Wild Food Foraging- Season 3- Milkweed, Tree Cambium, Fiddlehead, Pine, Cattail, Evergreens, Birch

This is common

milkweed

in Latin, it is known as Asclepius syriaca. If you tear off one of the petioles of its leaves or break its stem, you will immediately understand where it derives its name, as you can see. Common

milkweed

is full of milky sap that drips easily from any lesion on the plant Now before we continue I want to warn you that common milkweed is slightly toxic and therefore cannot be eaten raw; however, the toxin can be neutralized by boiling. This is good news because common milkweed is a tasty and nutritious plant when prepared properly.

The United States Department of Agriculture has identified 76 species of milkweed that grow in the US alone. However, common milkweed is the only species that is considered safe to eat after being properly boiled, of course, other species are not. They are, even if common milkweed is a plant you just want to admire rather than eat, it's still a good idea to familiarize yourself with it. You never know when that knowledge might come in handy. The more you know about the

wild

edibles around you, the better if you are a butterfly enthusiast. You're going to love milkweed because milkweed plants are magnets for monarch butterflies.

Monarchs lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves and the caterpillars that hatch from them feed on the plants. Milkweed is the only

food

a monarch caterpillar will eat. They use plant toxin. as a defense against predators that might try to turn them into a snack, the monarch is immune to the toxin, so they can eat the plant while eating, the toxin is stored in their bodies, giving them a bitter taste to predators, It's a pretty smart move. defense, if you ask me, if you see a milkweed leaf with little bumps on the underside, leave it alone, they will probably be monarch butterfly eggs, and of course if you see a butterfly or caterpillar on a milkweed plant, leave them alone. peace too, common milkweed grows anyway.

They are found throughout much of North America and love to grow in direct sunlight, meaning you will most likely find them growing in open fields. Common milkweed has a single thick stem that grows upward and is between three and five feet tall at maturity when the stock is broken, you will see that it is hollow in the center. This is an important characteristic to remember that the leaves are oval and fleshy with smooth margins and always grow in pairs opposite each other from the stem. Each pair is usually rotated 90 degrees with respect to the pair. Above and below, in mid to late summer, common milkweed will bloom.

The flowers are quite unique in appearance and grow in dense spherical clusters. The seed pods are equally unique and will develop in mid to late summer. The elongated seed pods are covered. In soft projections, when the seed pods reach maturity, they will open during the fall to release their soft seeds to the wind. Several parts of the common milkweed plant are edible when properly cooked in the spring. The shoots and young leaves can be boiled later in the summer. The buds, flowers, and immature seed pods can also be cooked and eaten in this episode. I will focus on the seed pods when handling milkweed, make sure the sap does not get in or near your eyes, for this reason it is a good idea to wash your eyes. hands immediately after handling milkweed or you may want to wear gloves while handling the plant, only the immature seed pods can be eaten because the silk inside a young pod is moist and tender enough to eat, but as the pod matures, the silk dries and solidifies.

The fluff makes it too difficult to eat when picking the seed pods. I try not to pick anything more than two inches long, but you can probably get away with something up to three inches at most as boilers often extract the silk within the young seed. pods and use it to mimic the texture and appearance of melted cheese. He heard me well. The silk inside a seed pod can be used as a substitute for melted cheese in different dishes before you start cooking the seed pods. You should be aware that common milkweed can sometimes be confused with other plant species that are not edible in any way, so it is always a good idea to thoroughly research each

wild

edible before handling it, but it is best to have an expert help you. take him out into the field and show him how to do it.

To correctly identify certain plants, my point is that just because you read about them online or see a guy on YouTube eating a certain wild edible, doesn't mean you should take his word for it, anyway, the two most commonly confused plants with common milkweed. They are butterweed and butterfly weed, both of these plants cannot be eaten under any circumstances, but don't let that scare you because there are some key characteristics you can look for that will help you easily identify common milkweed, other than butterweed and butterfly weed. butterfly, let's get started. with oleander, teasel and common milkweed are often confused in the spring, when the plants are still young.

