Happy New Year!

January 05, 2020 by Kelsey Fast

For the past couple years I’ve spend a considerable amount of December hand making and writing our family holiday cards. I bought supplies and made a plan for this year as well, but about halfway through the month I realized I would never be done in time, and besides that there were so many other things calling my attention. Learning to let go and prioritizing has been a theme of our year since Baby Forager made her appearance nearly four weeks ahead of schedule (and thankfully with no serious complications).

All of that said, I missed sending the cards for the point of connection they create. So many of our friends are spread out all over the world and sending a tangible note to show how much we value them was a big part of why I made a point of sending out cards each year. It’s a small gesture, but one I felt was important to continue in some way. A dear friend I know shared her Christmas letter on her blog, and it suddenly clicked that I could, and should do something similar!

As I alluded to earlier, this year has been quite an adjustment now that our little family has grown by one. We also spent the year settling into our new rented apartment. That was quite a big change that brought some great things (a planned, intentional living space, not just a randomly configured basement retrofitted as a suite!) and some challenges (where to put all the plants and the massive piano?). In a lot of ways we still feel like we’re settling in since there has been so much change in such a short amount of time.

Along with the new baby, and newish house, this year also brought a newly minted Master’s degree for Mr. Forager. He’s been working toward this goal for the past five years so having that finished is a huge weight off all our minds! We’re so proud of him, and he’s looking forward to having more time to work on some other projects that have been sidelined these past years (new Abram’s Epilogue album is in the works!).

Little Forager is enjoying his last year at home before heading off to school next fall. I was warned how quickly littles grow up, but I still can’t quite believe it! In some ways we’re so ready for the change, but in others not at all!

As for me I’m looking forward to more music teaching, and obviously working further on this blog. It’s been a great year of exploring my city and the surrounding area, and I’m excited for even more amazing adventures next year!

Eat the Dandelions

April 15, 2019 by Kelsey Fast in Find

Spring is the season of flowers, rebirth, planting, and so many other wonderful things. I’ve also come to notice that it’s the season for people to talk about bees. As a forager, a gardener, and an environmentally concerned citizen of the planet, I am very happy when the general public also remembers that bees are important. Since they play a key role in most of our food production, bees and other pollinators are vital to our survival so we are right to be concerned about protecting their food sources and habitat.

This concern for the bees gets demonstrated in all sorts of ways. Just today I was shopping and samples of Honey Nut Cheerios were being given out (very difficult to eat that sample as you’re pushing your shopping cart), along with packets of sunflower seeds to plant to ‘save the bees’. They even changed the design on their box to show a blank silhouette where the cartoon bee would be, to remind you that your beloved breakfast cereal is dependent on the bees not going missing. This is all well and good - even practical by giving out the sunflower seed mix to plant.

The most common thing I’ve noticed these days is that people demonstrate their care for the bees in the same way they do for almost everything else: hitting ‘share’ on a Facebook meme.

I’m sure you’ve seen these kinds of posts. They usually make the rounds on social media this time of year saying something like:

“Dandelions are the first food for bees in the spring. Don‘t spray them with pesticides! ”

— Random Meme on Facebook

This concern for the environment is great, but can we find better ways of expressing it than just sharing a Facebook post? I see this kind of thing all the time for all sorts of issues - and occasionally I’ll share some things that I find important too - but I hope that I can also say I’m working in other ways to make a positive change in my world than just clicking one button online. In the end, I do hope that people are discouraged from spraying weed killer, and if the Facebook posts are helping that’s great.

There has been an offshoot of this making it’s way into conversations about foraging.

I still have so much to learn about foraging, but over the past few years the humble dandelion and I have developed what you might call a relationship. We’re both descended from European transplants, and have naturalized here in North America. I let them grow in/near my garden, and they grow huge (I take care of my soil) and feed me. You can eat the entire plant from flower to root, and it’s all delicious. I’ve written here about using them in pesto, and also adding them to egg noodles. All this doesn’t even mention the role they play in bringing beneficial insects to my plants. Basically, I love the dandelion. It really might be my favourite plant.

Bracelet is the sterling silver spoon bracelet from my shop.

There is a ‘rule of thirds’ in foraging - meaning that you take no more than a third of any given thing when you find it, and leave the rest to serve it’s purpose in nature. Exceptions would apply for invasive species (take it all), and the rare ones (take none). This sometimes gets combined with the advice about leaving the dandelions unsprayed for the bees, and people get very vocal (usually on the comments section on social media and blogs) about making sure you leave some dandelion blossoms for the bees when you pick some for yourself.

