The Earth is My Garden! Day 64 of the Year of Foraging

A year without grocery stores or restaurants, not even a garden! Nature is my pantry, my garden and my pharmacy. I am foraging for every bite of my food and medicine, down to the salt, oil and spices.

This talk was hosted by the Minnesota Mycological Society and Minnesota Foraging Alliance at the University of Minnesota on December 12th, 2025 as part of my Homeland Speaking Tour on day 64 of the year of foraging.

Transcript: The following is a transcription of The Earth is My Garden! Day 64 of the Year of Foraging.

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Alright! Plant people unite! And, of course, mushroom people, too. And those of you who are just humans who haven’t connected with the plants and mushrooms in that way, may we all unite!

So, thank you to the Minnesota Mycological Society for having me here in the Twin Cities. It’s a joy to … to be here with all of you and thank you all for coming out to embark on this little journey together of exploring the food and medicine that is growing freely and abundantly all around us.

So, tonight I’m going to share about my current journey, which is, for one year, I am foraging 100 percent of my food and medicine: everything that I am eating, everything I’m consuming for the entire year. Of course, the calories, and the fat, and the protein. All the mushrooms, all the herbs and spices, down to the oil and the salt. So, everything that I’m eating I’m harvesting from the lands and the waters, primarily here from Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Today is Day 64. I started on October 9th. So, I’m just a little over two months into the year of foraging all my food and medicine.

But before I share what’s in all of these jars, which I’m sure, given the room that we are in, many of you are curious and interested, I want to share a little bit about the journey that got me here today. Because I certainly could not have gotten to the place of foraging all of my food overnight. It’s been a long journey.

So, I’m going to go back to about 33ish years, when I was about six years old. I grew up in Northern Wisconsin in a little town called Ashland, that I’m sure many of you have been to. It’s on Lake Superior. The population when I was growing up there was 8,620. And I grew up just absolutely loving the Earth. My … one of my favorite things to do was to go to a place called Prentice Park and to catch frogs and turtles. My second home was the Hot Pond, and that’s where I would spend so much of my time fishing. And from a young age, I just really had a strong love for the Earth and a connection to the Earth.

At that time, in my younger years, I had a few career possibilities. There was a marine biologist, there was a professional fisherman, and the other one was a banker. [Laughter] And the reason for that is because as much as I loved the Earth, I also loved money. I really loved money. [Laughter] The reason for that is, I … I was always, as a young person, I considered myself … I felt like an outsider. So, I was … my mom … it was me, my mom and three siblings, a single parent household, living in a little two-and-a-half bedroom duplex with paint chipping on the walls and rust on the car, and I was always comparing myself to some of my friends who … my friend, Paul, is here tonight. And, where’s Paul? Paul back here. They always had the nice plastic Tupperware and my mom had the glass jars and I thought plastic is normal and wealthy and success! And I wanted the plastic life.

And so, I also grew up Jewish. My family is ethnically Jewish in a very Catholic, Christian-dominated society. So, in that way, I felt like an outsider. There was the fact that there were … I had no relatives in the state of Wisconsin. It was just my mom and us four kids up there. So, in so many ways as a young person, I was always just striving to belong, to fit in, and I saw that through normalcy, and to me, normal was to have the … the path to normalcy was having enough money to buy the nice clothes like everybody else had. In my lived experience, it was, like, Gap and American Eagle and the standard things you get at the mall. And have the nice car and the nice house, the nuclear family, all of that.

In sixth grade, I was fortunate to join Boy Scouts and got to camp six … twelve months of the year. So, every month of the year, we were out camping, and that was a way that I got to continue deepening my relationship with Earth.

And, in university, I continued. I went to school for biology with a focus on aquatic science. But there was … the real reason I was at university … and honestly, I showed up at University of Wisconsin/LaCrosse and I saw a lot of pretty young women and I saw a lot of beer being drinkin’ and I thought, “This is the place for me.” I was really there for partying and for pursuing another passion of mine … another aspiration, which was to have sex. [Laughter] And the reason for that is because, growing up, that’s what you see in the movies, that’s what you see on the magazines. That’s what you see as, how as a young man, you are successful: whether or not you’re attracting partners. That’s how you know you’re loved: if … if someone wants to have sex with you means you’re worthwhile and such. So I was very, very … I became very passionate about the ‘Red Solo cup.’ [Laughter] That was … that was the path to success at that time. And so, I … I was … I was quite successful with the ‘Red Solo cup’ wherever I traveled to. So, I was … I’ve had my feet in both worlds: the … the pursuit of normalcy via the ‘American Dream,’ and then the pursuit of a deep relationship with the Earth.