At a quick glance, the buds and leaves of both plants may look similar and both drip milky sap when injured, but here are three key differences, number one, the variety of a common milkweed plant is hollow, while a plant of those soft milkweed is solid. The populations and leaves of common and advance number two milkweed may look similar near their bases, but there is an obvious difference higher up on the plant as it matures, the milkweed branches rapidly and the leaves often become smaller in size. the top of the bush, however, common milkweed branches and the leaves remain relatively the same size throughout the single stem and finally, the number three oleander seed pods are long and thin, similar in shape to beans green.

The seed pods of common milkweed are very meteorite and teardrop shaped, now about butterfly weed, butterfly weed belongs to the milkweed family, but as I said before, it is not edible under any circumstances, now I don't have any recording of butterfly weed, since I don't have it. I still found some in my area, but the differences described are easily noticeable anyway, here are the two main ones, number one, the flowers of butterfly weed are red or orange, while the flowers of common milkweed are light purple or sometimes light pink or even white. two, the sap of butterfly weed is clear, while the sap of common milkweed is milky after confirming that these plants are common milkweed.

I harvested some of the younger seed pods while I was picking them. I made sure to leave at least a couple of pods on each milkweed plant, all of the pods, as you see here, measuring between one and two inches long, a perfect size for cooking and eating. After taking the seed pods home, I started by rinsing them with water and then pouring them into a large pot of boiling water, the more water the better remember that it is very important to boil the seed pods first to make them edible. I always boil common milkweed seed pods for 8 to 10 minutes with a pinch of salt.

If you boil the pods for more than 10 minutes, they will begin to fall apart afterward. the boil is over, throw away the water, the pods are ready to eat, their texture is like nothing I have ever tasted before, which is why they are one of my favorite wild

food

s and taste similar to asparagus or broccoli. Sometimes I eat the boiled pods too. But this time I will show you my favorite way to prepare them. I mix some butter and soy sauce in a wok and throw the pods in to cook for a few more minutes, the flavor absorbing into the seed pods silkily.

Center, which is why they are great for sautéing, there you have it with the seed pods: savor the pods in 15 minutes. Did you know that certain types of

tree

bark are edible? This knowledge could be useful if you find yourself in a survival situation. Stay tuned to learn more about

tree

cambium

during the spring and summer months, there are many wild edibles to choose from as late fall arrives, the options begin to dwindle, and when winter arrives, sources of Wild foods become scarce, but even in winter. At the moment when nature provides a cache of emergency food for those who really need it, to find these emergency caches, you do not need to look beyond the trees that surround them, this emergency food is located under the The outer layer of bark and the actual wood of the tree is a thin layer of inner bark called

cambium

.

The cambium layer is only a couple of millimeters thick but is packed with digestible starches, vitamins, minerals and a little sugar. The cambium also contains a large amount. amount of fiber now, although all trees have cambium, not all cambium is edible, that is because some trees are known to be toxic for human consumption. here are some tree species that are generally safe to collect cambium from

birch

, willow, maple, spruce,

pine

and spruce, there are other trees that contain edible cambium, but those are the main ones. However, all of the tree species mentioned have multiple subspecies, for example there are literally dozens of different types of

pine

trees, so although most pine species are edible, not all are.

Why it is extremely important that you thoroughly research the trees in your area to find out which ones are toxic for human consumption and which ones are good for harvesting. Traditionally, pine is the most popular choice when it comes to harvesting cambium. Personally, pine is the only species. which I have harvested cambium from and have only eaten cambium a few times in my life, as I said before cambium is classified as an emergency food because removing the cambium layer will stunt the trees growth at best and can kill him easily at worst. The cambium is where the tree's nutrients are transported from the roots to the leaves, so without the cambium the tree will starve quickly, as trees are such a slow-growing and valuable resource that the cambium should not be harvested in Under normal circumstances, that's just not the case.

