hey friends so today we're going to just cover a few things not a super long episode probably but we want to cover things like collecting seeds uh forg forging drying techniques things that we're doing to kind of um do the squirrly things this season that squirrels are doing and I feel like a squirrel constantly every time I go out the door I'm like oh I'm such a squirrel because I will to go from one thing to the other thing and Drew yesterday was like so what's on the agenda today I was like I'm going to just go outside and see where it leads me
[Music] cuz and then I went outside came back in and she was making a quilt in the basement with Ela well so you know when you're 12 years old says mom I want to make a quilt you don't say hold on a sec I'm going to you know I had to I had to help her I I like to think of it more as you're chasing squirrels than yes if it was up to me and on my schedule all the time then but it was it you know what happened is she cleaned her room and she found this Supply kit for making a quilt and was inspired and so I wanted to a reward her for having cleaned cleaned her room and B encourage her to do something other than you know make a mess of her room or do whatever other thing that she was doing that was you know not and it's the cutest thing in the world I mean she's really working hard on it I'm very excited about it um yeah but I made a few posts about things that I'm harvesting right now and we went foraging last week with the kids which I'll tell you was really um gratifying and you know I think the reason that it was gratifying for me was that the reason that we started homeschooling was that you know like that was why we started homeschooling was so that we could learn side by side with the kids and so that we could go on these little adventures and that we could be outside and we could um just get to know creation better as a whole now I'm not going to say that they were all in they were not all in there were there were a a lot of moments where they were all in well it's interesting cuz the morning was okay we're going to go and we're going to forage and we're not going to um we're not going to sit and do school work this morning we're going to get outside and grab baskets and everybody was very eager to jump in the car yeah so it's like you know the mixing up of things and routines they enjoyed however and I think they complain at this point a little bit because they're teenagers and they feel obligated to complain yeah I feel like the general attitude was pretty pretty good it was pretty good and yeah and they were all we had on one of the children come down pretty hard in a in a uh in a disciplinary fashion the night before right so I think she was really um putting her best foot forward was Shing lightly yeah she was definitely um not complaining maybe nearly as much as she like a parenting moment where we chose Mercy over it could have gone either way and it just felt like yeah so I think she was appreciative of that yeah and knew that she probably deserved worse right and foraging wasn't really a punishment if you think about it now it was at the Sho which is its own punishment because it's like blackberries and you know you've heard about the Sho so the walking is not exactly but we well we had to move cows so we moved cows we did that work together um running lines that kind of thing but then um Drew had seen several pons and some peons and um and so we're like well let's go out there let's see if we can gather anything and we had I would say great success we took out empty containers and I learned so many lessons I think like I'm always sort of looking for the spiritual side of things when it comes to when we go foraging or when when I go in the garden in general or you know how things play out without my making it happen and in this particular situation I did post about this but just that feeling of going out with empty buckets and not knowing what you're going to find but being open and ready to receive right like that is a really good feeling and I think as homesteaders we tend to approach it more with the like planting the seeds and then you know I don't know how to describe it's like the opposite approach of like if I do enough I'll get enough kind of thing and releasing the control yeah yeah and really the biggest lesson I've learned from our Homestead in general is just being open um and and willing and like waiting to see what comes next because you can put all the seeds in the ground and it can fail you know like you just don't know what's going to happen um and actually a really good example of this within this context of this actual experience is we have plugged a lot of mushrooms into the locks so many mushroom walks and not a lot to show for it in fact I would say we've gathered maybe two or three mushrooms from have mushroom flavored squirrels on our property yeah potentially yeah um we just don't I mean I don't know you know we probably didn't give it enough time enough energy enough rain enough uh watering enough attention generally but um I think the appeal of mushroom LS is fix it and forget it that has not been our experience it's benef fix it and you'll never you'll see where the swirls have eaten them is what we've noticed um but anyway I plugged maybe five Logs with RI a couple of years ago and not gotten anything from that and and then we're out we collected all these Persimmons we collected all these peans which we were expecting a little bit um when we went out and then Drew turns a corner that he was kind of cutting through and he's like oh what kind of mushroom is that is that a RI and I came around corner I was like it was aai and you know you could see it on one side and then he's like oh look at this side and then it was everywhere the whole stump a big big stump big stump was completely covered with RI mushrooms so it was just like I think the lesson for me in that was and I didn't mean to go down this path but the lesson was just like you know a lot of times I think we put in the effort in one place and it pays off in a different place and I think that like just the lesson is to show up you know I'm going to trry just thinking about it because how many times do you do something and you don't get the result that you expect to get or you don't get paid the way you want to get paid um but I do think there is this equal this give and take and and um you know the Lord knew I wanted six logs worth of RI he said um well it's cute that you