Foraging: A How-To Guide to Get Started
Foraging: A How-To Guide to Get Started
Food is growing freely and abundantly all around us. The Earth is offering us these gifts freely with a silent agreement of reciprocity. This gift is growing in all climates, in all regions, and all cities. As a gift, it costs no money whatsoever. It is some of the most nutrient-dense food on Earth and the medicines are absolutely potent. Harvested with reciprocity, your hands can actually improve the world around you. How’s that for a food to eat?
Overcoming the Fear to Forage
After reading Food Freedom, you might be feeling ready to get out foraging. I know I felt that way just writing the book! But in a society of separation, how do you get started?
There’s a lot of fear. Many of you might be wondering, how did I eat all these new plants and not die? It’s a common thought, which is apparent when you see that the world’s most watched forager, Alexis Nikole Nelson @blackforager, ends most every video with “Happy foraging, don’t die!”
I’ll share with you how you “don’t die” when foraging as well as how to avoid potential contaminants.
There’s also the worry of getting ticketed or arrested for foraging, as I wrote in my journal at the beginning of my preparation for the year:
1/06/18 On my first plant walk I learned that foraging is illegal. FORAGING is illegal. My well being, my success, my existence, for the next year is illegal!
Well, I learned that it is not so illegal after all. I’ll share with you about that.
But then you still may be concerned about how to ensure you are not a taker, but also a giver. I’ll help you with this.
Okay, now you are pretty sure you aren’t going to die, or get arrested and you feel some confidence that you can be a friend to the plants. But if you’ve been going to the grocery store for years, you might be a little confused about where to go to start this new found passion. I’ve got you.
And even then, now that you have an idea of where you are going to go, you might be concerned about how you are going to look at the wall or carpet of green, and pick out which of the greens to eat. You’ll still have to do some deciphering, but I’ve got some real helpful tips for you. And I’ve made an extra section for all the folks who live in the city and want to make sure that they don’t accidentally infringe on their neighbor’s fruit tree.
And okay, that didn’t tell you exactly which plants to eat, so I’ve even shared my top 50 wild edibles to get to know first.
One last thing. You want to eat A LOT of wild food? I share my experience of doing just that, narrowed down into some top tips.
My Top Foraging Tips for Beginners
Go out with a forager in your area who knows the plants. There are many teachers who offer classes and many foragers who are happy to have a friend to walk in the woods with. Use findaforager.com to find a forager near you!
Don’t over-complicate it. “Foraging” is a cool word for saying “eating food.” Humans have been eating wild plants for tens of thousands of years and you can too.
Start where you are. This could be your yard, your garden or a park down the street. Just get started!
Start with one plant. You only need to know one plant to eat one plant — like dandelion. Some people think they need to learn all the toxic plants before eating one, but that is not the case.
Eat the weeds. Start with the easily identified, widespread, common plants. “Weeds” are a minimally intimidating place to start. There are many that you likely already know but just didn’t know are edible.
Learn one new plant at a time. If you learn one plant per month for a year, that’s 12 plants. In just one year, with very little time commitment you could have 12 new plant friends that you work with as food and medicine. If you are super dedicated, you could learn one new plant per week for a year, that’s 52 plants. Within a year, you’ll be the plant wizard of your community. Botany Every Day with Marc Williams can support this practice!
If you use social media, follow foragers to keep foraging on your mind. I highly recommend Sam Thayer, Linda Black Elk, Alexis Nikole Nelson and Eric Joseph Lewis.
Get a foraging book for your region. Samuel Thayer’s book series: The Forager’s Harvest, Nature’s Garden and Incredible Wild Edibles are my top choices.
Attend a foraging gathering to make foraging friends. Midwest Wild Harvest Festival, Great Lakes Foragers Gathering, Mycofest, Pawpaw Fest and Earthskills Gatherings are great opportunities to deepen your foraging skills. The Woodslore, Weeds, and Wildwoods Wisdom Walk with Doug Elliott at Firefly Gathering in Asheville, North Carolina is an absolute joy, and this gathering as a whole has changed the lives of many of my colleagues and friends! It is worth the trip to become a part of this community.
How to Safely Forage
Many people have a deep yearning inside of them to forage. But what is stopping them is the concern over safety, from both the uncertainty of identifying the plants correctly and the potential pollutants from the many sources of human-made toxicity in our world. First I’ll cover the former, and then the latter.
