Year of Foraging — Winter Update (Three Months)

For one year, nature is my pantry, my garden and my pharmacy. I am foraging for every bit of my food and medicine, down to the salt, oil and spices. In this video, I share a winter update from the third month of the year-long endeavor. (December 1st-31st, 2025; Days 54 through 83)

Transcript: The following is a transcription of Year of Foraging — Winter Update (Three Months).

Hello Dear Friends,

I am nearing three months of foraging 100 percent of my food and medicine. Today is Day 83 of the year. It’s December 31st, 2025. And the last that you heard from me was on December 1st, which was about Day 53. So today I’m going to update you with the last month of foraging for my food and medicine.

Three months in and I still have food. In fact, I have a lot of food. My pantry has not really dwindled in size as far as my dehydrated stored goods. My freezer has dwindled in size some. My canned goods, my pressure canned and my water bath canned foods have also dwindled some. But overall, I still have a lot of food. In the last update video, I went through my pantry, my freezer, and really showed you what I have stored. Not a lot has changed in that regard during this time, and so I welcome you to watch that previous video if you’d like to see all the different foods and medicines that I have stored.

Last night I noticed a new change in my body that I hadn’t experienced. And that is, I got a little bit plumper actually. So the last month has been very productive in that regard: that I actually have managed to gain a little bit of weight. Part of the reason for that is that I’ve had all of my food needs met. I’ve got my calories, I have my fat, I have my protein. I also have all of the vitamins and minerals. My body feels physically about as good as it has felt in a while and my weight has leveled off. So, there was some time at the beginning where I was somewhat concerned that I was losing too much weight and I lost about five or so pounds. And that has completely leveled off.

So it is, indeed, winter here. It’s December 31st. And it’s actually been one of the colder Decembers in quite some time here in northern Wisconsin. We have probably gotten a total of two feet of snow out here. And we’ve had three or four weeks at a time where it’s barely gone above freezing. And we have had the coldest days with wind chills down to negative thirty with wind chills. So it has been a pretty cold December.

I’ve spent a lot of time inside. And the reason that I’m able to do that is that I have stored away a lot of foods. That’s one of those common questions people ask is: “How can you eat through the winter?” And the answer is you harvest the abundance of spring, summer and fall. You store that and then you enjoy that bounty through the winter. It is a season where I’ve been staying inside of my house. I am so grateful to have a woodstove that I heat this place with. It’s been a real joy. In fact, when I’m not out on a speaking tour, I will often be here for a week without leaving this little patch of woods that I’m in. So it takes some real motivation to get out and bike the ten miles that it takes to get into town. And so, because of that, I would say I’m kind of just settled in here on the land by the woodstove, eating my nourishing breakfast, lunch and dinner with a few snacks in between. I continue to intermittent fast, generally eating from about 10 a.m. ‘til about 6 p.m.

Given the depth of winter that we’re in here, I am really happy with the foraging that I still have managed to do. And for anybody who says there’s no foraging to do in the winter? The reason that they can say that is because they haven’t done their due diligence. There is a lot of food to forage here. I’ve still been harvesting greens: the watercress and wintercress. I’ve still been harvesting berries: the highbush cranberry and the nannyberry can stay on deep into the winter. I’ve been really pleasantly surprised to still be eating apples off the apple trees. They freeze and they have a bit of a flavor of applesauce and also a bit of a flavor of dried apples. But they’re own unique thing. And then also, crab apples. Still foraging those. And the bitterness of those really decreases and all the crab apples that I’ve tried … they’re almost like little pieces of applesauce right off of the tree.

There’s still fishing to be done. I haven’t been out fishing at all this month, which I expected to, but with the fifty pounds of fish that I harvested between salmon and whitefish, I still will have plenty of fish. I have been really pleasantly surprised and delighted with the amount of food that there still is to forage. And I wish that I had more time to forage this food, but there’s other things that I’ve had to prioritize at these times. Now, that’s even here in northern Wisconsin. This is a whole ‘nother level from southern Wisconsin or Ohio, or other parts of the midwest. So, in other places, there’s even substantially more food to be foraging even in the winter. So, that’s been a great lesson so far.

The real harvest of December has been deer. And I still have not actually hunted, because I have managed to harvest two deer that were hit by cars. And I should say ‘portions’ of two deer. So while I was on my speaking tour, I announced in my talk that if anybody saw a deer on their way home, to let me know. And sure enough, somebody let us know that they saw one and I went and picked it up with my colleague, Crystal. So, I got about twenty pounds of meat and fat and bones … some bones as well for bone broth from that deer. It was so amazing. I was able to travel for that whole tour with that deer meat without the need for a freezer or refrigerator because it’s frozen outside. I could just leave it outside. Quite the new experience in that regard.

