God bless fiddleheads.  My dad and I picked these yesterday (in a spot that will remain undisclosed), washed them, boiled them and added them to our dinner salad.  Hmmmmmmm, soooooo goooooooooood.

Here are the rules of fiddleheading according to Farmer Steve (pictured below a’hunting with Molly):

1. Pick no more than one or two fiddleheads per stand.  It you never want to find fiddleheads there again, by all means, pick more.

2. Stick to the lowest ones – once the fiddleheads have unfurled more than a half inch of their stem they’re no good.

3. Remember that picking fiddleheads is the easy part, cleaning them is a real bastard so, as exciting as it is to discover them, try not to get carried away in the picking phase.  Pick only as many as you can stand to peel the brown film off one-by-one when you get them home.

4. Enjoy!  There’s nothing better than freshly picked fiddleheads for dinner… except maybe freshly picked chanterelle mushrooms – which folks in this neighborhood literally go to war over in the summertime.

Boo found these beauties and laid down right next to them to mark the spot.  (Read: Boo got tired and flopped down wherever he happened to be standing – mercifully right next to a beautiful clump of fiddleheads and not right on top of them.)  Thanks, Boo!