These crabapples I found a few blocks down are delicious! I've heard that crabapples are not good tasting, so I wonder if these are better because they are Chinese crabapples.
Not sure how to avoid eating the seeds though since they are so small, so I just tried not to chew too hard.
I do not understand why folks would plant #HorseChestnuts as #StreetTrees. If we are going to have spikey projectiles falling on people's heads, could we at least choose the non-poisonous variety?
My boss asked me "what new skills do you think web developers will need in two years", which gave me an opportunity to tell her about my recent efforts to learn urban foraging and how to identify edible plants in my neighborhood.
I'm 99% sure these are edible Hawthorne berries, but in case I'm wrong, it has been nice knowing you all!
Update, the #KousaDogwood fruit are delicious! However, I understand why people don't commonly eat them, considering the sweet flesh is sandwiched between a bitter skin and hard inedible pit.
However, they are absolutely perfect for mashing up and making into shrub (drinking vinegar that you can mix into carbonated water as flavoring). In fact, I just created my most delicious batch of shrub since #INNAJam announced they were closing and I started to mix my own.
Here's all the dried, retted #yucca bundled up on the left. On the right is the finished product from my last batch. Beautiful, strong, cream coloured fibres.
To get there now just requires a lot of manual working of the bundle, followed by lots of and lots brushing.
This isn't particularly hard, but it is time consuming, so it's best done with company, and definitely done outside (it produces lots of chaff).
If you've got a crafts fair, ren faire, or other outdoors event in #Narrm #Melbourne that's broadly aligned with my values and would benefit from a fibre processing demonstration, hit me up.
Otherwise I'll likely be cleaning and dressing these fibres the next time I'm camping or at a picnic with friends. ❤️
#fibre #fibreArt #NeolithicTech #solarpunk #foragingAustralia #urbanForaging
I feel like localharvest.org maybe used to be a site where users could contribute locations of publicly accessible fruit trees. I could be thinking of something else, but now it seems like a map of your local farmers markets.
This was one of the bookmarks in a folder named "Saving the World" probably circa 2002-2006
7/n
Mike McCaffrey 
Mike McCaffrey
AI6YR Ben
YouTube
Paul Fenwick
Eric R. Scott