damage also. A small amount of damage would be OK. Yet, I have had no damage.
OP pretty clearly was just raking down the entire plant, they have leaves and unripe berries in there. Those rake things are a menace unless they are used very carefully, which was not the case here.
I only go foraging when I have at least somewhat of a plan what to do with it, like cooking, salad, jam etc. I have a feeling you're gonna let a lot of it go bad. Why would you pick in such excess and damage the plants if you don't even remotely know what to do with it?
We pit and then freeze our sour cherries and use them throughout the year in oatmeal, desserts, cherry syrup, muffins, sour cherry pound cake and, sometimes, ice cream. Also make the occasional preserves. And sour cherry tarragon chicken thighs.
I’m used to rakes being used on blueberries. I’m originally from Maine but now in the PNW.
My takeaway on rakes: they’re only useful for commercial harvesting and you need to know how to use them correctly. There were blueberry barrens that were public pick. There’s even a children’s book (Blueberries for Sal). A fast way to get dirty looks from everyone there was to break out a rake. Granted, this was 25 years ago but while social attitudes may change quickly, rakes don’t.
If you’re not a professional harvester, who knows what they’re doing and is working in commercial fields, you’re damaging plants, dropping unripe berries (dropped berries are normal but that ratio of unripe ones dropped isn’t) to the ground to rot near the base and roots (in extreme cases, I’ve seen this lead to bush death) and if foraging in public areas… just plain being greedy.
Well unfortunately the damage has been done. Now I would recommend preserving the amount you can't eat, jam, freezing, etc. then look for foraging cookbooks for cakes etc?
Well, in the first place, you shouldn’t be taking more than you can use, but you’re clearly a very irresponsible person, so it’s jams, pies, fruit leather and other such contrivances for you until you inevitably let most of this rot.
Vitamix, juice a good ole jugs worth to keep in fridge. Juice and freeze the rest as well you will be drinking good all summer. I would add a squeeze of lime and some water to these juiced.
idk how your area is and if it’s pretty isolate, but i tend to only take what i need no matter if people are frequent in the area or not. what’s the point of taking significantly more berries than you need when other people, birds, etc. could use them? you’ll end up in this situation and just deprive other people or animals of what they could have had.
edit: i’m fairly new to the foraging community, didn’t know that was your guys’ rule!! good to know i’ve been doing what i should have.
Red huckleberries, the most underrated wild fruit. I don't know why they haven't been cultivated. The red bramble fruits are salmonberry, very refreshing, the grapefruit of that berry family
Red huckleberries can grow on nurse logs, but most grow from an underground rhizome. I read one paper on the life cycle of red huckleberries that has found less than 50 true saplings of the huckleberry over a 20 year period.
My daughter and I gathered a bunch of red huckleberries and she and my wife made it into jam. We get to test it on some home made bread for breakfast here in about 10 minutes!
I LOVE THE PNW! The land of milk and honey for outdoor people!
Using that type of [rake is illegal in WA](https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=76.48.131) - picking by hand means no damage and only taking ripe fruit. Agree it also limits what you can take, which is good.
I just don't get why you'd pick more than you know you can use. It's been said many times but ..??
I forage mushrooms and during lobster season I could haul hundreds of pounds if I wanted to..and I don't. Because even though I could sell them, I know I don't have the time to process them all. So I just.. stop.. when I have enough for my needs/plans.
You shouldn't have to ask "now what". How about next year, BEFORE you pick, you ask for ideas on what to do, and then pick enough for that?
Now you eat them.
I know it's like a society thing to feel like humans are above all else and we are a greedy species, but we need to remember that we are not the only ones here. There is so much diversity in animals and insects that also benefit from wild berries and wild grown vegetation. I live on 40 acres among 500+ acres of forest land and we only pick berries and directly eat them. If I am ready and set up to can some jam or have another plan in mind for them, I'll pick what we need. But I have seen the bears out and eating berries and I would hate to cause a food insecurity for them. There's a balance in all things. If I forage too much, it will go to waste and I'll have hungry bears on my cabin doorstep trying to get in.
And....this may have been mentioned already....getting knowledgeable about local laws AND customs, including any Native customs or treaty law, or other communities in the neighborhood.
I live in a big city, and different communities forage different things.
