PREP Foraging for Survival

[Artificially Intelli]

There are some of us that know mushrooms very well, and the sense to stay away from the ones that we don't know. Some are very easy to identify, such as Morels, Chanterelles, white caps. There are also very simple ways to test an unknown mushroom. Mushroom foraging is very popular in my area, and I've heard of no one dying of ingesting any but it does take study.

Oh yea. Morel hunting season is a big deal here in Missouri. And they go for BIG bucks if you hit he jackpot and have some to sell.

 

[Samuel Adams]

How much fat on a squirrel?

And is it worth planting Giant Sunflowers for the number of squirrels that would visit?

I ask because one year I planted about a dozen giant sunflowers, and the squirrels did come and visit and decimate them pretty soon in short order.

Nothing a pellet to the head couldn’t contend with, but on the calorie and protein exchange; does it even make sense?

Yes.

We have walnuts.

Plenty.

I let the squirrels come and go, until the change of diet mood strikes me.

One squirrel,
one Dutch oven,
one wood burning stove,
half dozen onions, golf ball sized,
dozen potatoes, golf ball or a little bigger,
2 tablespoons your favorite cooking grease or oil,
salt to taste,
put it all in the pot (skin and gut the squirrel first….cutting the feet off is optional)
let slow cook on low to medium heat for 2-4 hours.
If it’s your first time wood stove cooking, keep a closer eye on it.

 

[Kathy in WV]

I always laugh at the people who say they will bug out to the mountains and live off the land. Okay maybe they are talking about the eastern mountains. In the high western mountains there are edible plants. But very little. My land has many pinyon pines which are the go to pine for pine nuts. The squirrels get all of them around here. We also have some scrub white oaks. Yes the squirrels eat all the acorns long before they even come close to falling. We also have many current bushes. And I do pick some of them but you have to do a lot of picking to get very much in your container.
We do have elderberries and if you are on top of things and have your spots picked out ahead of time and watch the ripening closely you can harvest a good amount.

I guess because squirrel is still heavily hunted here in WV, we have plenty on our property of nuts , greens and mushrooms. I keep an impressive supply of seeds as well for gardening and sprouting. There's a lot of edible greens that most folks don't even realize. It's obviously never going to be completely foolproof but I breed rabbits and chickens and if things look bad I'll be back into landrace hogs. After 2 years I'd miss my beef but oh well. I know a lot of you live like me where there's not much but forest for miles. I think those places are just easier. I don't think we'll starve but really who can ever be really sure, because well.....just life.

 

[ShadowMan]

DON'T FORGET ACORNS!! One thing we do have out here in abundance is various species of Oaks....and lots of acorns. If you can get them BEFORE the squirrels and deer. The indigenous Indians that lived here thrived on their Acorn harvests.

 

[Artificially Intelli]

Exactly. I don't believe anyone on this forum is depending on foraging alone, but it is well worth your time to learn what wild edibles are in your area, and how to use them.

Absolutely. I cover this in a manual I wrote for beginner preppers. Three types of food for when TSHTF. What you can store, what you can grow, and what you can gather. What you can gather is extremely important, but it's one leg of a three legged stool.

 

[hiwall]

I like eating squirrel and have eaten many of them. Lots of meat available here, including beef. It's the plant stuff that is in short supply.

 

[Artificially Intelli]

I easily identify it, by almost yearly walking into a mature patch of it, wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

Sandals help.

 

[Artificially Intelli]

DON'T FORGET ACORNS!! One thing we do have out here in abundance is various species of Oaks....and lots of acorns. If you can get them BEFORE the squirrels and deer. The indigenous Indians that lived here thrived on their Acorn harvests.

It's extremely important to add that there is a process that must be followed for acorns to be edible. You cannot eat these raw or even roasted. The tannic acid in them is poisonous and must be removed before they can be eaten. From your previous posts, I'm certain you're aware of this Shadowman. Since you brought up the subject, I'll leave it to you to expound on it. BTW, love your posts.

