#learn to forage

[keruukat]

Buy plan B and Ella (plan B for over 200lbs) before they’re taken off the market.

If possible, stockpile prescription medicine. Especially ones you take daily. There’s a few I have stockpiled just because I forgot to take them enough times it built up, but there’s some I can’t do that to without Issues, so do what you can, and if you trust your doctor communicate. This way you won’t be shit out of luck if the price rises beyond what you can afford.

Learn how to garden! You can grow things as long as you have a window or can afford a decent quality grow light. There are vegetables suited to small spaces, and if all you have is a window box, grow herbs! Ensure you have a source of food as health codes become less and less restrictive.

Related, but if you know of a patch of land that doesn’t use pesticides, learn to forage! Dandelion greens, and clover, are both very nutritious and good for beginners. I don’t have access to very much land, but I’m lucky in the fact I have access at all. But even just 20 square feet has yielded enough dandelion and violet greens for around 2 side dishes, more if you supplement with spinach or collard greens or something. Hell, if you have a community garden in your area, ask the owners of some of the plots if you can weed for them. As long as you have a discerning eye and/or stick to beginner foragables with no poisonous lookalikes, you’re golden.

Pick up an offline hobby. Arts, crafts, exercise… anything you can do to engage yourself outside of the online hellscape. I recently picked up crochet!

Make more plans with irl friends, if you have them. I’m working on setting up a potluck ramen bar with 3 of my IRLs, plus I’m fixing a book for one of my friend’s sisters, and I have plans to meet up at a local coffee shop and crochet together as we catch up! If your friends are open to it and if you don’t have sensory issues, hug them, lean on them, touch them. Human contact, physical contact, is important for keeping yourself happy and sane.

If you don’t have IRL friends, then set aside a time to hop on a voice call and do shit with your cameras on and shoot the breeze, or play a game together. Any game. My college friends are scattered all around the state right now, but we find time to play Stardew, or Minecraft, or risk of rain together and I love it. Human contact is important to keep your sanity!

everything is awful right now so im making a 4 year survival plan, put in the tags any ideas you have

my ideas so far:

trust self & focus on values

get new copies of govt. papers

medical history binder

avoid self censorship

get high quality masks

research where my data is being shared

care for body as if theres already no healthcare

buy condoms

make sure vaxxes are up to date

self defense classes

renew passport

reblogs for a bigger idea pool would be very appreciated

don't kill yrself im so serious that is exactly what the government wants you to do stay alive out of spite even if yr miserable (& you will be) (joy exists in and amongst grief)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dungeon Meshi: The RPG

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching quarterly mini-classes! These will be replacing the quarterly chapbooks I was writing, and they will be available to everyone free of charge, whether live, or as a YouTube video afterward. 

If you've been following my social media over the past several months, you're likely familiar with my criticisms of AI foraging guides that have popped up on Amazon in the past year or so. In this free mini-class I'll show you just what's in these questionable sources created with programs like ChatGPT and MidJourney. Just how accurate--or dangerous--is the information in them? How can you tell when a book is written by AI rather than a real, live person? And what's being done to stop the spread of potentially fatal misinformation?  

This free mini-class will be held on Sunday, June 16 at 11am PST and last about an hour. The class will be recorded and the recording made available on my YouTube channel afterward for those unable to go to the live class. To attend live, please RSVP at rebeccathenaturalist(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll email you the Zoom link; space is limited and RSVPs help me gauge how many people will be attending live, so the sooner you RSVP the better!

(Reblogs very much appreciated!)

[scholarastrid]

The blackberries are growing!

Old Market, Bristol, July 2024

[enbycrip]

Folks, if you are talking about or sharing anything about “native plants”, please mention *your* location and *where* the plants are native to, not only country-wise but environment-wise.

So many people are learning about rewilding, gathering, foraging and gardening for food in harmony with the environment entirely online. Making your information clear for those people takes you little effort and limits confusion and misinformation getting out there.

The internet isn’t only “not just America”; many nations contain different environments with materially different conditions.

I live in Scotland. Most of the gardening and foraging information I get in the UK is calibrated for the south of England, which is a really different environment from mine - spring can come up to a month later and the south is semi-arid, which Scotland is *not*.

These days I actually look at a lot of Danish and Swedish gardening advice because their environment is a lot closer to mine. And that’s within one small nation. The world is wide and full of incredible diversity.

I am seeing UK-based pages sharing information about “native lawns” which contain plants from arid areas of the US because there’s no specificity in the original post. A small amount of information in the post, even a few lines, about locations, environments, context and goals would prevent this sort of confusion and incorrect information from spreading.

A lot of people are really enthusiastic and ready to be engaged in gardening for food, rewilding, gardening in harmony with the environment, soil preservation etc, but confusion and feeling they can’t trust information sources can really kill that. Make it easy for people new to the movement where you can, please.