It is worth damaging or possibly killing a tree to get a simple snack, so these are the only two circumstances that require you to harvest cambium at number one if a person is in a survival situation and needs something to eat, number two if the tree is already being harvested for firewood or lumber today I will harvest some pine cambium and although I am not in a survival situation I will return to harvest this pine in the near future I used my ax to carefully shave the outer layer of bark Be very careful not to accidentally remove the delicate layer of cambium in a survival situation, it is better to remove small patches like this from several trees rather than harvesting everything around a single tree, a tree can recover if a small patch of cambium is removed. cambium, but will die if the cambium is removed from all sides, however, in a survival situation, it is best to harvest what is available.

Human life takes priority over trees, in the case that the tree is harvested for materials, anyway, it could also harvest the most cambium. as possible now that the cambium layer is exposed, all I have to do is gently shave it off the tree. The cambium feels soft and a little rubbery, it is also very easy to bend and is very easy to peel off the tree. After starting a cut, it may be difficult to see in the video, but the wood of the tree is slightly more yellow in color than the whitish-looking cambium. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between the two layers since the cambium is easy to peel, but the wood itself hardly peels in a survival situation.

Probably the best way to eat cambium is directly from the tree. In my experience, I find that pine cambium can vary slightly in flavor and texture. It sometimes has a mild flavor and is easy to eat. Other times. It can taste quite bitter and is a little harder to chew. I have noticed that cambium picked in the dead of winter is probably the most pleasant and easiest to eat, but since I haven't eaten much cambium, I can't confirm if that is generally the case with all cambium, but regardless of whether it tastes good or not , the cambium contains a good amount of nutrients to keep you going if necessary, you may want to chew the cambium to extract the nutrients and spit it out, or you can swallow it. cambium to have something in your stomach, there are pros and cons for each, but if you want to cook the cambium you can make a kind of tree paste by breaking the cambium into strips so that they loosely resemble noodles andBoiling them by boiling the cambium will make it easier to eat and a little tastier to taste when you finish eating your tree paste.

Make sure you also drink the water they were boiled in. Pine cambium has also been harvested dried and ground into flour in countries such as Sweden and Finland. This pine flour has been used to make pine bark bread for centuries, however, I will fry my cambium strips in salted olive oil until golden brown and crispy. I call them cambium chips and they don't taste that bad, but I'll give you a fair warning: hot oil, especially over an open flame, can ignite easily. This would obviously destroy your precious batch of cambium in the blink of an eye, trust me this has happened to me before so be very careful if you feel like the pan is getting too hot. or if you see the oil smoking, you will probably only have a few seconds to remove it from the flames before it ignites.

Cambium chips definitely have a pine flavor, but if the batch of cambium is mild, the blend of flavors is quite good with the oil. and salt is an acquired taste for some, but I really like it in the spring, shortly after the snow melts,

fiddlehead

s begin to sprout from the ground by the look of them, one can see why they are appropriately called

fiddlehead

s , but what you are actually seeing here is an ostrich fern in its early stages. The fiddleheads grow quickly and before you know it they will have spread into a fully mature fern three to four feet tall at this stage.

Ostrich fern becomes inedible, so only in their fiddlehead form are they good. For eating, fiddleheads grow and moist even in swampy soils or in hardwood forests with rich soils, although they are very easy to identify due to their appearance unique, there are several different species of fiddleheads, some of which are not edible, which is why the species I am looking for. For today it is of variety of ostrich fern the good news is that it is easy to differentiate an ostrich fern fiddlehead from all the other inedible species once you have located a fiddlehead, there are three things you should look for to make sure it is of the Right type, number one, fiddleheads should have pieces of brown paper II that can be easily removed.

The second sign to look for is that the stem of the fiddle head should be smooth and free of hairs, and thirdly, the stem of the fiddle head should have a deep shape. Slot shaped these three signs indicate that you have an ostrich fern fiddlehead, which means it is safe to eat; however, they should not be consumed raw. You will first have to cook them properly before eating them before continuing. I would like to show them to you. An example of a fiddlehead that is not good to eat notice how these are fiddleheads but they are clearly not the edible type, let me demonstrate to you using the three identifiers I just listed first, these fiddleheads do not have brown paper.