Artie

 

[West]

It's extremely important to add that there is a process that must be followed for acorns to be edible. You cannot eat these raw or even roasted. The tannic acid in them is poisonous and must be removed before they can be eaten. From your previous posts, I'm certain you're aware of this Shadowman. Since you brought up the subject, I'll leave it to you to expound on it. BTW, love your posts.

Artie

Agree with you, with one exception.

The Chinckapin oak acorns once dropped by the tree are edible. At least they have been by me. For over a decade now I've eat a handful at least every year that the trees in my hunting area usually drop. If roasted I bet there be even better. Don't think they have any tannic in them. Never gotten sick eating them.

I have tasted many different types of acorns, from Oregon, California, Colorado to Montana and now in Oklahoma. They all tasted like tannic and about made me sick with just a taste and spit out.

I know what needs to be done to get the tannic out, but I figure I'll do that when the SHTF. However for now and in the early fall I'll be hunting over the Chinckapin oaks, and eating their bounty raw even.

 

[1911user]

How much fat on a squirrel?

And is it worth planting Giant Sunflowers for the number of squirrels that would visit?

I ask because one year I planted about a dozen giant sunflowers, and the squirrels did come and visit and decimate them pretty soon in short order.

Nothing a pellet to the head couldn’t contend with, but on the calorie and protein exchange; does it even make sense?

I had a thread on food about three years ago. One factoid from it was a person needing about 25 squirrels per day to get 3500 calories.

 

[Samuel Adams]

Agree with you, with one exception.

The Chinckapin oak acorns once dropped by the tree are edible. At least they have been by me. For over a decade now I've eat a handful at least every year that the trees in my hunting area usually drop. If roasted I bet there be even better. Don't think they have any tannic in them. Never gotten sick eating them.

I have tasted many different types of acorns, from Oregon, California, Colorado to Montana and now in Oklahoma. They all tasted like tannic and about made me sick with just a taste.

I know what needs to be done to get the tannic out, but I figure I'll do that when the SHTF. However for now and in the early fall I'll be hunting over the Chinckapin oaks, and eating their bounty raw even.

Around these parts, it’s the bur oak that has the least tannin.

I’m with you on the notion that it would take one tough dude to OD on unprocessed acorn meats.

NASTY

 

[Old Gray Mare]

I let the squirrels come and go, until the change of diet mood strikes me.

One squirrel,
one Dutch oven,
one wood burning stove,
half dozen onions, golf ball sized,
dozen potatoes, golf ball or a little bigger,
2 tablespoons your favorite cooking grease or oil,
salt to taste,
put it all in the pot (skin and gut the squirrel first….cutting the feet off is optional)
let slow cook on low to medium heat for 2-4 hours.
If it’s your first time wood stove cooking, keep a closer eye on it.

My recipe for tree rat

Hunt and kill one furry tailed rat
Skin and gut
Try and pick out all the lead shot. Good luck.
Try and pick off all the stray hair sticking to the carcass. Give up.
Soak in salt water in a bowl in the fridge, resume trying to get fur off. Give up again.
Cook between two boards in a medium oven
Toss squirl. Eat the boards.

 

[Samuel Adams]

*as-of-yet-unavailable-to-TB-users-ultradramatic-facepalm-emoticon*

 

[West]

Around these parts, it’s the bur oak that has the least tannin.

I’m with you on the notion that it would take one tough dude to OD on unprocessed acorn meats.

NASTY

Hmm... I think we may have a few of those in my hunting area as well. There huge!

I'll try one or two next early fall or late fall.

 

[Samuel Adams]

Yup.

The huge aspect is their other positive attribute…..

 

[moldy]

Very few oaks here, but lots of siberian elm and cottonwoods. If I had to, I could forage for cattails, amaranth, goosefoot, thistle. Meat available would be mostly turkey, goose, duck - maybe a rare pheasant or fish. And turtle. Making it on forage alone would be very difficult.

 

[pauldingbabe]

How long until the forage is depleted?

How long will the number of people on this planet take to empty mother natures grocery store?

Without agriculture we slip backward bigly!

 

[jward]

but o my, wouldn't the next version o' homeo sapiens get to start off with some mighty enriched soil

How long until the forage is depleted?