ID: some photos of my native rewilded lawn from Scotland, UK, containing buttercups with butterfly eggs on them, yellow rattle, a willow tree, wild orchids, and many different grasses, and my small garden pond upcycled from a Belfast Sink surrounded by wild grasses, ladies’ mantle and wild geraniums and with woundwort and pondweed growing in it. There is a short path mowed in the lawn to allow safe passage of mobility devices and a wooden bench sitting in the long grass. A somewhat overgrown gravel drive and a front door with three steps up to it can be seen. The photos were taken in early June 2023.

[ookaookaooka]

the ranch i used to go to camp at as a kid and still volunteer at occasionally (which is now more like a nature preserve slash ranch slash camp slash cemetery) has been working on a forestry project for a long time and now after ten years (TEN YEARS) was finally able to do a controlled burn 🥹🥹🥹🥹 i'm gonna cry im so happy

[frogonamelon]

It's that time of year again where it gets a little warmer and I remember that Amphibia is a show I very much enjoy thinking about. Have some Anne outfits, as a treat <3

If you would like to see what aspect of headcanon/ au worldbuilding had consumed my consciousness like a pestering maggot, feel free to continue below.

Hello! Welcome to I focus on researching one very specific detail until I burn out!

My entire day has been consumed by figuring out how Amphibia's farming works. Like... amphibians are carnivores why do they have farms?

Well, I'll tell you why! The Plantars grow animal feed for predominantly crickets but also others such as silkworms, spiders, snails, etc. They grow produce like cabbage, mushrooms, parsnips, potatoes, dandelions, and turnips as well as heartfruit, a fruit not found on Earth.

In the past, the original amphibian hunter/gatherer societies found that mealworms were attracted to fallen heartfruit, among others. They began to use this knowledge to make traps and eventually began both containing the worms as well as growing the fruit.

Despite mealworms historical prominence in the farming and feeding of Amphibia, crickets are more popular nowadays due to their higher levels of protein. They also began growing a larger variety of produce to further increase efficiency.

Heartfruit is a kind of tree grown fruit with the color of a raspberry, size of a kumquat, and shape of a peach (hence the name). The Plantar's orchard is the only producer of this fruit as its traditionally significant but not necessary for frog kind. They are Anne's personal favorite of the Plantar's produce, being chalk full of nutrients and somehow feels nostalgic to her.

Speaking of Anne, she survives mostly on the Plantar's produce along with cricket meat (knowing that she can at least eat crickets).

After discovering that the amphibians hibernate, she begins to plant pole beans, blueberries, elderberries, and other produce and herbs in her greenhouse to cultivate while she forages and stockpiles for winter. She preps and stores wild rice, pecans, and sunflower seeds (discovered through trial and error). She keeps spare root veggies and other product in the basement. The Plantars help her do this, once they understand the situation, drying heartfruit and salting and smoking fish as well as making jerky out of bugs that they know she can have.

Anne's gonna learn to survive, even if the first winter is especially hard.

[frozenartscapes]

EdenAU idea where Loid/Twilight - one of WISE's youngest agents - is assigned to go undercover as a student in Ostania's Eden Academy to look into a few of the students most likely to go into politics. It's all going fine until one day when his gym class has a "wilderness survival" excursion way out on the grounds and he runs into this weird girl he's never seen before. She's about his age - maybe a little younger - but is decidedly not a student (evidenced from her lack of uniform, messy hair, and all the scrapes and bruises). Despite her wild appearance she was really nice and they ended up foraging for mushrooms together. But when he went back to his group no one believed him when he mentioned a strange girl he found in the woods.

He then keeps running into her. Turns out her name is Yor, and that she lives in the city with her brother. They moved there after their parents died and it's sometimes still hard to buy all the food they need so she often goes foraging on Eden's grounds (since it's the largest natural greenspace still within the city proper). He does try to convince Franky that she's real but there's always some kind of wacky circumstance that keeps her from being revealed to the other students. Loid is even starting to wonder if he actually saw her or if all the stress has finally gotten to him.

[mycoblogg]

freaky fungi fact : entomopathogenic fungi !!

entomopathogenic fungi are fungi that can kill or seriously disable insects.

this group of fungi lives in the soil & infects insects by penetrating their bodies to feed on them, & eventually kill them. they are sorted into five divisions (ascomycota, zygomycota, deuteromycota, oomycota & chytridiomycota), each with their own properties.

they have a big impact on insect population dynamics in soil.

there are currently over 800 different entomopathogenic fungi that have been identified.

below the cut are some images of insects that have been infected. CW for animal death + bugs / other critters + just general disturbing imagery.

a beetle parasitised by an unnamed entomopathogenic fungus. [source]

a cicada parasitised by the massospora cicadina fungus. [source]

a spider parasitised by an unnamed entomopathogenic fungus. [source]

[the lovely user who asked me to talk about this : source<3]

[foundfeast]

I technically got these from a CSA. But i could have foraged them... This was my first time cooking fiddleheads!!! They were SO GOOD.

