Stocking the Beautiful, Bountiful Novembers Harvest

The beauty of the harvest that decorates November, the tingling chill of the forthcoming winter that defines November and the sober facade of piercing grays and fading blues that albeit confirm the winter season has begun all identify with this month November: the month of frost and sleepy winters.

The Freezer , The Root Cellar , The Refrigerator , The Pantry

For a forager the month November marks a significant break from the labors and toils of the spring. It’s a season to watch with deep contemplation as a hush covers the land and the landscape dramatically transforms into one featuring dark days, fading sunshine’s, biting colds and blankets of snow. An earnest forager still tends his garden in November, not having yet taking a winter rest. Because some late offerings like leeks, chards and other wild greens will still be expected. Foraging the frosty hardy wild greens will still be possible in the month of November depending on whether there is a long protracted Indian summer or an early blanket of snow. As the first snow makes its presence, visions of the frosty nights and the shortening day lengths become more evident. Truly time to take a winter rest has finally reached as the harvest is finally complete.

It’s time now to preserve, time to freeze and time to ferment. Yeah! Its time also to swell the cupboards with the bounty of the harvest just collected. This is the signature of November. No work just gathering and gathering the toils and labors of another fruitful year. Just recollecting and recollecting the times and memories of another eventful year, all through the frozen sleepy November month, we will be surveying and contemplating over our lives, our joys, our fruits and our labors. Still we will be waiting for the resurrection of the spring, for the first fruits of the maple sap and the watercress that will define the month of March.

Building the food supply for the forthcoming year is the main feature of November. In the months to come the family will be nourished and energized by all the abundance stacked in storehouses. Freezing, packing, Lacto-fermentation, stacking in cupboards and all manner of storage are the preparations for the forthcoming year done in November. There are berries, saps, nuts, medicinal plants, roots, syrups, Herbs, wild meat, mushrooms and all wild stuff that will need to be appropriately stored and preserved as they will meet the food needs of the coming year

Wild roots

The great burdock root will adorn the tastes of the coming year. These roots are the only wild root one may have to preserve for food for the coming year. Once appropriately preserved Burdock roots will last for long. Burdock roots are harvested in the early spring in large quantities of at least a bucketful or two.

Preservation of Burdock roots

Burdock roots are preserved by drying, pickling, freezing or preserving in oil or vinegar. Second year Burdock roots are usually dried to be used for tea and tonic infusions as they are tough to eat. The tender first year roots are usually simmered in salt water to make them tenderer and then they are cooled thoroughly. After these they are put in 2 cups portion in freezer bags and stored in the refrigerator. Freezing these roots will also serve to make them tenderer and break down the chewy fibers thus making them easy to be used in winter rice and stir-fry.

Berries

In a typical foraging year their will be lots of harvested berries including: blackberries , black raspberries , sumac berries all harvested from the wild. From local farms one can obtain the straw berries, blue berries and red raspberries. Incase you are a berry fanatic, preserving your berries is a very simple process. These preserved berries will be used in the next year to make wild berry glazes, deserts and sorbets. The wild berry glazes particularly will be used on top of cheesecakes, ice creams or drizzled on top of coffee cakes among other uses.

Preserving your berries by freezing

To preserve berries you simply but them in freezer bags then you stack them inside the freezer . Preserving berries is this simple and a bucketful of berries can be placed inside the freezer in a matter of minutes.

Freshly preserved berries are good for making dessert recipes. Once the berries thaw out they get soggy and seedy and will no longer be good for making desserts as the fresh berries. The thawed berries should be passed through a sieve and the pulp or juice produced used for making other treats as the berries can no longer be used to make pie or cobbler recipes.

Ideas for using your frozen berries

1.) Make berry glazes and sauces One of the best things berries can produce is sauces and glazes. Especially when you get rare species of berries available in small quantities, the best thing to do is to make a sauce or a glaze of that berry. An example of a berry available in limited quantities is the Gooseberries. The gooseberries are available in the woods and it is normally hard for them to fill a quart as they are so sparsely distributed. Try to gather about 2 pints of gooseberry each year and make about 2 to 3 cups of gooseberry glaze. This glaze made will subsequently be used in making special dessert. Out of the pulp strained out of berry juices also sauces and glazes can be made.

Wild berry glaze recipe

This particular glaze can be used on top of cheesecakes, drizzled over frostings on cakes and also drizzled over coffee cakes or simply used on ice creams.

Preparation
1.) Three cups of berries are put in a blender and whizzed into a paste. Incase one is using blackberries or raspberries which have a lot of seeds, first you will have to strain them through a fine sieve to get rid of the seeds. You will end up with 1 ½ cups of berry sauce, more or less.
2.) Mix together 1 cup of sugar and 3 Tbsp cornstarch in a small bowl or cup.
3.) The berry sauce is then put in a pan and the sugar- cornstarch mixture subsequently mixed in. Then the mixture is heat gently until it boils. Be stirring constantly the mixture as it usually gets thick and could scorch easily.
4.) Let cool.
2.) Make wild berry sorbet
With the harvested wild berries, wild berries sorbets will easily be made. Once you have harvested your berries, make sure to freeze the berries. When the berries will be out of season you will easily take your frozen berries and prepare a delicious wild berry sorbet. In the middle of January when the berry season is far from over you will be savoring the refreshing tastes of the wild berry sorbet. One can savor the fine black raspberries sorbet or simply the black berries sorbet. You can savor the sorbets from all the different kind of berries you harvest.

Recipe for preparing wild berry sorbet

All you need for making a wild berry sorbet is an ice- cream maker. There are many possible ways you can prepare you sorbet, below is one possible way to prepare sorbets.

Ingredients
The main ingredient is 2 cup berry puree. Be sure to strain any seeds out of this puree. Other ingredients are:
2 tsp lemon juice
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup sugar

Preparation
All the above ingredients are combined and follow the instruction for using your ice- cream maker.

Preserving the berries by canning

Ideally most wild foods should not be canned. This is because canning may destroy the nutrients in wild foods because of the intense heat of the pressure canner which is normally used for canning. The most ideal way to preserve wild foods is by freezing them. Of all your wild foods only about 10% to 15 % should be canned. Wild Berries and fruits are among the wild plants that may be appropriate to can. Juices of these wild berries and fruits are usually canned into small pint or cup- sized jars as these juices are not freely abundant. Wild juices are normally so strong and intense in flavor that one pint of a wild juice would flavor a whole gallon of cider. The wild berries that make for good juice include black raspberry , chokeberry , blackberry , elderberry and wild grape . Also you should can juices of domestic plants such as apple ciders. Apple ciders from local orchards can be used to make juice which will subsequently be canned in quart bottles. Always remember domestic plants like apple ciders are easily available while wild plant such black raspberries are not easy to come by. So it follows domestic juices are easy to come by compared to wild juices. Jams made from wild berries such as black raspberries are also usually canned. Such jams made from wild berries are a good source of nutrition. Just try making home made jams from wild berries and you will save on the cost of purchasing jam from the stores. It’s also a joy in a cold winter day to go downstairs and have a fine selection of home made jams. The canned berries, fruits and other canned wild foods should be stored in a room most preferably at the basement. The ideal temperature for this room is 40 degrees Celsius all year round and it’s better if the temperature of that room doesn’t fluctuate much between summer and winter. Still if the temperature of the room is fluctuating and there is no better alternative the room can still suffice.

Wild greens

It’s always nice to have a substantial amount of wild greens in your food reserves to be used during the off season. Once harvested the wild greens should be frozen for use in the off season. Popular wild greens include wild amaranth , lambs’ quarters , dandelion greens and stinging nettles .

Stinging nettles

Baby nettles should be frozen in the early spring before they become 8 to 10 inches tall. They are gathered in large quantities then frozen. Remember not to store your nettles for long as they tend to get gritty in texture and get an off- flavor.

Lambsquarters

Collect large amounts of Lambsquarters when weeding the garden. Then you should freeze these Lambsquarters.

Dandelions

These dandelions are collected during the dandelion root expeditions , freeze them just as you freeze the other wild greens.

Preserving greens

Greens are preserved by putting them in a freezer bag then storing them in the freezer. Before putting them in a freezer bag you need to cook them down. A gallon of greens can cook down to as little as two cups which will appropriately fit in a freezer bag. The below procedure is a guide to preserving greens:

1.) Blanch the harvested greens in a pot of boiling water for about three minutes until they become tender. Then drain the water and cool them thoroughly.
2.) The greens that have now boiled down are put in quart size freezer bags in either 2 or 4 cup portions.
3.) Label the freezer bags with the name of the herb and the year of harvest.
Remember: The cooking water used to simmer these greens can be preserved and used as a super- nutritious soup stock during the winter. This water is preserved in plastic juice bottles or ½ gallon milk jugs.

Preserving green garlic butters

One can make green garlic butter from Lambsquarters , purslane , chickweed , watercress or dandelion greens . Once the garlic butter is made they are subsequently stored in the freezer to be used during the coming year. When making garlic butter, make it using some portions of the above wild greens in it. This makes the garlic butter to be nutritious because of the raw wild components in it. Green garlic butter is a good source of healthy fats needed by the body. Garlic butter is used to spread for toast, biscuits, corn bread and other hot baked products. Garlic butter can also be used for cooking to sauté vegetables, onions, garlic and other ingredients.