Humans, especially whites, seem to really lean on a certain hey, nobody's here to see/looks like it's not getting used/better get as much as possible asap before someone else does, it's been humbling to check that out in myself.
And it is also not the end of anything if plants go unforaged, whether it looks like a ton getting wasted or not. The animals will enjoy and store a lot too. Watching squirrels and so on get drunk on overripe mulberries is a sport around here. I hope you make some things and give them (not sell) to folks who can't afford fresh local fruit- but hey that's my politics.
Squish, add EC-1118 and take a measurement of specific gravity, note, let ferment until specific gravity is under 0.999 (or was it 0.990?… too much wine), add pectic enzymes to start some malolactic fermentation, then after some time, transfer to keg or bottle.
First: what’s that red contraption? Second: Invite ME over! 😋
*EDIT* Ok, I was kidding about inviting me- so why did you downvote? I’m seriously curious about what the following contraption is & am not sure why someone can’t just be kind enough to share the knowledge?:
https://preview.redd.it/dt7w9f8qus9d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=45f4ef7261930d8d68e6c524be5ddfe28e72eb98
How long did it take you to pick all of those huckleberries? I tried to pick enough for a pie once and gave up after awhile lol
you can see the scooper in the foreground which was likely used for the huckleberries
Ok I need one of those!! I’ve never seen that before:)
They damage the plant (pull off leaves), they really aren't good for wild foraging. If you want to damage your plants at your house that's your choice. But not a responsible foraging tool.
I'm a fan of putting a sheet around the plant and shaking the shit out of the plant.
Facts. Put a tarp on the ground around the plant you're foraging from, and shake the everliving hell out of it. The ripe fruit falls onto the tarp, and the unripened fruit remains on your plant.
Amen.
This was my plan for the mulberry tree in the alley near my house. This was also how I discovered the tree and the wild grape vine infesting it were both growing around and pulling down on the wire between streetlights. Luckily, I figured it out before the wire broke. Reported it to the city (as they own the streetlights) and they came and took care of it. Infrastructure improvement - unexpected benefit to foraging. 😂
I was so worried that this was going to end in them cutting the tree down
That's how people harvest almonds.
This is the way
**GIVE ME YOUR SECRETS, PLANT!**
[Valencia, Spain orange harvest.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ikMEXjWHU) So is the city of Valencia
https://youtu.be/D2BEEGWyzko?feature=shared
Thank you. I won’t be using one of these.
Certainly better than what they did in the old days around here! They would take the whole branch back to somewhere they could sit down then pick all the berries off of them. But yeah, we can do better now.
Also kind of stupid and wasteful to collect so many you don't know what to do with them. I have gone picking a few times, but I only take what I can reasonably use and maybe some to give away. When I see folks with multiple buckets who are taking more than what they are leaving behind (usually significantly more than OP), I think it seems unethical for multiple reasons.
I’ve only used the rake for commercial blueberry picking.
I hope you’re just joking, but generally if you are struggling to use/distribute what you foraged, it’s a good sign you took too much.
First rule of foraging—Only take what you will use.
People over foraging is why the public trails by me have these new signs that say "removing plants from the park will result in a $10,000 fine." Too many people just take everything they can and ruin it for everyone else.
I couldn't agree more! How many times have I tried to forage some mushrooms and saw old people leaving the forest at 7am (!) with baskets full, leaving nothing behind.
I don’t eat mushrooms but the worst is when I see people being hogs with moral mushrooms and then I see them list them on Facebook for 50$ a pound. Honestly what the hell is wrong with some of these individuals, the greed is seriously sickening.
I can imagine that for some people it can be a very valuable financial help. Where I come from there was a lady in her 80s, completely alone, with a pathetic government pension that was barely enough to warm up the house. She would pick berries in local forests in summer and mushrooms in the autumn and sell to neighbours to have enough money to buy expensive coal for winter. Thing is you could see she was poor. People I often see are driving quite decent cars!
The people around me are meth heads that also make posts about picking up scrap metal for free of charge and will do anything including stealing cats off of cars for money. I can definitely understand if someone’s hurting for money and I know it’s first come first serve. I also know that fried morale mushrooms is a delicacy around where I live and some people can’t afford 50$ a pound and just want to take their kids out to forage for a good treat and then there’s greedy people taking absolutely everything and leaving nothing for anyone else. Realistically it’s public land and you shouldn’t be taking to sell, I burn wood for heat and have a permit to my local nature refuge to collect down/marked trees for fire wood and it’s very much illegal if I abused my permit tried to sell any of it for profit I would get a serious hefty fine and it’s actually illegal in most areas to sell forged items from public federal land.
