Finding Food Where You Live
Get ready to start picking and eating from your yard and garden! The young Spring plants are starting to show themselves and the next Wild Edible Walk of the season is May 11th, this Saturday! Join me at 9 am on the corner of 44th Avenue & Vallejo Street in the Sunnyside neighborhood to see what we can find out there to eat! To sign up and read more about this event go to: http://www.feeddenver.com/classes–events.html
Have you ever been to Four Mile Park? Maybe it’s time to give this historical Park in the city a closer look. I will be doing just that on Saturday May 4th. I have been invited to give a foraging talk at their Victorian Tea on that day, and I am really looking forward to it! I will learn as much as the people who attend this event, I’m sure.
Saturday, May 04 | 1:00 pm–3:00pm
As a working farm and ranch, Four Mile Historic Park was once supplied with edibles primarily from the land around the buildings, either in organized gardens or by gathering wild edibles that grew in the area. Join us at our Victorian Tea where Kate Armstrong, Urban Forager, will share the usefulness of the plants we normally ignore now; how some of them were brought to America from Europe because of their use as food and medicine; and how most rural and urban people knew how to supply themselves with simple meals, home remedies, and household products from these plants.
About the Presenter: Kate Armstrong has an educational and entertaining style that will add to your knowledge of these earlier times, give you food for thought, and may even interest you in harvesting some of the plants you now consider weeds! She brings a lifetime of experience to the subject as well as a wealth of helpful information. There will also be examples of the products she makes and uses from her backyard, the alley ways, and the neighborhoods in Denver. You will be able to identify (and taste) plants that are already up and growing since she will be bringing examples of these with her. http://urbanforager.co/about-kate-armstrong/
$30 Non-Members | $25 FMHP Members
Advance payment is required by Thursday, May 2 at 4:00pm. Limited seating available.
For more information, please call 720-865-0815 or email info@fourmilepark.org
There is a new link on this site for the First Wild Edible Walk of the season. Space is limited, so get your name on the list now! This is going to be surprising and fun! On April 13th we will be finding out what is emerging for a really tiny, yummy, nutrient rich salad. Don’t miss this one…or if you do, book me for your yard and neighborhood. Let’s see what we can find.
It’s hard to imagine wandering around looking for greens and fruits in this snowy weather. So I don’t. I’m relaxing with the knowledge that I have lots of fruits and veggies on the pantry shelves in the basement, a delicious reminder of the abundance of last summer and fall. There are still dried apples and apple sauce, dried apricots, canned apricots and apricot jam, dried plums, plum chutney and jam, and …well the same sorts of deliciousness with cherries, peaches, and pears. I love to gaze on three kinds of tomato sauce, quart jars filled with various colors of heirloom tomatoes, dilly beans and pickles.
Now is the time to use my dried ‘weeds’ and herbs to make oils and salves for healing. These little pots of green goodness are prized in my family for their amazing properties of healing chapped skin, rashes, rubs, minor burns, and scrapes. My Grandchildren ask for it when they have a “booboo”, and the youngest has to be watched like a hawk since she knows how to get the screw top off and uses it by the hand full in her hair! That’s how we found out it’s good for cradle cap, too. Best of all the ingredients are organic and/or wild crafted from plants that are also eaten, so if the little ones get it in their mouths, it won’t hurt them!
So, in part, that’s what an urban forager does during the Winter – other than wait for the first signs of Spring!
Tomorrow morning, Saturday June 23rd, meet me at 9 am in the back yard of People House, 3035 W 25th Ave, to take a walk in the immediate neighborhood and explore the opportunities for fruits in the city. Learn about identification, etiquette, public spaces, and what’s good as well as what’s not! After you start to see what is available in our ‘hood’, you’ll look at the trees and bushes around you differently. I’d love to see you there! This is going to be fun!
If you are the type of person who loves to find really fresh fruits to pick, eat, and preserve for later, this is the time for berries and late cherries. What a great year it’s been for fruits! The mulberries were falling off the trees a few weeks ago, the cherries came next – both sour pie cherries and sweet black cherries. There are a few left, however it is becoming harder and harder to harvest them and then eliminate the little white worms eating around the pit. Everything loves cherries!!
I’m focusing on the huge crop of Saskatoons – also known as Juneberries, Serviceberries, and Shadbush. There botanical name is Amelanchier alnifolia, and they grow from Alaska to Colorado. In Denver they are used as an ornamental bush or tree, and they are getting ripe now! Looking like blueberries on a large bush or tree, (check out my video) they are best when cooked. I like to make jam or jelly, syrup, and use them in pie, muffins, or pancakes. This fruit was also used dried and mixed with dried meat and fat to make pemmican by the Native Americans.
Let me know if you have too many to pick and use or don’t want to bother. I’m still looking for sources of Elderberry and want flowers as well as berries. The flowers are out now (I think). Enjoy!!
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