Year of Foraging – Day 280 Update

It’s been over nine months since I broke free from the grocery store. Here is a Day 280 Update of foraging 100 percent of my food and medicine for a year.

Transcript: The following is a transcription of Day 280 Foraging 100% of My Food. Nature is my Garden!

Today is Day 280 of the year of foraging all of my food and medicine. It has been a little while since I have shared a substantial update and I am going to do just that.

I am over nine months into the year of foraging, which means I have just under three months left: one quarter, one season of the year. I have some feelings that I am in the final chapter, but I still very much have my work cut out for me. In some ways, I am feeling like I’m flowing along, and in other days, oof, I have had the thought of giving up and, not quite giving up, but making some meaningful, substantial exceptions.

It is July 18th here in northern Wisconsin. I’m in my off-the-grid hermitage near the shores of Lake Superior. We’re in the mid-summer. So, what am I eating and what is making up my foraged diet?
My pantry is still quite full of food. What I have had no shortage of are my herbal teas and many of my different medicines. I have found that I haven’t needed to really harvest any of those this summer because I’ve been able to continue with the supply that I harvested last summer.

My dried mushrooms have continued to nourish me this entire year. The abundance that I harvested in the fall has pulled me through. Right now, we are having quite the dry spell and I was really hoping for a lot of fresh mushrooms, especially chanterelles, but I’ve had close to none. So the dried mushrooms have continued to sustain me.
Of course, herbal teas and dried mushrooms are far from making up my diet, as most of you know. Right now, I am deeply nourishing myself with whitefish from Lake Superior. I’ve had three successful fishing outings during my two weeks back between my West Coast tour and my upcoming summer tour. I also am eating a substantial amount of smelt from my spring harvesting, and I just picked up a car-killed deer. So, between the fish and the venison, I have been really nourishing myself.

The West Coast tour was quite the challenge. I ran out of my main protein sources by the time I got to northern California. I expected to be able to fish and potentially hunt a wild pig. None of that really panned out. And I found myself sort of getting smaller, my muscles shrinking, and there’s also the fact that I was really trying to conserve my calories, my starchy calories, that is wild rice and acorn flour. I finished off my wild rice, and I actually managed to conserve my acorn flour. Amazingly, I still have six pounds of acorn flour, and I’ve managed to hold myself through.

So, this summer, now that I‘m back, I’ve been eating a substantial amount of fish and venison as well as fresh berries by the quarts, per day. And that has made up a substantial amount of my calories, along with drinking some of my maple sap that I had frozen, my maple syrup, and, of course, lots of nuts.

This year has been a profound year in my relationship with wild nuts, and my realization of how much they can truly satiate me, and nourish me and sustain me in a very sustainable way that’s in harmony with the Earth. And they are incredibly delicious. Right now, I’m eating a bounty of hickory nuts, which I make hickory nut milk from. I’m also eating a lot of black walnuts. These foods have really surprised me at how deeply nourishing they are. And, just as important, my limiting factor with nuts has been time. Efficiency and effectiveness is very important with a 100% foraged diet. I’m not going to say every minute counts, but the minutes really count. And, I’ve managed to become quite effective and efficient at getting in a lot of fat and protein and calories through eating my wild nuts.

I’ve continued eating an abundance of wild greens with watercress being one of the main ones, along with basswood leaves and numerous others. And one of my main vegetables this summer has been cattail spikes, as well as some milkweed pods.

I have been gorging on berries as a substantial calorie and nutrient source. Number One has been the serviceberries or juneberries, and then mulberries, as well as cherries and then some blueberries. That’s been my substantial fruit.
You might notice the kind of puffy face. That’s the gnats. Oh, I was out harvesting the serviceberries today, and I wasn’t prepared for the gnats to be biting me while I was harvesting. I just had to seriously harvest, so they got me. Right now, I am also dealing with the smoke coming from the Minnesota and Canada fires. We’re under pretty substantial air quality issues here and I’m definitely feeling it. Living outside and needing to be outside to do a lot of foraging, I’m definitely feeling the smoke. And, I’m sending love to all of you who are out there who are feeling this smoke as well and who are dealing with these wildfires.