While there is nothing really harmful in this advice, I maintain that - for dandelions - it’s not really necessary. Dandelions are by no means the first or only food for bees in early spring. Here in Kamloops they are only just blooming, but the bees have been out and about foraging for a few weeks already. Don’t forget that dandelions are imports from Europe, so before they were here the pollinators had to have something available to survive until settlers brought them over! Dandelions are plentiful, and definitely valuable for many insect species (not just bees), but you’re not going to endanger the bees by picking too many of their blossoms. They also have a very long blooming season, and send up several flowering stalks at a time so even if you did pick every blossom you saw another would be waiting to shoot up and replace it.

I also don’t appreciate adding unnecessary barriers to people enjoying the nature around them. Dandelions are easy to identify and have no toxic lookalikes, so I like to encourage people who want to learn about foraging to start there. I wouldn’t want them to read one of those comments and feel unsure of whether or not they should pick them.

If those Facebook memes convince people to appreciate this amazing little plant that is awesome. Please don’t take this to mean that I approve of people using broadleaf herbicides on their yards. I just like to correct misinformation where I can. I also feel that encouraging people to eat the dandelions will discourage them from spraying them.

I’ll leave you with some encouragement to pick and eat dandelions without worrying about if you are destroying a fragile ecosystem. Enjoy them! They are as healthy and delicious as they are cheery and bright.

Wild saskatoons are very abundant locally and last year we picked a massive amount of them!

Foraging and Gardening Goals for 2019

January 14, 2019 by Kelsey Fast in Grow, Find

Dandelion leaves are very nutritious and abundant! Consider allowing them to grow in your yard and you’ll have the lowest maintenance food crop ever!

This year I have decided to pare down my goal setting just a little bit. I used to write out ten different goals for each of these categories, but I realized I wasn’t achieving even half of them. I also realized while looking over my goals for the past few years that I would write one or two larger scale general goals, and then the rest would be just about specific plants. While this isn’t a terrible way to set goals, I’ve found so many things - from weather, vacations, family growth, to other random surprises - can derail the search for growing or finding specific plants, and various things in my life kept doing just that. This year I have a new baby coming, and a smaller garden, so I figured five goals for each category would be a much more fulfilling way of going about things! We’ll see how I like that for this year and maybe next year I’ll do something different. Who knows!

The whole point of why I set these goals is so that I have some inspiration for the year going forward, not about the number of things I actually accomplish in the end or not. I hope you find some inspiration from my goals, and maybe you’ll set some of your own! If you do please let me know in the comments below because I’d love to hear about it!

I hear magnolia is edible, but it doesn’t grow a lot here. I’d love to try it some day since I saw so many people posting lovely things about it on their instagram feeds last year.

Foraging Goals

Learn more from the local indigenous community.

I feel really strongly that to forage ethically anywhere in North America you have to consider the fact that there is already so much history here of people and their relationship - sometimes even a spiritual relationship - to wild plants and resources. I’ve done small amounts of online research in the past, but I’d ideally love to learn more from actual people. if this is impossible I will definitely be seeking out other resources like books and museums. I feel like this is an important step as I continue to respectfully forage and explore in land that is unceded traditional Secwepemc territory.

Mushrooms

You might be thinking that you remember just reading me say that I wasn’t going to include specifics in my goals list this year, and you’d be correct, but I still want to include mushrooms as a goal of mine this year regardless. I’ve included this as a goal in my past lists, but aside from finding someone selling morels at the farmers’ market last spring, I haven’t really done much in this area. This is such a broad category that I have very little experience with, so even if I don’t end up going out and picking huge amounts to bring home and eat, I still want this to be a focus of learning for this year. One small thing I’ve been doing is to photograph and research the mushrooms I do come across, and I feel that has been a really great start. I missed my local opportunity to do a guided mushroom walk last year, so making one of those happen this fall is something I am very interested in.

With the help of the amazing Mushroom Identification group on Facebook, I think this is an old Turkey Tail mushroom that I came across last spring near the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, BC. Even in its old age it is still beautiful!

Fishing

I know this one is also kind of specific too, but we actually didn’t get out fishing once last year! I’m not totally sure how practical this will be now that we’re going to be a family of four, but I still want to make sure I give it a try this year. Or maybe it’s something I can delegate to Mr. Forager to go find a fishing buddy and bring back some of the delicious local trout that are abundant here! Either way I’d like to try to make it a priority to go out at least a few times this year.

