WILDLY EDIBLE
Cottage-country foraging tour
Q Tell me what you did.
A I signed on to one of Carolyn Langdon’s wild-edibles tours, which she runs from Windfall Food Forest, the picturesque property near Minden she shares with her husband. For about 90 minutes, in teeming rain, our band of seven foragers trekked over a weed-rich rural road, an open field, even Carolyn’s expansive yard, all to gather plants commonly viewed as a nuisance. We then incorporated our finds into a tasty multi-course meal prepared in her farmhouse kitchen.
Q What kind of weeds are you talking about?
A Not the weed the government seeks to decriminalize, but just about everything else: ladies’ thumb, lamb’s quarters, sarsaparilla, Japanese knotweed. Carolyn assigned each of us a task. Mine was to gather 30 day lily buds; for others, it may have been red raspberry flowers or milkweed florets. Because we did things together, we learned about a range of plants.
Q But what if you don’t know what the plants look like?
A Some were experienced foragers, but Carolyn welcomed duffers like me. She’d point to specific plants, explaining the nutritional or medicinal properties of each. Sumac is rich in vitamin C, she said. St. John’s wort is an anti-depressant. Purslane is richer in omega-3 fatty acids than any leafy green vegetable. Cattail pollen provides testosterone to level out a man’s mood — a remedy I surely don’t need.
Q Was Carolyn one of those earnest true believers, then?
A Not at all. She was funny, engaging and full of contagious passion, as befits someone who was adviser to Naked and Afraid, a Discovery Channel series in which participants survived a three-week ordeal in the wild. She warned us not to destroy plants by taking too much: If wintergreen has three leaves, for example, pick just one. She opposes foraging on a commercial scale; Quebec’s wild leek population has collapsed because of harvesting for restaurants. She’s adamant we rethink how we tend gardens: “People throw out purslane, but we should move from weeding it to harvesting it.” And she insists there’s a local, more nutritious substitute for almost every food we import: “Lamb’s quarters is more nutritious than cabbage or spinach.” About 97 per cent of what grows wild is edible, she claims.
Q But I can’t believe these weeds are tasty.
A Neither did I. Then I ate lunch. The cattail pollen — not that I need it, remember — was used to thicken our gumbo, and was also mixed with goat cheese and lamb’s quarters for a delicious dip. Pennycress and sumac were married in the vinaigrette for our salad of day lilies and brown rice noodles. Cold soup, served in shot glasses, combined sour cherry juice with ladies’ thumb, wood sorrel and lamb’s quarters. Dessert was a custard pie akin to strawberry-rhubarb, but made with Japanese knotweed. One digestif was distilled with chaga, a rock-hard fungus that grows on birch trees.
Q How did you learn about this event?
A Through Yours Outdoors (yoursoutdoors.ca), an outfit that mounts day treks in the Haliburton Highlands. Their programs cover everything from rockhounding to making canoe paddles. The wild-edibles event I signed onto will be offered again in August, but variations that tack on other culinary activities, such as farm and winery visits, are also scheduled, and Carolyn also offers workshops on such topics as cooking with sumac, mushroom foraging, and digestifs and bitters making. Details are available by emailing windfallfoodforest@gmail.com
Q How do you get to Windfall Food Forest?
A The route meanders through picturesque Canadian Shield countryside. From Ottawa, take highways 417, 17 and 60 to Renfrew. Turn left onto Highway 132 (Munroe Avenue), and continue to just beyond Dacre, where you take Highway 41 to Denbigh, Highway 28 to Paudash, and Highway 118 to Haliburton. Head south through Haliburton on Highway 21; as you leave the village, turn left onto Gelert Road (there are traffic lights). About 19 kilometres later, turn right onto South Lake Road. Proceed five kilometres; turn right onto Bat Lake Road. You want the fourth driveway on your left (1079 Bat Lake Rd.). It takes a steady four hours to get there, so I drove up the night before and booked into the welcoming Sunny Rock Bed and Breakfast (sunnyrock.on.ca). It isn’t more than five minutes from Windfall. I was enchanted by its local wildlife — osprey to otters — and the sound of rushing water lulled me to sleep.