[AmmoSgt In Memoriam]

oops... Chestnuts.. meant Chestnuts... good time to look for nut trees in your area.. do a little "wildcrafting" locating and harvesting a little of natures bounty where permited.. Pecans, walnuts, Chestnuts whatever...

Also all them leaves.. if you haven't already try composting.. maybe turn them under in your garden or start a worm farm for compost. Pinecones are both fuel and craft supplies.. you can sell bags of 6 "selected for niceness" pine cones to city people for $3-$5 .. Dogwood Berries and sprigs with nice berry clusters sell to craft supply shops .. bale up clean pine needles and hit up the local big box home gardening supply or landscaping contractors to buy it

Good time to add a nut or fruit tree or two.. some require more than one tree and some trees have to be quite a bit apart so pick wisely... pecan for example need to be 40 foot aparts and 25 feet from wires.. apples much smaller footprint.. I know, I just planted two pecans and I got the year before last two apple trees over in the corner of the yard.. hope to replace the grapes I lost with the new fence next year...

So what do you have growing wild arround you.. I have several squrril rich pecan trees that I never seem to get to early enough and an old black walnut that still drops a few..

 

[trainsktg]

I was expecting to see pictures of large, well-done rodents. We used to eat them when I was a kid. Yum .

Keith

 

[Petrov]

I don't have any pictures but there are abandoned apple orchards all through the Santa Cruz Mountains. Most were in a couple months ago. I tried planting a granny smith this year - the deer ate it up. Now it's protected.
I've always meant to get hip to where some black oaks are and when the acorns are ready to harvest. Never done it though. I ran into someone harvesting some years ago; part of some native ritual he said. I asked him how he leached out the tannic acid - if he went to a river, did it in the sink, or what. He told me if you leave the meat in a burlap bag and stick it in your toilet tank, you'll leach out the acid in 4 or 5 days assuming you flush two or more times a day.
Not a lot of edible berries around here - and what we have doesn't ripen in the winter.
Edited to say - the last of the Madrone berries dried up or were eaten about a month back. I don't think they're edible for people, but I suppose the band tailed pigeons that come for them are - they look meaty for a medium sized bird.
I've also planted an elderberry. That will take a few years to yield anything, and those elderberries are pretty seedy.
Maybe that's good from a calorie standpoint.

 

[me26245]

local foods

Around me there are many hickory trees, and black berry and goose berry bushes, I've planted black walnut and pecan trees along with granny smith golden and red delisous and another apple type, wild plum trees and hazel nut bushes, strawberry plants both domestic and wild are present. I need to plant some peach, plum, cherry trees and grape vines and a gardren.

 

[Petrov]

Around me there are many hickory trees, and black berry and goose berry bushes, I've planted black walnut and pecan trees along with granny smith golden and red delisous and another apple type, wild plum trees and hazel nut bushes, strawberry plants both domestic and wild are present. I need to plant some peach, plum, cherry trees and grape vines and a gardren.

Blackberry is a weed where I am. We had a decent crop this year - it was dry; I think that concentrated the sugars in the berries. For some strange reason, the berries ar largely ignored by the wildlife - even the birds. I have two "cherry plum" trees. The fruit is sort of like a tart cherry with a really big pit but you get hundreds of them. Something - I'm guessing a small opossum - got into one of the trees and made a mess of it this summer - broke lots of branches. With both the blackberries and plums you get lots of berries over a short time. Canning is another thing I need to get into at some point.

 

[AmmoSgt In Memoriam]

We canned pears from our tree his year.. we got maybe 7 bushels all told.. 48 quarts of quartered pears.. 12 pints pear sauce...12 pints pear butter and bunches of dried pear and pear leathers.. we still have a conciderable supply of concord jelly and grape sauce probably enough to last until new vines start to produce LOL

 

[BBQ SAM In Memoriam]

Have more Hickory & walnut than you can shake a stick at on my farm . Cant even give them away anymore , folk's are to dern Lazy to pick 'em up !

While were on the subject though , Spring is right around the corner & my farm has May apples out the ying yang . What , if anything , are They good for ?

 

[AmmoSgt In Memoriam]

BBQ mayapple has it's uses, but for the most part it is concidered a toxic plant.. fruit and root are okay but any part of the leaf, stem, or seed is poisonious.. first symptom is a rapid and irregular heartbeat.. I have seen that myself on several occasions from folks using the wrong part of the plant to make home remedies.

Here is a link with details
http://www.herbs2000.com/herbs/herbs_mayapple.htm

recipes

http://www.schools.lth5.k12.il.us/bths-east/mayapple.html

Commercial sales ...

http://wildcrops.com/blog/index.php?p=143&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

$2.50 a pound plus shipping... I dunno I would rather do up half pints of BBQ Sam's world famous Mayapple Jelly and sell them at the resturant for $9.95....

 

[Petrov]

If someone needs some aluminum sulfate fertilizer I know where there's a whole pallet - but you'd have to drive to Kali

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/zip/949998574.html

 

[Billofthenorth2]

For some reason the walnut trees have not produced well in the past 3 or 4 years. There is one big old one that dropped piles of them when I first moved here but now nothing. Two smaller ones drop a few but they need a few more decades on them to be big producers. I have started a few seedlings though, let the next generation have some.

"if you leave the meat in a burlap bag and stick it in your toilet tank, you'll leach out the acid in 4 or 5 days assuming you flush two or more times a day."
Great Idea!

 

[Mark Harlin Chaney]

One of my old arguements with wife (I lose). She doesn't like fruit trees.

 

[GhostCat]

Have (4) Large Pecan Trees.....Pear Trees that Produced a BOUNTY this year...more than I can use....I ended up playing Fetch with the Pears and my Dogs.....The Dogs Loved them....lol.....
We've also got a couple of Apple trees.......now if I can just figure out how to get BAMBOO to produce Fruit, I'd be SET!!!....got lots of bamboo and you can eat the Shoots in the spring...