Foraging Wild Food -Survival Texas-

Hey guys, so today we're gonna do some foraging down here in South Texas. It's late spring, sun's coming up. It is going to be an extremely hot day, but we have a lot to show you out there in the forest. Let's get started. This is a mesquite tree. It's not really a good year for it. We're still about a month early. What I want to show you are the beans, and they're about half the size they ought to be. Most folks know the mesquite from the wood. They use it for smoking, for barbecue, you can get mesquite briquettes and even mesquite honey barbecue sauce, so it's very desirable. But the pods here, these beans, a good portion of that's actually edible, and on good years get three times as big as these are. Here after a while they'll swell up a little more, and when they start to dry out, turn tan with red striations down these beans, what you're going to find is that you can break it open, pop the little beans out, but eat all the pith in between each of those, and it's full of sugar. So mesquite sugar is awesome. Now one of the other things you can also do if you get the right season, the right year, is take a knife, an axe, something and damage the actual bark on these mesquite trees. And what that can cause them to do is start to leak sap. So it'll start to just kind of drain out of them, and it'll congeal into pretty much pieces of amber. But you can take those, suck on them, they're going to be kind of like candy a lot of times. Different trees, different years, they might not be sweet, they might be really sweet. So it's hard to judge, but it's definitely something worth remembering. Let's keep... This is forest rose. This is one of the most important flowers out there, and I don't pick a lot of flowers, but this one's a good one to know. Now this beautiful distinct red helix right here, that's all edible. Okay, so just pick it off, make sure there's no bugs inside of there and pop it in your mouth and eat it. Same thing with these young leaves, lots of roughage, good salad. You can just chew them up and eat them raw, or you can steam them up. Now what's awesome about these, especially now that they're blooming and getting pollinated, is within a month, month and a half, these bushes are going to be full of what are called forest rose apples. So they're about the size of peanut M&M, maybe a little larger. They turn orange to red. They crunch up like apples. They taste like apples. They look like miniature pumpkins, but again, red, and they are awesome. One of my favorite foraged fruits in the forest, and they continue producing all the way through November, December out here. So it's a lot more refreshing and sweeter than you might think. Almost like a melon, like a watermelon. Good stuff. This vine right here, it's pretty hateful. It's called briar vine, full of thorns, real strong, trips you up all over the forest, kind of like nature's razor wire. Now most folks don't want to find this, but there is a positive characteristic that this thing has. That's the very top. For this vine, since it's very large, it goes up in the tree, but the growing tips are actually edible. Very soft. You pick them off, eat them raw. They taste just like raw green beans. I can't tell them apart. And when you steam them up, cook them up, they usually taste like asparagus. So pretty awesome. You also have the roots underground, which is an excellent source of starch, but you've got to go and dig down for them and do a little bit of processing, but good one to know. These are ground cherries, and it's actually kind of a weed that grows up every single year. I would show you the plant itself, but it's dried up and blown away. Unfortunately, these were just scattered on the ground. Now inside of these little paper lanterns, as they dry up, that's when your ground cherry is ready. You tear that open, you're going to find this orange berry, and it actually tastes like tomatillo or a tomato. It's about half to a third of the size they usually are each year, so I don't think you're just going after little things. Most years, these things are much, much larger. It's a good snack, a good meal. Add it to something. It's one to know. Ground cherries. This right here, this is grapevine, and those are wild grapes, known as mustang grapes down here in South Texas, little grapes or sour grapes. Now they're green right now, but give them about a month, they'll turn black, be full of sugar, still be a little tangy, but they're awesome. Eat them off the vine, cook them down into a jelly jam, maybe a syrup, or even dehydrate them into raisins. Definitely a plant that you want to come across. And this thing is just expansive, so lots and lots of grapes, fruit in abundance. That's what you want to find. Now I don't expect this to be very sweet. Give it a try anyway. All right, yeah, not sweet at all. Not bad, but definitely not sweet. Very tart. Give them some more time on the bush. This, this is a yucca. Now if you're familiar with the channel, you probably think this is a baby, but this is actually just a different variant. So kind of nice, not as mean and spiky as the Spanish dagger. You still make cordage out of the leaves, soap out of the roots. The big draw here is going to be the stalk, the flowering stalk. Now something's already eaten the pods. Kind of tells you just how edible those things are. They are gone. And a lot of times when we come