II material, secondly, the stem is not smooth but covered with fibers and thirdly, the stem is not a hollow U shape, but is completely round, which tells us that this is definitely not the plant What we want. Okay, back to the grocery patch. The violins I discovered while collecting violins only gather those that are less than eight inches tall. If the fiddles are taller, they are not good to eat, so when I pick fiddles I usually play it safe and choose ones that are about five inches tall or shorter fiddles will grow in clusters, so when you pick them be sure to leave at least one or two so the fern plant stays healthy after picking what it needed.

I brought them home to cook. I started by washing the violins well to make sure to remove all the paper material and any stubborn bugs that might be hiding, then I threw them in a pot and seven minutes after boiling the violins I sautéed them in a pan with butter and garlic powder for a few minutes and now they are ready to enjoy, they have a nice flavor similar to soft asparagus and I love the texture of them, although I have made teas with many different wild edibles over the years, I have never dared to make needle tea of pine until now.

Pine needle tea is a very healthy drink considering that one cup of pine needle tea contains five times the amount of vitamin C found in one lemon. Vitamin C, of ​​course, is an antioxidant and immune system booster, it also contributes to cardiovascular health. skin and eye system In addition to vitamin C, pine tea also contains a lot of vitamin A, which benefits the regeneration of skin and hair, eyesight and the production of red blood cells, although pine needle tea has many benefits For health, there are a couple of warnings I should share with you early in pregnancy. women should not drink it and secondly, although there are literally dozens of different species of pine trees that are good for making tea, there are three that are considered inedible, these three poison pines are the Norfolk Island ponderosa pine and although It's unlikely you'll need to worry about these inedible pine species;

It's still important to do proper research on anything before ingesting it, but now that we've got all that out of the way, I decided it was finally time to try pine needle tea. To start, a good species of pine is the white pine. A white pine looks like the typical evergreen tree with its needle- and cone-shaped foliage, but a white pine has long green needles that grow in groups of five. this is what a cluster looks like again notice there are five needles here is what the bark of a white pine looks like when I identified that it was actually a group of white pines I harvested a few handfuls of needles after placing a small pot of water on the fire to boil.

I separated the pine needles into smaller pieces and added them to my cup. I also recommend bruising the needles between your hands or between two stones, this will help release the juices when the water boils. I added it to the needles in my cup. I put a lid on the cup and let the tea steep for a few minutes. The reason I didn't boil the needles in water is because I didn't want to destroy the vitamin C that the needles contain, however, boiling does not affect the vitamin A after steeping the tea for five minutes. I strained the needles into a glass cup.

I like to use a clear cup when drinking wild teas because it allows me to see the color that you can notice. Since pine tea is almost completely transparent, it's hard to see on camera, but the tea only had a very slight green tint to it, otherwise it could easily be mistaken for plain water. This is normal for pine tea, for one reason or another, the color is green. of the needles doesn't filter into the water very well, but the flavor will still be there. It's time to try it. White Pine Needle Tea is definitely one of the gentlest teas I've tried.

It has a slight pine flavor, but it wasn't as strong as I thought. I also wondered if the tea would taste bitter, but I was surprised that it didn't. When winter came, I decided to make another batch of white pine tea. I decided to use less water and more needles to see if there would be much difference in color and flavor. This time I heated the water with the pine needles, however, I renewed my cup from the heat once the water boiled, the tea was obviously a little cloudier. When I tried the tea, the only difference in taste I could detect was a slight bitterness that wasn't there before, otherwise it was still quite mild, so this is what I think of White Pine tea in general: It's a Healthy drink to stimulate the immune system. and to fight colds, but I don't really like how it tastes now, don't get me wrong, it doesn't taste bad, but it doesn't taste very good either, but don't take my word for it, white pine.