In 2011, about a year-and-a-half after I graduated, I relocated to San Diego, California. I started a marketing company after a little while and I set the goal that I would be a millionaire by the time I was thirty. I was 25 years old at the time. And after not too long, we had about twenty independent contractors selling advertising and I was very much on track to accomplish that objective.

I lived in a three-bedroom apartment just a couple blocks from the beach, and as a Wisconsin boy, to be in San Diego near the beach and surfing, life was good. It was excellent. I had a lot of friendship, romance, money. I had the nice car. Every Sunday I would be shining those rims and wiping down the dash with the Armor All, and … and I was traveling the world. I was happy, I was healthy. My young boy self would have been very proud, and I could have continued that for … indefinitely.

And then something happened and I realized that it was time to radically transform my life. And a lot of people would imagine, maybe some sort of ‘ah ha’ moment, a near death experience, a moment of enlightenment. But, it was none of that. What happened was, I simply started to read some books, watch some documentaries, go to some different websites, talk to people. And I learned that the way that I was living was destroying the Earth that I loved.

I learned that the food I was eating, the car I was driving, the stuff I was buying, the trash I was creating, the money I was spending, the money I was investing … it was all tied to systems of exploitation, of oppression, of extraction. I basically learned that I was living a great hypocrisy. My actions were not in alignment with my beliefs. Because I didn’t certainly believe in destroying the Earth as we know it. I certainly didn’t believe in the idea of people suffering so much for me to have the clothes that I was wearing and the … the apartment that I am living in and so on.

So, at that time … well, I learned that I had been lied to to a large degree. That the US government was not so honest about a lot of things. That the narrative of history that has been sold to me is not the history of this nation. I learned even going back to the foundation of this country that we call the United States, that this nation is founded on the enslavement of over seven million people stolen away from Africa. And that’s not acknowledged very much. And then you learn that the people who came and settled this land, that there’s been a genocide of hundreds of indigenous cultures that had been living in harmony with this land in many ways. Just at the core of my existence, I realized that our societal norms and our societal structures are not designed for the goodwill of the majority. They’re often designed for the enrichment of a small percentage of people at the expense of the majority.

So, I felt a lot of … some depression, some overwhelm, some disempowerment, some anxiety, which I’m sure every single one of us experiences sometimes. And right now, in the really challenging times we’re in, I would imagine every single one of us is feeling that often every day. Waking up, going to bed, it’s really a lot to … to realize this. And it’s a lot to … to go through.

But at the same time as I felt that, I actually felt something much stronger. And what I felt was excitement, inspiration and empowerment. Because these books I was reading, these documentaries I was watching, these new people I was talking to … they weren’t just sharing with me the problems of the world, they were sharing solutions. They were sharing that another way is possible: alternative ways of doing things.

So, I decided that, one step at a time, I was going to take my life back. I was going to live sustainably. I was going to attempt to live in harmony with this Earth, just live in a way that is not causing so much destruction, in a more equitable, a more just way. And so, what I decided is that I was going to do this by taking it one step at a time. I made a list of over 100 changes that I wanted to make in my life and I hung it up in my kitchen and I made an objective of making one positive change per week.

So, I started with small things. I looked in my garbage can and I saw all the ways that I was creating garbage, and I found reusable, non-disposable alternatives. So, the paper towels: I switched to reusable washcloths. The plastic bottles: I just got a water purifier for my tap. I started to go to the local farmer’s market, go to the local food co-op. I brought my containers to the food co-op so I could fill up at the bulk section rather than having so much packaging. I started to ride my bike a little bit more and drive the car a little bit less. I started to look at all the ways I was spending my money, and spending my money less in the large multinational corporations and keeping the money in the local economy. I looked at where my money was. It was invested to my mutual funds and fossil fuels and cigarettes, so I took my money out of all of my investments, took my money out of the big banks and switched to a local credit union. I looked at all the things I was putting on my body. My Old Spice deodorant, for example, and I thought to myself, “Why am I wearing Old Spice?” And I said, “Well, it’s because Old Spice has millions of dollars and it’s convinced me that I need that in order to be a loved member of society.” That’s why I was wearing Old Spice. And then I thought, “Haven’t human beings existed like 10,000 years … 100,000 years prior to Old Spice?” “Isn’t it possible that I could do that, too?” So, I ditched the Old Spice and I ditched many of the … all these products with petroleum byproducts that I’m putting on my body and all the chemical cleaning products in my house, too. Ditched those and just started using simple things like vinegar and biodegradable soaps and such.

