Every year I do a lot of canning — peaches, pickles, beans, sometimes beets, etc. This year we did peaches I got from the St. Jacob’s farmers’ market. All three students have been with me before. Interesting to see the progression of students; one of them who helped out actually graduated their masters at the same time as I did, then became a lecturer, and is now doing their PhD. What a progression to see through the years they’ve been coming along.
Took a couple of students (and a local person who expressed interest) foraging for ramps. Ramps are the first edible that grows in the bush each year. It’s sort of a cross between a leek, garlic, and onion. Tasty.
Every year Maple Tap Farms in New Dundee has an open house where you can tour their bush and syrup facilities — see how maple syrup is actually made. About a dozen of us attended this year, tried some candy, and saw the process.
So after the debacle a year or two ago where my wife’s ornamental pumpkins turned into a gardening nightmare and we started learning to process pumpkins, it looks like it’s an annual thing now. A UW student, a Laurier student, and their spouse turned about 40 pumpkins into a variety of pumpkin loaf, pumpkin pie, and a ton of pumpkin paste for muffins this winter.
When we canned pears in August, one of the students had us stop on the side of the road while she picked some wild crabapples. Then I started noticing - there’s crabapple trees absolutely everywhere on the side country roads. Like, hundreds of them. And the bushes where we hunt are full of them. All loaded with apples going unharvested. So i did some reading and found out that they’re perfectly fine to eat and for making apple related products. I asked permission from a farmer, grabbed 2 five gallon pails of apples (the one tree tasted surprisingly like a macintosh apple) and made apple butter. In 2024 I’ll be taking a bunch of students to harvest again, we’ll be making apple butter and apple pies.
My buddy has two huge old pear trees just laden with pears every year. Nobody touches them, they just fall on the ground and he runs over them with the lawn mower. This year we took some ladders, a few students, picked buckets full and made canned pears. Round about February they taste like sunshine, if they last that long. I had to drag the students away from all the farm cats, and feeding the horses some pears made the horses happy.
So in 2022 my spouse bought an ornamental pumpkin for the front step. After Halloween was over, I threw it into my raised bed garden to compost. Which, it did. But it also sprouted pumpkins in the spring. I thought I’d let it go and see what happened (not sure what I thought would happen, probably grow some pumpkins?). In any event, the pumpkin plant took off and consumed half my lawn. The neighbours would stop by and stare in amazement. My spouse was not pleased as it was all over the lawn.
In any event, I ended up with enough pumpkins to give away ornamental pumpkins to all my family and I had all the kids in the neighbourhood come by and pick a pumpkin for Halloween. And then I had some students over to process the pumpkins. We carved them up, baked them, processed them, then turned them into pumpkin pies and pumpkin spice loaf - delicious!
So one of the properties we forage at (thanks to some local kind farmers) logged their bush a few years ago. The result? Acres and acres of blackberries. It’s off the hook. I took students picking blackberries a few times in 2023 and made jam from the fruit. Here’s picks of one such trip.
Every spring the first plants up are fiddleheads and wild ramps. I take students out to harvest, then back to my place to cook and eat them. I’ll provide some fish or wild game to make the meal complete. Very satisfying!
Canning with Frank and Mukund. My famous dill pickles with dill I grow at home. Beet pickles, with beets I also grow at home, and spicy pickled beans from the garden as well.
The bean recipe calls for a half a teaspoon of red peppers. That’s way too spicy for me, so as I’m reading the recipe I turned to Mukund (who’s of Indian decent) to tell him to actually put in half that much spice…..only to see him putting in multiple teaspoons because the recipe didn’t call for enough! After some back and forth, we decided to split the jars in half; half with my ‘half spice’ and half with Mukunds, well, whatever the heck he was doing with too hot spices.
Every spring we go on the hunt for wild ramps (and we try and harvest them sustainably). This year we brought them back to grill on our charcoal BBQ (coated with some oil, salt and pepper, and a dash of lemon). Rounded out the meal with some of my world famous french fries and some moose steaks!