across these plants, you'll actually see that the stalk has been nibbled off of and foraged before you got there. So as it's coming up and flowering, a lot of creatures come eat the whole thing. So you hit this thing at the right time, you got yourself a meal. But this thing right here, especially as it starts to dry out, is going to be the most ideal fire by friction tool you can find here in South Texas. So this is the spindle. Once it dries up, it makes the best fire starter out there. So we actually call it fire starter yucca. I know it's got a regular name, but it starts fires out here. So that's what I call it. Now this is unexpected guys. This is about a month and a half after we ought to find this, but this is the fire starter yucca in bloom. And so you come across anomalies every once in a while. Blossoms, just like regular yucca, are going to be edible. So check that out. After they get about four or five days old, they start to taste really bitter. So here's to luck. Still fresh. Still good. Eat the whole thing. Now once these are pollinated, which I imagine most are, they're going to make pods within a couple weeks. And if they don't get eaten, the pods get eaten by animals like the other fire starter yucca, then they'll make seeds. Those seeds are also edible. This thing just keeps on giving. So awesome find. Definitely an anomaly. So keep your eyes open. You never know what you're going to find. In the southwest, you really can't go very far without running into cactus. This is prickly pear cactus. Every part of this plant is useful. Now the pads themselves, those are called nopals. We actually sell those things at grocery stores down here in Texas, especially when you get close to the border. Slice them up, dice them, burn off all the thorns, make a great meal. On top of each of these pads, it's going to be a heck of a year for them. Those are the fruits. They're called tuna. They have all kinds of thorns on them. You want to burn the thorns off. Here in about a month or two, they're going to turn pink and purple. And that's going to make them very sweet, full of calories. A lot of folks enjoy those as a desert treat. What a lot of folks don't know is that you can take these green, unripened fruits. The tunas, they come up for about an hour and you will absolutely love them. All right. They kind of remind me of okra. I enjoy the seeds on the inside. They're immature and you just bite through them, kind of like okra. So amazing texture, amazing flavor. You won't regret it. One of the last things is that here about a month ago, each one of these fruits had a beautiful large flower on it. Each one of those flowers, pull the petals off, eat them, enjoy them. Refreshing, amazing, more food. Again, cactus is fantastic. Use it. Know how to make the best out of the desert. Now in drought, unfortunately, the fruit and nut trees down here require constant rainfall. And we're not getting that this year. So they're all going to suffer. Count those out. In survival though, in most of these situations, even in times of drought, you can find a silver lining. But back here behind me, this is actually my creek or what's left of it. This little puddle right here is usually flowing about two and a half foot higher than it's at right now. Now, as these puddles get smaller, as they dry out, it's probably got two or three more weeks in it, maybe. All of the life inside of it, the fish, the crawdads, everything are becoming more and more concentrated. And that makes it very easy to go in there with your hands and pull stuff out. Not only that, but as the water slowly gets centralized in these areas and we start to get these mud banks, you're going to have all kinds of snakes and predators come down to get a drink, especially at nighttime, and to pull those fish, pull those organisms out of the water and get a meal as well. So these are all excellent sources of protein. You might not get your fruit, your veg, but at least you're going to have something to eat. This tree is called the Anaqua and not many folks know about this one. Also known as the sandpaper tree because of the roughness of the leaves. If you can hear that, it feels like and sounds like sandpaper. Pretty distinct. Now what we're after with this tree is going to be the berries. They're covered with yellow berries. Some years there's even more than this, so there's plenty of them on there. The yellow are not quite ripe. You're going to wait until they turn orange into red, and that's when you're ready to pick these guys. So really fleshy, kind of like an apple. A few seeds in there, spit those out, but there's plenty of it. Good fruit tree to have. This big spiky plant back here behind me is the yucca, and it's one of the most important and useful plants that we have down here in the south. Every part of this plant, especially seasonally, is useful, especially in survival. From down to the base and the roots, full of saponins, you make soap and shampoo out of that. The leaves, once processed, make some of the strongest cordage, that's rope, that you can have out there in the wilds. And up top, you're seeing the dried remnants of a flowering stalk, and even now in its form as you see it, it's extremely useful. So about a month ago as it was shooting up, very tender, very edible. You can eat it raw or you can cook it up. The flowers that bloomed off of that stalk, those were extremely, extremely tender