Foraging for Spring Edibles in the Mountains of Vermont | Catch & Cook Wild Trout

[Music] hey folks oh hello bread and Eddie here taking advantage of this beautiful late spring day to hike up into the mountains of Vermont to see if we can forage for some spring edibles we have a very rough plan today we're gonna try to find some ramps and try to find some fiddleheads and then we're gonna try to catch some trout and the screen that's down here each one of those things can be found in a generally different place and I think the first place that we're gonna go is since right next to the stream is we're gonna try to find some of these grants they like low-lying areas next to water and swampy areas so we're gonna hike around hike up the stream a bit able to find schools all right we've been following this stream up it's very damp right here on the side and I think we finally found somewhere else we've been having such a hard time because they are almost gone by they died back in the very late spring which is the time of year right now but we found something all right well here you can see the leaves are turning yellow they're starting to go by but this is what we're looking for the bulb is actually almost out of the ground here you can see I just moved the dirt away a little bit these are known as ramps otherwise known as wild leeks and the way you harvest them it's very very simple I'm just gonna take my jackknife out and we're gonna try to leave the root system in there as much as we can just cut them off like this there we have some wild leeks normally you'd be able to eat the greens as well but these are pretty gone by so we're just gonna eat the roots awesome we'll stick some more [Music] [Music] all right ramps check next we are gonna be on the search for some fiddleheads now we've been seeing them as we've been hiking up the river a little bit but they are just too full grown down here so we I think we need to hike up the mountain we can actually get quite a bit of elevation in a fairly short distance here it's very steep so we're gonna hike up and up and up hopefully the ferns will get younger and younger as we go up [Music] well we're still making our way up we finally found something that resembles the fiddlehead here unfortunately this is the wrong species we're looking for ostrich ferns and these are not them they're very fuzzy and completely cylindrical the ones that we're looking for are gonna have a brown paper on them and we'll have a rib on the inside hopefully if we find something we can show you that but these will leave a bad taste in your mouth let's keep going [Music] so as we're kind of walking along this trail we're seeing a lot of stinging metal which we've had many encounters with while metal detecting if it touches your skin it's like it burns for like a day and according to the field guides you can eat that you can cook it and leaves are delicious you can make nettle tea but man I don't have a dress I've never done it and I just the thought of having that stuff in your mouth does not sound like something I would want to put in my mouth so we're gonna skip it today maybe next year well we've hiked nearly to the top of the mountain I think it was in the 60s or the 70s there's actually a pretty bad forest fire here so it's all cleared out and it's beautiful it's all opened up in the summertime this is all ferns which is why I thought to come here so far though it's not the right species [Music] alright well we have been quite unsuccessful and trying to find the ostrich fern which is the most commonly harvested and eaten fern its kind you find at the supermarket but this here is what we call a wood fern there are significantly more bitter and they are not typically harvested to be eaten but it's all we're able to find out here so we're gonna go for it they'll be just fine in small quantities the hen the root ball is actually sometimes used to get rid of tapeworm which is pretty interesting so ethical practice of harvesting these is to take less than half it looks like we've got about I don't know seven or eight nine here so we're gonna take three this one this one and this one and these will be just fine to eat in small quantities after we cook them up they'll taste just fine so we're gonna try to find some more and keep on moving [Music] you [Music] [Music] all right well we are going to attempt to catch some trout now to get a little protein in our pan and the stream is right down here and right upstream from here there's this beautiful some old stack stone from an old mill that used to be up here so what a better place try to catch the trout going up through that we're gonna get our poles out I'm gonna get my pole out get my feet wet see if we can find some trout so this is a very small screen so we're gonna be catching pretty small trout I mean they don't get very big in here we'll catch a few to fill up our pan and if you look there's not really any like holes where they might be there anywhere there's just a little bit of flat water I'm gonna throw my room a couple times work our way upstream so I'm fishing upstream I just see a little glint of glass and we're not far from that stacked stone check it out I already pulled it out a little bit it's an ideal ball mason jar and check it out it still has its all hung up in the roots here complete wherever gas gets almost gone but heck yeah I'll take that I'm not exactly sure how old that is 1930s 1950s somewhere on there but heck I'll take that that's awesome mason jar treasure [Music] alright well put Eddie to work we got three small brookey's we both caught quite a few more but they're just too small we let them go not bad be a little meal and I put all of our wild leeks and fiddleheads mason jar I found I washed it first of course and we found this fire pit just right overlooking this beautiful waterfall we actually did catch one of the groupies right out of there then it goes up into this beautiful Canyon so Eddie the fire master is going to get us a fire going and I brought my cast-iron skillet which I seasoned to last night and burnt the heck out of my hands doing [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is different and I got my pocketknife me too that works it yes all right well I think the trout are done yeah this guy's definitely done oh my god it sounds like an onion ring delicious it's just like an onion I have one of these guys too no lose all our food Eddie I'd say uh a hard flavor to describe the fiddlehead it's like like a nutty asparagus you'll notice the trout got all you know twisty curvy and it's just because they're just so fresh like they were caught like 20 minutes ago and if you were to freeze them first and then cook them they would just lay flat the whole time but something about fresh fish they they do that when you cook them what do you think all right we're gonna take this off the fire now and have ourselves a Mountain meal [Music] all right folks well I hope you enjoyed that I did I did too that was a great way to spend the day in the woods in the mountains finding foods just growing out of the ground everywhere how many people do this anymore it used to be a way of life now it's a thing people do for fun alright folks thanks again next week we're gonna go look for treasure hopefully see you then [Music]

Channel: Green Mountain Metal Detecting

Views: 27,504

Rating: 4.9597507 out of 5

Keywords: treasure hunting, wild edibles, fiddleheads, wild leaks, ramps, trout, wild trout, catch and cook, adventure, hiking, fishing, campfire, fire making, bushcraft, self reliance, survival, nature, beauty, gmmd, vermont

Id: YWyNiP-CWKk

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 26 2019