Has anyone harvested wild rice?

[calgarychef]

Who knows why these thoughts pop into my head? I’ve always wanted to paddle my canoe and harvest some wild rice.... I know zip about it and after seeing photos online I’m not even sure if I’ve seen it growing.

Has anyone done it? Sounds fun.

[Dewey Cox]

Like wild rice growing in the wild?
Is that even a thing in Alberta?
Interesting.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by calgarychef

Who knows why these thoughts pop into my head? I’ve always wanted to paddle my canoe and harvest some wild rice.... I know zip about it and after seeing photos online I’m not even sure if I’ve seen it growing.

Has anyone done it? Sounds fun.

When younger I visited a place SW of Edmonton. They had a shallow marsh that had wild rice growing. To the life of me I can’t recall the exact location.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_rice

[bezzola]

My brother inlaw does it at his plsace just outside of meadowlake sask

[Red Bullets]

In Alberta some of the wild rice you encounter may be seeded crops. There are probably a few permitted wild rice growers. Just Lakeland Wild Rice and Canada Goose Wild Rice may produce several thousand pounds a year on a few lakes. Be careful where you harvest, make sure it's not somebodies crop.

Saskatchewan has wild rice permits and leases on Crown lands and are restricted to northern residents who have resided above the NAD (northern administration district ) line for 15 years or half their lifetime, whichever is less.

[o.w.l]

When I was a kid I remember my brother showing me a slough that he said had wild rice growing in it by Elinor lake, not sure if it really was but it did look different


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[Talking moose]

YouTube bushway wild rice.
They are in Saskatchewan.

[35 whelen]

I used to pick it in Eastern Manitoba, but we used airboats with big screens on the front. That was in the late 80s then the market more or less collapsed. Was pretty cool lots of wild rice lakes in eastern, Manitoba.

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[Okotok]

I worked with a guy years ago that used to harvest his own wild rice in Manitoba or Saskatchewan if I recall. He said he would bend the heads over the side of of the canoe and whack them with a paddle of some kind so the grains would fall into the canoe.

[calgarychef]

Originally Posted by Okotok

I worked with a guy years ago that used to harvest his own wild rice in Manitoba or Saskatchewan if I recall. He said he would bend the heads over the side of of the canoe and whack them with a paddle of some kind so the grains would fall into the canoe.

That’s what I want to do...I’m pretty sure I could tell if it was someone’s crop by the extent of it so I’d stay out of there. End of August sounds like the right time, same time to be looking for some of the mushrooms that we all love and it’s blueberry season too if I remember right.

[kritz]

Originally Posted by Red Bullets

In Alberta some of the wild rice you encounter may be seeded crops. There are probably a few permitted wild rice growers. Just Lakeland Wild Rice and Canada Goose Wild Rice may produce several thousand pounds a year on a few lakes. Be careful where you harvest, make sure it's not somebodies crop.

Saskatchewan has wild rice permits and leases on Crown lands and are restricted to northern residents who have resided above the NAD (northern administration district ) line for 15 years or half their lifetime, whichever is less.

Yes This. There are lots of northern Sask water bodies that have wild rice growing in them. They are seeded and harvested, so yes they are somebodies crop, yes they have investment in them. They do use the air boats with rakes to harvest. There is a Wild Rice cleaning facility in La Ronge that processes most of the Sask Wild Rice.

[webster]

I believe in the Hay Lakes west of High Level there was a significant amount of wild rice growing. Sometime in the 1950s or 60s the Hay River flooded and after the flood there was little or no wild rice to be found.

[Drewski Canuck]

"end of August sounds like the right time, same time to be looking for some of the mushrooms that we all love and it’s blueberry season too "

And THAT is why I love Alberta at the end of August!!!

Drewski

[Osky]

Yes we do it here. Your question?
Here the smaller entities generally use a clean aluminum canoe. One person paddles or poles the canoe thru the rice beds while the second person in the canoe has two wood rods or paddles about 3 feet long, one in each hand. One hand reaches out with paddle and sweeps a bunch of rice tops over the side the canoe and the other hand/ paddle Knicks the rice off and into the canoe. The rice then is taken ashore and spread in the sun to dry. Once dry it is tossed into the air and the breeze blows the chaff away and leaves the rice to fall and be caught.
An acquaintance owns large fields which he plants then floods with water from a river on his property. For harvest they pump the water back off and harvest those fields with very big combines. They bolt 2x6 boards to the combine tracks to make them wider and move better over the saturated ground.
His commercial fields grow so thick a person could not walk 3 steps into that head hi mess. Natural areas boated thru are much more sparse.