So, one step at a time, I was building a foundation of a more sustainable life. A big part of this was simplicity. I really thought simplicity is the answer. I realized my life was a web of consumerism that I would … I had wrapped myself so deeply into. So, one strand at a time, I broke each web … I broke each strand in this web of consumerism and I replaced that with a new strand. A strand of living sustainably and of living in more harmony with the Earth.

So, after about two years, I had made about 100 changes. One change a week for two years is 100 changes. So imagine if you woke up tomorrow and you were doing 100 things differently from today. You might look at yourself and be like, “Who am I?” “What’s going on here?” But, by taking that one step I was able to quite rapidly radically transform my life, but in a pace that was manageable for me.

And from the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to let my life be my message. I wanted to take others along on this journey of another way of existing. Not to say that there’s a good way or a bad way or a right way or a wrong way, but just to share there’s another way. When we turn on the TV and we watch all the commercials, we hear a lot of messages saying, like, “Buy this. Buy this. Buy this. And then you will be complete.” And I wanted to go on the TV and just say, “You’re wonderful just the way you are. You’re enough. You don’t need to buy more stuff.” And that everything we need, the Earth can provide for us. And so, this is the journey that I set out on.

The first campaign that I did was to bike across the United States on a bicycle made out of bamboo, and try to have no negative environmental impact as I crossed the country. So I set a whole bunch of guidelines, rules for me to follow. For example, I was trying to create no garbage, so what I had to do was, every piece of trash I created, I had to carry all the way across the country with me. That would force me to look at every single way I was creating trash. On that trip, I was also eating only local, organic, unpackaged foods. I wasn’t foraging yet, so I was still buying most of my food. And at that time, I learned that, well, I started to look inside the grocery store dumpsters and I found that we are throwing away a lot of food. So, the exception was I could eat anything that was going to waste because there was no negative impact by doing that.

In 2014, my second endeavor was to bike across the country again. And this time, from the Mississippi River to New York, I committed to only eating food that I harvested from grocery store dumpsters, and to raising awareness about food waste. So, in the United States, we throw away about half of all the food that we produce while one in seven US Americans are food insecure. So some people think we have a food shortage problem. We don’t. We have enough food to feed two entire US American populations. Some people say we have a distribution problem. Other people say we have a capitalism problem. [Audience member:] “Yes!” [Laughter] I see at least one of you … from Rachel. [Laughter] Yes! So, what it is, is that our food is no longer considered a life-giving substance. It’s no longer considered a human right under this system. Instead it’s considered dollars and cents on a spreadsheet. And so, what I decided to do was I would dive into dumpsters in that city, take out all the perfectly good food, lay it in a display in a public park, invite the media, invite people out, to see just the tip of the food waste iceberg. But by creating a visual, help us to understand really complex, big picture issues. Discussing the problem, yes, but only enough to lead us into discussing the solutions of what we can do to be a part of the change to do things in a different way.

My activism is designed to be very visual, to help us to understand complex issues. And also very non-judgmental. Again, it’s not about good or bad or right or wrong, it’s just “here’s one of the realities of the times that we live in, and here’s another way of doing things should you choose to.” My activism is designed to stimulate questions inside of ourselves. It’s about critical thought. About … about really think … thinking deeply. And so, there’s two big questions I like to … to stimulate inside of others. And first, “Am I living the life that I truly want?” To really … to really chew on that, to really think about that: “Am I living the life that I really want?” And then along with that, “Are my actions in alignment with my beliefs?” And if the answer is, “Yes,” great. No homework, nothing to do, just keep on goin’. But if the answer is that then we feel a little pit inside of our stomach, a little lump inside of our chest, a little bit of … a little bit of “no,” then the answer is, “Well, maybe there’s something I’d like to do.” And so, “What do I want to do to live the life of my … of my desire and to bring my actions into alignment with my beliefs?”

So, my activism has ranged across all of the ways in which we interact with Earth, but food has stayed always at the center. The reason for that is because food is what connects us so deeply to one another, to culture, to the plants, to the animals, to the Earth. It … it’s so interconnected in our entire lives. Many of us live to eat. It’s at the center of our being in so many ways. And so. And I also love food. I really love food and it’s been one of my … my own personal explorations.

So, in 2017, I decided to see if I could break free from this global industrial food system. I learned that I could live off the waste of the system. Now I wanted to see if I could live independently of the system. And so, I decided to see if I could go one year without grocery stores or restaurants. And that meant one year of growing and foraging all of my food and medicine. I decided to live in Orlando, Florida, and the reason why is because I am one of the Wisconsinites who likes to be in a warm place. [Laughter] And so, always I’ve been … I’ve been going to warm places as long as I could get out of Wisconsin.