The Golden Rule of Foraging Safety
I have very good news for you. There is one simple rule that you can follow that guarantees with absolute certainty that you will not die from eating a misidentified plant or mushroom. That rule? Only eat a plant or mushroom if you are 100 percent certain that you have identified it correctly and that you know how to eat it. It’s that simple. To start, you only need to be able to identify one plant with certainty to eat it. The other numerous millions can still be a mystery. Don’t let this fear stop you if you really want to forage, my friends. Within this, there is much to learn and much nuance, but you don’t need to know it all to start.
Avoiding Pollution when Foraging
Now, people often ask me about pollution, toxins and contaminants that may be on the plants or in the soil. Common concerns include pesticides, herbicides, car exhaust, heavy metals, chemical fertilizer, toxic runoff and so on. There is certainly reason for concern here. However, once we regain our common senses by establishing a relationship with the land, we learn how to read it and have accurate ideas as to what areas and which plants are relatively unpolluted or are quite polluted. This does take some reconnection to master, however, starting is quite easy.
One must also ask when questioning the safety of foraging so greatly, if they have potentially put too much false trust in the food industry and potentially have an ingrained fear of Earth through the indoctrination of our dominator society? Do you really know what’s on and in the food from the store, even if it is organic? Foraging creates critical thinkers, and when critical thinking is applied, what seemed in the past incomprehensible now seems quite natural and flowing. I invite you to come to foraging in this way.
Now, I am going to speak for myself here, because that’s the safest thing I can do in this scenario, as I do not have rules that I follow, but rather my own ethos. And this is an ethos that many other foragers follow.
I embrace that I live in an impure world, with pollutants having reached almost everywhere on Earth. I accept that I will be exposed to some of these in many facets of my life. I will be exposed to them through foraging as well. And so it is.
Yet, I am going to do what is reasonably within my limits and in my best interest to avoid unnecessary contaminants. Thus, I avoid foraging in any sites that are potentially heavily contaminated from multiple years of pollution, including “brown sites” like where a gas station or chemical processing plant formerly was or currently is. I avoid foraging along interstates and areas of congested traffic, with some exceptions. I avoid current construction sites. I avoid municipal utility fence lines that are often sprayed with herbicides, as well as power lines. I avoid harvesting from low lying and aquatic areas that may be a receiving site for contaminated runoff, such as ditches along the side of the road. However, I will still forage from these places if the time is right. I will choose to have access to a food medicine if I believe that the potential benefits outweigh the potential costs. That is a personal judgment call that I make and that we all have to make ourselves.
If I am harvesting large quantities of food or medicine, then I will focus on harvesting from the cleanest sites that I can find. If I am harvesting snacks and small amounts, then I have far less discernment. I harvest a very substantial amount of my food along the roadside and generally stick to local highways where the speed limit is 55 or less and uncongested city roads. I also learn which plants and what parts of the plants are more likely to be contaminated. I understand that toxins are less commonly stored in fruits, since this is the plant’s offspring and they have a natural intelligence not to concentrate pollutants that might diminish their species in the future. I harvest fruits on the side of the road in great quantities. However, in general, I am always going to be wary of roots that are immersed directly in contaminated soil. Mushrooms I especially prefer to harvest away from roads and contamination. I avoid harvesting from low-lying areas on the side of the road, because heavy metals fall there and runoff concentrates there. Instead, ideally I harvest uphill from roads.
As far as the concern of eating food that has been sprayed with pesticides or herbicides, I generally feel confident that I avoid most spraying. First, I look for biodiversity and unkemptness. If an area has a lot of biodiversity and seems unmaintained, it’s much less likely to have been sprayed. A lawn full of “weeds” and flowers is the lawn I will always choose over one that is a monocrop of grass (there’s not much to forage there anyway). I watch for patches of brown plants where everything else is green. That can be a sign of spot spraying, where they are spraying for a particular plant, rather than a blanket spraying where they douse the whole area. With these basic practices, I have close to no concern in this realm, and I accept that I expose myself to some pesticides, just as I do when I eat most food from the store.
Legalities of Foraging
As far as legality goes, in my complete transparency, I do not concern myself much with the legality. I follow Earth Code first and foremost, which includes respect to Earth, the plants and animals in the space and the humans who use and steward the space. I follow laws that holistically serve humanity and our fellow Earth inhabitants and I disregard the ones that are destructive to our potential to live in harmony. Thus, I forage where it may not be legal, as long as my foraging is doing no harm. I do not forage in areas where foraging is prohibited, if the prohibition is of true benefit to the plants and the people. That said, in most spaces foraging is completely legal. It is the exception where it is not legal. For those who do not want to deal with the law, it would be in their best interest to inform themselves of any codes in their area and to follow them as desired — which can mean learning the best times and ways to forage within them, or not foraging in these locations — depending on your desire.