Wild Staples

I definitely want to concentrate on this one more strongly this year. I am very curious about using acorns, and other plants - maybe even pine bark - to create wild flours. There are also other plans I’ve heard about but have very little experience with like cattails that are so useful and nutritious.

If you don’t want to keep dandelions in your yard consider digging up the plants rather than spraying for them. Every part of these little cheery flowers is edible from root to blossom!

Find more flavours.

This might be a bit of a catchall category, but one of the things that I have loved about this foraging journey I’ve been on is finding the new flavours of these local plants. Last year I got a chance to experiment with Douglas-fir cones, for example, and they turned out to be so delicious, and the cookies and flavoured sugar I made with them were so lovely. I’ve also been having so much fun with sumac in the kitchen, so I can’t wait to get out there and find some more delicious flavours to experiment with this year.

Haskap bushes in my old garden just as they start to get their leaves in the spring.

Garden Goals

Research container gardening.

If you’ve been following along with my blog over the past little while you’ll know that recently I’ve had to say goodbye to my garden of the past four seasons. This year’s garden will be a balcony one, so I am making it a priority to look into what container garden systems work best. I’ve had to consider a lot of different things so far since my deck is south facing, and there is no spigot for watering. I’ll be posting in a few weeks about the kinds of solutions we’ve come up with, and I can’t wait to share it all with you since I know I’m not the only one who would like to continue producing at least some food with only my balcony as garden space.

Research varieties that work best in small spaces and containers.

This one is very related to the above goal, but I felt it was different enough to be considered its own focus. Not only will my garden be dependent on coming up with a system that works (above goal), it will only be successful if I grow the right plants for my environment. I am actually a little bit excited about my new challenge, because I am going to get a whole lot more sun than I used to in my north facing, shady garden. I am thinking I might actually have some decent success with heat loving crops like tomatoes and peppers, and I can’t wait to see what happens!

Same view, after a few months of growing.

Continue to produce food.

This goal is very important to me. I know I’m not going to be able to do this on the scale that I am used to, but I still want my garden to be a way to provide at least a little bit of food for my family. I really like working with food crops - especially heirlooms and other interesting varieties. There will always be flowers in my garden too since I want to attract lots of pollinators and beneficial insects otherwise the food crops on my balcony will struggle.

Look into Community Garden options.

I’m not sure if this is something I’ll have time for with the new baby on the way, but I do know that there are lots of community gardens in town, so I’d like to at least look into it a little bit and see what kind of commitment would be involved. I rented a community garden plot one season, and it really didn’t work out, because of the location. I wasn’t able to get there as often as I wanted, and nothing I grew there thrived. After that experience, I know now what kind of things I would grow in a community plot, and what I would keep at home. I think it might be something I could handle if I was growing garlic, rhubarb, or other things that don’t need as much daily attention.

One of my springtime harvests from last year. Lots of leafy greens!

Grow lots of herbs.

This one will be very convenient to focus on for me, since a lot of herbs do well in smaller spaces, and that’s definitely what I’ll be working with! I also think they will help create a nice environment on my balcony, and help add a little bit of biodiversity to my other plants. This is one of the easiest ways I can still grow things to eat as well, since snipping some herbs from the balcony and bringing them right in to my kitchen is so easy. I’m excited about this goal, and am planning to cultivate a large collection!

Calendula blossoms harvested from my garden last summer.

Reflections on 2018

December 31, 2018 by Kelsey Fast

In the above collage I have what Instagram deems as my top nine posts of 2018. I think they are pretty good, and they hold a lot of memories, but I wanted to do a fuller reflection on my year and share a few other photos that might not have got as much attention based on Instagram’s algorithm, but were very special to me.

I read my 2017 reflections over again before starting to write this one, and was again struck by how busy December is. I had so many ideas and plans that will have to be put off for another time, but I’m really happy with what we were able to accomplish this year.

We had a lot of little trips throughout the year, and we were so happy to be able to take a flight to visit family in Manitoba. There were so many firsts in Little Forager’s second year, and we enjoyed soaking up every minute of them - especially his first real experiences with the ocean, and his first airplane trip!

This year was the first full year the A Forager’s Home Shop was open for business, and it was really nice to have that outlet for my creativity. I really enjoy making things for others, and I have been so blown away by your support in this endeavour! I look forward to what the coming year brings!