So, I set my roots down there for this and I had a couple main challenges. First of all, I had no land to grow food on. So my remedy for that was I spoke to people in the community and I offered to turn their front yard into a garden and in exchange for … for converting that lawn into a garden, I would be able to eat as much of the food as I wanted and they could eat that, and then when I left after two years, the garden would be theirs. And very quickly, I had a list of over thirty people who wanted me to do that. So, I realized it turns out there’s a lot of people who are kind of tired of their lawns. [Laughter] And would rather look out their window and see an abundance of food and medicine growing that they can walk out and harvest rather than having to spend a lot of money on groceries. So that problem was solved very quickly. And the other big problem was that … well, I didn’t know how to grow food or forage really. [Laughter] I had some experience in all my bike trips across the country. I had planted a lot of fruit trees. I had volunteered at community gardens, visited a lot of places. I had my permaculture design certificate, so I … I understood some big picture things, but I hadn’t really, as a traveler, been around to see much go from seed to fruit, veggie, et cetera. So, at the very beginning, I really went to Google and I typed in, “How much water does a carrot seed need?” And, “How much kale … how much sun does the kale plant need?” And I really was starting from scratch. Fortunately, I found that there’s actually books you can open up that have all that information and simple charts for every single plant that I would want to grow.

So, I … I gave myself six months to go from basically zero percent to 100 percent. And, what I did is, I immediately started to go on foraging walks with different foraging teachers. In Florida, that was Andy Firk and Green Dean were my first foraging walk. I went to local gardening meetups, to the local community garden. I went to the Florida Perma … the Florida Earthskills Gathering. I went to … I got some books, watched videos online, went to different websites. And I just learned what I needed to do. As I learned each thing, I implemented that in my … in my garden. I was very fortunate to be around a group called Orlando Permaculture. And so, I just took in a lot of the knowledge that they already had. I didn’t really have to find out too many new things. Most things people were doing and I just had to put all the pieces together.

So six months actually took ten months. And the reason for that is my objective was by no means just to grow and forage all of my own food. My objective was to bring others along on this journey and provide resources and support to … to people that wanted to do this as well: to grow and forage. So I started four … five community programs along with others. There was Community Fruit Trees. So we were planting fruit trees in publicly accessible places for others to enjoy, which hopefully, we’ll talk a little bit about that tonight. There was Gardens for Single Moms, where we would build gardens for single parent families so they could grow their own food at home. The Free Seed Project, where anybody who wrote in with … with low income would be able to get seeds from us to be able to start growing their own food. And Community Compost, to help people at home be able to start composting through simple, small-scale compost systems.

And so, after ten months, I had a lot of food in my gardens, I had a … basically, a supermarket on all the streets, having written down where all the food was growing. And that first morning: it was November 11, 2018, that breakfast was the first meal of my entire life that was 100 percent homegrown and foraged. So, I was really jumping off the deep end there. And that year, I’ll summarize it just a little bit. It was a great joy, but it was also a great struggle. It was very challenging. And the biggest challenge was actually getting enough fat and protein. That was where I struggled the most. I had … most things, I had plenty of: especially the sweet potatoes and the yucca and the yams. No shortage of calories, herbs, anything like that. [Drinks] Ahh … that was good. I’m sure some of you are wondering what this is. This is chaga and Japanese barberry root. So. Yeah. So that was my main lacking, was the fat and the protein. And I actually came up to Wisconsin. I brought 120,000 calories in my duffel bags with me to come up to Wisconsin and do a couple months up here. And I remedied that by catching some lake trout. And it was one of the most fascinating experiences with my own body that I’d ever had. Within 24 hours of eating that lake trout, I could feel the difference in my muscles and my … I could really just feel it in my entire being. And this might sound kind of ‘out there,’ but I had basically absorbed the lake trout directly into my body as direct as I could experience it. So in that moment, I was, like, “I’m part lake trout!” [Laughter] Legit. Legitimately part lake trout in that moment. And part Lake Superior, of course. That lake trout was part Lake Superior.