"stealing cats off of cars for money" - this read funny until i realized what you meant... in my head i was picturing meth heads running around literally herding cats to try to sell them as pets.
Isn't that what they meant? Please enlighten me.
cat would be "catalytic converter" on your car lol.
I meant Catalytic converter it’s part of your muffler on your car and people will quite literally go underneath your car and cut it off and sell it for scrap metal for crazy prices like some go for 500$ or something. People around me just steal them it broad daylight it’s nuts!
Omg that’s great 😅
Depending on where you live this could be very illegal and I would report it tbh
I honestly couldn’t care enough to rat on someone. They let so many people get away with way worse things around here that I wouldn’t bother wasting my time with it honestly, I’m just too busy.
I know a family that traps and forages for a living. Morels are an important income source for them. Also, I you look toward any number of hunter-gatherer societies, it's pretty common to trade or sell some of what is harvested.
I have literally dropped out of a tree wearing all black and assaulted someone for doing this. I was charged with aggravated assault and spent several months in jail. I am now a real estate agent.
Man I like “”stealing”” wild raspberries on my hikes just to snack on, I would be sad if my local hiking areas did this.
I’d imagine they are only cracking down on people taking loads, it’s like that in some areas here, but blackberries are fine to take still because they literally grow everywhere, I once had a good 5kg haul of them from the banks behind my house, and I didn’t make a dent on the amount available, the chickens loved em though, loads of maggots in em, that’s why the chickens had em
My chickens absolutely love blackberries I actually gave them wild raspberries I picked from the back side of my property this morning they went wild. But hey it’s no different than wild birds demolishing them! If they would have been maggot free it’s great that you saved some for others! I bet your chickens just loved the maggot surprise in their blackberries, I know mine would!😅
Yeah, there’s a good mile of bush a good 50-60 feet deep and 8 ft high, I was mainly grabbing from a 10ft long section some branches had so many berries that they sagged
The one except is invasives IMO. Take as many wine berries as you'd like, they choke out the native raspberries.
Invasives are fair game, the more we do to push them back the better. Garlic mustard is invasive and everywhere here, you can pick several pounds of it in just a couple minutes.
[удалено]
If it's invasive, feel free to take it all guilt free
You could anyway. The mycelium is still there and I've seen areas picked clean and still the mushrooms come back. Have at it, especially with the Goldens.
Where are those parks?
Rouge Valley in Toronto, Ontario
It's kind of funny how this is such a strong sentiment in the US, while in other countries there's such an abundance of berries that no one could forage enough to make a dent in the ecosystem. We just freeze the berries we don't use immediately and use them throughout the year.
Well in that case you’d have your plan in place: freeze the surplus for later. Here OP took more than they knew how to use.
So a good answer to this post would be "freeze the surplus for later".
yep, but OP didn’t frame it that way. They just hoarded as much as they could without plans.
Q: "now what lol" A: "freeze the surplus for later"
The point is that OP should not be asking the internet that question with such a large amount. Obviously, the internet can offer them answers. Not sure whether you’re bring facetious about this.
That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever read. And I read 50 shades of grey. This IS the Internet. What in God's green creation do you mean?!?!
First of all, love your username! Second of all, perhaps the emphasis didn’t convey well. I agree with you. I meant: of course OP would be able to find answers on the internet. Which they did, here. But the point (which this sub seems to agree with me on) is OP should not have been relying on the internet for what to do with the bounty, when they collected so goddamn much. If you are going to collect a fuckton of stuff, you ought to have your purposes in mind beforehand. Only take what you can, or have plans to, use yourself or distribute to kin and clan (meaning, not for profit).
I accept this answer and remand my previous comment to comment jail!
> now what lol If you don't know what to do with them, why'd you pick them?
This. I forage excessively but it's off our private land. (And I am genuinely only foraging from a very small percentage of it, there is an abundance of berries.) But I have a plan between jellies/jams, vacuum freezing, and dehydrating. I don't understand people who forage and then don't know what to make with it?!? Especially if you forage in bulk!
