I Foraged 100% of My Food for a Year (Short Film)

Film coming soon

There’s nature. And then there’s us. We are separate.
That’s the belief of many today, consciously or subconsciously. And when we walk down the aisles of the supermarket, this belief is only deepened. But I have a belief that this separateness is an illusion. That I am nature and nature is me, interconnected and inseparable. Theoretically I know this to be true, but I want to feel this in every cell of my body. So to put it to this test, I decided to step away from the grocery store. And this time I would not even grow a garden,
Instead nature would be my garden…

On October 8th, 2025 I stepped out of the grocery store, not to return again for at least a year.
I would now forage 100% of my food. Every single bite. The calories, the fat, the protein, the herbs and spices, the vitamins and nutrients, and even the salt and sugar.

You may remember I did something like this in the past, but then I had my gardens. That was a deep experience but with the garden, I decided what went where and how much. I had the ability to control. I could still remain largely separate from nature.

Can Earth provide me with everything I need, like it has for our ancestors? Like it has for many Indigenous cultures? Amongst the climate chaos, habitat loss, globalized pollution and the sixth mass extinction… Is there still abundance? It was time for me to find out, for better or for worse.

Although I had eight years of foraging experience at hand, physically I started from scratch…
I chose to do this in northern Wisconsin on the lands and waters that raised me. I wanted to reconnect with this place and community. Plus I had experience with the abundance here.
Having just come off my Experiment of Non-Ownership I had a few material possessions and few dollars to my name.

I quickly found a place to live – a simple wooden structure on the land of someone who took me in as a “Traveling Monk” as he saw me. I gave myself just three months to prepare, starting in midsummer on July 1st and began accumulating the basic year I need, mostly second hand, some homemade. I didn’t need a lot, but I did need some tools and a way to store the abundance. Contrary to what a lot of people imagined, I wouldn’t be just like a deer, grazing my food each day. Instead, the key to success would be to harvest and store the abundance.

As a forager, I didn’t need to own my own land, till any soil, or plant any seeds. So the preparation time for this was fairly minimal. The plants, animals and mushrooms were just out there, waiting, I just needed to find them.I made a list of everything I need, in what quantity, what season it is available and how to store it. Planning was essential – since every food has a window that it can be harvested. Going in I knew just about everything that I needed to know.

Now when I say 100% I truly mean it.
No trading. No gifts from others.
No exceptions for meals with family or friends.
And again no eating from a domesticated garden.

Why no food that other people foraged? Because I wanted to develop a deep relationship with every single plant. I wanted to develop the skills. I wanted to break free at the deepest level I could.

The year began with a salty sip of water from the Atlantic Ocean. My pantry and my freezer were stocked with foods that I had I canned, dehydrated, froze and fermented to start the year.
But I was very far from home. I was in Portland, Maine to begin my first public tour. The year ahead was only part for me. My life is my message. I wanted to help others see the abundance too, to see Earth in a new light, through the food and medicine growing freely and abundantly all around us.

Over the last year I foraged 280 different foods.
Wild rice for calories and sustenance.
Acorns as a second source to sustain my energy.
Fish for the foundational fat and protein.
Deer as another staple as well.
Dozens of greens packed with nutrients and vitamins… stinging nettle, watercress, dandelion, lamb’s quarters, basswood leaves and dock.
Wild veggies…mustard stems, milkweed pods and cattail shoots…
and roots…parsnip, burdock and dandelion filled both my belly and my dreams along with many edible flowers.
Fruits… apples, pears and plums satiated me almost daily.
Antioxidant rich… serviceberry, autumnberry, mulberry, nannyberry, highbush cranberry, chokecherry, black cherry, aronia and wild grape in a diverse array.
Black walnuts, hickory nuts, pecans and hazelnuts provided me with much fat and calories.
I ate hundreds of pounds of mushrooms… maitake, boletes, chicken of the woods, chanterelles, puffballs and hedgehogs.
Spices filled out my meals…wild onion, wild garlic, ramps and monarda, among others.
Seaweed was a source of minerals.
Of course the herbal teas…mint, goldenrod, sweet fern, pineappleweed and basswood flowers brought me much joy.
Maple syrup satisfied my sweet tooth.
I even harvested my salt from the ocean by evaporating off the water leaving me with homemade sea salt.
And my drinking water came exclusively from wells and springs.
And yaupon holly even provided the caffeine.

