Gathering food

[marla]

Do you ever gather food? Our neighbor's tangerine tree hangs over our fence and we often take the ripe tangerines off it and eat them as snacks. We also have some walnut trees in a small grove near our house and will go there and gather them off the ground to bring back home and eat. Are there other foods like that which are easy to gather?

[PrincessPerky]

Not around my house! My ex step mother used to have mint in her pastures and apples in a neighbors yard. The mint made great jelly, and flavor in tea.

[SeeAPenny]

Hey, I'm all about free food sources....! : )

We never spray our yard, so every spring I make a point of picking, with the help of the kids, the first dandelion greens that come up (pick them before they flower or they'll be too bitter to eat). It's just for fun --although the greens are actually very nutritious (I find them particularly good cooked in lentil soup, but also fresh in salads). They can be harvested again in the fall -- after frost (when they lose their bitterness again).

When the dandelions do start to flower (which they do all at once), we gather the blossoms and make dandelion syrup (or jelly, if I have the pectin on hand). We also do this with violet blossoms -- which we also have lots of in our yard. The colors of syrup/jelly they make (sunny golden yellow, and the deepest purple ever) are REALLY striking....

A few years ago, the Chinese nanny of a neighbor was over, and recognized something growing wild in our yard and the yard next door as an asian vegetable of some sort -- very chive-like. She carefully picked it all for us, and I cooked it up in a stir-fry ...

We do have a few overgrown mulberry trees on our property -- but the berries are far too high up to reach! I would gather them for sure if I could (yes, they can be on the bland side -- but nothing a few squirts of fresh lemon juice can't liven up)....

We also have an aged apple tree that produces a bounty every other year. They are not baking apples (as I discovered when I tried making pie with them once), but I do have a juicer (given to me by a friend) so I gather them up and run them through that (sometimes canning the juice). And, they're not bad in sauce either...(this year ought to be a producing year, so I need to brace myself ......).

The church we go to has several dwarf crab apple trees. Their purpose is ornamental of course, but I've noticed they do produce a LOT of fruit -- heh, if it's not too obnoxious, I'm thinking of asking to gather them this year to make crab apple jelly....

[miclason]

LOL! when I was growing up, my grandmother had this GIGANTIC mango tree in her yard...we all ate mangoes, the whole family did (we are talking at least 5 or 6 different households!)...but there were still sooooo many, my grandma used to put them on top of the little fence around her house, so that the students from a nearby school could pick some on their way home! We also had a lemon tree, a native mango tree (these were really good to eat while still green, with lots of lemon and salt!...sluuurrp! I just made my own mouth water.... hmmmm...wonder if the old lady selling fruit downstairs has some green mangoes??)....

[amomof4]

I am a member of a gleaners club. I got about 100 lbs of potatoes this year. My church sisters all go for the apples. We make apple cider as a church. The rest of the apples is used for apple sauce & apple pie filling. We get as much as we want. We also get pumpkin after halloween. Also get other stuff.

I go to a u-pick for blueberries. I get them free by giving them back 1/2 of what I picked.

[mom-from-missouri]

We have numerous apple orchards in our area, and several u pick strawberry places. I usually hit them about every other year