Edible Plants 

 

My first and favorite is sumac.  We would pick the cone shaped heads from the plant to make a lemonade (sometimes called Indian Lemonade).  It is tart tangy drink.  People were shocked when I would tell them what the tea was made from.   The first thing they would  say is, "Sumac is poisonous".  Well they were partly right. White Sumac is poisonous but we used the red and it is perfectly safe edible plant.  It is easy to make. You can also grind the seeds and use it for a natural herb.  If you would like to learn more about Sumac click here.

Morel mushrooms are delicious gift of spring.  They are not easy to find but definitely worth the hunt.  To learn more about hunting and cooking Morels click here,

Our next edible plant most people think of as a nuisance  - dandelion.... I love the color of the flower.  We would pick dandelions and use the stem as a drinking straw when we were kids.  This plant was actually brought over from England by the colonist which was planted and harvested as crop.  That's  hard to believe as much money as people spend trying to get them out of their yard today.   There are so many health benefits from the dandelion plant as well as a great food source.  

Click her to find out more about the dandelion.

Once you read the you may start your own crop.

Joe has introduced me to ramps and I have found I really love eating them and using them as a seasoning on our steak and burgers.   People really do not give them a chance.  The first time we went ramp hunting we didn’t have much luck but then a friend of Joe’s said he had some at his camp and we were welcome to them.   He had so many he let us dig some and transplant them on the farm with our patch and this year the patch doubled in size.  It will take a few years to get it going but we both are very excited. They have a mild onion garlic flavor and can add so much to any meal.  There is a great deal of information on ramps so I gathered a little collection together for you. Just click here.

Blackberries and raspberries are our sweet treat.  We love picking them and eating them as we pick.  They have wonderful childhood memories for both of us. Joe would pick them to snack on while walking the right of way when he worked for the gas company.  I can remember when we moved to our farm when I was a kid and the berry patches where so big you could climb into the center of the patch and they would form a ceiling over your head and hanging down from it were blackberries as big as your thumb.  We would pick them by the five gallon buckets.  My mom would boil them into a thick syrup. On a cold winter day, nothing tasted better over pancakes. My favorite thing to bake is raspberry cobbler. Yum Yum. 

One of the most common edible plants are wild onions.  The flavor from a wild onion is the same if not better than what you buy at the grocery store and they grow all over the farm.  All you have to do is pull them up eat them raw or cut them up in your salad or add them to your hamburger.  You can dry and grind these just as you did the ramps. When I was little our milk cow “Bessy” found a patch of wild onions to graze in and when we milked her the milk tasted so much like onion you could smell it as the warm milk hit the bucket while milking her.  We couldn’t stand to drink it but my mom made butter out of it and we had onion flavored butter.  Isn’t that funny and yes, it is a true story.