Needle tea is definitely worth trying. Cattails are one of the most common wild edibles to find. If you can find water, whether it's a river pond, a swamp, or even a very moist patch of land, you can probably find

cattail

s. There, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere,

cattail

s are likely growing in your area. The unique characteristics of the cattail plant make it easy to identify blade-like leaves that measure between five and eight feet tall at maturity. and, of course, its characteristic cattail flower head situated on top of a central stem that may be the same height as a small handful of plants may have similar leaves, for example, some people may confuse young cattail leaves with those from the i-r-s plant, which is toxic to ingest, but the cattail flower head is completely unique to the plant, so when you come across a group of cattails, the best way to confirm them as such is to look for the heads first. of cigar-shaped flowers.

Different parts of the plant can be used for many different reasons, but today I am going to focus on the tender stem at the base of the cattail, but before I begin I want to warn you, although cattail is edible, make sure the water source of which the harvest is not stagnant or contaminated. Cattail is a wonderful plant that naturally cleans any water source. It grows and does so by absorbing contaminants from the water, although this is a great feature, it is also the reason why it is not good to eat cattails from a contaminated area, for this reason ditches and roadsides are never good places to harvest bulrush.

In fact, that goes for any wild edible, but especially cattails. Well, let's go harvest the stems, although this group of cattails has no visible flower heads. I've worked with cattails long enough to have a pretty good idea of ​​them without needing to see the flower. Head before collecting your cattails, there are two observations you should make. Number one, you should only collect cattails in an area where they are abundant. In many places in North America, cattails are being displaced by an invasive species of wild grass known as Phragmites. Therefore, if you can only locate a small group of cattails, it would be best to give them a fighting chance by leaving them alone to grow and repopulate.

Secondly, check your local laws before harvesting, for example in some US states it is illegal. To choose hattails, this is because they are listed as endangered in certain parts of the world due to the Phragmites problem mentioned above; However, if all goes well, there's no reason you can't enjoy nature's delicacy for yourself. They are harvested from spring to fall, however, the roots can be harvested all year round, including winter, but considering I live in an area that receives large amounts of snow in winter, I imagine it would be quite difficult to reach the roots. under a heavy layer of snow and ice I start by cutting the roots from the stock base later in a different episode, meaning I'll extract the starch from them now.

If I didn't intend to use the roots, I would have used a knife to cut the stems. away from the root system while they were in the water to leave the roots intact rather than pulling out the entire plant like I did with these cattails. Then I separate the leaves around the stem, as you can see, there is a clear slime that can be found under the leaves, although it looks disgusting, this slime can be used as medicine, it is a natural antiseptic and pain reliever, which means it can be Use to keep wounds clean while relieving pain and inflammation for centuries.

Cattail jelly has been popular. to treat and relieve sunburn insect bites toothaches cuts bruises and more Anyway back to the task at hand most field guides suggest cutting the stem to four inches, but you don't need to be strict with that number always and when the stem is tender. The only thing that matters is that the white part is obviously the most tender, so judging by that I thought I could get away with cutting them off to about 6 inches. This is what the end of the stem looks like, as you can see it is made up of several different layers.

I would like to draw your attention to the heart that protrudes slightly from the end of the broth. This is what I will eat. The outer layers are too fibrous to eat, but the heart is tender enough to eat raw, although I have eaten it. Raw cattail sprouts before. I like them best when they are cooked after removing the outer layers. I'm ready to cook the tender cores. I estimate that for a single serving you will need to collect between 30 and 40 cat tails for this video. However, I only collected about ten, it only took me a couple of minutes to collect them and about five minutes to process them.

After washing the cores, I blanched them for a couple of minutes in boiling water before dipping them in cold water and then frying them in butter with a little salt and pepper to taste. The main nutrients in cattail sprouts are manganese, vitamin K, magnesium. and iron after frying them for two or three minutes they were ready to eat. I must say this is my favorite way to eat.Cattail sprouts cores are very easy to eat; their texture is similar to that of an udon noodle with a little crunch. I think this is as close to paste as a wild edible can get which part of cattail is your favorite to use, let me know in the comments below, thanks for watching this episode, I make tea with four common species of cattail trees evergreen, which is better.