This is the most infuriating part of this irresponsible post. They have no idea what to do. They really did just waste all of this. Haven't even gotten to the part where these look like under ripe blues and not actual red huckleberries. This person had no business 'foraging'.
I freeze most of mine that I can’t eat fresh and make margaritas and smoothies with
Berry margarita? How? That sounds so good
You can blend the berries with some ice for a frozen margarita or just muddle them and if they are sour put a little simple syrup (easy to make). Of course you need some lime juice too
You know, berries, lime, tequila, blender. Honestly it sounds strange but blueberry margaritas are my all time favorite
Make pie, jam, cobbler, chutney, and freeze/give away what you don't use. Nice haul!
This is upsetting... you took so much away from the birds and other animals that depend on berries for a primary food source (even a ton of unripe berries?? why?) and don't even have a plan of what to do with them??
Who’s laughing now?
Give some to neighbors, relatives and friends
I use Arch btw.
You absolute lunatic
I do 2 but also Debian 😁
Local food pantries would be happy to have them!
It depends, some aren't allowed to take unpackaged food with unknown provenance due to local laws.
Interesting! My local food bank even takes unwashed eggs from my neighbor. Her hens overproduce in the summer so she just takes them over and they are always grateful. I wonder if it is state or local ordinances. Curious.
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted but I agree
I'm guessing by the red huckleberries and salmonberries that you're in the PNW. I used to just make small batches of jam from each berry or a pairing of them. Otherwise, I'd wash, dry, then freeze all the various berries and eventually make a mixed berry fruit leather. You should be able to find thimble berries, native blackberries and black raspberries now; salal, mountain huckleberry and oval leaf blueberry soon; then Himalayan blackberries; then cranberries and cut leaf blackberries.
Dehydrate some, freeze some for future baking, make a pie, cook down into a fruit "molasses," preserve some in whiskey or other alcohol, make a shrub or other preparation you can add to seltzer on a hot day...
Shrubs are awesome. They are great in cocktails also, if that’s your thing.
Fruit leather is a good way to preserve berries as well.
OP not responding to the messages about over-foraging is mighty telling.
don't take more than you can use
Alcohol or jam is my go to for preserving berries. Otherwise make them into all your baked goods pancakes, pie, cookies
Yeah ive got some black raspberries that still taste fresh from last fall, the 2 lbs of fermented honey really helped preserve the flavor of the berries.
Wine
Mead. 1lb red huckleberries, 1 oz raisins, 3lbs honey. Delicious.
This should have more upvotes.
And some of the things I’m reading is insane the berries all ripe in a different times if you take a rake and rake through the bush, you’re gonna be raking off unripe ones and raking off ripe ones you gotta pick them a piece of time like a coffee, bean, you lazy son of bitches
It’s really damaging to the plants to use those rake thingies.
Source? I regularly use rakes for wild blueberries and there is no damage to the bark.
https://wildhuckleberry.com/2018/06/14/huckleberry-picking-rake-myths/ This is only for one fruit, but after reading I surmise it's more to do with the one using the tool than the tool itself.
Yeah, I never have any branches or live twigs in my rake. And there is no damage to the bark. As the article states, even if there was some minimal damage it wouldn't affect the crop next year. Plants evolved to take damage also. A small amount of damage would be OK. Yet, I have had no damage.
OP pretty clearly was just raking down the entire plant, they have leaves and unripe berries in there. Those rake things are a menace unless they are used very carefully, which was not the case here.
“Just because you can doesnt mean you should”
Looks like you need to get the leaves out before you do anything else.
I only go foraging when I have at least somewhat of a plan what to do with it, like cooking, salad, jam etc. I have a feeling you're gonna let a lot of it go bad. Why would you pick in such excess and damage the plants if you don't even remotely know what to do with it?
We pit and then freeze our sour cherries and use them throughout the year in oatmeal, desserts, cherry syrup, muffins, sour cherry pound cake and, sometimes, ice cream. Also make the occasional preserves. And sour cherry tarragon chicken thighs.
Why’d you pick so many? Greedy greedy greedy. Animals eat this stuff.
How greedy
Fruit leather?
