PNW Week: Foraging Organic

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We are wrapping up the week of Proper Mountain Women in the Pacific Northwest with a few more posts, hope you enjoy them. I have enjoyed focusing on this beautiful area, I thought I had a crush on the Pacific Northwest before we decided to post about it and now I am totally in love. It's sort of been a virtual week long visit for me, remembering previous trips up there, and reading and discovering more about it online has been really fun for me.

The Pacific Northwest is so different from everywhere else, and I guess you could argue that every corner of America has their own unique vibe... but where else is this parody of a couple ordering "local chicken" sort of accurate?

Yeah, I've thought of moving to Portland or Seattle a few times... because I love it up there, but I don't know if I am passionate enough about where my chicken comes from to fit in. As a conservative christian woman, my political and religious beliefs couldn't be more opposite from the majority of my Portlandia and Seattleite friends and citizens.

But if I were homeless and had to forage for food... I would move to Seattle in a heartbeat.

Have you heard of the Beacon Food Forest? Read that link and discover Seattle's idea for a 7 acre "forest" in the middle of Beacon where people can come and pick free food... it will be the largest urban food forest on public land. Sounds like a magical Utopia, too good to be true, like Leslie Knope is behind it or something. I would love to live next to a free food forest. To read more about it, click here.

In late summer months, all around Washington there are wild berries to pick and eat. My brother ate them along on his bike rides as a missionary in Olympia, and at the beginning of August I snagged a few off some bushes at Gas Works Park. I liked this parenting article I found online called Summer Urban Foraging: Pick Wild Berries in Local Parks.

I once found the weirdest internet site, years ago when making your own website was bran new, where someone was trying to chart all the free edible plants around Provo. I thought it was hilarious... a bike trail where you could pick fruit and not get caught, genius. I wish it still existed. Well, the Pacific Northwest has the foraging thing locked down. There is a huge online community, and tons of resourses for those who would like to get in on the foraging scene.

Read about this magical place called Hylebos Blueberry Park, it used to be a blueberry farm, but now it's a public park.

To the delight of many proper mountain women, there are plenty of U-Pick Berry Farms in the Pacific Northwest. Doesn't spending a day out picking berries sound absolutely delightful?
Check this article out for Portland, and this article out for Seattle.


(berries at University District Farmers Market)

If I lived in the PNW I would practice making pies and jams every year with all that berry goodness. Doesn't that sound so proper mountain women-ly?

To read Amanda Jane's recipe for the easiest raspberry jam ever, CLICK HERE.