Once I got back from my speaking tour, I harvested another deer about ten miles from my house and, from that, I harvested about 57 pounds of meat and fat and some of that being bones. Now, the real gift of that was the fat that I rendered. So, from that first deer, I rendered about a quart-and-a-half, and from the second deer, I rendered over four quarts of fat. So that’s over a gallon of fat. And that has made all the difference in this month. The difference of my food being a lot tastier, a lot more filling. And so, this is so much more calorically dense. And so, with the meals that I’ve been making, I don’t need to eat as large of a volume, and it’s so much more satiating, and also just sticks with me for longer. A gallon of fat is enough to last me for a good little bit of time. So, between the deer that I’ve harvested and the fish, I have been very satiated when it comes to fat and protein and not having any lackings there whatsoever. And I’ve had very nourishing meals.

My friend, Jennifer, and her children pressure canned this. And my friend, Ryan, helped me to process this deer, and Crystal helped me to process the deer in Green Bay. So, this has not been something that I’m doing alone. Yes, I am foraging all of my food and I’m the only one that’s doing that in this regard, but this is a community endeavor, and this is really only possible because many people are taking part in this. Helping me to process and preserve food and taking me to some of their best foraging spots. And that’s what gives me so much time to be able to be teaching. To be out on my speaking tours. To be able to be creating these videos and sharing with all of you.

One of my practices is seeing the interconnectedness of everything and breaking down this illusion of separateness that we have really deeply ingrained in ourselves as individuals and as humanity. And an interesting one of those is meat. The more that I deepen my connection with Earth, the more of an illusion that I see that is, and that the reality is that the cultures that live in closest harmony with the Earth, and the closest harmony with the animals and plants, are cultures that often eat animals. And deer, venison, is obviously meat. But the more that I am eating it, the more that I dissolve this separateness of plant and animal in the sense that deer is a manifestation of grass and yarrow and all of the herbs that it’s eating: the apples and even mushrooms. And so, my diet is quite meat oriented. I eat a lot of meat, between the fish and the deer. But I don’t see that as this complete separation of plants like a lot of people have come to see. I see the deer as a manifestation of plants, a deep interconnectedness with the plants, and I am very happy to be experiencing that dissolving of this illusion of separateness. And that’s just one of the ways that I’m experiencing that.

My daily meals have continued to incorporate wild rice in the most meals; stinging nettle, a variety of different mushrooms, with maitake, chanterelles and boletes being the main ones. And then different herbs like bee balm, or monarda, and wild onions. And many different herbs on my shelf. And then even my fruit sauces: applesauce, pear sauce and plum sauce I tend to have each day, as well as frozen juices: the different berry juices. And, of course, the wild parsnips and nuts. Snacking on different nuts: the black walnuts, pecans, and hickory nuts. So, my diet has been fairly diverse and quite fulfilling.

I am getting what I need, but the challenge has been actually that not every day do I manage to eat what I need because I have been quite busy. And when it comes to cooking my … all of my own meals, and my nuts have shells around them, and I have to remove those shells. It’s not just handfuls of black walnuts to the mouth. So some days I’ve just been too busy to eat everything that I would like to. And, one of the big lessons that I’ve continued to learn and continue to experience, is that a quality existence takes time. It really takes time to do this and that’s a really important lesson. A lot of people … they want convenience, they want things that don’t take any time, that are just done at the click of a button, instantly. And the reality, for me, is that a quality existence takes time when it comes to harvesting and preparing and processing, and even the act of eating and the act of starting my fires. It all takes time.

Now, I actually thought by now that I was going to get sick. And the reason for that is I went on a … about a two-week speaking tour around the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and during that tour, there were a lot of people who were sick … a lot of people with colds, or potentially even worse. And in numerous cities, I heard that there were ‘bugs’ going around. And I shared hugs with probably a few hundred people and was in close contact with hundreds of people, while kind of burning the candle at both ends. And, amazingly, I haven’t even had a sniffle of sickness. So, for me, that’s been the true testament of my food being my medicine and that I am getting everything that I need. And so, that has been a real joyful way to see that I am getting all of my food and medicine needs met.

The homeland speaking tour that I did went very well. Throughout Wisconsin and Minnesota, I spoke in about a dozen cities over a period of about two weeks. A lot of people came out. There was great enthusiasm. So many people learning about how we can reconnect with the Earth, live more simply and live in a way that is in far more harmony. In most cities, I was on the local news channels, did interviews with the local newspaper and radio stations. And so, I’m very grateful that I‘ve had all the food that I needed in order to have the time to be able to be doing an extensive number of interviews and be out on this speaking tour, meeting with a lot of people and sharing inspiration for them.