[balkanradfem]

So, since the gardening season was unsuccessful, and really sad, I've been dreaming of starting new seeds. I've decided, this time, I'm going to plant so many tomatoes that nothing will be able to prevent the tomato harvest. It's gonna be all tomato garden, 40+ tomato plants, I'll build shelters for them in case of hail, weave nets, I'm ready, let's do this.

However, it's October, and there's precious little I can do in October to start plants; if I germinate anything right now, there won't be enough sun for it to grow, and it will pout and die </3. It happens every year when I stubbornly plant basil and it checks out the daylight levels and decides to nope out of that situation.

So, instead, what I'm doing, is still learning about mushrooms! I'm going to the forest regularly and collecting anything that could possibly be edible, and trying it out. I've been lucky to find so many edible boletes, I've been drying them in the summer and I have a great dried mushroom stash, which will prove very valuable during the winter.

Now there's a mushroom that grows when nothing else is really available, the latin name is 'Neoboletus luridiformis' and it looks like this:

Cool, right? A red bolete mushroom. She's called Scarletina Bolete. Looks poisonous. However, sources claim that this mushroom is edible, granted it's cooked first. I've been sheepish to try it because it's so red, and there are red boletes that are 100% poisonous, so this is just a health risk. You can check if the mushroom is this one because it stains blue and black when you cut it, and mine do. This is how it looks like cut:

I mean that does look extremely unappetizing but it says right there on wikipedia that it's edible:

hmm so anyway, I've finally decided to stop being a coward, and I cooked the mushroom and had some yesterday! It's still not been a full 24 hours, but I'm faring well for now. If this turns to be a good food source, I'll be set for the entire year because this baby grows at all times in the forest.

Another cool thing I'm trying out is acorn pancakes. I discovered some people on youtube who are making acorn flour and then baking pancakes out of it, and I've been curious about acorns before, but now I'm set with instructions and knowledge on how to process it. Acorns were used as a source of flour before wheat was in use, and it was pretty great, because they didn't need to cut down forests, or plow the fields, or turn bunch of soil to dust; people can just collect acorns because oak trees are everywhere here. The only issue is that the acorns are filled with tannins, which is a chemical that produces a very bitter taste, which makes them not very tasty. However, people have also figured out how to ''wash the tannins out', and there's a process of boiling and throwing water away, or leaving them buried next to a riverbank for a year, in order to get them to taste good.

I haven't yet decided what route I'm going to take, but I collected some acorns last time I was in the forest:

I have to admit they feel very good to hold in hand. They're so nicely brown, almost chestnut in color, they're shiny, pleasant oval shape, and very heavy. It felt like I was holding something valuable, rich. Since they're a wild food, I know they have more nutrients in them than anything we developed ourselves, wild food generally has 3 times more nutrition than anything growing in a human-made garden.

I've also stumbled on a few acorns that have sprouted roots! I've collected them as well, and put them in a soil-filled container on my balcony, let's see if I can grow an oak tree. That would feel extremely cool to grow.

I'm also collecting and curing walnuts (apparently you can make a walnut butter out of them I did not know that), conkers (for the laundry detergent, I love them), nettle (drying into powder, using as a calcium supplement) and I've also found some violets growing at this time, so I collected the leaves for tea; they're medicinal for colds, flus and fevers.

I'm going to the forest again tomorrow, and hopefully I'll write another update about fun things I've found and trying out! Stay safe and don't follow my lead to eat weird things, unless you research them yourself.

[loubella77]

A square foot of turkey tail :)

A good tummy medicine. Helps gut health :) also helps reduce inflammation, balance the immune system, improves liver health, and improves heart health! I’m probably missing some but 🤷‍♀️

[mechaffeine]

I should be fishing for trout to eat instead of having a job

[lemon-grey]

lays down. stares at the ceiling. thinks about Dimitri eating weeds.

why does this man do this. I understand he cannot taste. But that doesn’t mean he automatically thinks he can eat every plant.

He’s a smart guy. He’s also royalty. At the point during which he eats weeds, he never has had to forage to survive (although presumably this was useful to him during the timeskip).

does he have pica? if so then why did they give Dimitri full on canon ptsd and psychosis and nerve damage and aguesia and a missing eye and also pica. bless his heart.

Why weeds sweetie. Why.

[macehysteria]

Need someone to invent a machine that let's people experience the kind of full body uncomfort that comes from having a ADHD productive feeling day only to be forced by the rules of society (my job) to use that productivity on dumb stuff (my job)

[rebeccathenaturalist]

The weather might still be a mess outside for a lot of us in temperate North America, but spring is going to be here in a month! In the meantime, I have plenty of online classes on nature identification, foraging, and other natural history topics (and some in-person options a little later in the year, too!) No prerequisites or degrees, needed; these are for everyone! You can check out my current schedule at https://rebeccalexa.com/class-schedule/