Wild Edibles

Harvesting food from the wild gives us a great satisfying feeling. It makes me feel like I’m standing in my ancestors’ shoes. We enjoy learning about what foods we can eat and cannot eat. One example is berries. Black raspberries grow like weeds in parts of Wisconsin. Picking black raspberries brings back many memories from my childhood, and I couldn’t wait to share those memories with Eric.

My uncle owns some land in northern Wisconsin which supplied great berries this year. We only had at about fours hours of picking time, so we picked as fast as we could. We fought back thorny bushes, biting ants, and fears of black bears….but it was worth it. We gathered about seven pounds of berries. We had enough berries to make 12 half-pint jars of jam and a few berries went into the freezer for later.

-M