We've got currants, in addition to blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. I also picked blackberries from the roadside just for something different. Our rhubarb died out for some unknown reason.

One group of foods that just disappeared from our grocery shelves during the pandemic was plant based foods s/a cashew yogurt and tofu, good spices and accents s/a nutritional yeast and chia seeds and healthier deli items s/a Chao and vegan sausages. It forced us to eat a more animal protein based diet...and the pounds came pouring on to my hips and thighs.

Many of the products are now back, but not all of them. I still can't find my favorite vegan cream cheese or yogurt and the herbs and spices never made it back. Regular tofu came back, but not tempeh or baked tofu. These are all things that I can now make at home, but it's time consuming. I'll have to send in a request for these products to the store manager, or make them myself. Other items like spices and food enhancers s/a nootch can now be ordered online from specialty.stores.

I have a kumquat tree that produces tons of fruit every year. Unfortunately I don't like kumquats and most people I've asked either don't know what they are or do know and don't care for them. It is a pretty tree though, with all the little orange fruit on it.

I love that word: Kumquat. It really is a fun word to say.

We have blackberries, huckle and blueberries, black raspberries, elderberries, pawpaw, wild grapes and Maypop fruits. In the fall we harvest Chinqupins, hickory and white oak acorns, dried they make a really good flour. The fruit we just eat as we walk our forest. Even our dog likes the huckleberry and blueberries. We had such an abundant supply of the huckle and blueberries this year that I froze some for eating later.

Oh...I'm interested in your harvesting of Chinquapins. We have a couple of trees on our property and I never thought to eat anything off of them. Please tell me more!

We also have various oaks and tons of acorns in the fall, but we don't harvest them either. I hope you'll expand on how you harvest and use them.

Harvesting Chinquapins is not for the faint of heart. We wear rubberized gloves to get the nuts from the opened burrs. Chinquapins can be eaten raw or roasted. They may also be well roasted and milled into a flour and used as such. We have on some years placed a sheet under a few trees and let the nuts fall in order to make collecting easier. However, we found the weevils became a much bigger problem that way. And I’m not hungry enough to eat weevils! White oak acorns are much easier to prepare for eating as they have less tannins. The acorns need to be soaked in water. You can use a mesh laundry bag to keep them contained and soak for a t least a day. Keep changing the water as it becomes cloudy or dirty looking. Red oak acorn have much more tannins and take more work to make them edible. Once soaked and dried, they can be slow roasted and ground for flour.

You girls have some interesting things growing on your homestead. I don't have any but it's fun and interesting reading about these fruits some of which I forgot about and some I never heard of. Thanks .

Oh I ADORE kumquats! We rented a house on the beach in Hawaii a couple of years ago for a family reunion, and there was a kumquat tree with instructions from the homeowner to feel free to eat as many as we wanted. One morning I made French toast. I put a handful of kumquats in a blender with a bit of *real* maple syrup and a bit of water, blended it, then poured it on the French toast. Holy cow it was the best any of us had ever had, and family members STILL talk about that French toast.

I had to go look up "chinquapins" on the googles because I've never heard that word before. The pictures look very similar to what was called horse chestnuts when I was growing up. Are they the same thing, or somewhat different?

Chinquapins are a dwarf native variety of the American Chestnut. It still suffers from the same blight that almost eradicated the American Chestnut. But Chinquapins are less susceptible to the blight allowing for a harvest for several years before the tree succumbs to it. New shoots start coming up from the old roots as the old plant dies. The roots cane live up to be more than 1500 years old. The nuts of the Chinquapin are smaller than the end of your little finger. Eating them raw is our favorite way to eat them.