I foraged everywhere I went – front yards, backyards, churchyards and school yards, empty lots… Along the sidewalks, bike trails and neighborhood streets. Scrappy urban spaces, public city parks, county, state and federal lands… From the city to rural farmland and countryside dirt roads and the forests, prairies, meadows, lakes, rivers, oceans and intersections of ecosystems… Food was growing ready to be harvested all around me.

Diversity was my strategy to meet all of my nutritional needs seeking out all of the colors of the rainbow, unique smells, strong and varying flavors and foods from across the plant families.

I chose what to eat, not by thinking about what I would want to find at the grocery store but instead by honing in on foods that grow in abundant quantity and are wide spread, are easy to harvest and time efficient to process, that I had access to, and that I already had the knowledge and skills to apply. And just as importantly knew how to harvest in a way that was harmonious with the ecosystem.

My meals varied throughout the seasons depending on what was available to freshly harvest but many meals remained consistent throughout.
Wild rice accompanied fish and venison along with mushrooms and greens.
I made unique meals to get the most out of my harvest – like creamy blended fish head soup and venison bone broth.
When life was most abundant I ate a pound of wild greens per day.
Acorn porridge, sweet with maple syrup and hazelnuts or savory with fish and veggies.
Applesauce and fruit sauces blended the line between dinner and dessert.
Fruit juices and fruit leathers made many snacks.
Hickory nut milk I will never grow tired of or black walnuts as a daytime treat.
Wild ferments brought flavor, nutrition and digestion aid to my meals.
And I enjoyed a wide variety of hot herbal teas.
Some meals were absolutely delicious, some times they were pretty bland, and sometimes they were hard to get down.

My food is my medicine. Everything I ate was a medicine. For me there is no separating the two.
The weeds that so many of us seek to destroy are some of the most medicinal plants on Earth. Plantago, wild lettuce, mugwort, mullen, yarrow and red clover… the list goes on.
Elderberry, an ally to prevent and fight off cold and flus.
Immune boosting medicinal mushroom teas.
Antiviral bee balm, mint for an upset stomach, valerian to call my nerves…
For the last year nature has not only been my garden and my pantry but my pharmacy too.

Can the Earth provide us with everything we need? Every cell in my body is starting to say YES! But that doesn’t mean that I expect perfect health. I did struggle throughout the year. I had my highs and lows and I didn’t always manage to get everything I needed.

I tracked the year with bloodwork and in the middle I had high mercury which seemed to have resulted in a minor anemia and low vitamin B1 or thiamine. I often felt exhausted during that period. But I spent seven months of the year traveling – hosting 100 foraging walks, talks and foraging schools and spending many hours in the car. That is a lot to handle!

I started off the year at 155 pounds, at the hardest time I dropped down to 145 pounds and I finished off the year at 151 pounds, just 4 pounds less than when I’d started. What do you expect when you give up the cinnamon buns and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream?

This was without a doubt, one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done.
While on a two month tour out West in an unfamiliar ecosystem I ran out of my staple calorie of wild rice and then I had to ration the acorns I had left. I learned that the single greatest mistake I made this year was not harvesting more acorns in the Fall when they were plentiful and available for the picking.

The time that this all took researching, harvesting, processing, preserving, organizing, storing, cooking, eating and cleaning was one of the greatest challenges. It ranged from about 20 to 80 hours per week but yet I had time to run a nonprofit, host 100 events, create videos, write, meditate, and spend extended time alone in nature with it all. My belief is that a quality existence takes time and each of these hours was a connection with life.

Scarcity was actually not my problem, save a few instances. My problem was actually the abundance. We live in a time of great abundance still. The big challenge was the amount of time that it took to harvest and store this abundance.

And yet the greatest challenge of all was one of my own making. It was deciding what counted as foraged and what was grown by humans. Because more than ever before from a place of deep experience and exploration I have seen that humans are not separate from the Earth.
We have been in relationship with plants for thousands of years and it seems just about every plant that I interacted with had been influenced by humans.

When settlers from Europe came over to this land I am on, many thought they had arrived to an untouched wilderness. But in reality what they were seeing was a land tended by hundreds of Indigenous cultures. They “tended the wild”, living interconnected with it all – influenced by and influencing their surroundings of plant and animal life. They had no word for wild. Because there is no such thing as wild or wilderness. We are nature. Nature tends us and we tend nature to live in balance and harmony.

After 15 years of exploring our food system and our ways of meeting our basic needs as a humanity, I have come to believe that the greatest threat of our time is the belief that we are separate. The belief that we are separate from Earth. Separate from the plants and animals. Separate from one another. It is what allows us to destroy. It is what allows us to exploit and pollute the land and water. Oppression within our society – racism, classism, sexism, nationalism and white supremacy…It all has its roots in the illusion of separateness.

