A Tea Order and A Marathon Foraging Run – Reminder of Upcoming Foraging Workshops

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Today’s foraging run is brought to you buy a custom tea request at the recent wellness fair, that was hoped to be a wild flavour version similar to Earl Grey. The purchaser liked the smell, and if the recipient likes the tea, we need to be ready for potential re-orders.

For starters, plants in the Okanagan area in general, are not caffeinated. None of our research has shown any plants to contain caffeic acid, let alone to any degree. What we DO have, is a plant that when steeped too long, begins to taste much like black tea without any cream or sugar, and that is Pasture Sagewort. This isn’t your garden mint-adjacent sage plant, this is a member of the Artemisia family, so it has a familiar flavour to the store-bought sage, without the slightly minty overtones.

Secondly, the closest we get to citrus flavours are with Sumac, pineapple weed, and purslane if it’s fresh (goes peppery when roasted). Now Sumac isn’t yet ready for harvest, and pineapple weed is only now starting to get it’s flower tops, and we aren’t seeing much purslane yet. We chose Sumac berry for the custom request. We’ll get more of that this fall.

Thirdly, people often describe the tea as having a slightly peppery flavour, so we threw in some parsley, that very much tastes peppery in tea, and dries easier than purslane does, making it easier to replenish our stocks with.

Other ingredients featured in this custom tea as well, but they weren’t on our to-get list for now or this fall, as we have more available. Curly Dock was included for it’s citrusy flavour, and we obtained a couple of those leaves today.

So today we grabbed more desert parsley, 3-flowered avens who are getting their flower heads and will soon have their wispy petals that lend the name “prairie smoke” by some botanists. The field where we were getting these, also has a burgeoning crop of chocolate lilies!!! Those are endangered here in BC, so we can’t harvest their cucumber-flavoured hips. But when they go to seed, we happily scatter them! We hope that one day we’ll see the plant taken off the endangered list and we can start to enjoy their food contribution as well.

Yarrow was needed, as it features in a number of teas, and we did a scouting run to see how the Great Sage or Sagebrush as Artemsia Tridentata is sometimes called, was doing. It’s growing very well, and the wild tarragon has such a new crop of leaves that they have a very baby-green colour to them! We didn’t get any wild tarragon today, but did get a little Great Sage. It’s flavour is much stronger than pasture sagewort, so we haven’t tested to see how it would do in our tea blends yet.

But Ashley had designs on using the Great Sage in her mascerated oil experiments.

We also grabbed more Saskatoon flowers and more arrowleaf balsamroot flowers. This week I will begin a food-grade glycerine tincture experiment using the arrowleaf balsamroot flowers. Their scent is much like vanilla blended with sweetened chocolate (like sticking your nose in your baking cupboard!!!) and I wonder if an extract from the flowers might be a suitable substitute for vanilla extract. I’ll make a batch, and then test it in a small recipe to find out.

One photo here shows a hillside filled with Great Sage, Saskatoon bushes, and Arrowleaf Balsamroot flowers. Scattered among it all is also yarrow, and in places, 3-flowered avens and St. John’s Wort. St. John’s Wort doesn’t seem to be growing yet, but we’ll see.

Ashley is seen here standing beside a Great Sage bush! This is why it’s named what it is. The bush immediately beside her was growing at ground level and some of those bushes are taller than she is. She’s just over 5′ for comparison.

My copy of My Foraging Workbook arrived today.

We are exactly two weeks before the May Foraging Workshop dates of the 18th and 19th. If you’d like to attend either date, please either purchase your spot from the coaching blog store, or send your $30 via e-transfer to bnhc@naturalhealthgodsway.ca.

The sooner you book, the sooner I can place your notebook order. If you book too late, your book may not be present on the day of the workshop and I’ll have to contact you to get it to you.

The first 23 pages contain all my handouts for the workshop, and the rest is available for notes during the tour as well for your own future foraging runs. You will also get a pen to go with the book that you can take home after the workshop.

Today’s foraging run encompassed two zones we visit, and we spent roughly 2 hours at each zone today. So we are exhausted! Our Great Sage patch takes a full half hour to hike into before we begin foraging. Others forage there as well, so it is imperative to observe the 5% rule! If you don’t know what this rule is about, you want to be at the workshop on the 18th, 19th, or in June, on either the 1st or 2nd.

We have interest now for a potential workshop in July. If the first four dates go well, we’ll definitely consider July and August dates. Foraging can be done year round for various herbs as they come in and out of season. So let’s see if we can fill the first four dates and get a feel for future dates after June 2nd.

Pass the info around to others who might want to take part in a foraging workshop, and tell them to plan for at least 2 hours. If there are lots of questions and lots of discussion in either portion of the event (workshop and tour), it could go longer, so we are starting at 9am on any of the first 4 dates. We are looking at trails in the area that we haven’t been to yet, so that when the theory part is over, you will get to see how we examine a new trail and identify what is useful for food, medicine or hygiene.

If you aren’t yet a member of the Natural Health God’s Way newsletter, please be sure to sign up for that so you get word of where the workshop will be happening! Use the form in the lefthand sidebar here.

While we will accept day-of registrations, do note that day-of means I won’t have a notebook for you, but will have a pen you can use, you’ll just have to bring your own notebook. You will also miss out on the handouts included in the notebook. I can put your book on order and arrange for it to be shipped to your address, so you’ll still get the info, just 2 to 3 weeks later than those who registered early.

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