When I talk about medicine, it’s not just food for me. Everything can be a medicine: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the water we swim in, the content we take into our minds, the physical space we are in. And one of my medicines is that I’ve continued cold plunging. Swimming in the Fox river in Green Bay and then the Mississippi river over by LaCrosse, I’ve continued to do my cold plunging. And that has been a really important medicine that I really do think is one of the things that has kept me from getting sick and has kept my immune system quite strong.

When I was moving into this space and there were a lot of mice here, I was concerned about how much of my food the mice would be eating, and I’m grateful to say that the mice have gotten a nut here or there, and I can spare that little bit of food. So I haven’t had any food loss. And the outside … one thing that’s wonderful about the winter is that it’s a freezer. It’s so easy to store food during these times and it’s really a real joy to be able to just put things outside and have them being taken care of by nature, by the Earth.

So, my food is dwindling some, as I mentioned, but I still have a pretty substantial amount of food. One big question that people have is: “Do [I] have enough food to get me through the entire winter?” And the answer is ‘no.’ And the reason it’s ‘no’ is because that was a very intentional design. Today is December 31st and in about three days, I will be hopping in a car to spend a portion of the winter in Florida: a couple months down there.

Over the last couple of days, I have been doing an inventory of all the food I have as well as packing food for my Florida trip. So I have made a full inventory of every food that I’ve harvested, as well as quantities. And you can read that at robingreenfield.org/foragingyear. Here is what I’m bringing to Florida. So, for Florida, I am bringing sort of the bare essentials and I’ll be doing a lot of foraging while I’m down in Florida. So, in here, I have a good number of different herbs. And I don’t like having all of this plastic, but this is the most efficient way for me to bring a lot of foods without having all the glass jars.

I’m bringing about 4 ½ pounds of mushrooms, some are in dried, whole form. And then this is dehydrated, then blended, maitake mushrooms. So, I’m bringing about 4 ½ pounds total of dehydrated mushrooms, which I think is about a 10:1 ratio of wet, which would be about 45 pounds of mushrooms. I eat a lot of mushrooms. Of course, stinging nettle, some seaweed powder, and then I have sixteen pounds of wild rice. That’s not nearly enough food. I will also be bringing some jars of venison and my fat. And that’s not enough food for while I’m there, so what I’ll be doing is a lot of foraging while I’m down there.

My agenda: first thing is I’m going to spend about two weeks alone in the Everglades, paddling, and I’ll be bringing just a pretty basic amount of food and eating a lot of fish while I’m there. It’ll be two weeks of silence, of solitude, of deep connection with the Earth and I’m really looking forward to that. I’m going to be paddling the 99-mile wilderness stretch of the Everglades.

So, once I’m back from that, then I’m going to do a week-long foraging immersion, where I harvest about a two-month supply of food. I’ll be harvesting the giant wild yams for my calories. I’ll be harvesting coconuts for a nice, nourishing fat and protein and calorie-rich source; making coconut butter and potentially coconut oil. I will, hopefully, hunt a wild boar, and I’ll fish for mullet with cast nets. I’ll harvest a lot of wild citrus, and there’s a few other fruits down there that I’ll be harvesting as well. And then different greens and some herbs. I will have others joining me in that week’s immersion of harvesting … people who are really excited to learn and who will be helping me with processing at the same time.

And then leaving directly from that will be foraging school, a weekend-long foraging immersion. That’s in central Florida, between Tampa, Orlando and Gainesville, in a region called Lake Panasoffkee. That school has actually filled up. There’s about 70 people who will be coming out to learn all about the food and medicine that is growing freely and abundantly all around us. And if there is enough demand, I’m going to do another foraging school in the Ft. Myers area around February 15th. So, if you’re interested in foraging school, it’s always available by donation, accessible to everyone. You can go to robingreenfield.org/foragingschool. And then, after foraging school, I’ll be doing a three-week tour from north to south, east to west, doing talks, giving plant walks and foraging in cities all over Florida.

So, I welcome everyone who is watching this. All of you who are down in Florida and would like to come out and learn, build your community. I will be in Florida January and February, and I am there at your service.

So, again, I’m about three months’ in to the year of foraging all of my food and medicine and I am happy to say that the Earth has been providing me with everything that I need. I am both physically and mentally in a sound place and I’m really thoroughly enjoying this deep connection with the Earth. I am here to explore this belief that the Earth can provide us with everything that we need, and in doing so, be on this journey with all of you. Being here as a support, as an inspiration, as a motivation to connect more deeply with Earth. To learn the skills and the knowledge to build the community and to build the relationships: with the plants, with the animals, and with the Earth, to live in a much more harmonious way. So, I’m grateful to be on this journey with all of you and looking forward to sharing the next video with you from Florida.