Event Announcement
Sunday, Sep 4, 2016
1:00 pm
– 3:30 pm
The 2.5-hour foraging tour begins at 1 PM, Saturday, Sep 4, at the NE corner of Woodhaven Blvd. and Forest Park Drive, outside Victory Field, in Woodhaven, Queens.
The suggested donation is $20/adult, $10/child under 12. At least 24 hours in advance to reserve a spot on tour.
SIGN UP LINK
DETAILS BELOW
After a well-attended tour of the QueensWay, co-led by Friends of the QueensWay and local legend, “Wildman” Steve Brill, we are back with another one!
This tour explores the long-abandoned RBB line that runs through Forest Park. This is one of the best places for foraging in late summer. We’ll explore a wild, wooded trail, next to a large, mature forest, plus trail sides, thickets, and cultivated areas, all loaded with wild plants
This is the start of the nut season, and the butternut is one of the best. We’ll crack these flavorful nuts open with rocks, and enjoy a treat you can’t buy anywhere.
Most roots are out of season in the summer, but burdock, an expensive detoxifying herb sold in health food stores, is an exception, and it abounds in human-disturbed areas scattered throughout the trail sides, where it’s invasive. Instead of brewing it as a tea, it’s so common; you cook it like potatoes, or marinate and bake it to make vegan beef jerky.
Sassafras root, the original source of root beer, stays in season all year. You use it for tea, for making root beer, as the thickener for gumbo, called filé powder, and as a cinnamon-like seasoning.
Another tree we’ll look for is the black birch. It grows in the woods, with twigs that taste like wintergreen, and it provides the raw material for making birch beer. You can steep the twigs in hot water to make a fabulous tea, with anti-inflammatory properties that protect you from heart disease, similar to aspirin. You can also thicken the tea with agar, season and sweeten it, and make black birch Jell-O. Even better, use it to flavor a tapioca-thickened Stick Pudding.
There are plenty of summer herbs and greens in season. We’ll find mugwort, a tonic for the female reproductive system, and lamb’s-quarters, which you use like its relative, spinach. We’ll also be finding Asiatic dayflower, hedge mustard, poor man’s pepper, lady’s thumb, and wood sorrel, all great for salads, sandwiches, and cooked vegetable dishes.
Wild seeds are in season too. We’ll hunt for the spicy seeds of garlic mustard, walnut-flavored seeds of jewelweed (a panacea for skin irritation—it even cures mosquito bites and prevents poison ivy rash), plus the wild grains of foxtail grass.
With lots of rain and a bit of luck, gourmet chicken mushrooms, milky mushrooms, boletes, and russulas may be emerging.
Don’t miss a fantastic tour of this vastly under-appreciated nature trail.
“Naturalist-author “Wildman” Steve Brill is America’s go-to guy for foraging. He’s been leading foraging tours and providing demos for the public, for schools, day camps, birthday parties, museums, nature centers, parks departments, restaurants and chefs, garden clubs, hiking clubs, teaching farms, nurseries, and other organizations, in parks and natural areas throughout the Greater NY area, since 1982.
http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/
Forest Park Dr, Woodhaven, NY 11421, USA
Sunday, Aug 28, 2016
9:00 am
– 3:00 pm
We are regulars at the GrowNYC Forest Hills Greenmarket and we always look forward to going back to set up our table information sessions! Join us in filling out the design survey for Phase 1 of the QueensWay
106-6 Queens Blvd, Forest Hills, NY 11375, USA
Sunday, Aug 7, 2016
9:00 am
– 3:00 pm
We are regulars at the GrowNYC Forest Hills Greenmarket and we always look forward to going back to set up our table information sessions!
60-1-60-25 86th St, Middle Village, NY 11379, USA
Wednesday, Jul 27, 2016
7:00 pm
– 9:00 pm
In 2013 and 2014, community residents participated in a planning process, leading to the October 2014 release of The QueensWay Plan—a proposal backed by key local elected officials to transform a 3.5-mile abandoned former rail corridor into a linear park and trailway.
Since then, The Trust for Public Land (working with Friends of the QueensWay—a local volunteer group) has received funding commitments from the NY State Office of Parks and Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi to prepare a complete design for a half-mile Phase One of the QueensWay—the Metropolitan Hub, from Metropolitan Avenue to Union Turnpike.
COMMUNITY RESIDENTS ARE INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN A DESIGN WORKSHOP TO GENERATE IDEAS FOR THIS IMPORTANT FIRST PHASE OF THE QUEENSWAY.
Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School, Queens, NY, United States
Sunday, Jul 10, 2016
9:00 am
– 2:45 pm
We are regulars at the GrowNYC Forest Hills Greenmarket and we always look forward to going back to set up our table information sessions!
106-06 Queens Blvd, Forest Hills, NY 11375, USA
Saturday, Jun 18, 2016
11:00 am
– 3:00 pm
In our 3rd year of hosting a QueensWay Bike Tour, we are co-leading again with our friends at Five Borough Bicycle Club (5BBC) and TA Queens Committee.
Join us in a ride from Rego Park to Ozone Park to explore the future route of the QueensWay, the proposed bikeway, linear park, and rail trail atop the abandoned Rockaway Beach Branch railroad. We will make several stops, and brief hikes onto the rail line before officially ending outside the Aqueduct Race Track and Casino. Riders wishing to take the A train back to Manhattan can continue to Aqueduct Station. Peter Beadle of Friends of The QueensWay will discuss the history of the abandoned rail line and give updates on project progress.