Preserving wild greens by making pesto

Wild greens can simply be preserved by turning them into pestos. All the wild greens including the garlic mustard that is rampant in the forest during March can be used to make pesto. You can simply make pesto using garlic mustard, which can be substituted with any other wild green. There is also a pesto recipe that makes pesto using tomatoes. The pesto made using tomatoes is called Mondo Bizzaro pesto. Making pesto is through a simple process that utilizes a lot of wild greens. These pesto made will be used during the coming year to make delicious pasta dishes.

Wild syrups

There is an array of syrups that can be made from wild plants. This includes herbal syrups, maple syrups and cough syrups. These are made from harvested wild plants like maple sap which is usually harvested in March. The maple syrup is a great refreshing experience. Once you have made the maple syrup you simply can them and these can last you a whole year. Remember when you are harvesting the maple sap to preserve them in plastic bottles or half gallon milk jugs, and then freeze them in a freezer. This sap being frizzed will not only be used to make maple syrup but also will be used during summer to make iced teas. In winter these frizzed sap will be used to make hot tea and to cook rice and hot cereals grains in. Maple syrup is an energizing drink and will boast the spirits during the sluggard winter days.

Maple syrup

More about maple syrup is that if you have the time you can prepare a good amount of the syrup (about 3 gallons) to last the whole year. These will even be easier if you have some maple trees in your garden or yard. maple sap is normally harvested in February/ early March. Once harvested you will be able depending on the size of the harvest be able to prepare 3 gallons of maple syrup or more. What you simply need is a 5 gallon stainless steel cooking pot and an outdoor propane cooker. Once prepared the syrup is canned into little 12- oz juice bottles. Remember not to can all of the maple syrup, leave a remainder that you will be using to cook wild foods.

Herbal syrups

Herbal syrups will make your wild recipes even tastier. Common herbal syrups you can make include dandelion blossom syrup and red clover blossom syrup . Syrups can sometimes be simply made by turning some of your wild juices into syrups by adding sugar to them and cooking them down until they are thick and rich concentrates. Once you have made these syrups do store them in the room at the basement (root cellar.) Remember there is no need to can you wild syrup’s, always make enough to be used for a particular moment. For any forager or a person with an interest in wild plants, it’s obvious that the field of herbal syrups is largely unexplored. There is truly room for further experimentation in the area of wildflower syrups. Wild rose petal syrup and elderflower syrup are also other intriguing fields for experimentation.

Cough syrups

Cough syrups are made in big batches, a quart or two at a time. The “mother” stock of the cough syrup is normally kept in the freezer for long keeping. One can also make other syrups beside cough syrups. This includes deep green iron tonic syrup. This syrup is very nourishing syrup. One can also make the ginger/garlic syrup that is also stored in the freezer. The wild cherry cough syrup is also an ideal cough syrup. You can read more about it here .

Stocking Condiments

Having a stock of condiments at different times of the year is also a good idea. Condiments can be made easily by use of herbs and herbal vinegars. Making mustards and other condiments calls for an easy procedure you can carry out simply with much fun. You can obtain condiment recipes from many websites.

Condiments can be preserved by lacto- fermentation. Some information about lacto-fermentation

When you choose to put some of your wild greens like condiments in jars i.e. quart mason jars and you subsequently put these jars in the refrigerator this is what is called lacto-fermentation. One can choose to discover more about this method of food preservation. It can be used for some plants instead of storing these plants in the root cellars where temperatures keep fluctuating. In the fridge you can keep a constant temperature of 40 degrees Celsius. Wild grape leaves and cucumbers can be lacto-fermented. Its worth trying if wild roots like burdock roots can be lacto- fermented. It’s worth also trying lacto- fermenting tonic infusions and wild juices. It may actually be possible to lacto- ferment these two. Incase you choose to opt for lacto-fermentation one fridge may not be enough as quart masons jars may be many and may not all fit in the shelves of one fridge. So the better, if you purchase a second fridge.

Dried roots, dried products stored in cupboards

Having bigger cupboards will prove to be important especially during the harvest time. Most of the harvested dried roots, coffee beans, and root powders will have to be stored in the cupboard. Other supplies such as linen cloths, salve supplies, Herbal vinegars, tinctures and empty bottles among others will also have to be stored in cupboards.

Dried roots and roots powders

Common roots harvested will normally just be stored in cup boards. However some dried roots and root powders can’t be stored in the cupboards and have to be stored in the freezer for maximum preservation. This includes the roots and root powders used in special formulas and used for medicinal purposes, especially the expensive ones like OSHA and Echinacea.

