Hello everyone! 

This fall season since Helene has been insanely busy. We are super grateful to still be operational through this time and are so lucky to live in such a beautiful loving community with awesome neighbors, friends, and customers. 

 About Helene - We were without power for 17 days  and are still dealing with the problems the tree falling on the house caused. Worse than the house is the forest, where over 100 trees, many being`100+  year oak trees were toppled over and strewn about. Its truly overwhelming to see our once beautiful mature hardwood forest essentially leveled in large areas, and weird to think that we wont live to see the hillside look like that again. The good news is that we intend to fill the gaps in the canopy with other fruit and nut trees and to take this passing of old giants as a way to help regenerate the forest with new food for us and the other creatures that live here  So we will carefully manage and plant and tend the hillside to keep the multiflora rose, tree of heaven, wisteria, and whatever other opportunistic plants may  try to take over.  

Luke will slab up a lot of the  wood for countertops, tables, etc. with the alaskan chainsaw mill, and then we do need to get busy plugging the trees as well, but having a hard time finding the time. 

Speaking of time, I have to get going now.

Don’t forget to eat your mushrooms, and try to count your blessings ,not your problems.

Natalie 

Hi Everyone!

Some may know that we have relocated to a place in north East Hendersonville NC. We love it here up the mountain, but when we head down into town we pass through an agricultural wasteland of “apple farming”. It’s odd that this area is esteemed as an area suitable to grow apples, when in reality the conventional recommendations of fungicide, pesticide, herbicide, and more are so numerous that it prompted me to write this blog post.

As you can see here at the 2023 Integrated Orchard Management Guide for Commercial Apples in the Southeast the list of recommended applications of chemicals is no shorter than 100 + different chemicals. I stopped trying to make sense of this disgusting guide at chemical 100. What the heck is this! It’s no wonder that half of the population has cancer. 

Here at Wild Goods you can always rest assured that we have sprayed a total of zero chemicals on anything we grow. We are growing native useful plants like Pawpaw, Aronia, juneberry, hardy kiwi, American persimmon, duck potatoes, ramps and more!  We are extremely lucky to be living up a mountain where we are well tucked away from the chemical inputs that the nearby farms utilize on their crops. It is worrisome that this backwards way of farming is still being recommended and sold to the masses by big agriculture and big business. According to Utah State University, “Chemical fertilizers hit the market after World War II, when the government realized that leftover ammonium nitrate, originally manufactured for explosives during the war, could be applied to crops as a nitrogen fertilizer. Pesticides had been initially developed for poisonous gases ”

It is no wonder that the toxic chemicals that divide us are a byproduct of war. Let us create a more peaceful, healthful future without these unnecessary chemical inputs and build our soil naturally with compost, green and natural manures, and mulches. 

Peace and love

Natalie 

Hello friends!

We have been quite busy preparing for an exciting spring season, as nature is bringing to show the first signs of spring. Frog eggs in our pond, daffodils popping up, suspiciously warm weather, and lengthening days are all pointing towards the end of winter and the beginning of a new season of growth. We have updated our online store with a few new and old products, so be sure to check that out. If you notice any issues with the store, do not hesitate to reach out and let me know so I can get them fixed! 

Our class schedule for 2024 is nearly completed. We may have some additional events and activities come up, but our monthly foray schedule has been posted and is bookable now. Please let us know if you have any questions and we hope to see you sometime soon! 

Our 2nd truffle season is wrapping up with the season change, and it was another good one for the books. We found our first black perigords in a nearby orchard, had another great successful year hunting our native wild truffle, the Imaia gigantea, and found a few unidentified species. We were featured on WLOS, so that was fun! check it out here 

We should be back at all our usual markets this coming year, and possibly a few new ones. A big shout out to all our friends and interns who help make what we do possible. We are also in a number of retail stores currently, so if you can’t make it to a market, be sure to head on over to any of the wonderful establishments carrying our wares. You can check out the list and get directions here 

THANKS YALL! 

Hope to see you at a class, market, or around town soon! 

Mush love,

Luke & Natalie