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To: greeneyes
greeneyes :" It was a common and ordinary way of life for country folk back when I grew up.
Hubby has that book Stalking the wild asparagus, and several others regarding wild edibles."

Yes, Euell Gibbons wrote "Stalking the Wild Asparagus", an that was my first introduction to foraging.
The book identified how to identify wild edibles through sketches, not photographs, and where to look; it's best to use a companion field book to verify identity.
On my first forage, I successfully found wild asparagus, wild chive, and spearmint in a farm hedgerow adjoining the then apartment house .

102 posted on 04/19/2017 11:57:51 AM PDT by Tilted Irish Kilt (Muslim & Spanish migrants are like Kudzu--> designed to overload the system= Cloward-Piven)
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To: Tilted Irish Kilt
"On my first forage, I successfully found wild asparagus, wild chive, and spearmint in a farm hedgerow adjoining the then apartment house."

When I was growing up in Michigan, we had about a two-mile stretch of roadway ditches that, in the spring and summer, were full of asparagus. My mother would drive us down to the far end and had us walk back to the house, picking asparagus and putting it into paper grocery bags. What we didn't eat fresh, she canned in Mason jars. As all five of us boys just loved asparagus, we made sure that none of us told anyone else about the bounty along that stretch of road. I'm sure that others knew about it and harvested some, but there was always multiple bagloads for us to pick when we went looking. Without that, I probably would have never had any asparagus until after I left home, as it was considered "very expensive" when purchased fresh or even in cans.

We also looked for bottles to turn in for deposit and, on occasion, found cash .. usually paper money .. that must have been blown out of passing cars. We used that to buy BBs and fishing tackle for our own use. We may have looked feral .. or, at least, what passed for "feral" in those days .. but we were all proper boys for the time.

103 posted on 04/19/2017 12:16:36 PM PDT by BlueLancer (Ex Scientia Tridens)
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