Dried roots are kept in the cupboard for up to three years. However for dried herbs they can only be kept in the cupboard for one year and then restocked. When storing dried roots and herbs in the cupboards:
1.) Make sure they have been kept in plastic freezer bags and each freezer bag labeled and dated.
2.) The roots should be kept in one section and the leaves and flowers in another.
Remember: Roots and dried herbs are used for tonic infusions, preparations of soups and for making medicinal teas.

Other stuff’s stored in the cupboard

You should always have a bigger cupboard and other smaller cupboards. In the bigger cupboard the roots and the dried herbs are stored, while in the smaller cupboards other less important herbs and other supplies will be stored.

Smaller cupboards

While storing your herbs and supplies in cupboards they have to be arranged in an orderly manner. One smaller cupboard can house all your coffees, coffee substitutes, pre-mixed teas and sweeteners. In this cupboard would be found also all your coffee beans, roasted dandelion root coffee , roasted dandelion root chai , chicory root and the pre- mixed teas. The pre-mixed teas include both commercial tea bags and home made- loose teas. Also in these cupboard is cafix, which is an instant coffee substitute. Other things to feature in this cupboard include honey, brown sugar, raw sugar and Mexican raw sugar called Peloncillo.

Above this smaller cupboard, you can have small upper- level cupboards where all your other supplies that help you daily in the kitchen, while washing, during foraging and also during other varied activities are kept. It’s appropriate in this cupboard to have your supplies arranged according to categories. These categories will be:
A.)Empty bottles and jars- Here all the collection of jars, bottles and their lids are kept. It’s important to always have a good supply of brown- glass bottles for cough syrup, brown- glass dropper bottles and salver containers. Nice bottles for your home remedies can be ordered from herb suppliers.
B.)Herbal vinegars- It’s important to have several jars of herbal vinegars . You will be using these vinegars much and they may surprisingly not last up to spring, when you will again harvest them.
C.)Salve- making supplies- To be found here is all sorts of salve ingredients, essential oils, beeswax and other supplies.
D.)Tinctures and tincture- making supplies- Here there is all sorts home made- tinctures stored in their original pint jars. These tinctures should be poured into smaller dropper bottles just the amounts needed at a specific time. Tincture- making supplies include mainly wild vegetable glycerin, distilled water, bottles of brandy, vodka and gin.
E.)Poultice and compress supplies- Found here are mainly clean linen cloths and first aid tape.
The stores and supplies you need to have are such that you will find appropriate to your own condition.

Mushrooms

A word about mushrooms : In case you are an avid mushroom hunter you will need to preserve well your morels, wild mushrooms and oyster mushrooms harvested.
Preservation of mushrooms
1.) First sauté them in butter until they become nice and tender.
2.) Then freeze them in 2 portions in freezer bags.

Nuts

Wild nuts are a precious lot of plants. This is because they are costly if purchased and labor intensive if wild crafted. Thus you need to store your nuts in a freezer so that they are not destroyed by rancidity which can actually make nuts to become mildly toxic.

A bountiful of hickory nuts , black walnuts and acorns will normally be harvested during harvest and they all have to be kept in the freezer.

During harvest you can also shell your nuts before you store them. By doing these when it comes to using them during baking, they will be straightforward to use.

Venison

For any hunter, November is the month to hunt for some deer’s and it is also the month for enjoying a good meal of wild venison. During winter in times past, wild food provided a source of fresh food. While it’s true that the flesh of wild animals is built from precious wild herbs and vegetation there is a debate as to whether wild game is more nourishing compared to herbs? The strictly vegetarians will insist on a diet that totally features plants and if they enjoy wild diets they will stick to wild plants. On the other hands there are those who believe in carnivorous diets. The truth of the matter is that some indulgence in wild meat provides your bodies with essential nutrition just as that supplied by natural vegetation. The deer’s feed on nutrient dense herbs and this is the reason wild meat is far times more beneficial than even meat from domestic animals. The domestic animals are pumped with hormones, antibiotics and artificial food that make them highly toxic to the human body. Savoring the fine pleasures of wild meat is to get real nutrition indeed.

Hunting for wild meat is nowadays regulated by DNR. Incase you love hunting for winter meat you will of course have to obtain permission form the DNR. November is the main hunting season, thus if you are a good hunter you will always be having deer in your table during November.

If you can, butcher you own deer, in doing these you can be able to utilize every part of your deer. Even the bones of the deer make for fantastic treats. You can boil down the bones of the deer for mineral rich stock.

There is much to be grateful for in the month of November and among this is the fact that again there is that opportunity to enjoy the bounty of the earth. Again there is that opportunity to savor the intriguing tastes of the maple iced teas, again there is that opportunity to taste the goodness of the hickory nuts, the burdock roots, the Lambsquarters, the acorn bread and the other hot baked items and the juices of the berries and other wild fruits. Above all, its worth to be grateful for the month of November, because its time to fill the barns and eliminate hunger from our horizons.