and definitely a treat worth tasting. Now as the flowers are pollinated, you're now seeing the pods that developed from those. And each of those pods, when baked for an hour or two, make a pretty good meal, full of starches and immature seeds. Give them about two, three weeks, maybe four a month, and those seeds are going to mature up. They're little black ones. They're going to be like barley. You can take them out, put them in soup. You can also grind them up and make a flour. So it's going to be a ton of food, lots of things to enjoy on the yucca. Definitely one to know. Go ahead and show you what's inside of these things. Now unfortunately, it looks like some kind of bug or ant has drilled holes into all these, and that might compromise all the seeds. We'll have to see later on in the season. But it looks like okra on the inside. Pretty amazing. There's also a neat feature that happens every other year, in that all this white stuff starts to kind of turn into the mush that you would expect from an overripe banana. So as you break it open, you just smell molasses, syrup. And being able to make little cakes out of that, cook them on the fire, little sugar cakes, fantastic. So you pull the seeds out, dry them, take the mush out, make sugar cakes out of it. Yucca's good for a lot of stuff. This big tree right here is called a mulberry. We've got about a dozen, a dozen and a half of these within 100-150 yards. Big tree, lots of fruit. It's going on an entire month of production right now. Those are starting to fizzle out. Two weeks ago, we pulled over 200 pounds worth of berries out of a couple of these trees, and that didn't take much at all. All the creatures in the forest know when the mulberries are going ripe, and it gets very exciting down here at nighttime. So you really don't want to camp around a mulberry tree because of the animal activity and because they stain so badly. But lots of sugar, lots of fluid, good fruit to have, and an amazing tree to come across. Your hands and teeth will turn purple after a while too. This prickly vine right here, this is called dewberry, and this is one you want to find. They grow up and down the rivers. They make briars. They look like blackberries, and a lot of folks get them mixed up with blackberry down here in South Texas. To me, they taste like strawberry though, so pretty interesting contrast there. We're about two, three weeks too late to pick these things and enjoy them. We actually ate a few of them early in the season, but all the rest have been scavenged, dried up, shriveled up, fallen on the ground. Seasons move on. These things are loose. We'll get them next year, but dewberry. That river looks extremely attractive right now with the heat and humidity. I'd much rather be swimming around in that in midday and relaxing a bit. And foraging, being able to pull all those clams out. We have several different species in here. If you're going to do so outside of survival, make sure you're doing it legally. But it doesn't take any tools most of the time, just digging around in the dirt. Pull some crawdads out, get your protein you need. It's a good place to cool off, stay hydrated. And a lot of times when you're down here by the rivers foraging, because they are corridors of life, you have your nuts, you have your berries, and all the creatures that come to eat those things, you're going to have increased risks. So anytime you can jump in the water, move up and down without having issues with animal attacks, snake bites, poison ivy, all those things, the water might seem a lot of folks, but for me it's just an easier way to get around. Up until a few days ago, it has been an extremely dry spring, and so all of our onions have just about dried up and gone underground. But this is one of the few stalks we've been able to find. Let's go ahead and see if we can't dig it up. Get some onions. There we go. A little shallow, broke the bulb, but that's what you're looking for. Beautiful wild onion bulb. Now identification on wild onion, wild garlic, is through taste and smell. So taste a little bit, smell a little bit. If it tastes or smells like garlic or onion, that's what you have. There's a few things that look like it, but they definitely don't taste good, and they don't smell good. So taste, smell a little bit. If you've got wild onion, look around. If you've got one, you've got a lot of them. Good thing to find. Makes your food taste a lot better. There we go. Now the stalk, the leaves, the bulbs, it's all edible on the onion. A lot of folks will eat these things raw. That's all right. Get a few calories out of that. But if you're surviving, you definitely want to cook these guys up. It's going to break up a lot of carbohydrates, make it simpler for your body to break down and get the calories it needs. So a lot more nutrition that way. Good little thing to come across. Now this, this is a tree that most Texans ought to know about. It's one of my favorites. This is the Texas persimmon. A medium-sized tree, beautiful smooth bark, and the fruits. Those are what it's all about. Now these are about half the size they ought to be. We haven't gotten the rain out here this year, unfortunately. So they're rather small. Green is not ripe. Once they turn black all the way through the flesh, that's when they're ready to eat. It's kind of a strange color, but tastes like molasses. A couple seeds, spit those out. Here