Wild Edibles Festival at Hillsboro Friday Evening and Saturday, April 17 and 18, 2015

Would you like to learn how to live off the land? Information to do that will be available at the Wild Edibles Festival this weekend. The Festival will be held at both the Hillsboro Library and the Hillsboro Elementary School and is free to the public. It all starts Friday Evening, April 17th, at 6 PM, as Mary Dawson, a member of the Committee organizing the event explains.

“Friday Evening we have a speaker, Bill Beatty, a Naturalist from Oglebay Institute will be there to talk about West Virginia’s official plants” said Dawson. “We’ll start at six (PM) with some snacks and we’ll register for Saturday walks between six and seven (PM) and then Bill will speak at seven.”

The Festival continues on Saturday morning.

“Saturday we’ll start registration for walks between nine and ten (AM) and at ten the walks and the workshops begin.” Said Dawson. “We’ll have a mixture of nature walks to identify wild edible plants and workshops to teach people what to do with those plants, how to prepare them and we’ll do some tasting also.”

Dawson goes on to detail some of the plants which will be talked about in Saturday’s workshops.

“One common plant we will look at is Dandelions” said Dawson. “We’ll be doing mushrooms, we’ll be doing a salad with lots of different nice green leafy plants. One person is doing fine dining with wild edible plants, and they will have a mixture of plants. We’ll be doing mushrooms, of course. We’ll have Chaga Tea, and then we have a mushroom workshop just to show you native mushrooms.”

Dawson talks about some of the other workshops which will be held on Saturday.

“We will be having a workshop on poisonous plants just to show you what not to touch and what not to eat” said Dawson. “We have a workshop on plants for survival just in case you’re in the woods and need to know what to eat. We’ll have workshops on herbal tea, spring tonics and we’ll be tasting some birch beer.”

There will also be nature walks on Saturday.

“Most of the nature walks will take place on the Greenbrier River Trail at different spots” said Dawson. “We’ll be at Seebert, and we’ll be at Beard and at Burnsides and we will also have a walk at High Rocks. There will be one hike that’s led by Bill Beatty, the Naturalist who was the speaker on Friday. He will lead a four and a half mile hike.”

The Wild Edibles Festival is part of the Calvin W. Price Appalachian Enrichment Series and is also sponsored by Pocahontas County Dramas, Fairs and Festivals. The committee organizing the event is made up of people from the Pocahontas Nature Club and the Hillsboro Library Friends.

There will be box lunches available from MY Daughter’s Attic and a special vegetarian lasagna lunch will be available at the Pretty Penny Café.

Again, the Wild Edibles Festival will be held at the Hillsboro Library and Hillsboro Elementary School starting at six o’clock Friday night, April 17th and continuing at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning.