Anyone who tends a vegetable garden knows how immensely satisfying is to eat what you yourself have grown - your own vegetables truly feel like nourishment for the body and soul. And yet, it's almost more satisfying, in this day and age, to gather food from the wild. Perhaps because you feel so lucky to live in a part of the world where nature can nurture, and suddenly the harsh winter seems worthwhile. And so last night after dinner, Jeremy and I went on a little picking and gathering expedition. We stepped outdoors (it's still broad daylight at 8.30 pm, how I love it!), and walked the path from the house back towards the forest.
We didn't need to go very far: we were headed for the young cherry trees that have sprung up around the big old cherry tree, now defunct, that used to sprinkle us with its white, wind-blown petals in early spring, fill us with plump red cherries a few weeks later, and shade the kid's room all summer long.
While we were picking, Jeremy doing the picking (which involved climbing and stretching) and I the collecting (which involved holding the bucket), we talked at length about how fun it would be to learn what's edible out there in our wilderness, and feast on it. We decided to make this a family project, which delights me, as it's been something I've been meaning to do ever since I read a very engaging article by John McPhee on the forager Euell Theophilus Gibbons, in this New Yorker book.
And to add extra flavor to our foraging project, as we were returning home we noticed a small patch of wild strawberries we'd never seen before: we considered this our first real act of foraging, and noted it down in our new Foraging Notebook. It's going to be a fun (and filling, hopefully) season out here in the wild!
