Friday, April 17, 2009

Day 360 of our Green Year: Picking Wild Berries

Well, five days left! We are counting down and are amazed that the entire year is almost over.

Now, as for today's blog, it comes to us courtesy of Jenni who made a good suggestion about ways that we can have some great berries, but without the CO2 to get us the berries, or the plastic packaging that comes with those berries.

It involves picking berries, and before we go any further it is very important that you ONLY PICK BERRIES THAT YOU CAN IDENTIFY AS GOOD NOT POISONOUS. Don't be stupid and just grab a handful of berries that you find in the forest. If you don't know what the berry is, then don't eat it!


Now, in Rossland we had wild huckleberries growing all around us and when we would go on hikes we would pick them. They made great and healthy snacks for both us and the bears who frequented the area.

Now, where we are in Alberta, there are actually plenty of berries that we can eat, especially close to us along the banks of the North Saskatchewan (about two km away from us). As well, on our property there are even raspberry bushes growing! This is great because Layla and I are big fans of raspberries, and to find out we have some growing on this property was a great bit of good news.

So, instead of buying strawberries and other berries at the store and dealing with the travel CO2 and the packaging of those berries, we will instead pick them from the wild here to eat. We will only pick those we can identify as safe (as should everyone else) and we will only pick enough for a pie or a dish, never more than we should have lest we rob local wildlife of this wonderful delicacy.

A cool bit of news. Layla and I were getting a lunch at the organic cafe here and we saw a poster for the Earth Day event we are attending with an exhibit of Our Green Year. It was actually really cool because when we looked on the poster, we saw that we were labeled as special guests, which we thought was a really cool honor and something we were not expecting at all! Thanks Jennifer!

If you are in Stony Plain on April 20, come out and support this wonderful event at the Stony Plain Community Hall from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. It helps the local Youth Center and will have many great things to come out and check out! While you are there, drop by our table and say hi!