Sitka Nature

It was a hazy but pleasantly warm afternoon when I rode my bike to check on a patch of feral strawberries that I found a couple of years ago (wild strawberries are in the area, but these are an escaped domestic variety) . Berries were already getting ripe three weeks ago, so I was hopeful that I would find enough to eat a few and maybe bring some home to eat later.

As I approached the patch, I could caught the sweet smell of ripe strawberries warmed and ripened by the sun of the past week. The first berries I found, I ate. Although not large, the berries were exceptionally juicy and sweet, much better than anything I’ve been able to buy in the store. Since I was little, I’ve had the tendency to eat as many as I pick, and the flavor of these berries made it easy to indulge, but that was no problem today, as the berries were abundant, and there were many more than I could possibly eat at once. I was definitely thankful I had taken a detour to grab a bag to collect them in.

No doubt I could have picked the half gallon of berries or so much quicker than the 2 hours I spent, but the peaceful surroundings invited a leisurely approach. I listened to the birds singing and insects flying as I crawled around through the bushes moving aside leaves and branches to find the red berries hiding underneath. Occasional engine noise was the only thing that interrupted the Swainson’s Thrushes, Fox Sparrows, Lincoln’s Sparrows, and warblers who were providing the music. Overall, it was a pleasant way to spend some time, and it’s hard to argue with the results.

This week’s wild food required a little more preparation than previous weeks. I thought it would be nice to have some spruce tip honey, but knew that it takes long enough to make, that it would not be possible to pick and prepare on Wednesday. Connor and Rowan had a day off from school Monday, so while we were at the beach we picked a quart or so of spruce tips. Later that night I worked on making the honey. As it turned out, I cooked it for too long and ended up with a syrup/honey that was too stiff to be conveniently used. (I couldn’t even spread it with a knife.) The next day I reheated it and mixed in more water, but this time I didn’t evaporate enough of the water off and it was more the consistency of light syrup than honey.

This week the Red Elderberries (Sambucus racemosa) have been blooming, and I had a recipe for elderberry flower fritters from Janice Schofield’s book, Discovering Wild Plants that I wanted to try and it seemed like they might go well with the spruce tip honey, so the kids and I picked some flowers. (Note that many parts of Red Elderberry are poisonous, but the flowers and berries, minus the seeds, are not.)

The recipe called for 4 cups of flowers, which were to be dipped in flour. We hadn’t picked quite that much, so I cut back on the batter ingredients slightly. I suspect I did not do it carefully enough and ended up with a batter that was thicker than it should have been. (This would have been easy to fix, had I done this before and realized what I needed.) As it turned out, I ran out of batter before running out of flowers, and the fritters were quite thick, consistently mostly of the bread-like fried batter.

The fritters were generally well-received, especially dipped in the spruce tip honey/syrup. Connor and Rowan said they mostly just like bread. Given the thickness of the fried batter, this is not surprising. I found the faint sour odor of the flowers an interesting part of the smell/taste mix along with the batter and spruce tip honey/syrup. Schofield says the fritters are not unlike fried clams, but that was not my experience. Perhaps with a lighter batter that allowed the flavor of the flowers a bit more room to expand, my impressions would have been different.

This week we picked Stream Violets (Viola glabella) for our wild food. Connor was a little bit over enthusiastic about his picking approach and managed to grab a fair amount of grass in with the handfuls of violets. We also ended up with a lot more stem than I might have been inclined to get, otherwise. Rowan did not want to pick at all, though in the end she did pick a couple.

Violets eaten straight by themselves have a bit of a peppery taste, but not too strong. We ate them in tacos (as an alternative to lettuce) and they worked pretty well for that.

Connor is especially fond of fishing and has been asking about going for quite a while. I finally got around to purchasing a fishing license today with plans to get up early with Connor to go fishing early tomorrow morning, but it was a nice evening and Connor suggested we go this evening, so I decide that would be okay.

It’s about the time of year the Dolly Varden are making their return to the sea after wintering in freshwater lakes. It is also the time when salmon fry are making their outmigration from rivers, so that provides a decent opportunity to fish for Dollies from the beach. When we arrived at Sage Beach to a falling tide, there was just enoug land showing to make it out to Sage Rock. We set up fishing from there. At first I cast a few times, then I got Connor set up and let him go. I went a short distance away and cast for a little while longer before helping Rowan.

Before too long, Connor had a fish. He had it on the rocks almost before I realized he even had a fish. It was not particularly large, but he was excited to catch it. He managed to get the hook out, and I did a hack-job of cleaning it. It was starting to get late, so I let Rowan cast a few more times while I cleaned, then I cast a few more times, getting one strike (but not hooking the fish) beore we packed up to go. Before leaving the beach we picked some Goose Tongue (Plantago maritima) to cook with the fish.

When we got home, I started a fire, and cooked the fish and goose tongue wrapped in foil together in the coals. The fish turned out quite tasty, but none of us cared much for the goose tongue. Connor commented that he’s liked all the greens we’ve picked and ate so far, but he didn’t like these.