How long will the number of people on this planet take to empty mother natures grocery store?

Without agriculture we slip backward bigly!

 

[West]

How long until the forage is depleted?

How long will the number of people on this planet take to empty mother natures grocery store?

Without agriculture we slip backward bigly!

Good point.

What the Oklahoma woods got going for us is all of the poison... ivory, sumac, oak, and weeds along with the tiny and big goat head stickers. The chiggers, ticks, fire ants, scorpions, poisonous spidders and snakes. And all of the pollens and cedar dust...

Took almost a decade and modern medicines with several shots of steroids for me to get use to. Been just over 5 years now and I haven't had to use modern medicine or had to get any shots.

Did have a chiggers bite go septic about 4 years ago. But I recall having a runny nose, and may have scratched the chiggers bite with snotty fingers, causing the infection. That required seeing the doctor.

So what I'm saying if I can hold out a year, the trespassers poaching my hunting area may die from a rash or allergy the first year.

 

[Old Gray Mare]

How long until the forage is depleted?

How long will the number of people on this planet take to empty mother natures grocery store?

Without agriculture we slip backward bigly!

Back in the 1970's there was a back to the land movement. Authors like Euell Gibbons pushed wild foraging. I noticed a lot of wild foods had be striped from many parks and woods close to suburban areas of the northeast coast. This was contrasted by some time spent in Ohio. There I noticed the parks and public walks lined with a variety of wild forage.

In more picked over areas I'd be looking for weeds: dandelion, plantain, black berry, raspberry, elderberry, Japanese knotweed. I'd keep an eye out for things like patches of rhubarb and ignored old fruit trees at historic sites. Offering to spruce up a garden at an historic church earned a friend some Egyptian walking onion starts.

 

[bracketquant]

To greatly simplify it...

Foraging is for vitamins and minerals.

Hunting, fishing (trapping) and gardening is for calories.

Our long term storage is probably 95% condensed calories. I also keep multivitamins on hand. "Weeds" like nettles, chickweed, lambsquarters, dandelion are valuable sources of vitamins, minerals and micronutrients.

By Spring, most self sufficient people, especially before canning and freezers, were starving, even if they still had plenty of grain, potatoes and other staples... because they were short on vitamins and micronutrients. That's why "spring tonics" were so popular, and why people were out as soon as the snow melted looking for the first bits of greens.

We have the ability to grow all our staples... even sugar, from sugar maples or sugar beets. However, experience taught us early on that stocking up and properly storing grains, pasta, sugar and salt was a far better use of our time and funds.

I've always tried to keep two years of sufficient calories and vitamins on hand, in the form of staples, and dried fruits and vegetables. We figure it will give us the cushion necessary if TSHTF, so we don't have to rely on producing everything necessary within the first year (something which would really be vital if TSHTF involved radiation)

Our experience as farmers taught us that there are never any guarantees. So having at least one extra years worth on hand is a good thing. We also can or freeze extra, over and above our normal expected needs for a year, any time we have a good crop. Most fruits and vegetables will keep their quality for 2-3 years, stored cool and in the dark. After that, pickier eaters will notice changes in flavor and texture, but it will still be edible and nutritious, although vitamin content will degrade over time.

This is the time of year we start looking at our inventory and planning the Spring planting. We definitely don't need to plant as many onions, and I can see I need to order more seed potatoes... we just don't get the yields here we are accustomed to. We're using up our older canned beans, and will be growing several bushels for canning this year.

Pigs will also be grown this year, after a year off, but we need to figure out grain prices... we may just grow 2-3 for our own use, due to cost. People just won't pay $6 a pound for pasture raised pork ( or they want to only buy bacon!) but our costs have been around $4 a pound, just for feed and the original cost of the piglets... before the grain price went up. I'm insisting on milking the cow this year... with the price of dairy in the store, even the men folk are on board with helping me get set up... I'm going to have to keep her with my horses, rather than pasturing her with the cattle, although DS was talking about setting up a mobile milking station that i could drive out to the pasture!