As for me, this illusion of separateness is dissolving.
After a year of foraging, everywhere I go I am with my friends. The plants and animals are my relatives. I am never and can never be alone. Through being in relationship with the life I share this home with I am becoming whole and complete within. I know that I am not a cancer upon this Earth. I belong here. I am home. I am home everywhere I go. I am home inside of myself. I am in love with it all.
In our compartmentalized, fractured society it may be difficult for some of us to comprehend this interconnectedness. But many cultures have never lost it and many of us are regaining it today.

Millions are awakening and realizing that the Earth can’t handle the status quo much longer. That we can’t keep up with this disconnected way of living. That in it, is the demise of not only the Earth, not only the plants and animals, but of humanity too.
Saving the Earth is saving ourselves.

If you feel this, you are not alone.
And I didn’t do this alone. I did this through community. Many foraged with me, making many hands lighter work. Foragers took me to their honey-holes as I traveled through their land.
All my knowledge is from those before me and relationships with foragers today. I didn’t figure out almost any of this. I had support from volunteers who drove me to where I needed to go.
And many joined me in processing my harvests.

In community lies the solution to all of our societal woes. This I learned from community herbalist Amanda David.

The answer is not for everyone to forage all of their own food and medicine. That was never the point. That’s not my message. My job is to radically show that another way as possible. To be the spark that lights a fire inside of you, helping you to question the unquestioned societal norms in your life and to begin the journey of living in alignment with Earth and all life we share this home with.

As I’ve traveled the country living my message while sharing this knowledge I have seen the fires growing inside of many. They have told me of how they no longer see their yard, the nearby park, or the Earth the same. That their eyes are now open and can never be closed again. That they are reconnecting to Earth through foraging and they are feeling more meaning, purpose, aliveness, hope and joy than ever before.

It’s time my friends.
Question your food. Where does it come from? How does it get to you? And what is the impact that it has on Earth? If you don’t like the answer, let’s change the answer together!

Start with one plant.
Start in your own yard or neighborhood, and with the easy plants to identify. Many considered weeds, invasive, or the gifts of fruits and nuts. If you learn one plant per month for a year, that’s 12 plants. That’s a radical new way of existing in your environment.

Go on a foraging walk with a knowledgeable forager. Use the find a findaforager.com database to find a forger near you.

Use my beginning guide to foraging.

Join us at Foraging School! In person or online. And join my online foraging community.

It’s not all about foraging though – it’s about building local, resilient food systems.
We can grow food instead of lawns. Practice natural gardening, blurring the lines between wild and cultivated. We can source local food from farmers markets, farmers, foragers and gardeners. At the store we can purchase whole foods, less processed and packaged food. Food co-ops are a great place for this. And we can cook more at home.

Join us in planting 1 million Community Fruit and Nut Trees over the next decade.

We can listen to and learn from Indigenous people. These are foraging cultures who have been foraging for generations. They know the interconnectedness of life. They know how to take care of Earth.

We can Listen to Indigenous women. Lyla June Johnston’s PhD and TEDx Talk are a great place to start. Winona LaDuke’s work to give legal rights to wild rice… And Robin wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweet Grass teaches us how to live in reciprocity.

We can Support Indigenous food sovereignty. Organizations like North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems started by the Sioux Chef Sean Sherman.

And we can get land back into Indigenous hands. Visit landback.org

I give my deep gratitude to the Anishinaabe people who have been stewards to the land I am on for hundreds of years and have shared so much with me.

We can elevate the women in our community. Being in right relationship with the plants and being stewards to Earth often comes more naturally to them.

Our roots of living here on Earth go back to the original people of Africa. The black community holds many of our greatest environmental stewards and we can support and uplift their work. Read Black Earth Wisdom by Leah Penniman and check out at @AfroForagers to learn from Black foragers.

This does not need to be a lonely journey. We can do this together in community.

As for me, well, there’s no going back to the global, industrial food system after this.
My pantry is stocked with foraged foods, and I’m now eating what my community forages too.
For the year ahead I’ve committed to eating only foraged, homegrown and locally, sustainably farmed foods.
I think I’ve eaten my last pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

If you’re feeling inspired and hopeful right now, let’s get this message out there together.
Please, like this video, Comment with what’s alive and you and share this with your friends, your family, your community, everyone who would benefit from this message.

Let’s take care of Earth together!