So, there were two … two of my sweetest realizations during that time: it was toward the end of the year, I was standing in my front yard garden, the first one that I had started, and I realized I was standing almost a foot higher than the sidewalk. Where it was … it was pretty level, the lawn when I started. And I realized that this was all carbon that had been sequestered. Because this was mostly wood chips. They come from tree trimming companies that often dump this in the landfill. And instead, I would have them dump it in my yard, and practice like a lasagna, garden style, where it’s basically laying down cardboard and wood chips and that breaks down into … into soil. And so, I’m standing there and I’m realizing I have harvested literally hundreds of pounds of food from here and yet there’s not less, there’s more than when I arrived. And there’s not a … a … a decreasing of biodiversity, there’s more plants. There’s more animals. There’s more life thriving here. And it was just a beautiful moment to see that, “Wow! Human beings CAN give back to the Earth. We CAN heal our own little landscapes.” And I thought, “Imagine if we did this with every yard across this nation.” The number one most irrigated crop in this country is NOT corn or soy, it is the lawn. And so, it’s amazing how much food that we can grow. We might not be able to grow all our food in that way, but I would say our fruits and vegetables we can grow just in our lawns. And that would make an incredible difference to our food system.

The other big realization for me was that now … during that year I foraged over 200 different foods: mushrooms … plants primarily, mushrooms and then some animals, via mostly fish. Some of the squirrels that were eating from my garden, taking my peanuts and my … If any of you read the book, you’ll know about my relationship with those squirrels, which I love, but I’ll still eat at the same time. [Laughter] But so now I saw food and medicine growing all around. Instead of driving down the highway and seeing the billboards for my former love, the 49 cent ice cream cone from McDonald’s, which was my favorite, now I saw the billboards, the gifts of Mother Earth. The sumac, and the apple trees, and the … and the stinging nettle, and the plums and just all the abundance of goldenrod and mullein everywhere that I went.

So, since then, I have found that food and medicine truly is growing freely and abundantly all around us. And where we are right now, here in the Twin Cities, here in Minnesota and Wisconsin, we really genuinely do live in a place of deep, deep abundance.

So, this year, I am embarked on an immersion in that abundance. So this time, no gardens. The Earth is my garden. Wisconsin and Minnesota and everywhere I travel to IS my garden wherever I go, except for in your actual domesticated garden, because this is just foraged foods for the year. What is foraged foods? We’ll see if we get into that a little bit because it turns out that everything is a little bit more interconnected and a little bit more complex and nuanced than you would ever realize. But, so, I think, on that note, I would love to share a little bit about what I’m eating, and what’s in all of these jars. How does that sound to everybody?

[Audience:] “Yeah.” Alright. And I know a few of you are like, “Finally! Oh my gosh! This guy’s been talking for so long! I just want to know what’s in the jars!” [Laughter] So, I’ll share … I’ll probably break this down over about fifteen or so minutes and introduce you to some of these different plants. And share a little bit about the journey. I guess one last thing before going quite into the jars, a little, small snippet about why I’m doing this. Yes, I’m doing this because I love foraging. Yes, I’m doing this because this is some of the most delicious and nutritious food that exists on Earth. Yes, I’m doing this because there’s nothing else on Earth that I’d rather be doing than this right now. But, for me, it’s so much deeper than just food and medicine. I theoretically know that the Earth can provide us with everything that we need, like, I know that theoretically. But my objective is that I want to feel that in every cell of my body. Something that the majority of human beings today have lost. The majority of human beings who have ever existed have known that, have felt that. The Earth provides us with what we need. I want to feel that. I want to feel in every ounce of my cellular being that the Earth provides us with what we need. I want to have that very deep connection with Earth and I want to take others along with me on that. And I want people to be able to see, “Wow! Look at the abundance!” Look at the abundance of food and medicine there is, even though we live in times of such great destruction, where ten thousand species are going extinct per year. There still is so much abundance that we can connect to, that we can protect, and that we can become stewards of.

So, the first that I’ll talk about is, indeed, not a plant, not a mushroom, but an animal. And this is venison. And this is … there’s a lot of people in this region who eat venison. And this particularly …. I haven’t hunted yet. The reason why is because 20,000 deer are killed by cars in the state of Wisconsin alone per year. I’m not sure how many here in Minnesota. So I harvest my deer that are hit by cars. Some people call that roadkill. I call that deer that are hit by cars. [Laughter] For a very simple reason. When we say ‘roadkill,’ we ‘other’ it as something else. When it’s walking along, it’s a deer. When it’s hit, it’s a deer. When it’s on the side of the road, it’s still a deer. A deer that was hit by a car. I could talk about that for a long time. I do want to acknowledge: I never expected to be the guy standing in front of large groups of people talking about eating deer from the side of the road, but I’ve embraced it. Here I am. Maybe a few of the plants in here will make me look slightly more normal. [Laughter] But do I want that? I’m not sure.

So here we have whitefish. And I, actually, for the first time ever, netted whitefish. This was in Trout Lake. Most of my fishing is up in Northern Wisconsin, and uh … but this is from a place called Trout Lake, where we net them while they’re spawning. This is wild rice, or Manoomin, or ‘the food that grows on water,’ or the good berry. Four different names for this wonderful plant. I could certainly give a talk that would last an hour or so about wild rice, so I’m … but I’m going to share about wild rice for a few minutes. I can’t .… It is the most impactful plant in my life. It is the plant that has changed me the most of any plant. And there’s a few reasons for that.

There is the fact that when I harvest wild rice, I am with this plant from 10:00 a.m. all the way until sunset, working with this plant, minute after minute, hour after hour; and doing that numerous days through the season. And when doing that, being with the redwing blackbirds and the … and the geese and the ducks and the bluegills and the muskie below. It’s a … really, it’s just a beautiful ecosystem to get to take part in. It’s a deep immersion. Because we’re talking about often these are beds of rice that go further than the eye can see. And it’s so often that you are just completely immersed in this rice, absolutely covered with rice worms, which by the way, are delicious, if any of you ‘wild rice’ and don’t eat the rice worms, you are, indeed, missing out. One of my favorite foods. Well, you’re not missing out. That’s … that’s up to you to decide. I’m not going to place that upon you. [Laughter] But I love them. [Audience member:] “Do you eat them live or …?” I eat them live. I eat them later, dried or frozen. Whatever way that they can enter into my mouth. [Audience member:] “If you eat them quick enough, they won’t bite you.” They occasionally will bite your tongue, but ….

So. Okay, here’s the real reason that I love wild rice so much. The reason why is that wild rice is a plant that has been stewarded for over 700 years by the Anishinaabe people, as well as other Indigenous groups. This is a plant that has been in relationship with humanity for at least 700 years. And when I get to take part in wild rice, I get to take part in that relationship. It’s not often that you can get to work with a plant that has had that sort of connection, uninterrupted, unbroken, for that long. There’s ‘people of the corn,’ there’s ’people of the wheat,’ there’s ‘people of the quinoa,’ there’s ‘people of the … the … of the teff,’ like in Ethiopia, and there’s ‘people of the wild rice – Manoominee’: means ‘people of the wild rice.’ And so, it’s just … it’s just an incredibly deep connection to people to get to be a part of that. And so, I’m deeply grateful to the Anishinaabe people for stewarding this rice, for sharing this knowledge.

Some people say, “Aren’t only native people supposed to harvest wild rice?” And the reality is that there’s a deep group – intercultural group – of native and non-native people who are stewards of the rice, who know that the more people who ‘rice,’ the more people who love the rice and who will steward the rice. An interesting thing about wild rice is, it’s wild, right? I mean, it’s got the name ‘wild’ in it and everything. But as I’m out there ricing, I know that this is a plant that has been stewarded for 700 years and think, “Well, is it wild, or am I in somebody’s garden?” And even today, GLIFWC and the DNR, many of the native groups and non-native groups … they work together, and if there’s an area that’s struggling, they might harvest seed from one area and plant that in another area. And so, there’s humans who are tending this today. And so, earlier I said, “What is foraging?” “What is foraging exactly?” I don’t have an exact answer to that. But for me, foraging is, to the best of my ability, it’s plants … plants and animals and … and mushrooms that are not domesticated, that are growing freely and abundantly from the Earth. But the more deeply you go, you realize … the more you realize that humans are not separate from Earth. That we are interconnected with this and that we are part of these ecosystems. So, thank you wild rice! And thank you to the Anishinaabe people for being the reason that I get to enjoy this wonderful plant.

Here we have stinging nettle. And this is a plant that I could talk about for at least fifteen minutes, but I’m going to summarize this one. How many of you have been stung by stinging nettle? Okay, the vast majority of us. And how many of you kind of were like, “Darn stinging nettle for stinging me!” You weren’t exactly excited to be stung. Only one, huh? Okay, A few more people. This must be that ‘Minnesota nice’ thing, where you want to pretend that you didn’t curse the stinging nettle? [Laughter] So, I want to share a really beautiful, for me, profound message in that regard. We know that stinging nettle is great food – a lot of you know it’s really high in minerals. You can eat it fresh by blending it into pesto. You can add it to soups and stews. You can dry it and then you can add it to anything, make teas, et cetera. It’s great food. It’s great medicine.

But, one thing that a lot of us haven’t learned yet is there’s a practice called urtication. So this is Urtica dioica, is the genus and species. So urtica or urtication is the intentional stinging of the body and it’s used to stimulate blood flow. So when we’re feeling that tingling, it’s actually stimulating blood flow and it’s used for people who have diabetes and arthritis. So it’s actually a medicine to be stung. Even further, a more modern medicine, because that dates back hundreds and thousands of years, our more modern medicine has actually shown that when we’re stung by stinging nettle, numerous and different endorphins are released in our system. So. If you’re at home, sitting on your couch in the air conditioning, watching your TV and you’re feeling a little depressed, you’re feeling a little disconnected from the world, [Laughter] the answer: go out and get stung by a little stinging nettle. It is some wonderful medicine of reconnecting to Earth.

