Four Season Foraging

⭐️I have an important announcement!⭐️ After giving it much thought, I've decided to leave Meta. I will keep my pages up so you can still browse and learn from the old content, but I won't be creating any new content or checking it anymore.

For a long time, I've had an ambivalent relationship to social media, but I thought I needed it to stay in touch with people and to run a business. But the reality is that I don't. None of us do. There are better ways to build and maintain relationships than through the mechanisms of tech billionaires. Recent events and policy changes have only highlighted that reality for me.

Does that mean I'm going to be completely off the internet? No! Does that mean I think you're a bad person if you choose to stay on these platforms? No! But I have decided that I will be better off focusing my efforts elsewhere.

You can stay connected with me through other channels, including iNaturalist, YouTube, Patreon, my blog, and by subscribing to my newsletter. You can find links in my bio, PLUS if you scroll down to the thumbnail for today's post, a link for preventing some of the ways that Meta collects and monetizes your personal information (for those of you who are staying.)

I have lots of fun things planned for this year - workshops, retreats, webinars, and more animal tracking education! I hope to see you out in the field 🌿

Thank you for your love and support, friends!

Photos by the amazing Bestside Captures.

It's black walnut season! 🐿

Even though we're getting late in the year, there are still plenty of black walnuts to forage (if you know where to look!) You might know them as "those big green balls that nearly twist my ankles every dang time," but they are edible and delicious!

The taste is hard to describe, but it's nothing like an English walnut (the kind you get at the store.) While there is a definite nuttiness to the flavor, the dominant notes are botanical, almost citrusy. They taste a lot like they smell, which is to say AMAZING!

Look for tall trees with dark, deeply furrowed bark and long, pinnately compound leaves. The leaf scar on the twigs looks like a monkey face. Also look for what kind of resembles small tennis balls growing on the trees. Those are the nuts, but they are wrapped in green husks, which turn yellowish and fall as they ripen.

WARNING - those husks are a potent brown dye! To avoid staining your hands for weeks, use gloves or shoed feet. OR you can try BlackForager's "lazy girl" method (which I'm trying for the first time this year) in which you dry the nuts whole (with the husks), put them in a sturdy bag, and then slam them against the sidewalk multiple times to remove the now desiccated husks. You'll still have to extract the nutmeat from the shell - I use a hammer and a hard surface for that. While this mortar and pestle is very pretty, it's not actually strong enough to break the thick shells. Oh, and make sure to cure the nuts by drying in the shells for several weeks if you plan to store them long term.

If you find these growing in a city of Minneapolis park, you're in luck, as these are one of the items you're allowed to harvest! (Except for excluded areas - be sure to look up all the details.)

What's your favorite way to eat black walnuts? Do you have any processing tricks? I would love to hear your experience!