Stay tuned to find out that there are literally dozens of evergreen species that are good for making tea from the four main groups in my area. At least there are pine, spruce, spruce and cedar within these four main groups of evergreen trees. There are many more subspecies, although most types of evergreen trees are good for making tea, there are a small number that are not good for human consumption, so it is important to become familiar with them. the different types of evergreen trees in your area so you can make a positive identification. If you are not sure, it is best not to touch it.

Additionally, pregnant women should not drink any type of evergreen tea as a precaution. Now that we've got all that out of the way, it's time to dive into the fact that evergreen tea is an extremely rich source of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, starches and sugars and, unlike most other wild edibles, the nutrients they provide. Evergreens are available year-round, although I've done individual episodes before on white cedar and white pine tea. My goal in this episode is to compare the flavors between the four main evergreen species, more specifically white cedar, white spruce, balsam fir, and white pine. I will also look at the general characteristics of each tree to help identify them from each other to start with let's take a look at their bark then let's look at the needles which is what I will be making the tea with as you can see white cedar needles actually don't They can be considered needles. not at all, they are really a hybrid, they are not exactly needles, but they are not leaves either, however for the sake of this episode, I will refer to them as needles.

Notice how cedar needles are made up of many scale-like sections that branch off from each other. Next on a list are the white spruce needles of the four different species. They are the sharpest and most rigid. Short compared to pine needles. Here are the needles of a balsam fir. At a quick glance, they look like spruce needles, but look closer and you'll see. You will be able to distinguish them easily although they are similar in length, the shape is different, the end of a firm needle is rounded, while a spruce needle has a sharp tip and a spruce needle has only two sides, which makes it flat, while that a fir needle has four sizes.

A quick test that some people use to distinguish fur needles from spruce needles is to roll the needle between your fingers. A spruce needle rolls quite easily, but a fur needle does not roll after turning the spruce needles to see their underside. You will see that each needle has two distinct white stripes along its length and finally these are white pine needles that are easily distinguished from the rest as you can see. They are much longer than fir and spruce needles. Another unique feature of pine needles is that they grow in clusters. I can tell this is a white pine specifically because it has five needles within a cluster.

Now you can use all the features I just shared with you. to generally identify which major group an evergreen tree might belong to, however, there are other ways to better identify which subspecies each tree belongs to and avoid confusing it with a toxic species, for example, even though their bark patterns are quite distinct. Among themselves, spruce needles can sometimes be mistaken for needles that are poisonous, spell yew, so we're looking for the telltale differences between these two trees. It is essential. The good news is that with a little education, differences can be easily spotted anyway after putting something together. needles from each tree I brought home for a taste test.

I placed the needles in their own jar after boiling some water. I immediately filled each jar and let them sit in the water for 15 minutes and then took them out immediately. I could see a difference between the teas: the cedar and spruce teas had a green tint, while the pine and spruce teas barely had any color at all, although the color of the tea was subtle, its flavors were not full of each tea. flavor and had its own distinctive flavor, so here are my notes for each one. The one I liked the least was the pine tea, it had a strong acidic taste that I didn't really like and neither did the lady.

Outsider, I would also describe it as slightly bitter, the cedar tea was our favorite by far, it was smooth with a slight sweetness that none of the other teas had. The only way I can describe its taste is by comparing it to a white tea, but there is really nothing like it, the spruce tea had a slightly fruity taste, this may sound strange, but it tasted similar to jelly beans. of wine, if you know what they are. Finally we tried the spruce tea, this was my wife's second favorite. slightly floral, that's honestly the best way I can describe it as an earthy floral, so there you have it overall.

I love cedar tea. I liked the spruce and spruce and I didn't like the pine, but that's just my opinion. What do you think? Please share it in the comments. below, hello fellow strangers, I am walking in the bush very quietly today to see what I can see. I don't think you guys can hear it, but I can hear a turkey calling deeper in the bush that way, so I'm being very quiet to see if I can get in undetected and right now it's turkey

season

, so it's probably I'll see some turkeys and if I'm lucky I might even see some coyotes trying to hunt them so that would be a real treat. but now is the time of year when the yellow

birch

sap starts to flow and the L birch sap flows just after the maple sap ends.