In addition to my regular topics, I also took more of a focus on eco-friendly home decor and/or organization on a budget on the blog. There are not a lot of gardening and foraging topics to cover in my area in the winter, so last year I shared how I redid my bedroom spending only $10. I also was able to feature a few of my products in there including the now out of stock autumn forage wreath, and the golden pinecone garland (still in stock and available in gold or silver via the link to the right).

I was able to make so many beautiful wreaths for the shop this year! Some of them were absolutely one of a kind, and will not be made again, others I will probably recreate like the sagebrush wreath and twig wreaths below. The Autumn Forage Wreath (pictured above in my bedroom), and the Summer Forage Wreath (pictured below, second from the right) were made from what was available at the time, and while I might make something like them again, I won’t be able to exactly recreate them. You can shop the current wreath collection by clicking here.

I was also able to work on lots of items from recycled fabric this year, and that gave me a lot of joy. I get my fabric scraps from various groups that are doing really worthy work. Some of them come from a few of the ladies that are a part of my Church’s “Sewing for Dignity” group that makes clothing, baby blankets, and feminine hygiene packs for underprivileged communities. Some also come from my Grandma who is a part of her Church’s used clothing ministry and helps sort out what is quality, and what is unusable from the various donations they get. Previously all of these bits would have just become garbage, so I am happy to give them life as useful, beautiful objects.

I also got a chance to be a vendor at the inaugural season of the Dallas Barnhartvale Farmers’ Market this summer. It was a really great opportunity to meet a lot of local people, and the support from my community was incredible. I’d be absolutely happy to do it over again next season!

This year also involved a lot of winter! It snowed straight through until April, so we made great use of our snowshoes, and skates. Kamloops is very beautiful in the snow! This year Little Forager also began what might be an undying love of skating and hockey. He’s now a diehard Blazer’s fan, and loves watching the Canucks on TV. This Christmas he got his own pair of tiny skates and is hard at work learning how to stay up by himself on them.

This year - unbeknownst to me - was my last season with my garden. I have so loved working on that project, and feeding my family with my own two hands. Balcony gardening is my future, and I am looking forward to the challenges and learning experiences that will bring. Even without the space I am used to, I will still be keeping the “grow” category of topics alive here on the blog.

2018 also featured a lot of recipes! I enjoyed writing the “meals from the pantry” series, and might pick that up again this winter if there is interest, and I also love creating and sharing the recipes I make from foraged ingredients. This is “A Forager’s Home”, after all!

If you have been reading this blog for the past little while you’ll know we recently had to move house. I was hoping to do some sort of “holiday home tour” this month and show off how we set up our new place, but our crazy schedule got the best of us, and all I have to show you are these few photos below.

We spent Christmas with my side of the family in my parents’ new place. This was the first year they had enough room for a full Christmas tree, and I have to say it made it feel a lot more like Christmastime knowing that my parents had their tree set up!

This photo of Little Forager sleeping in the glow of the Christmas tree is possibly a candidate for my absolute favourite photo of the year.

I’ve saved our biggest news of the year for last - although we’ve already shared it quite a bit so you might already know. This year we were so thrilled to find out that our little family would be growing by one in Spring of 2019! We are expecting a little girl to join us, and we couldn’t be more excited!

2018 was a complicated year, but filled to the brim with good things, and we can’t wait to see what 2019 has in store for us! How was your year? I’d love to hear how things were for you in the comments.

Little Forager watering the garden in his awesome swim diaper from Nuggles.

Goodbye Garden

November 05, 2018 by Kelsey Fast in Grow

Some of you who follow my Instagram or other social feeds might already know we have moved. Part of this move means saying goodbye to my garden of 4 years, and starting a new life as a balcony gardener. This post is going to be on the photo heavy side, because I don’t really have a lot to say about our change. I’ll continue to garden in this new way, and keep writing about it here although the topics will be even more focused on small space and container gardening. Nothing else about the blog will change other than the “Grow” topic, since I am more than able to continue with the “Find, Eat, and Make” categories that I normally write about.

We’ll miss our time here - especially the incredible views - but we’re looking forward to settling in to our new place, and tackling the challenges that come with growing plants on a balcony.

I’ll be updating more about our new place soon, and there is also new stuff coming down the pipe for the A Forager’s Home Shop (specifically winter/Christmas related things) so stay tuned here for updates! It’s been a little while since I last updated this blog, but moving has really commanded all my attention! I’m looking forward to getting back in the swing of things again now that we are almost settled in.

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