Hello all you blog readers!
I hope you all enjoyed and are applauding Filip for his two contributions to the blog. He very kindly offered to help me catch up with what we’ve been doing the past four weeks! Hurray for Filip!
This week we spent doing some sign tracking at Bob Heirman park and tried to see how many different species we could find signs of. We also worked with some mentoring concepts, specifically the cycle of learning from inspiration to competency to instructing. On Friday, we had another delicious wild-edibles day! John Gallagher joined us to help us learn more about how to use the wild plants around us to supplement our everyday diets, and also in preparation for our survival trip!
Over the course of the day we made a stir-fry of cattail shoots, dandelion roots, fiddle heads (that smelled and tasted like marzipan!!!), cleavers, nettle and dandelion leaves. This was extremely filling, I think because it was a lot of new tastes, but also because wild foods generally have a much higher concentration of vitamins and minerals in them, since the soil hasn’t been depleted like our agricultural areas have. We also made a salad of dandelion leaves, chickweed, and salmonberry, Oregon grape, and elderberry flowers. The tastiest items of our meal by far were the dandelion fritters (dandelion flowers covered in batter and fried!) and a knotweed apple crisp (tastes like rhubarb crisp) brought in by Linda.
It’s amazing to connect with the environment in such a basic way as eating things from the land. Apart from the benefit of having access to free food and learning about the natural world, the health benefits are significant as well. A couple students found that they got a buzz of energy after eating our meal!
Hope everyone is enjoying their spring!
–Dana
NatureSkills.com's Wilderness Survival Skills Blog
