Wild harvest

I love to harvest the wild greens in the early spring, I adore the cat tails, and the daylilys, and later the elder flower recipes, followed by the elder berries.

Nothing is as good, though, as the fall harvest. Walking through the conservation areas with the deep, delicious smell of wild grapes on the air. This year we have a huge harvest due to the rains. The black walnuts, wild hazelnuts, black cherries, Jerusalem artichokes, and Autumn Olives. I'll be heading to the dairy this weekend to get some raw cream so I can use the black cherries to make a childhood favorite, black cherry ice cream. It's a taste that grows on you, as it's more musty than the cherries you get in the stores.

I'll be soaking my first harvest of hazelnuts today in a brine solution, to release the enzyme inhibitors they contain. Later, I'll dry them in my dehydrator. The next batch will be soaked and candied in our maple syrup for a healthy snack for the kid's lunches.

This year, I am going to do something more than just fruit leather with the autumn olive. We found an absolutely massive amount of them at the conservation area we had been gathering our groundnuts at. Each bush is literally touching the ground under it's own weight. Autumn olives are one of the highest contents of lycopene known. We are not much in our family for jellies and jams, so that leaves us with dried berries, pie fillings, frozen berries, and just berries in syrup. However, as the fruit leather is a favorite, and needs no added sugar other than it's natural sugars (if harvested after the first frost), we will be running both dehydrators full on for the next month or so as we try to make enough for the winter and to carry us through until next harvest. I also found an Autumn Olive wine recipe. It sounds delicious. This year will be my first attempt at making wine from wild grapes, so I think I will try this also. For those of you unfamiliar with Autumn Olive, it's a red berry with silver speckles on it, and it tastes a bit like raspberry, but after drying, it's very much like a grape-raspberry mix. Taste varies from bush to bush, and it can be astringent, so finding a good bush is important. It can be quite tart unless you harvest after the first freeze, when the sugars develop.

AUTUMN OLIVE WINE

* 4-5 pounds Autumn olive fruit
* 2 lbs granulated sugar
* 1¼ tsp yeast nutrient
* ¼ tsp tannin
* 1 crushed Campden tablet
* 1 tsp pectic enzyme.
* 3 qts water
* Lalvin RC212 (Bourgovin) wine yeast