Experienced gatherers, and novices, might look afield to fill a void common in some grocery markets. While some items are in short supply, berry seasons are about to offer a healthy bite to eat.
Picking and gathering from nature offers benefits during this time of short supply, dwindling cash reserves, and a reduction of options to fill idle time.
How about walking, hiking, or climbing to look for wild edibles and possibly something to take home to freeze, can or dry?
Future nature forecasts may help plan summer and fall, too.
Black raspberry fruits will be ripe and ready for picking before June’s end. Tree mulberries may be edible sooner. Treat and use these as most food market fruits.
Raspberries begin what could be a long list of nearly free resources that will be fun for a family to gather, too.
This annual cycle has already started with winter hunting and fishing, or gathering a few carryover greens (watercress). Spring trout, catfish and bluegill fishing bid for time with morel mushroom gathering, which unfortunately turned into a bust for most. Was it climate change or unusual weather fluctuations?
Many of these activities are more about recreating for pleasure and exercise, but that doesn’t matter, because a person’s need has gone wanting with the lack of church, sports, movies and vacations.
Picking blackcaps (aka black raspberries) is a perfect fit for a novice. No license, no bag limit, and almost no equipment are needed.
There are readily available picking grounds in parks, forests and along trails. Private land may top the list but it’s worth asking.
Park admission fees may be required but transportation to get there can be worked through. Selling these goods may be forbidden (when picked on public lands), but gifting them is not and there’s nothing wrong with bartering.
Two of the most common fruits, raspberries and blackberries, are now blooming beyond belief. As the green berries enlarge, picking times can be estimated. Some years blackcaps are black before Independence Day.
Meat? Don Martin, at Martin’s Sporting Goods in Monroe, said catfishing has been good and fishing bluegills from banks or a small boat work, too.
Don’t let recent news of a black bear roaming the likes of Monroe cause a berry bucket to go flying or fishing pole to be left on a shore. “It got into some bee hives out in the country, but that was about all the damage it caused,” Martin said.
Jason Cotter, DNR wildlife biologist in Rock and Green counties said this bear may have been the same one seen other places north along the Mississippi River.
“The phone has not been busy with calls about abandoned baby animals, either, which is unusual,” Cotter said.
Expect to see the DNR field staff getting out and about more very soon, maybe even doing some survey work banding geese, which are flightless about now, enabling banders to herd them to lakeshores.
Whitetail fawns continue to be a weekly observation for anyone driving the country, or looking out a farmhouse window at a doe bringing one or both fawns out of the woods.
A few of what amateur botanists call 55-mph plants are blooming, some extending 5-6 feet upward. Cow parsnip, with its white umbel inflorescence, is companioned by Angelica’s ball-shaped flower cluster and noticeably purple stems. Both giants are lowland plants. Many more will follow, including the prairie compass plant, already several feet tall.
Local wind storms toppled many-a-tree recently. Most tip-overs were trees already stressed by disease, poor growth form, or generally weak wood.
Almost all that wood has some valve, if not for a local mill, then firewood or chipped for mulching.
Most trees are in the circumference growth stage, which takes place between the wood and bark. For this reason, the bark may peel away as though nothing is holding it to the wood, other than immature, weak cells.
Where present, turkeys are still gobbling and ruffed grouse continue to drum. Without many wildlife surveys this spring, hunters may find the best way to assess hunting populations listening and watching.
Tulip trees, an interesting, shade-providing landscape plant, is now blooming beautifully. Look for it in cities, parks, arboreta and campuses. Indiana’s state tree will can grow here in southern Wisconsin.
Those elms that produced nary a morel might be worth another look.
Golden oyster mushrooms are now common on some. Mycologists describe this edible fungus as a non-native mushroom that escaped from cultivation and now grows wild in some areas. “It’s pretty good to eat, but has a short shelf life,” it is noted.
While some food available from the wild requires a license and special equipment, some don’t. After berries, fish and greens, other fruits, more fish or all sorts, summer and autumn fungi, fall nuts and venison should tempt.
— Jerry Davis is an Argyle native and a freelance writer who lives in Barneveld. He can be reached at sivadjam@mhtc.net or at 608-924-1112.