Ethics of Foraging
For most of us, the daunting feeling of concern over not knowing how to harvest in a way that does not harm the plants or Earth comes in part from a place of respect. However, more so this concern may come from a place of separation. There is nothing inherently wrong with foraging. Earth wants us to forage. Earth is providing the food for us and asking us to please eat her gifts. And she is resilient enough that she can tolerate us making some mistakes in the process. In fact, to not forage due to concern as to whether you can do it sustainably, may be more harmful to Earth than to forage and make some mistakes. To take this one step further in response to the common concern, “what would happen if everyone started foraging?” Well, if everyone wanted to forage, it would mean that we had transformed as humanity, and along with our change in actions, there would be a change in the way that we relate to the land and the plants that we are foraging. We would not only be foraging, but we would be stewarding. Some of the general guidelines I follow to harvest sustainably include:
My General Guidelines to Foraging in Harmony
Focusing on being a steward of the land. Striving to be a giver as I am the receiver, whether in that moment of harvest or as a part of my overall approach to harvesting.
Foraging what is widely abundant, where there is no concern about overharvesting. I also learn which plants are not abundant and are more likely to thrive by my not harvesting them.
Foraging in a way that does no unnecessary harm to the plant, to the best of my abilities. And with many plants I learn how to help them reproduce or thrive through my harvesting.
Eating a lot of “weeds.” The very plants that other people kill and seek to eradicate are my foods and medicines.
Focusing on harvesting species that are not native to the region and are doing damage to the ecosystem, thus providing an ecosystem service through my harvest.
Thinking of others — both humans and animals — that may also be eating these plants and acting in a way that I believe balances all our needs.
Getting to know the land and water to facilitate a deeper understanding of the space and my place within it.
Entering into relationships with the plants, not one way interactions or quick drive-bys.
If the land is “owned” by someone, I give respect to them, but I also remember that ownership is an illusion. I acknowledge this illusion, but I do not make it my sole guiding force. I ask for permission where I feel that it is beneficial and I harvest without if I feel that it is not needed. To some this may sound insincere, but remember there is no black or white. When I walk past a fruit tree that is dropping its bounty onto the sidewalk where it is rotting, I will harvest as I desire.
To forage with ethics is to think critically. It is to seek to understand and enter into relationships. It is to act with compassion. It is to take a holistic approach. It is to remember that nature doesn’t have the same rules as humans do.
Where to Forage
Plants do not confine themselves to the separation mindset that many of us humans have adopted. Plants grow everywhere! I harvest my food from a wide range of spaces and I invite you to as well. Front yards, backyards and side yards. Medians along the sidewalk. Public parks and public spaces in the city. Empty lots and wild patches of land. Gardens and farms (eat the weeds!). Along rural roads. On others’ land with their permission. The forests, fields and the edges between the two. Edges are often the most biodiverse spaces. The shorelines.
Urban Foraging Tips
Look for fruit with the bounty falling to the ground. I find the most fruit by looking down at the sidewalk, not up in the trees.
If you are concerned about others getting their share, pick the fruits and plants that are harder to access, leaving the easily reachable foods for people with less physical ability or skill. For fruit harvesting, a fruit picking pole or ladder can increase your harvests greatly.
All too often I see people leave behind the harvest, not wanting to be greedy, and then I see it all go unharvested. It really comes down to being sensible and thinking critically. In some scenarios, it makes sense to harvest the entire bounty and other scenarios call for leaving some behind.
Think of the animals, too. Learn what creatures share this food source and find the balance of how much you leave for them. When it comes to birds, they can reach the fruit at the top of the tree while we take what we can access.
If the food is on someone’s property, ask for permission. Of all the doors I’ve ever knocked on, very few people have ever said no. The majority have greeted me with enthusiasm. In my experience, most people don’t know the food is even edible. In these cases, it is an opportunity to awaken them to the bounty at their doorstep. I invite them to learn about the food with me. Often people compare the fruit on their trees to what they are used to from the grocery store, considering it too sour, too fibrous or too hard to open and thus they are happy for me to take it all. On some occasions, especially with the mangoes in Florida, people found the fruits to be a burden, attracting insects and rats and were grateful for me to harvest the bounty. I’ve even had people who feel guilty about letting it go to waste and thank me for helping them to feel better about the situation.
