Young forager (me), 1991
My mom and grandmas always maintained gardens, but as far as simply encountering things to nosh on out in the wild, this pretty much so never happened prior to living in Oulu, Finland. I just wasn’t really in tune with what was available in my communities to eat plant-wise. Part of that was my healthy dose of fear of getting poisoned by eating something not quite edible - I mean that is what happened in books and movies and such!
Of course there was a period of my life — probably not unlike many others’ — where I wanted to put everything in my mouth. Exhibit A:
A learning garden on St. Kitt’s for Vetrinary medicine students to teach them how to identify plants that will harm pets — my sister attended here for her DVM degree!
Following that brief period of see something, eat something, I quickly learned that it wasn’t a good idea to eat just anything that appeared to be edible. Between fears in the 90s of razor-laced Halloween candy and poisoned apples as depicted in Snow White, I learned that even food given to me could be dangerous, much less food simply encountered.
We would often go apple and berry picking in well-maintained orchards, but we rarely stumbled upon an unmanicured patch of berries or fruit tree. The one exception I can remember was picking crab apples from some trees near our new family home in the summer of 1998. We made a ton of apple butter with them and even went back subsequent years for a few summers.
My berry-picking friends from University (Mona and Valentine) in Oulu
In FInland I was finding all kinds of yummy forest berries — without, might I add, fear of being shot at for accidently wandering onto someone’s territory that they choose to defend with a weapon. Kiitos jokamiehenoikeudet! I found lingonberries, bilberries, and wild plums fairly regularly. Leena and Jorma (members of my original friendship family) had an apple tree or two in their backyard and Anneli (a member of my bonus friendship family) somehow was able to find sea buckthorn berries. Sure, I could go to the store or market and buy a basket of these treats either fresh or frozen, but there has never been anything quite like doing it myself. Lingonberry french toast was just better with puolukat that I had found alongside my favorite exercise trails. I found out that the blue berries I had been finding shortly after the lingonberries were actually not blueberries, but rather bilberries from my (now late) mentor Larry “Lauri” Saukko, after I enthusiastically shared that “I HAVE FOUND BLUEBERRIES” with my facebook audience. Bilberries are a similar size and shape, but are definitely different than blueberries, their flavor is more intense and they are softer and juicier than blueberries as we know them in America.
Wild strawberries from NW Wisconsin, 2020
Since returning from Oulu in 2015, I have made seasonal foraging a regular part of my American life. I have had the most luck near the family cabin in NW Wisconsin or at friends’ places in Northern Minnesota, but I have even been able to discover treats on the campus I work! The serviceberry/juneberry/wild-plum (among many other names, depending on geography) bushes are plentiful and everytime I pass one I eat three. Edible landscaping is an area I need to look into further!
What have been some of your most amazing foraging finds? Please comment below about this and let me know, if you’d like me to write more about this topic in this blog going forward. I am always up for suggestions!
Yhdessä eteenpäin! (Forward together)
—Elizabeth “Helvi” Brauer
At first, I used my hot pink Martinex Finnish berry bucket for foraging for Finnish treats at the store — I miss this bucket a lot.
