Join us for the two remaining tasting sessions at our special partner event lead by SEAS Master's student Milan Anderson. This engaging value-added agroforestry project highlights underutilized native fruit and shrub crops. Come experience their unique flavors and discover how integrating tree crops into farm production can bring environmental, social, and economic benefits to farms across Michigan.
All of the ingredients used to make the value-added products Milan and her team will share were harvested by them. The value-added products themselves were also prepared by them. The crop was sourced primarily from trees around Ann Arbor and from Oikos Tree Crops. Serviceberries and cornelian cherries were foraged in Ann Arbor, demonstrating how hardy these fruiting plants can be since they grow and produce well without any maintenance or care. Persimmons were harvested from Oikos Tree Crops, and gooseberries came from the DPFLI farm in Detroit.
The main goal of this event is to showcase the flavors and potential uses of resilient tree crops. Milan hopes to gather feedback from participants to share with the team's network of growers, helping to support marketability and promote wider adoption of these crops.
At the Argus tasting, Milan and her team will sample serviceberry fruit leathers, gooseberry jam, and cornelian cherry salsa and chips. They will have recipes available and nutritional information for the crops available.
At Bløm Mead + Cider in November, they will have the full spread of tree crops: serviceberry fruit leathers, serviceberry beer, gooseberry jam, cornelian cherry salsa, cornelian cherry mead, persimmon jam and fruit leather, persimmon mead, as well as lemony quince, and chickasaw plum gummy bears!
Don't miss out on your chance to Taste the Food Forest!
More project details featured below: