Foraging for food while geocaching

[2cvdriver]

I was wondering if anyone ever had an exciting food find while geocaching? I talking about the wild kind: mushrooms, wild leeks (ramps), fiddleheads, watercress, and whatever other wild edible you may come across.

 

I regularly pick up wild leeks and watercress and are always on the lookout for more while caching in areas that may possibly hold such treasures.

 

No need to disclose where you made you find... I like to keep mine secret also

[+Ambrosia]

Huckleberries, blackberries, thimbleberries, currants...but I also tend to make waymarks outta things like that.

[+StarBrand]

Raspberries several times - and once we stumbled on an apricot tree in a most unusual place. They were juicy and at the peak of ripeness. Yummmmm

[+NorthWes]

Awesome raspberry caching at benchmark UW7561 and adjacent cache HEMLOCK 2.

My wife loves this spot as it always yields one of the first berry crops

of the season along Turnagain Arm, south of Anchorage Alaska.

Just up the road a bit there's a hillside of wild strawberries - a fairly rare treat!

 

Last year's raspberry crop - picked on July 30 2006 - this container was full when we left the site -

just ten minutes work (and an excellent benchmark recovery as well)!

[+sbell111]

Sometimes, you can find a fairly fresh hamster in a cache.

[+Mule Ears]

Awfully jealous of the wild raspberries. Here in the AZ desert, tempting forage is somewhat rare. There's edible stuff, sure, but it's mostly survival chow rather than a treat. One recent exception though--I ran into some perfectly ripe hackberries. When they're just right, the BB-sized yellow berries are subtly sweet and good.

[+wesleykey]

Sometimes, you can find a fairly fresh hamster in a cache.

 

We had a series of caches here at Burger King and McDonalds. Always good food near the caches.

[+BlueDeuce]

I have a cache on a trail that depending on the time of year has an abundance of Plums, Raspberries and Blackberries (Gooseberries and Mulberries too).

 

Edited September 26, 2007 by BlueDeuce

[+briansnat]

Blueberries are all over the place in northern NJ. Annoying raspberries too.

 

Interestingly enough I've noticed that blueberries taste a lot better in some areas than others. Maybe the soil?

 

I've encountered ramps and fiddleheads, but never harvested them.

 

I stay away from mushrooms after an "incident" with my mother-in-law who insisted a certain puff ball was delicious and safe to eat. She picked up a bunch, sliced them, breaded them, sauted them in butter and served them to the family. She was right about them being delicious, unfortunately she was wrong about the other part.

[+frizz]

A year ago I brought my wife with me to find a nearby cache, GCY3CX. While I found the cache, my wife discovered about 5 hickory trees that were just dropping their nuts. We filled two empty cache containers with hickory nuts, and came back the next day and filled a shopping bag. It took a lot of work to shell the nuts, but was worth it in the end.

[Suscrofa]

I don't know if you have this in the US but in Europe you got to be careful not to eat directly what you pick at ground floor (bluberries for ex.) because you can get "echinococose" a kind of worm foxes carries and expel in their urine. These worms will eat your liver !

 

As for mushroom, yes some are delicious and yes some are dangerous.

E few edible mushrooms are easy to identify, got to learn them and stick to these few.

Learn with an old expert. If he grew old, he is an expert !

 

BTW it is one of the purpose of my GPS, keep track of the best mushroom spots.

Edited September 26, 2007 by Suscrofa

[+Whitewater49]

Primarily Blackberries around here but there are wild figs in many of the ravines. I think a lot of them were left from the early gold mining camps. I'd like to learn more about a lot of the shrubs in the area, I know the Native Indians used to eat a lot of them.

A ton of acorns around right now if you are into that kind of thing.

[+9Key]

Blackberries are pretty abundant here in north Texas in late spring. They're real nice plants when they're loaded with berries but the rest of the year they're just nasty thorny vines that are hard to avoid.

Pecans are dropping from the trees this time of year. You can fill up a 5 gallon bucket of them pretty quickly in some of the good caching parks.

[+Team Crime Scene]

One of the best hikes I have gone on had a grapefruit tree 5 miles into the middle of the swamp. That was a great find..

[+Team Crime Scene]

One of the best hikes I have gone on had a grapefruit tree 5 miles into the middle of the swamp. That was a great find..

[+Team Crime Scene]

Is there a way to delete these posts when I fat finger them?

Edited September 26, 2007 by Team Crime Scene

[+team moxiepup]

We've found raspberries, black raspberries, wild strawberries and lots and lots of wild blueberries. A few times, we've run across asparagus growing wild, but so far, never in the spring when the spears are emerging. We've only run across the fully formed fronds. (Makes mental note to self to go back to those areas this spring. (Must remember... must remember...)

Edited September 26, 2007 by team moxiepup

[+Sioneva]

Well, I ate a bug the other day...

 

... but it was an accident. Not tasty.

[nobby.nobbs]

Plenty of blackberries and sloes are ready soon for sloe gin

Hazlenuts easy to locate, loads of mushrooms but I don't know enough to be happy eating any.

 

Simple rule, never eat anything picked below hip height.....

[+Kit Fox]

Mushroom Hunting - Geocaching Side-mission, Too many varieties to categorize?

 

Foraging Caches

 

Food Finds

 

GPS and Morel Mushrooms

[+avpas]

You can't eat them, but buckeyes are falling right now. I went caching with my son and nephews last weekend and collected enough for Necklaces all around!

 

O-H!

[+Lacomo]

I have found.

 

blackberries

gooseberries

raspberries

persimmons

wild strawberries

wild garlic or onions not sure which they were

mushrooms

hickory nuts

walnuts

watercress

several kinds of wild greens

sassafras

wild cherries, the're in my yard but I went past them to go geocaching.

wood sorrel

 

I havn't took time to harvest all of these while geocaching but they were there for the taking.

