Nature's Garden book and New Foragers Harvest dvd

"Nature's Garden" is Sam Thayer's newest book and follows the same format as his first book "The Foragers Harvest". This is another top quality go to book on wild edibles. This book covers 41 new edibles with the same no nonsense, hands on, I really eat this stuff manner. Both of Sam's books have quickly become favorites of experienced and novice foragers alike. This book will be a valuable asset to any foragers library.

New Foragers Harvest DVD set. Im really excited to check out this dvd set to go with the book the foragers harvest. If it is anything like his books then it should be one of the best plant videos around..cant wait to get em...This is the info from his site and a link to the video trailer ....


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snpAZybSkn4

DVD case cover

The Forager’s Harvest DVD Set includes two discs covering all the plants discussed in my first book. The footage was shot by Brian Pierce over the course of three years as he accompanied me on foraging adventures. Through hundreds of hours of editing, organizing, re-shooting, and planning in order to optimize the usefulness of the video to viewers, Brian created excellent DVDs that are both informative and fun. The entire production is narrated by me (Samuel Thayer) and provides ample ammunition for those who wish to make fun of my mannerisms, hairstyle, and especially, my attire choices. It also contains real-life footage of gathering and eating from the wild. In it, we interrupt normal foraging antics to cover the bases regarding each plant: identification, where to find it, what stage to harvest it in, what parts to collect, how to get them, and how to use them.
If you are a forager who prefers watching film to reading, or if you just want to augment the descriptions and explanation offered in The Forager’s Harvest, this video is for you. If you want to see what tangled clumps of hopniss vines and Siberian elms loaded with green seeds look like in real live action, they’re here. If you want to see the process of harvesting wild rice from a ripe bed, then parching, dancing, and winnowing it, it’s on film here. This footage captures the abundance, surprise, bounty, beauty, blind luck, mosquitoes, wood ticks, and occasional frustrations of wild food gathering in all kinds of settings around the Midwest, from wilderness lakes and hardwood forests to backyards and empty lots.

Sugar Bush 2010

Im posting this late as things have been real busy...but better late than never.

We live on a small woodlot with a good portion of maple, we have wanted to tap the trees for several years and got around to trying it out in 2009. The first year we experimented with an open fire and large stock pots. It worked and we made sugar and syrup, but I had to feed the open fire for 3 windy days and because of the constant wind and smoke it felt like I started smoking about 2 packs a cigarettes a day! not fun.



So 2010 we found a shallow stainless pan to fit on top of my two dog stove and set it up inside a tepee.

The shallow stainless pan has more surface area than a pot and boils off faster.

We used plastic spiles and tubing with 5 gallon buckets for collection. We only tapped about 6 trees with 2 spiles a piece. This gave us more than enough sap to make what we could process with this mini system.

This system was very comfortable on cold windy days.This is a very small stove and the pan would hold 2-3 gallons of sap at a time. The size of this is just big enough to play around with but not good for high production.

Improvised saw horse,axe, and bucksaw fed the stove.

I built a 24" bucksaw out of green saplings and wanted to see how well it would hold up with no nails in the construction...just notches...anyways after a little fitting it worked great and cut lots of wood for the little stove.

I would boil the sap until it started turning dark and getting sweet and then moved it inside on the stove to finish it. Everything I have read on making syrup says it needs to reach 219 deg. to be done which is 7 deg. above boiling. Well in my area I had it boiling at 210 and thought my thermometer must be bad. Then I realized we are at 1100ft. elevation and water boils 1 deg. less for every 550ft in elevation. So finished syrup is done at 217deg.

This was a fun experiment with the kids and a good learning experiance. In the future I will be keeping my eye out for a larger set up to process more sap and maybe someday meet my families sugar needs with this cool resource.

Book Review -The Foragers Harvest by Samuel Thayer

I had to do a quick review/plug of this book...


The Forager's Harvest by Samuel Thayer

I have been learning and using wild edibles for the past 10 plus years and have slowly added different field manuals and books to my collection. When starting to use wild edibles most people find themselves with a field guide of the Peterson type which is great for identification most of the time, and this type of book also has some description on uses of plants. Most of the "field guide" type books I have looked at have very similar information and the suggestions on actual use is kinda lite. Never the less the field guides are where most people start learning.

The Forager's Harvest is a different type of book and I am kicking myself for not buying one years ago. This dude is the real deal. Sam writes from a perspective of a forager who actually eats what he collects, and not only eats but cans, drys, and processes edibles for year round use to make up a good portion of his diet! One example is he says he collects 500 pounds of wild rice a year from a canoe!

I have found much useful information in this book that I have not found in any other wild food book such as info on digging sticks, berry hooks, and blickeys. Sam also busts myths about wild foods that are propagated in most other wild food books. One example is of how bitter common milkweed is, it is recommended in most books to boil it in 2-3 changes of water or not to even eat it at all. This is bogus as the common milkweed is not bitter and I have been eating several parts of it for many years by boiling it once!

I may stock this book in the future and his new book due out this fall which I cant wait to get my hands on....check out his site http://www.foragersharvest.com/