NICE! Really looking forward to follow your blog! We also live in a camper van at the moment, me, my partner and our 3 year old.
I love foraging, that is 100% what makes it up for not having a garden on the road! So I am super excited to hear some of your tips! I also share mine from time to time (I was planning to make a post about homesteading on the road very soon)
-What is wild rice? :D
i am a farmer, and it is hard not being able to garden. i feel like living this way in Europe must be pretty different. Is it hard? In the U.S., there is a lot of public land, mostly in the West, you can camp easily. But, it is not very socially acceptable.
Wild Rice is just that. Rice that grows wild. It grows mostly in New England (Maine, Vermont, etc.) and the upper midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin) and Canada. I know a lake with it in Idaho. You harvest from a canoe, collect the rice, and then have to go through a winnowing process to remove the chaff hull from the grain by toasting it and 'dancing' on it. The native americans in the north lands still harvest. Many other folks harvest too. You can work for a few days and get 5 gallons worth of rice. It's pretty amazing.
Wow, I didn't know about that, amazing! I don't think we have wild rice in Europe.. I wonder..
I tried to "live" on the road in my friends' schoolbus in the states a few years back (but just for 3 months) and was amazed with the open spaces compared to here! You would have a hard time finding parking spaces with a big bus in most places in Europe (though possible, I have friends who lives in big trucks here), but it's still fairly easy.. We didn't have so much problems parking, though you see many signs with camping forbidden..
Maybe we don't have as many great foraging options.. Mostly walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, all sorts of greens, blackberries, cherries, apples.. Also super easy to get oranges in the south - not so much wild though, but from people who has too many!
Foraging cultivated things people don't want works too! I have harvested Olives too from abandoned groves in California and processed them. And I've also harvested Persimmons and Citrus that was planted. It's more like 'gleaning' then!
The only thing about the open spaces is that everything is such a far drive. I'm alone a lot, or never alone. It takes awhile (and gas $) to get places.