The Gathering of the Fiddleheads and Ramps

I guess since it is our first official post, its makes sense to talk about our Fiddlehead

gathering. For those who don’t know, fiddleheads are baby ostrich ferns that are collected soon after they pop up out of the ground. It is sort of a rite of spring to keep checking the woods to see if they are up.  When they are, the ramps are usually ready as well.  Ramps are another wild edible that are very popular around here.  They are called a wild leek, but they have a bit more of a garlicky taste if you ask me.

We are lucky to have a very large area we can hunt.  This year however, we were a little late in getting out into the woods.  The main reason was that I had injured my back unloading a truckload of manure (I really need to make up a better story).  But for the most part, I’ve been laid up and Breanna knows that I don’t have enough self control to take it easy if we had gone into the woods before I was more on the mend. We went out today, but I wasn’t much help at all, and we didn’t get as large a haul as we had hoped, but that wasn’t all my fault.

The area we collect in is an island, or at least its a seasonal island and it is right next to one of our growing areas. It is owned by Breanna’s mother and step father and they let us gather all we wish as they only gather a small amount of the wild edibles for themselves.  It is on the edge of a river and when the water is high enough, it makes a seasonal river on the other side of the island as well.  Most of the time, this seasonal stream is a trickle, but last spring it was running pretty well and we had to wade across a frigid, fast moving river to get to our happy hunting grounds.

The island covers about ten acres, it is loaded with fiddleheads, and has a few acres of ramps growing on it. It is sort of a dream spot for gathering. So I hobbled along, and Breanna carried the bucket with the scissors and trowel.  I cant really bend down so she started cutting some fiddleheads and I wandered around taking pictures for this blog and making silly comments.  It was a beautiful day and we were very close to the ramp field.  Against doctors orders I took a trowel and started to pull out a few ramps.  Im paying for it at the moment as my back is aching, but I think I’ve already mentioned my lack of self control. The thing about ramps and fiddleheads is that you don’t want to over harvest.  You want to only take a few fiddleheads from each crown, and we try to thin out the clumps of ramps so that they grow bigger and have some room to spread out.  Its relaxing and on a warm spring day, next to the river, its easy to fall into a trance like state.  I had gathered a small handful of ramps and I didn’t see Breanna nearby, so I walked over to the edge of the island to check out the knotweed.

Knotweed is an invasive species but it is also edible.  It isn’t the most versatile plant in the world and you could probably never really eat enough to wipe out a stand of it.  It grows very thickly and it sort of resembles bamboo.  Last year we gathered some and pickled them, it basically tasted like a soft cardboard straw, pickled into tastelessness.  I think we only opened one jar and still have the rest on a shelf somewhere. Im sure we will pickle more this year.

After inspecting the knotweed, I saw Breanna standing in the middle of the ramps, so I walked over and dropped the ramps in the bucket, as I dropped them in, I noticed there weren’t many  fiddleheads in it.  I was about to say something about it when Breanna said “Don’t forget to keep an eye out for morels”.  At that a flash went off in my head, I had forgotten about the morels.  They are a very popular wild mushroom in the area and I had recently read that they were spotted in the county south of us, so it was reasonable to think they might be up around here.  Morels grow around dead ash trees, and there is one over there, and another over there, off I went.  I have never found one but we are both hoping to find some this year. I was scouring the ground, oblivious to the fact that I had been distracted, and it was all too easy.

What you need to know about my better half is that she has some mild obsessions.  One of them is collecting seeds.  Last year she collected quite a few seeds from many varieties of the plants we had grown and some of them are growing happily under lights as I write, waiting for their chance to be transplanted into the garden.  When I said she “collected quite a few”, what I meant was that she collected all she could find.  So if for some reason, all the Bronze fennel, Dill, and Cilantro were to disappear from the face of the earth, we could easily get the Northeast back up to its current level of those plants by the end of the year.

So what had just happened was, Breanna had distracted her slow witted boyfriend so she would be free to collect every ramp seed on the island.  She must have noticed some seeds and forgotten about the fiddleheads which would explain the deficient level of fiddleheads in the bucket. But after a scant 45 minutes of walking around, trying to identify dead trees, searching in the dead leaves around those trees, and trying to find mushrooms that look and awful lot like dead leaves themselves, my back was getting pretty sore.  I was close by Breanna again by this time.

“What are you doing?” I asked, suddenly realizing what had just happened

“Collecting a few seeds, you don’t have a small bag on you, do you?”

“No” I replied

“Too bad, this would be much easier if I had a bag or envelope or something” she said as she dumped some seeds into her breast pocket.

“Sorry” was all I could think to reply

“Ready to go?” she asked as if she were waiting for me to finish my mushroom hunt.

“Sure”

So we crossed back over the little stream with a handful of ramps, half a handful of fiddleheads and a pocket full of seeds.