I love to forage! And fall tends to be the time to do it. It is still a little early to collect most of the nuts but I considered this a scouting mission. Here is what I came home with:

Hickory Nuts

– top left are so delicious. As the shell dries up in fall the outer husk will crack open or even fall off leaving the inner nut much more accessible. I won’t be able to forage these for another month or so.

English Walnuts

– top middle are so much better than black walnuts and so much harder to find around niagara. Black walnuts are everywhere. The english version are much easier to open and to get the meat out. The flesh on the outside of the nut dries up and starts to fall off it in the fall making the nut easy to access.

Black Walnut

– right is something I will have to dedicate its own post to. It has a stronger flavor than and English walnut and is delicious. It can be a bit of a task to process so many people leave them for the squirrels but that makes them prime for foraging.

Chestnuts

– 3 spikey things beside the Black walnut. These will turn brown in the fall and that is when you know they are ready to be harvested. The spikes are very pointy and painful! For some reason when i saw them on the tree they looked so much more friendly. We started calling it the “Fuzzy Lorax Tree” because it looked like something from a Dr Seuss book but now I think of them more as “Spiky Nuts of Death”. Jonny refers to the as “Tree Urchin” which I thought was pretty clever and a lot nicer than my name. Not to worry, when they are ready they are much easier to handle.

Wild Garlic

– bottom are tiny little cloves packed with A LOT of flavor. These were ready to be picked already. The stalk holding them was dried up and they were easily removed. A little goes a long way with these guys.

Wild Pecans

– middle are so tasty and so small. I am not sure these would be worth the effort for the amount of meat you get from them but I can’t help myself. I collected a few off the side of the road and snacked on them right away.

I also scored a lot of apples. i ate a few of them while out foraging. I suggest trying an apple from each tree before taking too many. Some trees produce significantly better apples than others when you are dealing with wild trees.

Other Pictures from my foraging adventure: (click on the image to see very large detailed version of the pics)