greetings YouTube whoever said there was
no such thing as a free lunch apparently
never heard of
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fiddleheads so I keep these things on my
property uh just to give me a a
barometer of when the fiddlehead season
is ready to start uh these are Ostrich
Ferns uh the very young ones they come
up rather quickly but slightly more
mature ones are a little bit slower to
to develop and these are the fiddle
heads
here called that way I guess cuz they
resemble the head of a fiddle uh here's
a more mature one over
here and this is how you can easily
identify the ostrich Fern
uh it has a kind of a Woody looking
cluster on the ground that it grows out
of and you can see two nice little
fiddle heads
there
and this here is what identifies it as
the ostrich Fern it's dark brown or
black uh Spore frond whereas these
fronds down here are sterile those are
the ones you want to
eat
so let us Venture forth Into the
Wilderness to partake of Nature's
Bounty
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intro of darkness and whiteness and
greenness well here is the creature in
question here's some more Ostrich Ferns
and uh well Pi some people use a knife
but you can just uh snap it off right at
the
base another way to identify it as an
ostrich Fern is on the inside you'll see
it's kind of got a Groove
there that papery stuff that was on
there you can just peel that
off we'll pick the rest of these
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now some people just pick the curly
heads but you can actually eat the
stocks too and they're quite
tasty there's a couple remaining there
I'm going to leave them cuz I don't want
to kill the thing but it's not like
they're uh they're rare just over here
there's some more and if I look over
here there's another one they're all
around
me
he
see I wasn't kidding when I said these
things are
everywhere unlike wild garlics which are
going increasingly rare in this area CU
of all the quebeckers that like to come
in and just devastate the
uh the
crops
once again here's the big uh stock
identifying this as an ostrich
Fern and there are the sterile uh
fronds
so I'm not even in the bush yet that's
the
bush and uh pretty much all the green
vegetation you can see on the
ground off in the distance there those
are I was not kidding when I said these
are abundant they're absolutely
everywhere in this bush more than you
could possibly ever want to
eat fiddle heads are great in small
quantities but they are mildly toxic
especially if you don't cook them so you
don't want to eat a
ton especially certain species you do
not want to
eat but as far as I can see every uh
single one of these ferns is an ostrich
for now there's a real nice patch of big
ones right
here these puppies are
everywhere I thought I'd have to spend a
couple hours trying to look for these
things to find enough to get a few
decent meals out of them
but I was wrong they're
plentiful okay uh here's a fern you do
not want to eat in fact I don't even
know what this one is called it's not
lady
fern it's not uh what do they call them
Bracken
ferns it's not simp CN Fern is unknown
so I'm not going to eat
it it's a good thing I came when I did
cuz this is the stage you want them at
and you want to pick them when they're
between 8 in to a foot tall uh well 8 in
would be about here so it's a good thing
I came when I did because uh the
harvesting season for these things is so
incredibly short you would not believe
it give these things like a day maybe
two days and there'll be full-fledged
ferns they won't won't be edible
anymore do not eat ferns you can eat oh
here is a particularly wellestablished
one so you can see it's developing a
little bit slower than some of the
smaller ones it seems the younger they
are the faster they grow when they're
old uh you'll see they have this kind of
Woody base on them and uh the fronds
themselves will be quite a bit thicker
and they take longer to grow so you can
Harvest these a little bit later in the
season like a day later
so again I want to stress that this is
the fern we want the ostrich Fern it's
got that u- shape that I showed you and
it's got some sterile fronds they're not
always present but the uh the very dark
frond you see there is full of
spores uh and here is a variety that is
not
edible I think uh you can notice uh but
the little black hairs it's got come on
Focus
you I zoom out and get in
closer you'll see it has a whole bunch
of hairs little black specks on the
stems uh you don't want to eat that
because I think this
uh would be known as um interrupted Fern
as opposed to ostrich Fern which is a
matusa
stopus the cinnamon fern or inter
interrupted Fern is known as a
osmundastrum cinnamonum and it can cause
uh nausea dizziness headache and
potentially vomiting not too fun uh
there's also another one called Bracken
firm which doesn't seem to grow around
here I haven't seen any uh but you don't
want to eat it raw because it will give
you stomach cancer but uh yeah the
ostrich Fern perfectly
safe
oh here's something I live in Ontario
and here in Ontario our provin
provincial flower is the Trillium and
here it is it's a nice uh purple one
they range from white to Red to purple
the white ones are the most
common and uh being my provincial flower
if I were to pick this I could get like
a $500 fine so we're going to leave it
alone here's another fine example of the
difference between the ostrich Fern
seeing right
here and right behind it there is an
interrupted
Fern you notice the leaves on the
interrupted Fern are very sparse and of
course the black hairs you don't want to
eat
that you want to eat the
ostrich
M and here's another pretty little
Trillium man I wish I could dig these up
and plant them in my flower garden but
unfortunately that too will get you a
hefty Vine so it'll have to settle for
looking at its prettiness here a there's
some other little
flowers anyway I think I've collected
enough fiddle heads for now that'll last
me a few days probably going to give
some to my co-workers but uh so we'll go
uh back to my place and
we'll figure out how to eat these
things would you like knowledge on how
to cook fiddlehead
smokey
okay well here's how it's done uh we
have a frying pan here and I'm just
going to add a little bit of
butter and some
garlic and then toss in the old
fiddleheads and give them a quick
sa that's about
it also uh take the stems and put them
in a
salad and uh they're quite tasty well
thank you for watching and um Peace