in about two, three weeks, every creature in the forest is going to know when all these fruits are ripe because it's not something you want to miss. Again, one of the favorites, Texas persimmon. Go ahead and give these a try. A couple of early ones. Seeds haven't formed. Not much sugar in them. They're like a prune, almost. Eat them if you have to. Hopefully with some rain, they taste better in a couple weeks. This is a desert hackberry bush. This is another one down here in south Texas. Grows all over the place that most folks don't know about, but should. Bright orange berries. You can eat the entire thing. Seeds and all, crunch it up. It's a sweet treat, and they grow in abundance. So everywhere that you find a Texas persimmon, you usually find one of these guys growing pretty close by. Crunch up seeds, brush flavor. I like cantaloupe. About the same texture. Pretty good though. Fruity. This plant right here, this is one to know, especially in a bind. This is the Tassajillo. Also known by some as the Christmas tree cactus. Now what you're after on this plant are the little bright red fruits, and those are actually tuna. Most folks have seen those on prickly pear, pad, cactuses. Much larger. Same thing though, full of sugar, full of calories. They taste to me like watermelon Jolly Ranchers. So before you go and start picking these things, thinking you have a nice treat, you're going to need to treat them. Which means add some flame, burn off the thorns, burn off all the hate, and then they're ready to go. I split out some of the seeds, but it's definitely, definitely a food that you want to know about. Because November to December, most of these fruits are not here. But the Tassajillo, usually covered still. Well guys, it goes without saying, but it's been an extremely hot and long day out here in South Texas. Now we've gathered up a variety of things over the course of the day, and hopefully there have been a few that most of y'all maybe didn't know existed down here in the south, or perhaps knew about, but didn't realize they were as edible or useful as they are. And that's the idea. Knowledge is power. Now it might have looked like abundance on this video, but unfortunately for every one of the trees that you saw, there probably should have been 20 to 30 times as much fruit on each one. A lot of this fruit should be two to three times larger. And for all this, there's quite a few things on the list that were here last spring that either didn't come up, or they've since then shriveled up, because we just didn't get the rain. We're pretty much at drought right now, which is extremely unfortunate for late spring. So things change. Variety is the way to go. So if you counted on a single type of fruit tree or nut tree, maybe an orchard out there that you're going to get to if things were to go bad, don't count on it being the same year to year. The idea is that you want to know as much about the area that you're in so that you can pick from it whatever that year is going to give you. And that's the main idea. So out here, this is all wild. We didn't propagate. We haven't planted a bit of this. We're fortunate enough to be in an area that always grows wild. There are a few areas that the wood boring beetle grubs have decimated our forest, which is beyond tragic. I've since then started to plant a few trees in those areas. Wild pecan, Texas walnut, a couple of pomegranates, and a few figs, just because I like figs. Those actually do really well out here in Texas, all those four varieties, and who knows what else would be out here. I'm manipulating the environment a bit, a bit, but hopefully it'll all grow back and it'll help out the forest creatures. And perhaps my kids or grandkids, if things ever go wrong, they'll be able to count on that food. And that's the idea. We want to plant trees that perhaps we won't live long enough to enjoy the shade of. And that's something I live by. Guys, if you enjoyed the video, please like, subscribe, comment, tell us what you think about it. Please share the heck out of these. If you want to support our channel, check out our Patreon. That'll be in the description down below. Also Grim Survival and Titan Survival, those are affiliates. So if you click on the link, check out their products. If you buy through that link, you'll actually be helping out our channel, which we, again, appreciate greatly. Been a long day, guys. As always, be prepared. And until next time. Huck? Mulberry? Okay. Okay. He is a mulberry eater. Okay. Huckleberry. Okay. Maybe. Maybe, maybe. Huckleberry. Desert hackberry. Niblet? He's not sure about that one. Huckleberry. Ooh. When he was a puppy, he used to love tomatoes. So ground cherries? Huckleberry. Ground cherry. Not going to do it? I tried, guys. I raised him upright. Did everything I could. I don't know. He's definitely not starving though. Get out of here, pup. See if we can't make some quick cordage. I'll show you how it's done. Four pieces. Split one in half. Double it over. No. Invert it. Double it over. Twist the inside. Flip them over. Twist the inside. Flip them over. This is down and dirty. As I come to the end, what I do is pull another one of these guys. Split in half. Take that half. Just like that. Twist it in. Integrate it. That's how I make my cordage longer. It ain't pretty, but it certainly works. And that's probably about a hundred pounds test right there. Strong stuff.