put those there but you're going to find them over here yeah and like years later I mean that's that's the interesting part is like for me like with the foraging is I think like you said a lot about like I knew there was a pin tree I knew there was a peacon tree and just being aware of your surroundings and almost having like a I feel like it's a little cliche but I'll say it any like a a childlike mentality of like you know like we're walking around out there with Abraham and he's like poking and looking at everything and a lot of times I'm just kind of like trudge ahead but if you slow down even more and kind of like especially when you're forging and it's just like you you're like you need to release the expectation of what you're going to find and then you find things that you didn't even expect to find out there yeah like I mean I think we probably could have forged even more things we I know like we chewed on some juniper berries because that's just kind of always fun but you know I mean we could have forged those also well I was regretting not having actually harvested some of the the Golden Rod the solidago that was out there ton of that you know you kind of your buckets are full and you're like okay I got to take these full buckets home and I think like it's funny I thought you were going to say not the childlike part but uh an abundance mindset that's what I thought you were going to say which isn't it interesting like you never if a a kid untethered by Society a wild and freak kid would go out with Wonder and and look at everything and explore and be like what's this what's this what's this and you know we're so single-minded and we get so focused on the one thing that we want to get done um and maybe isn't that what abundance is is like not not being so single-minded and I don't think there's anything wrong with Focus necessarily because I think I you know like we've kind of gone through the business the one thing attitude right and um I I guess for me the one thing sounded good in theory but I have struggled with it because I don't feel like I have one thing I feel like I'm a mom and I love that and I have some business stuff going on and I love that and I you know I'm obsessed with plants and I love that and you know I mean like there's like I think humans can be multi-dimensional and I think we can pick and and harvest in all these different areas um all at the same time well I think there's like kind of intentions too though like every time I go out to move the cows I don't have the opportunity or I I'm not prioritizing the opportunity to forage the 40 acres you know like sometimes I need to go out there and just move the cows and do other things for the day so having that focus is important because if I start collecting mushrooms and everything else I could be out there all day well and I think I guess when I think about food is such a funny thing because you know with foraging I feel like I'm still very new at it and I don't you know don't have a ton of confidence cuz I know there's way more out there for us to eat than we are aware of yeah and that we've become very um like a carrot situation where you know Big Industry big farms are like waving this carrot in front of our faces and saying this is where you get that at this grocery store over here um because they can't Harvest Jerusalem arti chokes and sell them in great quantities at the grocery store they can't you know Harvest um you know even RI necessarily or like some of the things that you find in aren't shelf stable paw paws and Persimmons like these are things that Cattails or Cattails you have to do yourself and they have all this deep nutrition and potentially more than we need but we think we need to go to the grocery store to get the things that we need because they make us feel like that's where all the food is but if we walk around and we really know our environment um or if we stop scalping our environments you know and we let the diversity come back just how much how much is there anyway this has really gone off on some kind of a philosophical thing this is not rant this wasn't your plan it was not my plan um but well I will say so like back to forging the other thing was we were up in Sparta and we found uh spice bush which we knew was there um the summer but it had a bunch on it when we were there a couple months ago or a month ago um and so we harvested those for the first time which those are like super exciting and makes me want to plant more I know the one thing is they're an understory plant so you can plant them like in your Woods if you know if you have a lot of forest and don't want to log it you oh some other things too that we've planted and are actually doing well this year is beauty Bush did well U Beauty Berry Beauty ber um and harvested and made J jam out of that yesterday um yopon yopon both of these things can grow in the shade in the woods so um it's just just exciting to have some things kind of that we did put effort in we've put we've planted so much um because you know we've planted the hazelnuts if you haven't heard the hazelnuts we got about 25 hazelnuts this year 25 huge win because we've never gotten hazelnuts before yeah yeah um I have no comment um and then you know the blueberries and I think what we've learned in in large part is that we didn't plan super well for those those plants and so we the blueberries just kept eating being eaten this year we've had a more raspberries than we've ever had before on the same Bush we've had for 10 years so it's just these deer I was just eating raspberries today were you yeah it's lovely um so it's really nice because the raspberry bush is planted kind of like right outside the shed so it's like a treat my treat every time I go to the shed is have a few raspberries you made the lawnmower work again yeah awes you go raspberries um but yeah so I think you know we learned a lot about how to plant where to plant all of that that we've had some things kind of coming to fruition literally and that's been really nice in in also the finding the things just out there kind of ready waiting for us to be open to receive is huge so just a list kind of breaking down we said pons peans um we found the Rishi we found some oysters the other day there's lots of turkey tail out um there's I've seen people posting like crazy I haven't found any myself but Lion Man um what else have I seen people Gathering what have we gathered we did I have harvested a lot of solidago um and then a