Foraging Workshops and Our Own Foraging Adventures, Lots of Hiking This Weekend!

Slowly but surely, the foraging workshops are happening. Thanks to one lady offering several dates that worked for her, another lady requested a workshop last minute, contacting me on the Friday evening ahead of what would become a whirlwind day this past Sunday. Both women attended the workshop Sunday morning, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves! Because I still had some copies of My Foraging Workshop left over from offering them at the Lumby Days Craft Fair, I was able to give them out that morning.

One lady asked if we’d do the workshop again Sunday evening, as a friend of hers wanted to attend but was at a different all-day workshop herself. So we had an impromptu evening workshop with the two of them. This is when I should mention that the calculations to reduce the cost of subsequent workshops after you’ve paid your registration for your first one, results in a $10 discount off future workshops after you paid the full $30 fee the first time. This is so you don’t keep paying for your book over and over and over again.

Why would you want to attend future workshops when you heard it all the first time??? Because different times of year have different things growing and available for harvest, so attending more than one, particularly if you space them out between the four seasons, will give you the most well-rounded introduction to what grows around the Central Okanagan at various times. Secondly, you may hear things shared during the workshop that you didn’t hear the first time. In Sunday’s case, the workshop portion had to be shortened in the morning due to unforeseen events shortening the time frame one lady had for her attendance, so not everything was shared. As a result, the other lady was able to hear what was skipped in the second workshop, as well as experience more of what the Central Okanagan has to offer at a second location.

As if those two excursions weren’t enough, we did our own foraging run Monday morning, and it too got split in half with the morning portion at one private property and the evening portion at the barn where we have permission to forage. Needless to say, my feet are not liking me tonight!

Today’s foraging included gathering some late Saskatoon berries (they are almost a month late!), observing how the chokecherry berries are coming along, rescuing various plants we want from wild Morning Glory vines, including some chokecherry bushes, catnip, lupine, etc.

We gathered more catnip. The business tub is just over half full and we have 4 more fairs over the summer to attend before we need to ensure teas on the table for fall and Christmas fairs. So we are trying to gather what we can before the plants succumb to summer heat! Some are already succumbing, so we got several more trays’ worth today.

We gathered more peppergrass, this is for personal use and gathered on the rail trail near the private property. Peppergrass used to be known as Poor Man’s Pepper and can be used for just that purpose, as well as for upper respiratory health.

We also grabbed more nettle, canada Thistle, a little fireweed, and curly dock leaves. I’m going to try using the very cute little flower buds of the Canada Thistle to make an artichoke dip! Their open flowers are so cute and fuzzy, you just want to pet them!!! (they are quite soft to the touch too)

The curly dock at this location is quite large, as evidenced by this photo of Ashley standing next to one, and another pic here of the size of a leaf against her forearm. The leaves can actually get larger than that at times too! \

We need more curly dock for the apothecary trunk due to a custom tea request we are currently calling “Memories of Earl”, that so far, two customers have asked for.

This evening, we picked another grocery tub’s worth of pineapple weed, more peppergrass in it’s own tub, and a tub of baby Lamb’s Quarters, as it is trying to encroach on the riding area where we exercise her horse. We aren’t done, but we got a good haul with the time we had available. We brought home more common mallow and narrowleaf plantain as well.

We’ve run out of trays again! We’ll see how the summer heat helps us out tomorrow, and then we are due for a couple days of rain. Lord-willing, we won’t lose half this harvest the way we did in mid-May when the June rains arrived early.

While we were out foraging this morning, we happened across a few Sow’s Thistles, which seriously look for all the world like dandelions on steroids, complete with the dandelion style of leaf in the bottom third of the plant.

Here are a couple pics, one with me standing beside a Sow’s thistle, I am roughly 5’9″ for comparison, and another with a grocery bag near my daughter’s feet while she focused on the blossoms at the top.

My daughter is fond of doing glam shots of things, taking artistic photos of stuff.  She did that with a photo of a lupine plant we were picking bean pods from today.  She took a calmer shot for clarity sake.

If you are in the Central Okanagan and want to attend a foraging workshop with trail tour, please reach out to me about the days and dates that work best for you and we’ll set something up.

Paying day-of will not always mean you get your notebook that day as I have to order them after the cash shows up to pay for them. But you WILL get your notebook! I’ll arrange pickup/drop-off to get it to you regardless, as it has all my handouts in the first 23 pages. If you buy a notebook at a craft fair before attending a workshop, send me a photo of you with your notebook and you’ll get $10 off your $30 registration fee.

Now to spend part of Tuesday recovering, when I’m not doing dishes or making the wild artichoke dip!
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