**Feeder rides Begin Earlier**
9:30 AM, Union Square North @ Park Ave, Manhattan (Josh G)
9:30 AM Grand Army Plaza, Prospect Park, Brooklyn (Susan Levine)
10:00 AM Dutch Kills Green, Queens Plaza N @ Jackson Avenue (just over the 59th Street Bridge) (Steve B)
11:00AM @ Shalimar Diner, Austin St & 63 Dr, Queens.
ALL RIDERS DEPART SHALIMAR AT 11:15 AM. 25 leisurely miles if starting in Manhattan.
Partners
https://www.5bbc.org
https://www.transalt.org/getinvolved/neighborhood/queens
Shalimar Diner, Queens, NY, United States
Saturday, May 7, 2016
1:00 pm
– 3:30 pm
The 2.5-hour foraging tour begins at 1 PM, Saturday, May 7, at the NE corner of Woodhaven Blvd. and Forest Park Drive, outside Victory Field, in Woodhaven, Queens.
The suggested donation is $20/adult, $10/child under 12. At least 24 hours in advance to reserve a spot on tour.
SIGN UP LINK
DETAILS BELOW
For the first time, a tour of the QueensWay will be co-led by Friends of the QueensWay and local legend, “Wildman” Steve Brill, who will lead us on a hunt for “Devil’swalkingstick” above and on the QueensWay as well as many other shoots, greens and flowers.
This tour explores the long-abandoned RBB line that runs through Forest Park, and it’s one of the best places for foragers in the spring . We’ll explore adjacent trails in Forest Park itself as well.
On the embankment off Forest Park Dr., above the Queensway, we’ll come to a large stand of Devil’swalkingstick. This small tree gets its name because only the Devil could use the very thorny trunk as a walking stick. The large, red-and-green shoots at the tip of the trunk are prickly too, but you can trim the prickles away with a knife and cook the shoots, which regenerate, to make a vegetable similar to asparagus.
Another shoot in great abundance will be Japanese knotweed, which looks like asparagus and tastes like rhubarb. The faster you collect this tasty, nutritious, invasive wild plant, the faster it regenerates.
Roots are in season too. Burdock, an expensive detoxifying herb sold in health food stores, abounds throughout the area. The cooked root tastes like a combination of potatoes and artichokes. This invasive species hails from Europe and Asia.
Sassafras, on the other hand, grows in open places in the woods. It tastes like root beer, which you make from the taproots. You can also use it for brewing a delicious, detoxifying tea, or as a cinnamon-like seasoning.
Sweet cicely, which should be flowering, has leaves and roots that taste like licorice, wonderful in salads and oatmeal, and everything in between.
The black birch tree, of birch beer fame, is a common forest tree that tastes like wintergreen. The twigs, which you can chew, make a delicious non-steroidal anti-inflammatory herb tea. And you can thicken, season, and sweeten the tea to make black birch Jello, or to flavor puddings!
Everyone will also find plenty of leafy green vegetables, such as chickweed, which tastes like corn, pungent garlic mustard roots with their garlicky leaves, mild-flavored violets, sour-flavored greenbrier, and spicy field garlic.
With lots of rain and a bit of luck, gourmet chicken mushrooms, dryad’s saddle, and fawn mushrooms may have emerged.
“Naturalist-author “Wildman” Steve Brill is America’s go-to guy for foraging. He’s been leading foraging tours and providing demos for the public, for schools, day camps, birthday parties, museums, nature centers, parks departments, restaurants and chefs, garden clubs, hiking clubs, teaching farms, nurseries, and other organizations, in parks and natural areas throughout the Greater NY area, since 1982.
http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/
83-53 Woodhaven Blvd, Woodhaven, NY 11421, USA
Saturday, May 7, 2016
11:00 am
– 1:00 pm
Join guides from The Trust for Public Land and the Friends of the QueensWay, for a 2 mile walk alongside the northern section of the proposed QueensWay – that will transform a long abandoned rail line running from Forest Hills/Rego Park south to Ozone Park.
NO SIGNUP REQUIRED
When built, the QueensWay will highlight the many cultures of Queens (one of the most diverse urban areas in America) and provide important pedestrian and bike linkages. This tour will start in historic Forest Hills Gardens and include brief walks on the rail bed (wear long pants, and hiking or walking shoes), but much of it will be on city streets adjoining the QueensWay. The tour ends in Forest Park (near Myrtle Ave and Woodhaven Blvd.)
Participants can compare the “before” condition of the corridor to drawings and renderings of “what could be”, from the QueensWay Plan released in October 2014.
Jane’s Walk in its 10th year celebrates neighborhoods. “Jane’s Walks are free, locally organized walking tours, in which people get together to explore, talk about and celebrate their neighbourhoods. Where more traditional tours are a bit like walking lectures, a Jane’s Walk is more of a walking conversation. Leaders share their knowledge, but also encourage discussion and participation among the walkers.”
107 Continental Ave, Forest Hills, NY, United States
Sunday, May 15, 2016
9:00 am
– 3:00 pm
The best part about having our info booth at the GrowNYC Forest Hills Greenmarket next to seeing familiar faces and meeting new ones, is that we get to also meet great local farmers and vendors with delicious options.
106-06 Queens Blvd, Forest Hills, NY 11375, USA
Saturday, Apr 16, 2016
8:00 am
– 2:30 pm
To kick off our Spring season, we are having our first table in the foyer of the Michael’s Arts and Crafts thanks to the great folks at Trader Joe’s in Rego Park, Queens. We look forward to engaging returning supporters and new folks.
Trader Joe's, Queens, NY, United States
