# If your local is conducive to foraging, study it up



## keepitlow (Oct 22, 2009)

I also supplement my garden with foraging. There are lots of fruit trees in my local and some of em are abandoned or neglected so I make good use of their produce.










Foraging is for those that love to reap what they have not sown...









































































Lots of these blew down with the remnants of the last hurricane. Even if they have trouble ripening from being too green, they can be cooked.










This summer I have added many new fruit tree to my 'adopted orchard' that others planted then abandoned.

I got 3 mulberry trees, 6 apple trees. 4 big juicy Europeans and seckel pear trees, an apricot tree, 2 peach trees, 7 black walnut trees, 3 pawpaw trees, hickory and butter nut trees, yew bush and a hawthorn.

Also some wild brambles and herbs like purslane and dandelion and rocket. And not to forget lots of wild grapes.

*You are limited to using 10 images*

Now, foraging does not always yield Martha Stewart quality produce. But that is the beauty of being a forager. We can take what others may overlook and get nourishment from it. And it yields some sort of strange satisfaction is stealing food back from the ants after they have stolen so much food from some of us.

Take this nasty looking apple. When I play doctor with it, I get half an apple and it taste good.

*You are limited to using 10 images*

*You are limited to using 10 images*

So if your local is conducive to foraging, study it up and have many options for food production available to you if the world starts decomposing around you.

Here are 3 good books for those interested in developing an urban homestead.

Amazon.com: Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community (9781933392073): Heather Coburn Flores: Books

Amazon.com: Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series) (9780865715530): Steve Solomon: Books

Amazon.com: The Self-Sufficient Suburban Gardener (9780878574575): Jeff Ball: Books

I think we have a real food crisis brewing for the world. Not enough young farmers replacing the old. With the recent food shortages in the news I have to wonder as Richard Heinberg brought up "Who will be growing our food 20 years from now?"

"The average American farmer is 55 to 60 years old. The proportion of full time farmers younger than 35 years of age has dropped from 15.9% in 1982 to 5.8% in 2002. Who will be growing our food 20 years from now?" from "Peak Everything" by Richard Heinberg

"Amish farmers can't compete in conventual agriculture farming. 40 years ago 90% to 95% of the Amish were farmers. Today less than 10% are farmers." from: "How the Amish Survive" DVD


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## Canadian (Dec 14, 2008)

Awesome haul. Actually there are a lot of fruit trees in downtown Toronto and nobody picks or eats the fruit. The outside of my condo complex is lines with chestnut trees. Nobody eats them. Which is unusual because most of the people in my area are Korean and they love chestnuts.


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## northernontario (Oct 29, 2008)

Where I am in Northern Ontario, we have such a high number of wild blueberry patches, spread out all over the area around the outskirts of the city, that many people make a summer business of picking and selling blueberries on the side of the road. 

It's actually kind of annoying... to be driving, and have all these cars parked on the side of the road on major highways while the owners go off into the bush to pick blueberries.


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## TechAdmin (Oct 1, 2008)

Keep it low were are you at? Texas has pecan trees every where. People very rarely eat from them though. At least not in public.


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## keepitlow (Oct 22, 2009)

I'm in the NE US.

Let me add that was from '08. 

This year the season was crap. I found out to my dismay that apple trees and many other fruit trees produce every other year. It's amazing how the old timers survived.


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## sailaway (Mar 12, 2009)

Keepitlow, what's that tool called that you are using to pick fruit off the upper branches? I found an apple tree in town that could be harvested with one of those.


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## Canadian (Dec 14, 2008)

Yeah what is that tool. I've never seen one.


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## keepitlow (Oct 22, 2009)

Amazon.com: fruit harvester

I paid about $4.50 for my head and put it on an adjustable paint pole. Bot it at a hardware store.


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## sailaway (Mar 12, 2009)

I definately have to get one of those, there are trees in the ares i can use it on.


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## UncleJoe (Jan 11, 2009)

NOW, NOW, NOW. Stay away from those public places. You need to set a good example if you are going to be a servant to the community.


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## Rody (Sep 4, 2009)

The elderberry bushes got killed off by the railroad this spring so there's no elderberry jelly this year. 

I do know of several patches of persimmon trees but it's a bit too late for me to get any now. The deer have likely cleaned them out. The few walnut trees get swarmed by the locals. I do manage to get lots of wild onions in the spring and of course lots of dandelions out of my yard. I can't pick them back by the alley since my neighbor sprays his yard around once a week. He hates me because I let them grow and spread and I hate him for poisioning mine.

He litterily cuts his grass three times a week. I cut mine when I can't see the trees anymore.


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## sailaway (Mar 12, 2009)

I've been walking around my city campaigning, it's ammazing all of the fruit trees and bushes there are and also some nut trees. Some are extremely old. I need to get one of those fruit pickers. Stop driving or riding your bike, take time out walk and look around.


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## sailaway (Mar 12, 2009)

Rody said:


> The elderberry bushes got killed off by the railroad this spring so there's no elderberry jelly this year.
> 
> I do know of several patches of persimmon trees but it's a bit too late for me to get any now. The deer have likely cleaned them out. The few walnut trees get swarmed by the locals. I do manage to get lots of wild onions in the spring and of course lots of dandelions out of my yard. I can't pick them back by the alley since my neighbor sprays his yard around once a week. He hates me because I let them grow and spread and I hate him for poisioning mine.
> 
> He litterily cuts his grass three times a week. I cut mine when I can't see the trees anymore.


Sounds like your neighbor is obsessive compulsive and you have a boaters lawn!


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## Riverdale (Oct 31, 2009)

Black walnuts, blackberries, elderberries.... on our property, along with musrooms-

My neighbor does not do ANYTHING with his apple trees, but lets me pick them . The ones on the ground become either cider or animal feed. We dehydrate or can or freeze the ones we pick.

Have a couple other people who let us have the black walnuts from their trees 'because they are a pain'

Have neighbors who raise potatoes and allow us to 'glean' from the feilds. Small 'taters, but several bushels from each field, and they are free!


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## TechAdmin (Oct 1, 2008)

I've never heard that. What's a boaters lawn?


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## NaeKid (Oct 17, 2008)

Dean said:


> I've never heard that. What's a boaters lawn?


Same as an off-roader's lawn - never taken care of, full of weeds, dried out horrible looking lawn that makes the neighbors cringe when they walk by ... looks kind of abandoned, but, someone actually lives there .. :sssh:


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