Here we have pear sauce. I eat a lot of … more … more applesauce than pear sauce and also plum sauce. And I eat about a pint of this a day. So this is about two days’ worth for me. This is a big staple. Apples are one of the really abundant wild foods. Kazakhstan is where they’re from, but this is the mecca of the wild apple for me. I mean, I could take you to a hundred different wild apple trees up in the homeland where I’m from and it’s kind of amazing, because every single one tastes good. Where are the bad apples? I’m not finding any of them. So, for the sake of brevity, that’s all I’ll say about the apples for now.

Alright. Here we are with the Minnesota Mycological Society, so we’ll get to introduce a couple of mushrooms here. Here we have the king bolete, porcini, and this is one of my absolute favorite mushrooms. I enjoy it very much. So grateful to have Kathy here tonight. And right here on the front of Kathy’s book, “Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest,” which I’ve been using as my primary guidebook for mushrooms, is some boletes. Which bolete is this actually? [Audience member:] Bitter bolete. [Unintelligible conversation] Edible. But not the number one. [Audience member:] [Unintelligible] Yeah. I’ve eaten a few of the bitter boletes and quite enjoyable. Usually. So. Yeah, so that’s … so king bolete. One of my favorite mushrooms. And if you are wanting to get into mushroom foraging, great news. You don’t have to learn all the toxic ones. You only have to learn the beginner easy ones and in the front of this book is the top edibles, starting on page 24. And there’s, I would say, about a dozen, about fifteen, very beginner mushrooms in Wisconsin and Minnesota that you can start with that are quite, quite easy to start with. You still have to do your diligence with any foraging, but that … that you can get into. Morelles, inky caps, cauliflower mushrooms, chicken-of-the-woods, oyster mushrooms … numerous varieties, chanterelles, giant puff balls. There’s Kathy at a much younger age with her giant puff ball. [Laughter] What? I mean, what? It’s accurate, you know? [Laughter] What’s going on here? Some of this ‘Minnesota nice’ stuff? You don’t acknowledge reality? Lion’s mane, of course. Black trumpets. Hedgehog. Which brings us to the hedgehog. Has anyone here cried when they got to pick up a hedgehog, or is it just me? [Laughter] Okay. I don’t know what it is about the hedgehog mushroom. When you … when you … when you look at it, it looks kind of … it’s very closely related to a chanterelle. On top it more or less looks like a chanterelle. Man, I’m getting real excited about mushrooms right now. [Laughter] But when you flip it over, underneath it looks like a hedgehog and there’s just something about the hedgehog mushroom that is just so enthralling to me. How many of you have harvested a hedgehog mushroom? Okay. And how many of you have harvested a hedgehog, the animal? [Laughter] Okay. Good! Please don’t harvest the hedgehogs. I love the hedgehogs. Not for eating them. Hen-of-the-woods or maitake. And those … that really … those there cover my … my top mushrooms. So thank you for bringing this wonderful book to the world. It’s been a joy for so many of us. And, yes. Okay.

Well, I’m going to skip since… no, you know what? Just to spread out the mushrooms a little bit, since we’re here with the society, I’ll … I’ll come back to this mushroom a bit later. Here we have apple cider vinegar. And this is definitely one of my top edibles. [Takes swig] Aah. [Laughter] I’ll pass this around. [Audience member:] “Whoa, boy!” [Robin:] You are welcome to take a small sip if you’d like. Or a smell, as you desire. So, that is … that’s the product of wild fermentation. So, that’s the product of bacteria and yeast coming together, turning sugar into alcohol and then alcohol into vinegar. And, I can’t go through an evening of this without talking a little bit about bacteria. Because bacteria and yeast are incredibly important to our existence. Okay. How deep do I go down this realm here? [Laughter] Okay. To put it simply, I eat a lot of bacteria and yeast. That’s partly through wild fermentation. Another ferment that I have here besides that …. This is … I actually just tasted this last night for the first time in, like, a week or two, and this is something else! [Laughter] It’s really developed. This is wild bergamot and onion and salt. And that’s it. I packed this in. There’s enough here. If you feel like taking a little try, you are welcome to. [Audience member:] “Is it wild onion?” [Robin:] All wild, of course. Which … which species of onion? I don’t know. Why don’t I know? I don’t need to know, because I just know that it’s onion and I can eat it, and that’s enough in regard to that one.

