- Summer sunshine beams down on us and our growing food alike!
Early Summer
- In June, we embrace the bounty of fruits. Strawberries, cherries, and all our stone fruit are ripe. Stone fruits include apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums, and pluots.
- Cucumber, summer squash like zucchini, and melons are also in season.
- Towards the middle and end of June, seek out peppers, tomatoes, corn, and eggplant too.
- Seek out asparagus, artichokes, sweet peas and snap peas, pea shoots, spinach and other lettuce leaf, cilantro, and fava beans.
Honorable Harvest
While on the trail and foraging in wild places, I have been practicing Honorable Harvest. This is a concept rooted in indigenous knowledge that Opal Creek Ancient Forestry Center, the organization I work with, has adapted into a core of our teaching curriculum. We teach it on the first day of Outdoor School when introducing the practice of ID and eating on trail, and review it every day with the students.
- Ask permission from the organism and listen for the answer
- Harvest in a way that minimizes harm
- Don't harvest more than 10% of the organism patch
- Take only what you need, use everything you take
- Excersise gratitude
- Leave every place better than when you found it, and it will sustain us into the future