We'll use all the butterfat ourselves, and enough whole milk for fresh drinking (probably 1/2 gallon a day the way the k8ds drink it), but the skim milk will then be fed to the pigs... milk fed pork is fabulous, and it will help with the feed bill.

Now that we have a root cellar, we'll be growing more carrots, beets and cabbage for winter storage. I somehow have to figure out how to grow corn here... the soil is just so depleted, and we've been allocating most of the manure to the vegetable gardens and fruit trees. It's been a frustrating challenge, coming from our farm with 3 foot deep silt loam topsoil which we built up and managed for 40 years.

One last thing... the "Simple Life"... isn't!

Summerthyme

How much manure do the fruit trees really need?

 

[bracketquant]

Back in the 1970's there was a back to the land movement. Authors like Euell Gibbons pushed wild foraging. I noticed a lot of wild foods had be striped from many parks and woods close to suburban areas of the northeast coast. This was contrasted by some time spent in Ohio. There I noticed the parks and public walks lined with a variety of wild forage.

How long until the foliage is depleted?

I only forage for a few things that I'm good at foraging for. I know someone in their 90s who had been doing it for a long time. He told me that when some Chinese immigrants moved to our area, and discovered the wild plants, they would strip the area clean within two years. What they missed the first year, they would go back and get the rest the next year. That's how fragile the natural landscape is.

 

[summerthyme]

How much manure do the fruit trees really need?

A lot more than is in the depleted sand they're growing in. Our soil tests show essentially ZERO nitrogen! It was continuous chemical corn for at least 25-30 years before our son bought the place. It also is extremely low in organic matter.

Summerthyme

 

[Old Gray Mare]

How much manure do the fruit trees really need?

I'd fertilize in the spring not the fall. I would not want to encourage growth right before they go dormant. The other thing is one time I didn't fertilize, only hard pruned neglected bushed out overgrown apple tree and was amazed at the fruit production the next year.

 

[bracketquant]

A lot more than is in the depleted sand dryer growing in. Our soil tests show essentially ZERO nitrogen! It was continuous chemical corn for at least 25-30 years before our son bought the place. It also is extremely low in organic matter.

Summerthyme

So yes, your fruit trees need fert.

No need to apply near the trunk, I assume you already know. At the drip line and just outward, just like watering, if that is sometimes needed too.

While I don't know about the needs of all type of trees, many very large oaks and pines grow around here, with just a couple of inches of humus/soil, and all sand below that. I've found lowbush blueberries on a small humus "island", no more than 1/2 inch thick, surrounded by one hundred yards of pure sand in every direction. I have no idea how those plants make it.

 

[packyderms_wife]

Very few oaks here, but lots of siberian elm and cottonwoods. If I had to, I could forage for cattails, amaranth, goosefoot, thistle. Meat available would be mostly turkey, goose, duck - maybe a rare pheasant or fish. And turtle. Making it on forage alone would be very difficult.

what about wild hogs?

 

[Samuel Adams]

what about wild hogs?

What about ‘em ?

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e2RhMoLUDdU

 

[packyderms_wife]

What about ‘em ?

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e2RhMoLUDdU

I was thinking of the four legged variety, not the long pork variety!

 

[Bad Hand]

I am an instructo at primitive gatherings and have been for 31years. The people that write the books on plants and foreging are the instructors at these gatherings. If you want to learn from the you should attend these primitive gatherings like Rabbit Stick.

 

[Tessa]

I rode my horse and visited the old folks years ago. I would ask them what they did to survive in the old days.
A person can gather much knowledge from an older country person.

 

[GammaRat]

My problem is that I eat Kosher!

No squirrel
No bunnies
No catfish
No family pets

But on the plus side, I get all the grass hoppers I want!

 

[Luddite]

My problem is that I eat Kosher!

No squirrel
No bunnies
No catfish
No family pets

But on the plus side, I get all the grass hoppers I want!

I remembered from past comments you followed the law.

That definitely adds complications to meeting your caloric needs.

All the more reason to do everything possible to store up, and spread out your cache while things are plentiful.

Like 7 years worth.