- Villinä yrtteihin

Authentic food from the wild Finland,
the garden and the forest raw materials.

Hi

I´m Päivi Maaranen and I live in Imatra, Finland.

I enjoy tasty food, hiking, the smell of the
nature and its sounds. I enjoy the nature with all my senses.

Päivi-Angervo - Päivi Maaranen

My relatioship with the nature started as a child when we lived in a countryside. A lot of my family’s sustenance came from the forests and gardens. As I became an adult, all these sustenance stayed in the nature until I found picking mushrooms again.

I started to pick mushrooms more than I needed myself, so I canned them in different ways. Also, my family and friends got to enjoy the mushrooms. Because of all this excitement I decided to study “vocational qualification in Natural and Environmental Protection” in Vironlahti. I’m always looking for new opportunities to learn something new and that’s why I continued my studies in Kajaani to become natural resource specialist . New mushroom products are under development and they are supposed to be available later this year.

I also studied the use of wild herbs with the help of Martat. I learnt to make herbal drinks and got good feedback of them. Some of my other wild herbal products are syrups, fermented drinks and 365-powders that include wild herbs and berries. I try to mix wild herbs both with mushrooms and berries aiming to create new products including pure and natural ingredients.

retket ja koulutukset

Join my trips to nature

I’m trained and serficated to pick wild herbs, mushrooms, and wild berries. While joining my trips, you get to know the most common eatable nature ingredients but also their poisonous look-a-likes. 

The trips are suitable for well-being activity groups of workplaces, for friends, for children, for students and  for everyone who wants to learn more of what to pick from the forests. 

The trips usually take 2 to 4 hours and they may include a small taste depending of the deal. The trips are mostly being arranged in Southern-Carelia.

Dry and store your wild herbs

I can dry the mushrooms and wild herbs (not berries) that you picked to store for your later use. Shelf life for mushrooms is nearly 10 years, for wild herbs it is usually 1 to 2 years. I have a quite large dryer for herbs in which the drying happens with proper temperatures. This process takes about one day. I can dry all the eatable wild herbs but in some cases the color of the herbs might change. All different mushrooms and herbs are being dried separately and if any of them is allergenic, that is being dried in different time. The dried ingredients are being packed in your own containers or by using my plastic bags that are fulfilling the requirements of food product. One kg of fresh wild herbs or mushrooms will turn into 100 g (about) of dried ingredient.

The dryer will be used a couple of times during early summer, a couple of times in July by the time of porcini (herkkutatti) and a couple of times during the time season of mushroom picking. If you are willing to buy this service, please book the date for that in advance. There will be coming also a possible date of drying for plant and mushroom dyers.

My business is located in the school of Savikanta.

These are some of the examples of suitable herbs for drying: goutweed, nettle, birch leaves, fireweed leaves and flowers, dandelion leaves, and flowers, all the herbs that are planted in the gardens.

There are some of the examples of suitable mushrooms for drying: chanterelle, porcini, slippery jack, funnel chanterelle, black chanterelle, brittlegills