Maple sap flows ideally when the day is about five degrees above zero and during the day and then at night minus five but yellow birches sap flows best when the temperature is around fifty degrees Fahrenheit during the day and I think that equals 16 degrees Celsius but anyway I'm going to check some yellow birch trees here and see how the sap is flowing and if I can I'd like to collect some yellow birch sap so there's nothing here so this is a birch yellow and looks pretty scraggly, that's how you can tell it's yellow birch because the bark peels and gets tattered like this.

On a white birch, the bark is much whiter and more noticeable in leaves, and on a yellow birch, when the sun hits it just right, there is a kind of golden glow that comes off the bark. I don't know if you can see it on the camera here, but it has a yellowish-gold tint to it, that's how you know you have a yellow birch, so I'm just going to take the tip of my knife here and tap it against the tree. a little bit and see if any SAP is flowing and as you can see it's flowing pretty well so I'm going to see if I can start collecting some now so what I have here is a hardwood branch that I'm going to carve some Spile that I'm going to use to collect the yellow birch sap into a container.

I don't know if you can see it, but I have carved this stick with my knife and in the center, you can see that there is a softer part of the wood here, so I'm going to turn this into a Spile that I can use to hit the Yellow SAP, so I'm just going to take the tip of my knife and just push through. Remove the softer wood from the center and that will be a channel for the yellow sap to flow into the bottle I have prepared. Okay, so I've got my Spile set up here and I'm just going to do the initial one.

I'll go into the BARC with my knife and then I'll hit the Spile in the hole there and let it start dripping. Okay, the street has a good drip, so this will be a good option to put my smile on the intrusion my knife makes. in the birch it is so minimal that it does not harm the tree, in the same way that a light scratch would not harm a person today, birch sap is being hailed as the new super drink because it is packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, electrolytes and natural sugars. It is said to boost the immune system, lower cholesterol to intoxicate the body, and is even believed to have anti-aging properties.

SAP also contains the chemical xylitol, a natural sugar alcohol that the American Dental Association says helps fight cavities. Birch sap is sold. not only as a health drink but also as a beauty product in some parts of the world birch sap is so popular that I have heard it can sell for up to twenty dollars a liter but nature has Vaughn free tap now this is the second drip I have prepared so between the two smiles I have here I should have something pretty quick which I really want yellow birch sap and well they are also sweet birch or black birch it has wintergreen oil directly in the sap so if you chew twigs or boil them to make some tea, like I've done before in previous episodes, it will have a slight hint of wintergreen flavor, which is really nice, but anyway now that the second one is ready to go, then I can let them both drip for a while and I'll be back soon it's been about two hours and yeah so let's take a look okay this one is still dripping a little bit but I.

I've only collected a little bit of SAP there, so I'm going to remove this from the tree now and move on to the next one and see how much I've collected there, so again, I've only had them dripping for two. hours and I have almost half a bottle of water here and this tree was dripping a little bit slower, obviously, so less, but I still notice that this one here is a little bit cloudier than the one on the tree that was dripping faster, so I don't I don't know yes this sap is starting to break down, but I will try them separately and see if there is a difference in flavor.

Something I forgot to mention before was that yellow birch sap flows for only two or three weeks. so it's much shorter than the maple sap

season

because in the maples the sap flows. I think it's about four to six weeks, a much quicker period, so you have to get the yellow birches when the time is right and that's how it happened. to get them at the right time, it's definitely refreshing, it has a slight yellow tint, but not much, and it's actually quite cold too, which is good, a lot of people assume that maple sap and yellow birch sap will have a Really sweet and sticky guy.

It has flavor, but actually both saps taste a lot like water because they haven't been boiled yet to where the sugar content is higher, so with yellow birch sap you get maybe a touch of wintergreen flavor, but you don't. The same goes for maple sap: you have just a hint of the maple flavor, but it is difficult to distinguish it, it tastes a lot like water, but the fact is that this substance is really refreshing and of course, of course, you can't all deny it. the health benefits that come from drinking this stuff so overall it's really refreshing really healthy and this my friend is the taste of spring.