Wildharvest Walks : I Spy Hazelnuts!

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Catkins

This week we’ve been on a bit of a foraging kick. Summer is coming to a close (sigh…) but the late summer season transitioning into fall is a time of harvest!. The days are cooling off a little and many fruits are ripening (paw paws most notably near us).

It’s a great time to interact with your local bioregion.

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Late summer is a great time to get to know the plants in your immediate surrounding.

That's because, late summer, unlike other times of the year, is when things are in flower or past flower and producing seeds, nuts or fruit! Flowers and seeds are easy ID devices!

When learning new plants, it’s important to first be able to properly ID them.

This can be tricky at times as flowers or even leaves may be absent. Leaf structures, shapes and colors as well as bark can give clues to what plant you’re looking at, but one of the easiest ways to identify plants is by their fruit.

_{You know that old adage, You can tell a tree by its fruit...}

The fruits may also represent the target of your foraging, so it makes the most sense to train your eyes to pick them out from the foliage.

There are many widespread and easy-to-ID plants that are great to forage.

Hazelnut

Hazelnuts happen to be one of these plants. There are many species of hazelnuts growing wild around the globe, and the most commonly cultivated species hails from Europe, often known as filberts. The American hazel is quite similar although often yielding a smaller nut. Don’t be discouraged, this nut is still well worth the effort of foraging.

Hazelnuts are one on the easiest nuts to consume, and one of my personal favorites.

Many foods that are easily foraged represent but a trail nibble or novelty food. Redbuds (Cercis canadensis) for example are a well-known edible flower that most folks may sample a few times. Black walnuts (Juglans negra) are another high energy wild food, but they have a nearly bulletproof shell that protects the rich nut meat. Hazelnuts on the other hand offer an easy to crack nut that stores easily.

Foraging for Fats

Getting healthy fats and protein from your wild or feral landscapes.

If you’ve seen more than 3 of our posts, you’ll know that we’re fairly committed to cultivating food and medicine. While this represents a great deal of our focus, it’s also important for us to inhabit and interact with our bioregion outside of our homestead. Producing proteins and fats requite us to step of our annual gardener role and ask animals or perennials to provide us with the goods.

Keeping our eyes peeled.

Raising laying hens and hunting wild game are some of the ways we get fat and protein into our local diet. We also have focused on planting long lived nut crops. While we’re waiting for the chestnuts and hazels we planted last year to reach fruiting age, there are numerous hazels near us that are already yielding nuts!

Stepping outside of routine can help illuminate the great world around us.

We learn this lesson continually. Walking is a deeply humbling, rewarding and accessible activity. We’ve been prioritizing taking more walks lately and it’s rewarding for the mental and emotional clarity this affords. As an added bonus, we’ve stumbled upon plenty of wild foods growing right near us. If you missed it check out our post on paw paws.

We are honored to live in such an abundant and diverse area and have been enjoying this late summer season.

We spotted a long hedgerow of hazels on a county road we had walked on many times before. Isn’t it funny how you can discover new things each time you walk through a space? Upon inspection we noted the numerous nut clusters forming on this native shrub.

We will return to this hedgerow over the next month and watch as the nuts mature. This will allow us to keep tabs on how they are ripening while giving us a great reason to go for a walk.

Have you discovered any new features near your home lately?

When we get outside, you never know what we may find...!

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