What a fun year this was for us! We did so many great things with wild edibles…I thought it would be fun to take a look back.

In March, we were fortunate enough to have a friend with maple trees who allowed us to stay with her for a couple weeks. We had the opportunity to tap her trees (with spiles we made out of staghorn sumac branches):

Placing the jug over the spile to collect the sap

Collect the raw sap and boil it into maple syrup and maple candies.

maple candies

Later in March we released The Wild Ally Workbook, which you are able to purchase at a price YOU CHOOSE. I love that so many people decided to get this book and chose a wild plant to work with throughout the year while supporting our efforts here at Food Under Foot. The book was written in response to a very common question which Melissa hears on her walks: “What is the best way to learn about wild edible plants?” If you haven’t gotten yours yet, now is a great time to get yours in preparation for studying wild plants in 2012!

At the end of April we began finding morel mushrooms! We found morels until mid-May.

Black Morel

In May we made dandelion wine!

a gallon of dandelion blossoms

In June we gathered Reishi mushrooms (Ganoderma tsugae) in gorgeous old growth hemlock forests in Northern Pennsylvania.

Ganoderma tsugae - a type of reishi mushroom - growing out of a fallen hemlock tree

In July we discovered wild huckleberries while camping on Grape Island in Boston Harbor with our friends.

Two lovely young ladies gathering huckleberries from a tree in the Boston Harbor Islands

And on the winter solstice we tried our wonderfully sweet and spicy dandelion wine - yum!

Dandelion Wine

We are looking forward to 2012! We have such exciting news to share with you…but for now it’s fun to look back on the past year and all the fun we had.

Thank you so much for being part of Food Under Foot! We love sharing our love of wild edible plants with you, and look forward to more exciting times in 2012.

Happy New Year!

~ Melissa, Dave, and Jason
The Folks at Food Under Foot