Foraging Walk

Jackie Dill from OK Wildcrafting hosted a foraging walk on Saturday in Coyle. I had emailed her the second I saw a mention of it a few months ago to reserve our spots. I was disappointed to find out about the walk just a week too late last year. I'm so glad that we didn't miss it again because it really was fascinating. She taught us to identify a ton of the edibles that are all over the place here in central OK. We came home with several little potted up starts of dewberries, wild hardneck garlic, polk salet, walking onions, buffalo berries and a different variety of wild garlic than what we have here. We also harvested a small bunch of soapberries, a few pods from a Kentucky Coffee Tree and 6 passion flower vine seeds.

After the walk, we had a delicious potluck lunch at a local church. Several people brought homemade food (we took a few jars of our salsa from last summer) and Jackie made a wild salad with chickweed, redbuds and a dressing made from her own vinegar. She also boiled a big pot of the polk that we found on the walk. It was my first time trying it and I actually liked it quite a bit. It's a little like a very mild asparagus in the form of small, tender greens. She also had vinegar mothers from her own pear wine, but we somehow ended up coming home without our bag. I have no idea what happened there, but it's disappointing because they looked great.



























All in all, we were both really glad that we went and it has encouraged us to try to get out and learn to identify more of the natives in our area. When Mason gets home from work today, we're going to go see what we can find as we work on the walking trail we've started cutting on the old land. The trail will eventually lead back to the tangle of blackberries and a small stand of wild plums, but who knows what else is out there.

-Megan