Wildcraft!

Wildcrafting is the term used for gathering roots, herbs, or other plants from the wild. Today, these feet wildcrafted:

If you live in Kansas, you can probably guess.

And if you guessed mulberries, you are right!

It takes a long time to gather wild mulberries. And let's face it: they are not that tasty, even though they are gorgeous:

They are, however, like all berries, chock-full of antioxidants and other wonderful things not yet discovered by modern science. I wasn't really REALLY sure mulberries were edible till I lived in a convent in college where the sisters would lay sheets under the mulberry trees and gather the freshly fallen berries morning and night, then make pie and jam. Unfortunately, both those delicious uses for fresh mulberries destroy a lot of the nutrition in them. I always prefer freezing to heating produce to save it for future months.

We gathered a scant quart, washed them REALLY well, then spread them on a cookie sheet to freeze. This makes it so the berries freeze individually, and you can later grab as few as you need- to keep your green smoothie from tasting too mulberry-ish.

Only 2 cups made it to the freezer to be used by small scoops in our green smoothies.

Despite tasting like wild, unsweet blackberries, it's really fun to eat things you gather yourself!

Isaiah composed a poem/ chant/ song while we worked:

The Mulberry Tree
by Isaiah Armendariz
There is a mulberry tree;
It gives lots of mulberrieeeees.
The tall ones for the birds;
The medium ones for me,
The ones that fall down, down, down-
Food for the flies!

Sounds way better when he sings it. And he wants to go back to the mulberry grove tomorrow.

Relaxing with puzzles after all that hot mulberry gathering:

"His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant mixture of them all."
-J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit