So many of us look towards Roots, herbs and plants for natural organic healing, that often times Weeds are overlooked. Here are 10 Weeds That heal. These are some great ones & uses we had not seen or heard of before. Pass it along to your friends

1. Shepherd’s Purse
2. Cleavers
3. Chickweed
4. Dandelion
5. Groundsel
6. Mallows
7. St. John’s Wort
8. Self Heal
9. USNEA
10. Yarrow

When modern medicine is not available, or if you just choose to live a all natural self sufficient life style it’s important to know and understand what natural remedies out there can do for you.  Medicinal Herbs have been in use for thousand of years and are renowned for their effectiveness. This is just the tip of the iceberg, we plan on covering natural healing, herbs, and natural medicine extensively. So stay tuned and visit the site often.

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This is a great old Native American fish trapping technique. It’s best used in tidal waters rivers or creeks.

The concept is to funnel finish into an area where it’s hard for them to find the way back out, it’s the same concept behind a minnow trap or soda bottle funnel trap

Drive stakes side by side into the bottom in shallow water to create a square or fenced in area of sorts in the water. Make sure the open end of the funnel is on the downstream side where the water is being forced into the opening. Other materials can be used to construct this trap such as rocks, but this is the most effective and allows for building it in slightly deeper water. One trick is to build it starting at one side of the bank and extending out using trhe side of the bank as a barrier and forcing fish towards your trap

It’s a great and simple trap that allows you to catch the fish by hand or spear them once they are in your trap. You’ll be amazed at how effective this survival fish trap really is, even small ones work pretty well.

The fiddlehead is perhaps one of the most well-known wild edible. It is very tasty and cooked like asparagus.

Usually, when one says fiddlehead they mean the Ostrich Fern fiddlehead. This time, we are instead harvesting the bracken fern, an incredibly common fern in the north woods. The fiddlehead is shaped somewhat like an eagle’s talon with a silver-grey hair covering the stalk.

Harvest them when they are about 6-8 inches tall and not maturing, meaning, not yet uncurling and showing their leafs.

To cook them, give them a wash and rub the hairs off of them. It doesn’t take too long and the hairs come off easily. The bracken fern must be cooked before being consumed. They can be steamed for 30-45 minutes in two changes of water until tender-crisp or fried with butter or olive oil. They taste and are used much like asparagus.

Once they start unfurling, they become inedible as they tend to get more bitter. This is an example of a maturing fiddlehead that I would not consume.

They can be gathered in abundance and make for a delicious meal from our own forest and prove to be way cheaper (just a little time and work) than buying them at gourmet prices at restaurants or at the store.

Mmm, a great and tasty wild edible!

Harvesting Cattail Shoots

Cattails are a nutritious plant that are packed full of starches and in a survival situation, that means a good find.

The cattail is found throughout most of the US near slow moving or standing water. Almost all parts of the cattail are edible at some time of the year and were depended upon heavily as a main source of food by Native Americans. Currently in the North Woods around late April and early May, the cattail shoots are just coming up and are ready for harvest. They are very tasty at this time of their growth and exceptionally tender.

Here is a cluster of old growth cattails and new shoots growing near a lake.

This time of year, we are looking for the younger, new growth plants which are typically the green plants among the dead brown.Here is a young cattail

And another young cattail to show you the variation in sizes and to further illustrate that plants don’t always look text-book.

The goal is to reach down and dig a bit through the muck at the base of the stalk and pull up the white shoot, starchy bulb, and/or the starch filled rhizome. This early in the season we are focusing on the tender white shoots.

With a little bit of swishing in the water, the white shoot should become prevalent and it is this white part that you are after.

These cattails are plentiful and quickly gathered.

To be a responsible harvester and make sure that there are new cattails for you to harvest later, only harvest a third of the available cattails at the most.

The outer leafs are separated from the stalk, leaving the tender shoot to be cut up into chunk sized pieces. They then can be fried up with a little butter or otherwise cooked in the same way one would do with asparagus.

Winter Cress is a simple to identify plant that is great for beginners. Though it is easy to confuse with different types of mustard plants, I have not found, through research, any poisonous look-alike. The best and true way to identify this plant is by its leafs. You may notice the leafs are differently shaped and more lobed than wild mustard. The leafs will be a dark green and waxy. It grows in moist waste areas and flowers in April-August. Winter Cress may be found year round, and if you’re lucky, can be dug out of the snow even in winter.

The young leaves may form dense rosettes during warm spells in late winter and may be picked into the spring while the nights are still frosty. Though the plant is edible all year, the frosty nights of the transition of winter to spring is when they are most delicious. They make a great addition to salads or as a cooked green similar to salad.

As the nights warm up and it is no longer frosting, the plant tends to become bitter. This is quickly remedied by boiling the plants in two or three changes of boiling water. The tight yellow flower buds (at the top of the below picture) appear after the leafs become too bitter for most palates. They may be collected and then boiled for approximately five minutes in two changes of water and served as a broccoli treat.