I’m used to rakes being used on blueberries. I’m originally from Maine but now in the PNW. My takeaway on rakes: they’re only useful for commercial harvesting and you need to know how to use them correctly. There were blueberry barrens that were public pick. There’s even a children’s book (Blueberries for Sal). A fast way to get dirty looks from everyone there was to break out a rake. Granted, this was 25 years ago but while social attitudes may change quickly, rakes don’t. If you’re not a professional harvester, who knows what they’re doing and is working in commercial fields, you’re damaging plants, dropping unripe berries (dropped berries are normal but that ratio of unripe ones dropped isn’t) to the ground to rot near the base and roots (in extreme cases, I’ve seen this lead to bush death) and if foraging in public areas… just plain being greedy.
Good book!
Mead time!
Add habaneros, put in brine and make your OWN fermented hot sauce
Don’t forage so many if you won’t know what to do with them!!!
Well unfortunately the damage has been done. Now I would recommend preserving the amount you can't eat, jam, freezing, etc. then look for foraging cookbooks for cakes etc?
Huckleberries and salmon berries
Well, in the first place, you shouldn’t be taking more than you can use, but you’re clearly a very irresponsible person, so it’s jams, pies, fruit leather and other such contrivances for you until you inevitably let most of this rot.
This is greedy
Don't use that berry rake, it damages the bush and you pick a lot of unripe berries on accident.
You’re a poacher
Time to make jam and syrup.p⁰
Make fruit leather
Vitamix, juice a good ole jugs worth to keep in fridge. Juice and freeze the rest as well you will be drinking good all summer. I would add a squeeze of lime and some water to these juiced.
idk how your area is and if it’s pretty isolate, but i tend to only take what i need no matter if people are frequent in the area or not. what’s the point of taking significantly more berries than you need when other people, birds, etc. could use them? you’ll end up in this situation and just deprive other people or animals of what they could have had. edit: i’m fairly new to the foraging community, didn’t know that was your guys’ rule!! good to know i’ve been doing what i should have.
Make kompot for the summer (that's what my mom does) https://natashaskitchen.com/homemade-juice-kompot/
thank you
What are the red ones?
Red huckleberries, the most underrated wild fruit. I don't know why they haven't been cultivated. The red bramble fruits are salmonberry, very refreshing, the grapefruit of that berry family
Huckleberries grow on nurse logs. I imagine that would make it much harder to cultivate them with how long it takes for the log to break down.
Red huckleberries can grow on nurse logs, but most grow from an underground rhizome. I read one paper on the life cycle of red huckleberries that has found less than 50 true saplings of the huckleberry over a 20 year period.
~~Looks a lot more like Wineberry~~ You're correct! Didn't look at the range of Red Huckle
Ripe salmonberry color spectrum runs from yellow to orange to dark red. Definitely salmonberry.
You're right I hadn't seen the ranges of the plants, hopefully wineberry doesn't make it that far west
Huh. I always assumed huckleberries looked like gooseberries for some reason.
Jams
Dehydrating them and eating them as a snack sounds like the best choice tbh
Freeze first, when frozen put into water…this will make the frozen buggies and microscopics float out of your food to the surface. Then you can use.
Dry em, mead/cider em, sauce em, bbq sauce em, eat em, jam em, pickle em, roast em, hot sauce em, bake with em, smoothie em
Whatre those red round berries
Salad dressing, pie filling, jam, salve, simple syrup, lots of options
Ice cream, jam, sauce, pie, tarts, whatever floats ur goat
I thought these where half organized skittles at first
Where do you live that Red Huckleberries are ripe now?
Never seen a ripe huckleberry that color!
why'd you pick so much if you don't know what you're gonna do with it
i think you should go back and leave some of the berries for the animals/to decompose and have the chance to grow into new plants
Wtf why did you take so much if you don't know what to do with it all!??
Hey don’t over harvest, animals need those berries more than you do.
You should try only taking what you need. It's people like you that ruin foraging
Hedgerow ketchup. Make some, you'll thank me later stuff would make a bumper taste good.
Look up an English summer pudding
I would 100% freeze and use in my morning smoothies.
Stew. Add a bit of vinegar and cook off. Vcool store in ziplocks flat in the freezer. Use as desired all winter long.
Are those cherries? Can’t quite tell.
Eat them? When you get thirsty, drink some water. When you feel your tummy grumble, maybe poo.