My typical approach is, “Hello, I was walking past your yard and I noticed there are a lot of apples falling to the ground. I’m wondering if you are going to eat them, and if not, if perhaps I could? I’d be happy to clean up the sidewalk for you as well.” I start with asking just about what has fallen and feel out the situation about harvesting what is on the tree. I love this opportunity to be of service to a community member, sharing knowledge, inspiration and connection. If the resident is an elder or has limited physical capabilities, I’ll ask if they’d like me to harvest some for them. I am always polite and considerate, no matter the response.
Another option is to harvest to distribute to community members in need, keeping some for yourself and distributing the rest. This can allow you to be on a community mission, increasing your confidence and comfort level.
My Top 50 Wild Edibles
This list is based on the plants that I find in most abundance and enjoy the most consistently. At the same time, they are some of the easiest to find, identify and harvest sustainably (with a few exceptions marked with [*]).
Greens
stinging nettle
wood nettle
garlic mustard
lamb’s quarters
leaves
mustard
watercress
wintercress
dandelion
purslane
mulberry leaves
plantago
Fruit
apples
Juneberry
mulberry
aronia
chokecherry
bramble berries
autumnberry
wild grapes
elderberry
nannyberry
highbush cranberry
Herbs/Teas
mint
bee balm/monarda
wild onion/garlic
bramble berry
cedar
goldenrod
sumac
spicebush
sweet fern*
Mushrooms
king boletes
hen of the woods
chicken of the woods
chanterelles
reishi
turkey tail
puffballs
chaga
lion’s mane
Nuts
coconut
chestnut
hickory nut
black walnut
More
manoomin*
wild yam
poke stems
milkweed pods
wild radish pods
burdock roots
smilax
Runners-up: persimmon, pawpaw, plums, black nightshade, Kousa dogwood, blueberry, black cherry, ginkgo*, plantago, sochan*, dock, chicory, wild lettuce, wood sorrel, basswood, sassafras, wapato*, parsnip*, hazelnut*, Jerusalem artichoke*, oyster mushrooms
Florida specific: loquat, Suriname cherry, wild citrus, banana, mango, sea purslane
How to Eat a Lot of Wild Food
Are you motivated to take your foraging to the next level and really harvest the abundance of the land? Here I share a few of my key practices that have allowed me to eat up to a 100 percent foraged diet. Focus on the plants that produce a lot of food and are efficient to harvest. Become proficient at processing and storing these foods. Adjust your palate (and your mind) to love whatever is most bountiful and nourishing. Put real time and energy into your foraging practice!
Freshly harvested greens: Make horta. Bring together a big mess of wild greens, sauté them in oil or fat, add vinegar and salt.
Snack on the trail! Keep your eyes open for food whenever you are driving, cycling or walking. Harvest wherever you are, even on your way to work, school or to see friends.
Fruits: Gorge when they are in season and forget about the grocery store fruits. Freeze, can and dehydrate the bounty. Jams, jellies, juices and sauces galore.
Mushrooms: Seek the big hauls and be ready for when you find them. Eat large fresh quantities cooked and dehydrate the bounty for soups and stews all winter long.
Dehydrate greens into a green powder, which can be added to just about any meal. Make cooking herb blends from bountiful herbs. Drink herbal and medicinal mushroom teas daily from the herbs and mushrooms you harvest and dehydrate. Dehydrated foods can easily be traveled with, bringing your wild food to even the most unwild spaces.
Harvest deer that are hit by cars (Car-Killed Deer: A How-To Harvest Guide) and utilize the parts of the animal that hunters are not using.
“Eat something wild every day,” as I’ve heard my friend Eric Joseph Lewis say dozens of times. Even if it’s just a handful of greens or a few herbs.
See my extensive Foraging Guide for New Foragers.
This article is an excerpt from Food Freedom: A Year of Growing and Foraging 100% of My Food. Food Freedom is an empowerment manual to break free from the destructive food system and live in closer harmony with Earth through growing food, foraging and embracing community.
We welcome you to order the paperback copy here or download the eBook here.
100% of profits, after book distribution, are donated to Gardens of Liberation, supporting Indigenous and Black-led food sovereignty initiatives.
