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Berry Loud, Berry Congested
From the crop of books extolling the abundance of the vegetable kingdom, you get the idea that nature is such an obliging host that all you have to do for a great meal is open your mouth and walk into the woods. Bradford Angier’s guide, for example, is called “Feasting for Free on Wild Edibles.” The blurb on the back cover of “Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide,” by Elias and Dykeman, touts “a nutritious, delicious, season-by-season guide to identifying, harvesting, and preparing over 200 healthful plants from the wild!”
Personally, I’m not finding the green world quite so accommodating. In fact, I’m starting to believe that many plants have no desire whatsoever to be eaten. Read about the plants in the above books and others, and you are nearly always directed to gather the youngest shoots, the smallest basal rosettes, and the earliest stage of the flower buds. Why? Once they flower, most plants become bitter, even toxic. In other words, nature’s supermarket has very limited hours.
As a novice, I’m spending a lot of time in a Catch-22 scenario. The plants I want to eat are most edible when least identifiable, when every green shoot looks pretty much like every other. When most identifiable, during and after they have flowered, they tend to be the least edible.
One notable exception are berries, including the many varieties of the bramble (Rubus) family, which includes the various species of raspberries, blackberries, and dewberries. In my area, the wineberry - a type of raspberry introduced from Asia and well-established in disturbed, sunny places - is going gangbusters. The best patch I’ve found is right along the edge of a four-lane highway that skirts the Potomac. The roar of traffic is such that when picking with a companion you communicate using hand signals, like Scuba divers. Yesterday, after picking about three pints of delicious, juicy wineberries, I noticed I was out of time. Looking at my companion, I tapped the face of my watch and made a slashing motion across my throat. He understood perfectly, and we hugged the shoulder trying to get home without getting flattened.
You pick berries where they grow, and Nature apparently doesn’t watch the Disney Channel.
What’s the most unlikely place you’ve foraged, fished, or hunted?
When I was a kid vacationing in Iron River, Mich. My great uncle called me crazy for fishing under a bridge in town for brookies. After catching countless muddlers, I produced a nice fat legal brookie, which I ate for breakfast.
Of course, growing up in Wayne County and fishing the parks along the Rouge River, I was accustomed to fishing under overpasses and such.
The strangest I ever saw was a family from southeast Asia seining a detention pond drain and putting everything they found -- snails, crayfish, big tadpoles, sunfish and sublegal bass on a hibachi. It was the quickest I've seen fish go from lake to fire. Of course, the drain was very polluted with nasty parking lot and apartment complex runoff. I tried to explain that, but no one seemed to understand English or give a rip what I thought.
Posted by: Brian M | June 30, 2008 at 11:19 AM
By far my best local "patch" is 6' from heavy local commuter traffic. With a hook and a rope to hold the branches over a tarp, I took 18lbs (cleaned) out of there in 2.5 hrs last summer. The tricky part is to get the car in/out of the traffic without getting creamed.
Plan "B" is to transplant the berry bushes to my yard.
Posted by: Brian T | June 30, 2008 at 01:11 PM
Fishing in the Cohocton River in Bath NY under the interstate 86 overpass. It was route 17 back then and you could stand on a ring of concrete that stuck out from the side of the pylon about 2 feet under water. catching suckers by the dozen.
Posted by: Timberline | June 30, 2008 at 05:36 PM
Aren't you about done with this Ule Gibbions (he didn't fair to well either) crapola? Geez you're wearing me out! Who gives a s*#t anyway? Is the Sports Afield site?
Posted by: Gungle | July 01, 2008 at 07:17 AM
I'm glad to see that so many of you are having such great results with Urban fishing and gathering. sweet chestnuts from the park, and trout and pike from a chalkstream within the ring road that surrounds london are to of my favorites
SBW
Posted by: suburban bushwacker | July 02, 2008 at 09:19 AM
I know I've done worse, but fishing on a bridge in the middle of a bustling Arkansas Campus across a drainage stream with a spool of thread got me some weird looks. I had never caught a trout before and by golly I was gunna hold a live one! My first and only to date.
Posted by: bob | July 03, 2008 at 04:35 PM
I reckon my own property is the last place I ever expected to find turkey and deer.....I've lived here for 55 years, and the last 52 have never had either...Now, after letting trees take over the pastures, and the thickets and brambles grow back, the place looks like a haven for all the deer and turkey that have been run out of all the woods due to developement! After providing feeders and browse and mast... they finally moved in! Now, except for an exceptional bird or buck.....they have a protected home and haven....
Posted by: jes | July 14, 2008 at 07:58 AM