Horizon can’t stop Thunderhawks

Praire View continues to dominate Front Range League

BY JONATHAN MANESS SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA

THORNTON - e Horizon and Prairie View high school baseball teams are o to a strong start to the 2023 baseball season.

e two squads faced o on the diamond ursday with the underhawks coming out on top 12-6 to pick up their third consecutive win and fourth victory in the Front Range League.

It’s a challenging road ahead for both the teams playing in the revamped Front Range League. It will be Prairie View’s rst year in the league after playing in the East Metro Conference. Horizon was fth in the FRL last season.

e Front Range League features some of the top teams in Class 5A, including the defending Class 5A state champion Broom eld and also Legacy - the runner up last year. e top-ranked Rocky Mountain Lobos are also another headliner from the league.

“It’s a tough league, we have our work cut out for us,” said Prairie View coach Mark Gonzalez. “ ere are a lot of good teams and quality programs.” e underhawks rolled through their non-league schedule, winning ve of six games and their lone loss coming in a tight 4-3 defeat against North Penn (Pa.). e two losses in conference for the Prairie View were to Loveland (6-4 loss) and Rocky Mountain (9-7). Against Rocky, the Lobos scored three runs in the sixth to steal the victory. e strong showing has Prairie View right on the verge of being ranked in Class 5A.

“We are right there; have a really good group that really like to compete,” Gonzalez said. “We play our game we have a chance down the stretch.”

Junior Wyatt Waterhouse is leading the way with 15 hits, 18 runs and is batting .417 at the plate.

Senior Trevor Devincenzi and sopho- more Jerry Stone have also done well at the plate, each connecting on 12 hits. Against Horizon, Prairie View took advantage of the Hawks mistakes down the stretch to get the wins Getting four runs across in the both the sixth and seventh innings.

Six di erent players had hits for Prairie View and Favi Gaeta and Travis Teague led the way with two RBIs each and Anthony Rivera scored three runs.

Local foragers teach students to cook with wild foods

ere some see weeds, Erica Davis sees ingredients for delicious soups and salads.

“In urban areas, there are a lot of plants that we call weeds that spring up everywhere, that are widely available to people, that are edible and good,” she said.

Foraging is the act of gathering wild plants from nature, generally to be used for food, and sometimes to make other products. For Davis and other foragers, spring means plants are starting to grow –which means kitchens will soon be full of wild foods ready to be prepared in creative

Across the Front Range and in the mountains, several foragers share their knowledge through cooking classes based on

Why cook with wild food?

Davis, who runs a blog called Wild Food Girl, has upcoming classes in Ramah and Fairplay. Her Arvada class this spring has

“I think one of the biggest challenges with edible wild plants is that people don’t always know how to prepare them,” she said. “We all know how to cook spinach, we all know how to make broccoli — but we don’t all know how to cook tumble mustard so that it tastes good. So in my classes, I like to give students that experience of preparing an edible wild plant — or three — in a way that I think they are going to Davis’ classes begin with an hourlong plant walk where students learn the names of plants and safety and sustainability guidelines for foraging. Afterward, she teaches them how to prepare several of the plants they have for-

In the spring, dandelions and wild mustard greens are common staples in her

“People sometimes picture foraging as going out into the forest and picking plants

— and that’s part of it — but I would really encourage people to learn the weeds and make use of them,” she said. “A lot of them are non-native species, so there really aren’t as many ecological considerations with picking them.”

Davis teaches her students to make dandelion green soup from a recipe passed down by an Italian relative. Musk mustard is great in salads, and tumble mustard and field pennycress are fun to ferment, she said.

Beyond the creative and flavorful uses of foraged foods, research from 2019 suggests that wild edible greens harvested in urban areas can be abundant and highly nutritious. The study dubbed wild edible plants “open-source food.”

“This idea that open-source food is out there for anybody to eat and make use of — and then furthermore, it’s organic, it’s free, it’s fresh — I just think that’s a great concept,” Davis said.

Safety precautions

Despite their affordability and freshness, wild plants are not all safe to eat. Crystal Baldwin, who teaches wild plant-based classes at her Golden business, Earth Sweet Boutique, said it’s always important to triple-check plants before you eat them.

“I don’t like to frighten people away from… foraged foods because there’s a lot of very safe ones,” Baldwin said. “But I like them to be aware that there are dangerous, poisonous ones that will kill you, and so it’s important to kind of have an idea of what those might be and what to look out for.”

Baldwin encourages those interested in foraging to start by taking classes, working with local experts and reading about which plants are safe to eat.

She also said it’s important to check if plants are near old buildings that could be contributing lead to soil or if plants have been sprayed with pesticides.