When I first got into this quest to feed myself from the land, I had no idea how much time it was going to take. I had no idea of how to forage quickly or efficiently, nor did I know how to properly process the foods that I did bring home. Because I never attended plant classes by experts and failed to find a mentor, the vast majority of the things I have learned are either from a book or come from trial and error on my own part. Add in the fact that all of these years( except that one year that I lived as a bum and earned only 2,600 dollars in an entire year) I have had to work for a living and you start to see the picture that the foraging lifestyle is not as glamorous as Instagram or Facebook might make it seem.
Don’t get me wrong, I would not change my life or take anything back at all. I love doing my absolute best to be a modern day hunter-gatherer. But it is exhausting. There are nights when we go to bed well after midnight because of some form of food preservation or another. This very morning I woke up and canned 8 pints of wild blueberries before I went off to work. I had no other choice, as I don’t want to waste the berries that I just spent days picking.
I have had many people over the years tell me that it is easy for me because I do not have a full time job. People assume that because I write, or I teach classes that my only income comes from those sources. That is 100% false. I like to call myself a self employed hustler. I am a carpenter, a gardener, a wild foods teacher, I sell a tiny bit of wild food each year to some local restaurants in my area, and I started writing for a couple publications in 2019. Early on in my life I decided that working for other people would not be the best option for me, and I have literally done anything and everything possible to be able to keep this dream alive. All of this was done while simultaneously dedicating my life to procuring wild foods for the table.
Because I truly do want to help people not make the same mistakes that I have made over the years I have decided to write a blog with some tips that will hopefully help you and your loved ones achieve Wild Food Nirvana.
Take things slowly
The absolute worst thing that I did in the beginning was to try and rush through every possible item that I could shovel into my gullet. I went from a dude that could not Identify more than a couple plants to a dude that was filling his house with wild foods in less than six months. I would bring home every single species that I encountered on my forays that were edible. I am not joking. Every. Single. Species. Raw chicory greens on a turkey sandwich? Yeah, I did that.
Your experience with eating wild foods and dedicating yourself to this lifestyle will be greatly enhanced by slowing down. Especially in the beginning. Try adding in one new species at a time. First and foremost see if you like the species that you are working with. I often convinced myself that I liked something even though I in fact did not. There is no shame in not harvesting some wild foods. I haven’t harvested Jerusalem Artichokes for my kitchen in 8 years probably. I think they are gross, starvation food fit for the apocalypse.
Taking time to learn a species properly gives you space to explore all of the possibilities that a single food item can achieve. Some foods can be fermented and taste much better that way. Some foods taste great cooked, but horrible raw. Eventually some of these plants will become commonplace in your diet and you won’t be able to imagine your life without them. I have many of these foods.
Get the right tools for the job and learn the correct way to harvest.
This step is very important. It will not matter how many tons of nuts you harvested if you have no idea how to process them, or the correct way to keep them shelf stable. One can find a patch of wild rice without too much difficulty, but without the ability to harvest that rice it is completely useless as a food crop.
A common sight for me every summer is the would be forager with a container in one hand while the other hand collects berries one at a time. This is fine if what you are after is eating one cup of berries a year, but if you actually plan on being able to harvest appreciable amounts of berries every year then you need to invest in proper equipment, and learn proper technique. Otherwise your foraging endeavors will be greatly hindered. A berry basket that hangs around the neck or a Blickey that is belted around the waist are two better options than picking single berries with one hand.
I spent years picking wild blueberries by hand, even with two hands picking, and getting pretty fast at it, my gal Madelyn and I would not fill a five gallon bucket picking all day. I always scorned the idea of a berry rake as a bad idea because of the time spent winnowing leaves and floating off unripe berries. We switched to berry rakes at the suggestion of a friend and we have never gone back. I can now fill a five gallon bucket in a couple hours if we’re in decent blueberry territory. The time spent cleaning berries is absolutely minuscule in comparison to spending all of my daylight hours picking berries by hand. The trade off is definitely worth it.
My son using his blueberry rake to help supply our family with his favorite berries.
3. Be prepared to pick wild foods wherever you go!
Assuming you have a job, and you too want to be able to harvest wild foods for the table one time saver is always being prepared to forage. For me this means always having a basket/s and a good knife in my car. Other handy tools that are easy to store in any trunk are snips, a little hand saw, and a handheld shovel. Occasionally there are other tools that one could use, but those are the basic tools all foragers can have handy for quick forays into foraging areas.
Foraging actually requires a lot of forethought and planning if you really want to get serious about it while also working a job. This means learning where you might encounter a target plant, how you can get there before or after work and whether or not it is even legal to harvest at this location. Doing your homework can payoff though because instead of eating most of the boring, nutrient poor fare they pass off as food at the supermarket you can get real food, full of wild flavors that our wild ancestors survived on.
I cannot even count how many times I have stopped while driving because I spotted Chicken of the Woods or a fully loaded Autumn Olive shrub. Last year when driving to my home in Traverse City, Michigan from Ashland, Wisconsin I picked nearly 100 pounds of apples. This is completely normal for my family. Having baskets and a willingness to lengthen your trip can result in a bonanza of wild foods.
Basket filled to the brim with delicious, invasive Autumn Olives.
4. Avoid burnout by finding your staples.
We all know what burnout is. Many things in life are exhausting to do, but attempting to live off the land while you have a full time job is probably at the top of the list of exhausting things to do. One way to lighten the load is to stick to some staples that you absolutely need to have, and leave the rest for another year.
I refuse to go a single year without harvesting wild rice. Wild rice not only provides food for me in great quantities, but it is also the most wonderful time of the year in my opinion. Although harvesting rice involves great physical labor, there is something absolutely rewarding about spending a day in a canoe with a good friend harvesting delicious food. The commitment to rice I have made means that I have to not work in order to harvest it. I typically tell clients that I will be unavailable during ricing season, and I treat it like a vacation. Alternatively I have friends that will only harvest on the weekends and they do not have to miss any work.
Finding staples allows us to focus on a few things that we love and not burnout on constantly attempting to work 2 full time jobs. High energy people like myself find this life fun and exciting but for some it can be extremely wearisome and not worth the effort. This is why shaving down what you are after is important. Make a Foraging Greatest Hits list and stick to it until you are ready for more action. If there is one thing that I have learned throughout all of these years it is that there are hundreds of different flavors out there and you don’t have to like them all. Nobody is forcing you to spend a day picking Violet flowers for a salad you will eat once this year. If we don’t figure out how to enjoy this activity then inevitably we will quit.
Moving Forward
If you take small steps and learn how to properly harvest wild foods your relationship with wild species and wild places will improve dramatically. You will pass the word on to others and gradually this will help our world move toward a more healthy lifestyle. Most importantly, those that eat wild foods will do anything they can to protect those places that house those wild foods. The person that never eats wild foods has no care in the world if the countryside is slowly clearcut around him or her. Being a forager may just seem like a silly, hipster thing on the outside, but on the inside it is a complex web of ideas, skills and relationships that can never be duplicated in a grocery store.
Thank you for reading this blog! If you would like to support me you can click through any Amazon link on this website and do your regular shopping and I will get a tiny percentage of what you buy at no cost to you! Thank you again!