When I left for the West Coast tour, I was at a weight that felt pretty great and my body felt really solid. And I knew that I really didn’t want to lose another pound at all. And, I lost another few pounds while I was on the West Coast tour. Not having access to enough food and being on a very busy tour schedule, 28 events over a couple dozen cities from southern California all the way to Seattle. It was quite grueling. I really struggled. But, being back here in the Northwoods, I have managed to really get my body back to a state that feels great in the last two weeks, and a big part of that has just been getting more exercise. Being on tour is a lot of car time. Now that I’m back here, it’s been a lot of being on my bicycle as I’m foraging: a lot more physical activity through my harvesting and my daily chores.

With the running out of wild rice, I managed to eat a plant in a substantial quantity in northern California called soaproot. People often ask me if there’s any plants that I am grateful for, or if there’s any plants that I have gotten a little tired of, and soap root is both. It was a very, very important staple that helped me to conserve my wild rice some and then my acorn flour, but I never got really good at cooking it and I really struggled to make it highly palatable. It is used to make soap, but it has also been a staple food for different indigenous cultures. And
that knowledge, I would say, to some degree, has been lost. I am grateful to have worked with that plant, but I am glad to be on to the next chapter.

The reason that I not almost gave up, but made a substantial change was running out of wild rice. And then, running really short on calories knowing that it would be a good couple months until wild rice would be back to harvest and acorns would be back to harvest. And I realized that I could simply get the amount of wild rice that I would need from someone else who harvested. I could purchase it or trade for it. Or acorns. And it really wouldn’t change my diet and it really wouldn’t change the experience that much. And a lot of people think that that’s what I’m already doing … is trading for foods or eating what other people are foraging as well. But, on some of those difficult days, I really thought about it and, instead, I have decided to hold through. Being that it’s mid-summer and wild rice is still a ways off, between fish, venison and berries, I am managing to get the calories that I need and that’s what I’m going to attempt to do until the late summer, early fall comes, and those staple calorie foods are back.

I also want to celebrate that I finally pressed yellowbud hickory for oil. I managed to get two quarts of oil. This is an incredible food source. I’m grateful to Sam Thayer for having me down to press using his oil press. That made it a lot more effective and efficient. It’s been a really great opportunity to deepen my relationship with the yellowbud hickories. I have simply not had time to do everything that I was hoping to do during my two weeks back, but I did manage to store away quite a bit of food that I am taking on my tour with me. I have my canned fish and venison, as well as frozen fish and venison that I’ll carry in my cooler. I have canned fruit and dehydrated fruit. I also dehydrated them to make a serviceberry fruit leather that I’ll enjoy on the road. I have my dehydrated mushrooms, my six pounds of acorn flour, plenty of herbal teas, and still enough spices, but I’m running low on the spices as well.

So. What is coming? In the morning, I leave for a one-month tour. I head out to New York. I have a Five Boroughs Foraging Tour. I’ll be doing a foraging walk in all five boroughs in city parks. I welcome you all to come out. I’d love to share my knowledge with you New Yorkers, fellow human beings. From there, I will be at MycoFest, a mushroom festival in Pennsylvania, a foraging walk at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. And then I have Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Faribault, and Minneapolis, Minnesota; as well as another Foraging School in Duluth, Minnesota, before arriving back here in mid-August.

So, Dear Friends, I welcome you to come out and join me for a foraging walk or a Foraging School. Experience this year of foraging along with me, and learn about the foods and medicines that are growing freely and abundantly right in your own city parks and right in your own community. That’s what I’m here for. I’m immersed in this. I’m deepening my relationship with the Earth. I’m seeing that the Earth can provide me with what I need in a nourishing and sustainable and harmonious way, and I’m here to take you all along on this journey. I love you very much, Dear Friends.