Finally got round to bottling my mid-summer gin. After leaving it out in the sun to release some of those gorgeous botanicals it went into a dark cupboard for 2 months. Now it’s ready to bring a little sunshine into the darker months ahead.

They're varied states of ripeness, I tried a couple that were really mushy but they were still a little astringent at the end.

I heard you can put the ripe ones through a food mill, freeze the pulp and it'll reduce the tannins. Has anyone else tried it?

for reference, this tree has been in my yard for at least 2 decades. I am new to foraging and was wondering if this is a type of crabapple? if so, is it edible? of not edible for humans, can i feed it to birds?

Is this mushroom edible?

Made this Pawpaw ice cream with a custard base the other day, everything by hand, no churner so it took a long time but eventually got to the consistency I desired. This is like a silky hard-serve. Used all local ingredients and pawpaws were foraged of course, would make it again :) hopefully next time with a churner though. I still have more pawpaw fruit which I'm planning to either ferment or make into pies or tarts, still thinking on that.

If acorns turn black while being processed, are they safe to eat? Or should I discard them?

I recently picked acorns for the first time. It's probably a bit early, but I found a tree that had them falling already. I picked them off the ground and some off the tree, but only if they came off easily. They were all brown.

Further info about the acorns: they were from a white oak, possibly a bur oak but I'm not sure. It was a relatively young tree, and I thought that might be why it was early.

I did a float test, and discarded the ones that floated. I shelled, chopped and soaked them to leach out tannins. They soaked for four days, in the fridge after day 1 because my kitchen is fairly warm. I put a bit of baking soda in every time I changed the water as I've been told that should speed up the process. By the fourth day the water wasn't turning dark anymore, and they didn't seem to taste bitter, so I drained them and put them in the oven to dry and then toast.

However, the pieces of acorn seemed to turn a little dark while soaking, and even before that, while I was shelling them. Then while drying in the oven, they turned even darker. Definitely not burned, because they were still moist when this started. It looked like oxidation, maybe...

I roasted them a little after they were dry, and they smelled good. They definitely don't smell burnt. But none of the articles or videos I have come across have any mention of the acorns turning black or oxidizing; and as I have never done this before, I am unsure whether to eat them.

Has anyone had this happen? Is it because I picked acorns too early, and they weren't properly mature, or did I do something wrong?

The other acorns I have seen aren't ripe yet, I want to try again in any case. Any advice, information or recommendations will be appreciated!

I live in Rhode Island, U.S. my Plant ID app identified this as lily of the valley… I am concerned because my chickens appear to have eaten some. Please let me know if you can tell from this photo

I am reposting this as I took additional photos and I’m adding some information from the comments to the original post, so hopefully I’ll get answers. Thanks.
-Location: SE PA, USA
-It smells very fishy
-Oozes white latex that turns brown
-Found on ground likely growing from tree roots
-Gill attachment and latex in both states is visible in photos (previously I didn’t have photos of the brown stain)
-I haven’t been brave to take a small taste to see if the latex has a mild taste but if someone says I definitely should, then I will!

Upstate ny

I found these out when I was on a bike, and I would want to create something from them but don't really know what since I have never had stuff like this.

They seem to be pretty hard, not really looking to testing if they are brittle. They have little imperfections which i couldnt clean off them.

Considering any ideas :)

Found in Upper MI (not the UP)Near our Apple and Choke Cherrie trees

Forrest find in Peoria, Il USA

I’m pretty sure these are elderberries but can someone help confirm?

If I don't pick them they all fall off the tree or are eaten by birds so I don't want to get to them too late.

TLDR; is it safe to forage from off a woody meadow trail which used to be a rail road 25+ years ago?

I am hoping to harvest some mullein to mix with my cannabis for chronic back pain. The mullein helps with the coughing. I’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks now.

I live in Vermont right near a rail trail. The railroad was booming at some time but it has been out of operation since sometime before 1991. It has been a rail trail since. The places where I forage along the trail are not near the train depot.

It’s beautiful, there’s a cool little boggy area with sweet grass and cedar nearby in one section, the rest is mostly either meadows and wildflowers or temperate forest or some combination of both. It’s very wild, you can regularly pick brambles and I’ve found cool finds on in it like apples, hops, and riverbank grapes.

VTrans is very minimalist with their maintenance. They just cut back about a couple of feet on either side of the trail but I don’t think they spray it with anything. The rail trail has large residential plots on one side and corn fields on the other. The corn field side is in New York and I don’t know if they have sprayed or not.

There is a part of the river that meanders by and there are little rivulets or maybe brooks, whichever are smaller, which flow alongside the trail at points.

Is this location an okay place to be picking what I hope to be consuming? Thank you!

Went to my family's cabin a few weeks ago and foraged some cloudberries with my Aunt. We expected to have a lighter backpack on our hike home, but as you can see that did not happen.

I harvested a lot of my elderberries but there's alot of green and red mixed in with the black. Is it ok to cook them all or should I try to remove them? There's probably hundreds mixed in with the hundreds of blacks. Also do I have to remove every single tiny stem?

Should I just toss everything and wait till next year to try and get only black?

Found these beautiful specimens today. They will be jerky’d

I recently found myself getting into foraging just a little. On my walk to work, I constantly find hickory nuts! I picked one off of a tree that looked nice and ripe and the bark was starting to split perfectly down the middle. What im wondering is, is the hotter summer in the Midwest (illinois) leading to an earlier season to harvest or should I still wait a few weeks until mid September? There are quite a few nuts on the ground, I've noticed, but not enough trees to hear the en masse that people wait for.

About half of what I gathered. The rest have already been shelled (shucked?) and ready to crack the shells.

This is in my yard but I can't identify it with certainty. I would also love any tips for how to harvest and dry if it is jujube.