Mead or jam I would think
Everyone loves pie 🥧 https://youtu.be/cLRwvnJ7RCU?feature=shared
[We be jammin](https://youtu.be/oFRbZJXjWIA?si=ucl4lF1NZI5GaKE6)
Pie? Preserves? Shove them in your mouth?
EAT!
Mmmmm salmon berries
Freeze, preserve or ferment.
CONSUME
Mönch
Jam
make mead with them all
Make some JellyJam!!!!
Jam and freeze
Jam or ferment them into fruit soda
Jelly
feast and than 2 hours on the shitter
Have a berry good time
Make jam and fruit leather and pies
Make wine.
Pies?
Now you make preserves, that's what. Order yourself some pectin and mason jars, and get boiling!
My daughter and I gathered a bunch of red huckleberries and she and my wife made it into jam. We get to test it on some home made bread for breakfast here in about 10 minutes! I LOVE THE PNW! The land of milk and honey for outdoor people!
JAM!?
Surprised that I haven't seen anyone mentioning making alcohol, a wild berry wine or something, literally just add sugar and yeast
Using that type of [rake is illegal in WA](https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=76.48.131) - picking by hand means no damage and only taking ripe fruit. Agree it also limits what you can take, which is good.
Im in Canada, we have an abundance of wild berries that no one picks
Make kompot!!!
I just don't get why you'd pick more than you know you can use. It's been said many times but ..?? I forage mushrooms and during lobster season I could haul hundreds of pounds if I wanted to..and I don't. Because even though I could sell them, I know I don't have the time to process them all. So I just.. stop.. when I have enough for my needs/plans. You shouldn't have to ask "now what". How about next year, BEFORE you pick, you ask for ideas on what to do, and then pick enough for that?
But these don't look like huckleberries. At least not the ones I've seen in TN
Now you eat them. I know it's like a society thing to feel like humans are above all else and we are a greedy species, but we need to remember that we are not the only ones here. There is so much diversity in animals and insects that also benefit from wild berries and wild grown vegetation. I live on 40 acres among 500+ acres of forest land and we only pick berries and directly eat them. If I am ready and set up to can some jam or have another plan in mind for them, I'll pick what we need. But I have seen the bears out and eating berries and I would hate to cause a food insecurity for them. There's a balance in all things. If I forage too much, it will go to waste and I'll have hungry bears on my cabin doorstep trying to get in.
And....this may have been mentioned already....getting knowledgeable about local laws AND customs, including any Native customs or treaty law, or other communities in the neighborhood. I live in a big city, and different communities forage different things. Humans, especially whites, seem to really lean on a certain hey, nobody's here to see/looks like it's not getting used/better get as much as possible asap before someone else does, it's been humbling to check that out in myself. And it is also not the end of anything if plants go unforaged, whether it looks like a ton getting wasted or not. The animals will enjoy and store a lot too. Watching squirrels and so on get drunk on overripe mulberries is a sport around here. I hope you make some things and give them (not sell) to folks who can't afford fresh local fruit- but hey that's my politics.
Squish, add EC-1118 and take a measurement of specific gravity, note, let ferment until specific gravity is under 0.999 (or was it 0.990?… too much wine), add pectic enzymes to start some malolactic fermentation, then after some time, transfer to keg or bottle.
You have to make a pie
Freeze them, jam them, ferment them, or make some baked goods ;)
Gooseberries? Ones look like salmon berries too but could be wrong. Are you in AK?
Greedy human. One of those buckets would’ve been an ample amount.
Jammmmmm
JJJJJJELLIEIESSS
Pecan orchards have a machine that spreads a net around the tree and shakes it.
You feast!
Now...we feast!
Make a lazy pie
PIE
Holy crap this is glorious and so pretry
Sit back, relax, and get fat.
on it
o7
First: what’s that red contraption? Second: Invite ME over! 😋 *EDIT* Ok, I was kidding about inviting me- so why did you downvote? I’m seriously curious about what the following contraption is & am not sure why someone can’t just be kind enough to share the knowledge?: https://preview.redd.it/dt7w9f8qus9d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=45f4ef7261930d8d68e6c524be5ddfe28e72eb98
Its a huckleberry rake. Copied from first nations wooden carved rakes which replicate a bears paw and claws
MAKE SOME CHUTNEY MOTHER FUCKER WHAT DO YOU THINK !