Edible Plant Walk and Mesquite Milling Demo

This is a hands-on class! You will get to sort and break up the beans, put them into the home milling machine, and sift the flour from the chaff.

SPECIAL ADDED TREAT: We will boil native Desert Fan Palm date berries into a sweet juice.

Join my foraging email list to learn of upcoming events and what to harvest now!

Most of our time will be spent walking around the 4-acre property and learning about the many edible and medicinal plants there.

PLANTS WE WILL MEET:

VELVET MESQUITE

PRICKLY PEAR CACTUS

BRITTLEBUSH

CREOSOTE

BURSAGE

SENNA

SAGUARO

HEDGEHOG CACTUS

ALOE VERA

PALO VERDE

Mesquite beans are ripe to pick in late June and early July. And they sometimes have a small fall harvest like this year. At the end of the class, those who wish can follow me on a 1/2 mile drive to a large native velvet mesquite tree with hundreds of beans that are ripe.

If you have signed up but are now unable to attend, please let me know so people on the wait list will be able to attend.

Knowledge you will receive:

You'll learn everything from how to identify a sweet mesquite tree, how and when to harvest, how to freeze, roast, store, how to make tea or "coffee" with them, and how to clean, prepare, and mill them for flour.

What machines can you use at home to mill the beans into flour? How do you make flour manually? How do you prevent bugs and holes in the pods?

We can not help but be depressed when we look at global problems. So then we can think locally for our piece of the solution. How about getting to know trees in our yards, know which are edible, how to use them for nutritional and tasty eating, how we can plant foods native to our area so our yards become a patchwork of native ecosystems recreating what has been destroyed by human development? Yes, we can do a little something in our niche of the globe.

We thank the O'odham tribes and others for their understanding of these trees and their beans, and for passing on their knowledge to future generations.

Fry bread is a 3 generation tradition. Mesquite cakes are a 300-generation tradition for at least the last 6,000 years. How do we know this for sure? The archaeological answer will be revealed at the workshop.

Most plant nurseries don't know about native or edible plants. We are trying to change that.

Prickly pear powder, mesquite brew, and desert teas will be available for sale at the end of the class.

Using the electric sifter to make the mesquite flour.

Cindy uses the mill to grind the mesquite beans and pours the resulting flour into the bowl. Next, the larger chaff pieces will be sifted out.

Also check out other Workshops in Phoenix.