[+Ambrosia]

Eating huckleberries last fall at a cache:

 

[bogleman]

I always look for something to nibble on while out wandering around - the kids will work in a pinch.

 

Seriously, I tried getting a Waymarking category for wild mushrooms up and running but it went over like a ton of bricks. It's still open & looking.

[knowschad]

Found a whole bunch of King Bolete mushrooms (cepes or porcinis to you Frenchmen or Italians) last week while looking for a cache in northern MN.

 

I'm afraid that I put caching aside for the few weeks in May that the morels are coming up. I find the swag is better.

[+Moore9KSUcats]

We've found berries several times in Central Texas, and the pecans should be great this fall! We've had a very wet summer!

 

The last few weeks we found a few wild plums... the skin tends to be tough, but the flesh is great! Look for the ones that have that "frosted" look on them.

[+Harry Dolphin]

Blueberries!!!! But, Andy Bear says that if I keep eatng them, he'll give the bears my home adress for when they get hungry! (Yes, Brian, the flavor varies very much depending on location.)

I've also enjoyed the wineberries, blackberries, raspberries and even elderberries.

[Luckless]

There was a tree with crabapples in the park where I last went caching. It brought back memories of the time I helped my girlfriend peel a bunch of them so her mother could make crabapple jelly.

Edited September 26, 2007 by Luckless

[+Snoogans]

Blackberries are pretty abundant here in north Texas in late spring. They're real nice plants when they're loaded with berries but the rest of the year they're just nasty thorny vines that are hard to avoid.

Pecans are dropping from the trees this time of year. You can fill up a 5 gallon bucket of them pretty quickly in some of the good caching parks.

 

Never found any pecans, but I have a favorite blackberry patch (it's friggin HUGE) that I found cachin' in Memorial Park. I go back every year, given that blackberries go for like $7 a pound in the store.

 

If anyone likes to make their own wine, the muskadine grapes grow wild everywhere near my Row vs. Wade cache. They're not good fore eating , but they make the best wine I ever had and the ONLY wine that doesn't give me really bad reflux. It makes a pretty high alcohol content as well. My friend that owns the land RvW is on has his own wine label; Chateau Bubba. He always has about 25 gallons fermenting and another 150 bottles in the shed. Good stuff.

Edited September 27, 2007 by Snoogans

[+2qwerqE]

Giant puffball mushrooms! They are in season now. Last weekend, I found a group of them in Kickapoo State Park. I picked a couple of them, the largest was 23" around. Not big for the species, but it's been a very dry season.

 

Here's a pic of one I found in an Indianapolis park 2 years ago. 42" circumference, 6.5lbs! That was after the 05 hurricane season sent 3 soakers through Indiana in the space of about 3 weeks, including the remnants of Katrina. I took it home, and my cat checked it out. She is not a small kitty.

 

 

But then, it's not all about size. The little ones were very nice this year as well.

[+potshot]

The tastiest thing I've gorged on while caching in So. Cal is the prickly pears. I take a cheap bent wire style set of tongs with me to pick them and a self igniting propane pocket torch like the crackheads use to burn off the prickers before I bag them or try to eat them. If you don't remove the prickers before you bag them they'll destroy each other in transit. They're kind of out of season now and most are too ripe but they are best to pick in early summer.

 

Beware of the purple tongue syn drone that might last a day or more. Cook them down into a jam and eat it on toast and they don't stain your tongue as bad.

 

Happy Hunting!

[+"we two want to play too"]

We've found raspberries, black raspberries, wild strawberries and lots and lots of wild blueberries. A few times, we've run across asparagus growing wild, but so far, never in the spring when the spears are emerging. We've only run across the fully formed fronds. (Makes mental note to self to go back to those areas this spring. (Must remember... must remember...)

 

Around here, asparagus comes up 2 weeks after the first warm rain in the spring.

Sounds vague but it isn't.

 

Now that I can identify the fully grown, gone to seed plants, I keep threatening to mark their location on the GPSr so that I can come back.

 

I've been known to ruin a perfectly good roadtrip fast food lunch by snacking on:

blueberries

raspberries

blackberries

apples

pears

 

I'll pack up:

asparagus

leeks

morels

Mostly fresh Hamsters

 

I'm afraid to touch:

fiddleheads thay have little black buggies

anything that *could be* a crab apple. Can't positively ID so no way!

[+Mule Ears]

The tastiest thing I've gorged on while caching in So. Cal is the prickly pears. I take a cheap bent wire style set of tongs with me to pick them and a self igniting propane pocket torch like the crackheads use to burn off the prickers before I bag them or try to eat them. If you don't remove the prickers before you bag them they'll destroy each other in transit. They're kind of out of season now and most are too ripe but they are best to pick in early summer.

 

Beware of the purple tongue syn drone that might last a day or more. Cook them down into a jam and eat it on toast and they don't stain your tongue as bad.

 

Happy Hunting!

 

I've tried tunas (prickly pear fruit), but they taste like watermelon rind to me

 

On a different subject, maybe they haven't been fresh, but the hamsters I've had didn't taste anything like ham. Lots of horseradish is the only way to make 'em palatable.

Edited September 27, 2007 by Mule Ears

[+"we two want to play too"]

 

ohhhhhhhhhhhh, horseradish, mmmmmmmmmmm

[+Team Cotati]

Corn, watermelon, butterbeans, apples, bananas, dates and olives.

 

Those are my favos, fresh from Mother Nature's Horn of Plenty.

 

Simply can't be beat.

Edited September 28, 2007 by Team Cotati

[+simplyred]

I've gotten blueberries, raspberries and apples, but my favorite is fish, caught quite a few fish on my caching trips this year. Bring them home for supper.