Mid-Summer Field Notes: Forest Preserves

If you step into the woods with a rigid recipe in mind, you are bound to miss what the forest is actually offering you. But if you open yourself up to the land, observe what is peaking right in front of you, and understand how individual plant profiles interact, you can craft flavors that are truly incredible tastes that have literally never existed before and can never be replicated in a commercial kitchen.

During our summer Forest Preserves Series, our workshop groups set out into the wild with a single goal: build complex, bioregional preserves using only what the forest provided in that specific moment. Across these outings, we gathered over two dozen different species of native plants utilizing roots, shoots, foliage, and fruits to turn the canopy into a living pantry.

Part 1: Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness 

On our first outing deep into the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, we gathered a broad spectrum of wild berries across every stage of ripeness, along with aromatic leaves and resinous foliage. Rather than making a standard single-fruit sweet jam, we balanced the deep sweetness of dark wild fruits with the pectin rich underripe green berries and tart native wood sorrel.

The result? A rich, complex preserve that tasted strikingly like a wild fig spread. It was tart, earthy, warm, and subtly savory - the ultimate pairing for a charcuterie board and a total surprise to everyone in the group.

Part 2: Old Maid Flats & Sandy River Corridor

For our second outing along the volcanic lahar soils of Old Maid Flats and the Sandy River corridor, we leaned into the sharp, bright profiles of the mid-summer understory. We harvested the luminous, tart red berries of red huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium) and pinemat manzanita (Arctostaphylos nevadensis), balancing them with the rich, bittersweet anise-clove notes of raw licorice fern rhizome (Polypodium glycyrrhiza).

Through careful field-processing and temperature control, we coaxed out a flavor profile reminiscent of a fresh, wild cranberry sauce. It balanced right on the edge of bitterness, teasing the palate before immediately resolving into a bright, fruity, and refreshing finish.

Beyond the Recipe: The Forest as Teacher

The real takeaway from these workshops isn't just learning how to simmer berries over a field stove changing how you see the landscape.

When you go out searching for a specific harvest say, a gallon of prime huckleberries and find the bushes sparse, a traditional forager might walk away empty-handed. But with a deep, relational understanding of your ecosystem, you realize that the forest is always offering something. Even if one fruit is out of season, the plants growing right alongside it hold the exact aromatics, acids, and sugars needed to make something extraordinary.

While not literally every plant is edible, almost every native species in the Pacific Northwest holds a purpose. If a plant isn't food, it is medicine. If it isn't medicine, it is a tool, a dye, a cordage fiber, or a structural material.

These native plants are not just resources- they are part of a long, unbroken history of intentional management and stewardship by indigenous peoples since time immemorial. They are our greatest teachers, carrying ecological wisdom for anyone willing to slow down, observe, and learn.

To join us for our upcoming seasonal foraging workshops and wild extraction classes, visit the Rowen Forest Outdoor School.