This year's edition of the Sloterdijk Station expedition exploring the edible landscape with the aid of .walk code, shows lots of fresh new faces around unfamiliar places. In a follow-up of last year's event we return to Sloterdijk to combine the latest in pedestrian software and augmented reality with the good old fashioned joys of psychogeography and foraging. With an updated PacMan inspired code we set out to find 80+ species as noted (PDF) by Claud Biemans.

 

Here are some of our expedition snaps.

See also Wilfried's review and Lynn's review.

We're proud to present a special report from Mongolia by team-member Lipika

During my last holidays, I went to Russia and Mongolia. Especially Mongolia has been an overwhelming experience. For a city girl, the wide green scenery can have such a relaxing influence. I can still think back every single day, and remember the quiet, clean & green of the country and feel totally refreshed again. Other then seeing the vast green landscape and enormous livestock, I also coincidentally found my self experiencing Boskoi about 700 km. from Ulaanbaator at Tsagaan Nur. Our guide Rolmaa (Rosa for us) suggested to go and find pine cones, as she is addicted to them.

Tsagaan Nur, the White Lake is a beautiful area, where you can enjoy nice w alks around the lake and in the mountains. The lake was formed by lava flows from a volcanic eruption some 7000 - 8000 years ago. The soil is extremely fertile here and so we started exploring the area, where we discovered all sorts of berries, succulent plants, onions, pine cones, poisonous mushrooms and marmots (now an endangered species). The next day, during lunch a water bottle was filled with fresh juice, made out of the berries we collected. The lady at our ger had made it specially for us, rich of vitamins.

People in Mongolia are really directly dependent on their natural surroundings. They have nothing other then their animals an d their nature. For example we also collected a lot of rose hip, for Rolmaa. It is rich of vitamin C, calcium phosphorus magnum. In winter and spring time when people are tired and have a lack of vitamins, they boil it in water and drink it. Also people with kidneys problems use it.

 

During our journey we met another Mongolian guy, in summertime he works as a guide and during winters he is an IT student with an Indian institute. He will first study two years in Ulaanbaator and then mov e to Delhi and complete his education there. He also felt sad, because a lot of local, indigenous knowledge in his country is disappearing. As in any other developing economy, the younger generation is not interested in the rural life. They rather move to the city and have a job. Consequently slowly the knowledge on medicinal value of plants, animals and their natural surroundings is fading away. Together with Rolmaa we are now exploring how we can involve the younger generation in retaining this valuable knowledge.

Some images from the fieldtrip with: black-currant, wild-onion, edible pine cones and succulents :

During the M.A.R.I.N. camp 2011, Theun made an inventory of 140 wild apple and pear trees around Kultivator on the Swedish island of Oland. More about the wild apple mapping in this interview at DITT P4 Kalmar a local Swedish radio station.

Two excerpts from the show presented by Erika Norberg, featuring Theun of FoAM and Mathieu of Kultivator:

This image shows all the trees on Boskoi.

A database was made of the 140 trees with info about their location (GPS coordinates), amount of fruits, a description of the shape of the fruit and their taste. A few examples are shown here:

Between the 10th and 20th of august, 142 individual trees in public space in the area surrounding
Dyestad have been documented, mostly beside the road, sometimes in a field. Trees in gardens and trees without fruit have not been mapped. From each tree a sample and picture was taken, GPS coordinates were mapped and an estimate of the amount of fruit was recorded. The collec- tion of fruit has been thoroughly tasted by the M.A.R.I.N. and Kultivator crew. All apples and pears have been mapped on the opensource platform and android app Boskoi, to which anyone can add more trees...

the entire collection ready for tasting.

Observations:
Whether these trees are indeed wild or cultivars is unclear. On three occasions trees seemed to grow two varieties of apples, which suggests they are grafted. The majority of trees are of high age (50+). Epiphytic life observed on the fruit trees includes: Sawfly, Codling moth, Green Budworm Moth, Green Capsid, Apple fruit weevil, lice, spiders, lichen and moss. Tracks and paths going straight to trees suggest they are frequented by animals. Humans may be feeding of some trees at Bjärbygatan, where apples only were left out of reach. Birds feeding on apples only showed close to the coast. The trees generally seemed in good health with no evidence of mildew or cancer, but some scab and perhaps bitter pit. The apples along the path from Åkerby to the coast seem to ripen earliest and got some of the highest ratings in the tasting. Generally Öland apples seem to have a tough skin and be crisp but rather dry in taste.

M.A.R.I.N. is an initiative integrating artistic and scientific practices in researching cultural and environmental ecosystems. It’s operational focus is a mobile residency and workshop program looking at marine environments, sustainable mobility, and various methods & technologies for field work.

Kultivator is an experimental cooperation of organic farming and visual art practice,
situated in rural village Dyestad, on the island Öland on the southeast coast of Sweden.

I went walking with Anna and Abishek from the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuari: a forest garden in the Western Ghat mountains of Kerala/India: http://www.gbsanctuary.org/. We start walking from trainstation Santpoort Noord with destination to reach the North Sea of the Netherlands. On our way all sorts of little creatures and plants took our delighted attention, and in the end by far we never reached that Sea. Pretty unexpected we met an abundance of edible species. Abishek is crazy about berries and so easily he spotted Gooseberries (Ribes uva-crispa / Klapbes); Red Currents ((Ribes rubrum, Rode bes); Raspberries (Rubus idaeus, Framboos); Wild Plums (Prunes, Wilde Pruim); Dewberries (Rubus caesius, Dauwbraam) and Woodland Strawberries (Fragaria vesca, Bosaardbei) which like to grow on the northerns banks of the dunes and recognisable by having their little fruits pointing down. Anna's favourite was Wilde Oregano of which she picked a little for the pasta that evening. Further more we nibbled on our way on some Kamille, Rucola (Eruca sativa/ Rocket), Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata, Look-zonder-look), White goosefoot (Chenopodium album, Melganzevoet) and on the root of a Wood Avens (Geum urbanum, Nagelkruid), which tasted horrible!. Little Boskoi knew a spot to find Wild Garlic, (Allium ursinum, Daslook) where we digged out one root, just to see and wow what a smell they have.We spotted a few Wilde Asparagus (Wilde Asperges) and finally we met a huge Common Beech (Fagus sylvatica, Beukeboom).

Tasting Gooseberries

The Oregano from the dunes is inimini but  taste the best!

Wilde Plums, good have ripen a bit more, but nevertheless tasty

A digged out root of the Wild Garlic

Hi all,

We're proud to present a new version of the Boskoi app.

Available in the Android Market: http://tiny.cc/x2byf
or on: http://www.Boskoi.org

 

These are some of the main chainges and improvements the team has been working on. Looking further ahead here are some of the future innovations we're looking at.

In development:
- Making the service available as a personalized widget to be used on your own website.
- The ability to suggest/organize an event/excursion/meal.
- Using the platform for alternative aims perhaps including bio-remediation or for invasivores.

If you have any comments, suggestions and ideas for developing the service for foragers we'd love to hear them. Please get in contact with us via developer@boskoi.org

 

 

The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, have joined forces to create 'What’s Invasive' a mobile application to help locate and eradicate harmful non-native plants found in environmentally sensitive public areas.

 

For the edible invasive species they needn't bother, we've been adding those to Boskoi. The tasty way of managing exotic weeds is by becoming invasivores.

Boskoi has received an honorary mention at Prix Ars electronica 2011.

We'd like to thank Ars Electronica for this accolade.

Many thanks to all who support and contribute to the project!

 

Be part of mapping the energetic value of the Dutch urban landscape; how much energy does it take for semi-skilled contemporary foragers to gather wild foods and what energetic value is contained in nearby urban environments? On May 8th the Middle Kingdom of Weeds festival features a forage psychogeographic expedition that will starts at 10.30 from Station Sloterdijk, Amsterdam. Using .walk algorithms this foraging expedition will map and explore the caloric potential of the area.

Team members include:
- a geographer, who maps the edibles on Boskoi
- a timekeeper, who maps the times spent walking and harvesting
- spotters and harvesters

On return the wild foods will be weighed to make a calculation of the energy harvested in the expedition.

On the basis of this a map is made of the caloric value along the walk, the energy budget of the group and the best foraging algorithms.

This expedition is open to all.

Hosted by Wilfried Hou Je Bek (Cryptoforesty) and Theun Karelse (Boskoi/FoAM).

 A promissing organising platform for urban argiculture projects will be unveiled at Farming the City. Boskoi is one of 20 Amsterdam based projects linked to foodproduction in an urban context presented in this exhibition at ACRAM in Amsterdam. Farming the City is an initiative by Francesca Miazzo and the new platform support and link urban agriculture initiatives worldwide on farmingthecity.net

 

During Pixelache 2011 FoAM hosted a string of activities (the groWorld bazaar) including a presentation of Boskoi where we met with Joel Rosenberg of Satokartta Helsinki His Urbaani Sadonkorjuupyöräily or Urban Foraging Tours are Helsinki-based expeditions to forage for apples, pears, sea buckthorns, hazels, chokeberries, juneberries, currants, rowans, rosehips, pine nuts, plums, gooseberries, etc. His google-map is open to new entries.