Osky

[35 whelen]

This is what we used to use in the day. Quite fun to drive

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[bsmitty27]

I have a couple sloughs on my property that I would like to try planting rice in. Has anyone planted it before?

[bessiedog]

Lac LaNon has wild rice on the north west side of the lake

You can eat the stuff

And you prolly could harvest it.

Seeds r black or dark if I remember correctly.

[Big Grey Wolf]

My hunting partner planted bunch in local lake few years back. When he was a hunting guide one of his American clients had major wild rice company, gave him a few bags of seed.

[KinAlberta]

Originally Posted by bsmitty27

I have a couple sloughs on my property that I would like to try planting rice in. Has anyone planted it before?

About 35-40 years ago my brother got a government permit to plant wild rice. We spread it out by the lake’s shoreline but it didn’t seem to amount to much.

[calgarychef]

Originally Posted by KinAlberta

About 35-40 years ago my brother got a government permit to plant wild rice. We spread it out by the lake’s shoreline but it didn’t seem to amount to much.

The research I’ve done is the rice can’t be dried out too much or it won’t germinate. It’s supposed to fall directly into the water from the plant.

I’d sure love to find some and get a little bag of it. Food that you’ve harvested yourself is always better for some reason.

[dodgeboy1979]

Originally Posted by calgarychef

That’s what I want to do...I’m pretty sure I could tell if it was someone’s crop by the extent of it so I’d stay out of there. End of August sounds like the right time, same time to be looking for some of the mushrooms that we all love and it’s blueberry season too if I remember right.

I've seen the guys harvesting wild rice on Keeley lake about the third week in September.

[antlercarver]

The wild rice you buy at the store has been roasted and will not grow if planted.
I bought sacks of seed for planting, it was stored in sacks under water and spread in about 3-5 ft of water. It reseeds itself, my crop got weaker and in a few years there was none. Not right type of lake bottom.
There is a small lake 10 miles from here that WAS on someones wild rice licence maybe 30 years ago. I have not seen any trail or other sign of anyone going in there ever. I have not checked the lake myself. This is on crown land.

[rco320]

https://education.usask.ca/ccstu/pdf...eappendixa.pdf

This brings back a lot of memories.

I worked for the author as a university student taking field samples of mud and water from wild rice operations. I'd known him for years before that. Wild rice was one of the alternative income sources for people in Northern Saskatchewan that were getting impacted by the collapse of the fur trade.
My father was the provincial wild rice specialist collaborating with Bill. They hired my father from the Philippines for his experience with advancing agriculture and rice commercialization there.

I spent my childhood summers doing odd jobs wild rice various research projects and facilities around La Ronge.

The university of saskatchewanb developed equipment and processes for seeding/harvesting/removal of old rice stalks/ etc. but in early days everything was done by hand.

Anyways ... wild rice won't mature all at once. If you are harvesting manually, try light taps to get the mature heads without damaging the stalk or dislodging the green immature grains and then you can come back a few more times to harvest the next batch.

[calgarychef]

Originally Posted by rco320

https://education.usask.ca/ccstu/pdf...eappendixa.pdf

This brings back a lot of memories.

I worked for the author as a university student taking field samples of mud and water from wild rice operations. I'd known him for years before that. Wild rice was one of the alternative income sources for people in Northern Saskatchewan that were getting impacted by the collapse of the fur trade.
My father was the provincial wild rice specialist collaborating with Bill. They hired my father from the Philippines for his experience with advancing agriculture and rice commercialization there.

I spent my childhood summers doing odd jobs wild rice various research projects and facilities around La Ronge.

The university of saskatchewanb developed equipment and processes for seeding/harvesting/removal of old rice stalks/ etc. but in early days everything was done by hand.

Anyways ... wild rice won't mature all at once. If you are harvesting manually, try light taps to get the mature heads without damaging the stalk or dislodging the green immature grains and then you can come back a few more times to harvest the next batch.

Some good information, thanks for that.