lot of things from the garden like the herbs especially it's a good time to start picking them and bringing in them into dry so I brought in uh Tulsi and shisto and lots of different things that we've been drying and um oh prickly pear oh prickly pears we picked yesterday yeah the Tunas not the um the flat parts of pads but yeah so we're GNA make probably make prickly Peay wine from that yeah something like that I've made syrup in the past which was fun yeah I just made the beauty be jelly so I feel like I'm going to we're set on Jelly for a little bit right um but yeah so uh how we're harvesting it you know it's pretty straightforward you cut most of these things you bring them inside and then you find an appropriate way to dry them so for most of the herbs I hang them upside down um and let them hang for a while you don't want to let them hang for super long um they'll get lots of cobwebs and stuff on them not that I haven't done that I have done that sometimes they're just pretty so I leave them there um but letting them hang to dry is a really efficient way to let them dry really quickly and then you want to break them down into smaller packages a air safe humid safe packaging um and then you've got we've got this what do we call that thing it's like a dehydrating air dehydrating rack right so it can be tricky in North Carolina to air dry things because the humidity levels but we're out of the humidity season um so it's now it's okay um hanging inside and it's hanging inside um in a corner in the shade like out of a window um and so right now our living room is really smells like fungus F fungal activity because the ratio is a very pungent smell um while it's dehydrating so it's which I like to believe like breathing it in is beneficial too it's like bringing the Earth inside hopefully um it's kind of a cool drawing rack because it has like all these like different layers and each is screened and each layer Zips closed so you don't have to worry about like yeah mice getting into it yeah so in that rack right now we've got hops what did I put in there yesterday somec a ton of those Thai Peppers Thai Dragon peppers in there oh yeah those things are deadly a couple of layers of RI um and I think there's something else in there too but oh the peons are in there the peons are in there yeah so all of those things need to cure or dry dehydrate and I I would say like to me like that list sounds like a little bit overwhelming if you've never forged before but really it's like anything else it's like small steps like learn one plant take your plant identifying app out there and say oh what's this plant can I harvest this or can I not you know like what's its benefits and learn that one and then do it again and you know over the years you learn it it don't like put all this pressure of like I need to identify all this right away I will say like one thing is just being able to identify parimon bark of the tree like when you're walking through the woods it's a very distinct bark but a lot of times like if you don't know what it looks like the Persimmons are above your head yeah he'll never might not even know they're there but like if you see the bark now like when I'm walking through the woods I'll stop and I'll be like oh okay let me look around the ground and like sure enough there's pons so you know learning that same with pecans or all the different well and it's interesting too I think we try to learn in this really one like specific way I'm going to read all about Persimmons right or read all about pecans or read all about RI but the fullness of the experience of seeing them find you know finding them cutting them off or harvesting them I'm looking around the tree and you all of that that full you know 4D I guess experience is like that is how I learn so you know I could have looked at pictures of peons all day long but if I'd shown up out there I probably would have been like ah you know but then JW's like there's one and then you start to say oh okay I can see the similarities between these trees and start to understand their character and what to look for and to find more and to know seasonally I mean cuz we actually truth be told didn't know those peons were there until this year but we've been walking that property for almost 3 years now so they were there we just didn't notice them I mean the only reason is because I spent so much time out there and I was out there bush hogging again you know like and that's how I stumbled upon it and you know essentially walking every walking or driving a bush hog every square inch of that property ever and ever you start to learn where things are mhm um yeah and I just wanted to add that a piece of the foraging for me is the seed saving um and right now is really a great time to start doing that and start noticing um you really don't want to forge too much before now unless you're just seeing things fully ripen and um they're ready but right now is you know the fruits are R and now is like late October right now is late October um in our area in our zone right now things are really fully ripe flowers are fully ripe fruits are fully ripe and you can that's what you really want to make sure that they're not green um if they're green they're not going to um probably fruit for you next year they're not going to grow so um but foraging for seeds is a really fun activity and something pretty it's a you know like low impact you can start doing that and you can keep seeds in a really um compact area you don't have to keep up keep you don't have to dehydrate them generally unless they're in the Tomato still or whatever um but yeah so seed hunting um is a form of foraging and it's a really fun thing to get into um start start this year just just grab a handful of something bring it home and then try to grow it next year and that's it's like magic you know it's like carrying One Summer into the next and I don't know there's something really beautiful about about that process um anyway this conversation hopefully you enjoyed um it turned out a little different than I expected it to we went a little Meandering but we were open and willing so hopefully it's meaningful um for those of you listening and and if it was please share if you have thoughts about foraging what did you forge this year share with us teach us something um you can email us you can um reach out on social and we look forward to that we love hearing your questions or your comments or your wisdom and um yeah thanks thank you
