After you’ve grown your own peanuts, try turning them into homemade peanut butter! Our version is naturally sweetened with a touch of maple syrup, with a pinch of sea salt added for flavor. Don’t have homegrown peanuts? No problem – you can make this recipe with store-bought too. Preparing Homegrown Peanuts Start by shelling your…
Learn how to harvest and use Usnea, a gray-green forest lichen with medicinal benefits! Also includes recipes for usnea tincture, infused oil, salve, and wound powder. Usnea (Usnea spp), is also called beard lichen, lungs of the forest, or old man’s beard. It’s considered a cooling, drying herb and is valued for its powerful action…
Learn how to grow Antler Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum sensu lato) using an indoor grow kit. It’s a super easy way to produce your own medicinal mushrooms at home! While we selectively forage wild reishi mushrooms from our land, and also grow them on inoculated buried logs down near our creek, we can’t resist buying indoor…
Learn how to identify and harvest reishi mushrooms, plus how to dry and use for tea and tincture. Reishi’s distinctive look makes them friendly for the beginner mushroom hunter! There are multiple species of reishi worldwide – all are thought to have some forms of medicinal properties and none have poisonous lookalikes. Here at our…
Make a delicious jam using fresh or frozen maypop fruit! It tastes light, tangy, and tropical, and can be stored in your freezer. (No canning required!) Identifying Maypops Maypops are the green, egg-shaped fruits produced by our native passionflower (passiflora incarnata). Be sure to check out our article: Growing & Foraging Passionflower & Maypops to…
Our native passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) is a plant with many uses: it produces edible fruit called maypops, the leaves and buds have gentle calming properties, and the beautiful flowers are adored by pollinators! In fact, one specific butterfly, the Gulf Fritillary, relies on species of passionflower for its continued survival- it’s the only host plant…
This spicy pain salve recipe features pain-blocking cayenne, warming ginger, plus herbs to help your aches and pains. Spicy Salve is pretty much the most popular and oft-reached-for salve in our house. We especially love using it on sore muscles and back aches, leg aches from working at a computer for too long, or any…
Autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata), sometimes called Autumnberry, is an invasive shrub that produces loads of tangy but tasty berries each fall. When perfectly ripe, we like to eat them right off of the bush (you can chew the seeds or spit them out) and turn them into a delicious seasonal jelly. In this article, we’ll…
Learn how to make delicious autumn olive jelly! The flavor is unique and hard to describe, but we think it tastes somewhat like peach or apricot, with a hint of cherry. Around here, we have acres of invasive plants, including autumn olive, kudzu, Japanese knotweed, oriental bittersweet, and more. It’s a constant effort to keep…
You know that little bottle of paprika powder sitting in your spice cabinet right now? You can grow paprika peppers right in your own garden, and make your own! Growing Paprika Peppers First, you’ll need to grow some peppers. You will want to buy actual paprika pepper seeds to grow for this – look for…
Fans of garlic will love this easy and yummy dish made with freshly foraged chicken of the woods mushrooms! Chicken of the woods is a choice edible mushroom, that actually does taste a lot like chicken! This makes it a great stand-in for some of the recipes you’d normally use chicken in. For more about…
For the new mushroom hunter, Chicken of the Woods is one the easiest and most beginner friendly mushrooms to find. This choice edible mushroom will quickly become a favorite that you’ll look for every time you head into the woods! What is Chicken of the Woods? Chicken of the Woods is a polypore mushroom –…