But, so, as far as the bacteria and yeast, we now know that we are more bacterial cells than we are human cells. So, think about that for a second. There’s bacteria on every surface of every … every part of our body. We … we now know that there’s a different species of mite that colonize our eyebrow from the species of mite that would colonize our chin. Knowing that we are more bacterial cells than we are human cells, knowing that bacteria are making up our gut microbiome and are actually communicating with our minds, you start to see that we … what IS a human being? If we are more bacterial cells than we are human cells, which I do believe the science that says we are, then every single step we take is a walking culture of species interacting in every single moment. And when you realize that, then you really question, “What is a human being?” “What really are we?”

So, on that note, we’ll talk about salt a little bit. So, this is the hand-harvested sea salt. This is the one food in my diet that I can’t get from Minnesota and Wisconsin. There are other foods that I’m eating that aren’t from Minnesota and Wisconsin. I took a month road trip when I started. But this is the only food that I need from outside of the state and I don’t know how I would do it otherwise. And I don’t need to know because I go to the ocean every year. One five-gallon bucket of salt water produces two of these jars’ worth of salt. So a pint of salt. So, you only need about three five-gallon buckets of salt water … of ocean water … for an average person to meet your salt needs. So, if you’re going to the ocean, and it’s a pretty clean part of the ocean, you can start harvesting your own salt. It’s a really joyful thing. I may as well pass around the salt for the fun of it. And you are welcome to try the sea salt if you want. It tastes more or less like salt, but it’s just slightly more special.

Here we have … here we have seaweed. And this is rockweed and bladderwrack. It took me forty minutes to harvest a year’s supply of … of seaweed. A real wonderful resource.

Here we have cattail pollen. And cattail pollen … I love it for this really bright yellow color. And cattail pollen? It tastes just slightly better than chalk. [Laughter] However, it is far more nutritious and I know that, as a fact. It’s a super food. A wonderful super food.

Here we have green powder. And, some of us go to the store and we buy our green powders. Our super greens and such. There’s dozens of species of greens including mulberry leaves, basswood leaves, dandelion and plantago. We can harvest those. We can dehydrate them, blend them up, turn them into our own green powder. I consider this my … this is my multi-vitamin right here. This is actually just basswood, because basically I didn’t pull it together and make my wide range of … of greens. It’s one of the areas … I haven’t been eating nearly as much greens as I’d like, but with the green powder, I can easily just take a spoonful out of here, add it into my soup or … well, I don’t have smoothies to make. I just don’t have the ingredients for that. But you could put it in your smoothie if you wanted to.

Here’s a plant that I’m sure some of you in this room would be quite interested in. These are gingko nuts. [Audience:] “Oh, yeah!” [Robin:] And a lot of you know the smell of gingko fruit. Some people say ‘dog poop,’ some people say ‘vomit.’ Fortunately, the seed itself does not taste or smell like either of those things. It tastes more like pistachios. You can roast the nut, or the seed, and it’s quite joyful. Now, I’m going to pass this around so you can take a smell of this. This still has a small amount of the smell of the fruit. You can decide – you can trick your mind, you can do whatever you want with your mind – whether you think this smells like dog poop or blue cheese. I personally think blue cheese myself. Or not smell it. You decide. I’m going to hold all questions to the end except this question here. [Audience member:] [unintelligible] [Robin:] Gingko. Okay. I may as well share my biggest foraging mistake this year was with the gingko fruit. I’ve been eating gingko fruit for about three or four years now. Actually, because of this book right here, “Midwest Foraging” by Lisa Rose, it does say right in this book that … ooh, did I get to gingko? Did I do it? There it is! It actually says right in this book that the [pause] … well, basically, I don’t remember the exact words, but it says that the … the nut is edible. And so, I’ve been eating a little bit of the nuts for the last few years … or not … the fruit. It says the fruit is edible. The nut has been eaten in Japan. It’s a common bar food. But it says the fruit is edible. So I was harvesting … I had two gallons’ worth of gingko fruit and nuts that I had harvested in Lincoln Park in Chicago, and I took it home and I was processing it. I had it all over my arms and all over my hands and I decided to look it up and, for some reason, I was “I want to look up the edibility of gingko.” I had just eaten some. I was about to drink a whole bunch. And then, every single web page says, “Don’t get it on your skin.” And that it has the same oil as poison ivy or sister ivy. Urushiol? I’m not sure if that’s how you pronounce it. And so, sure enough, I ended up with a pretty strong allergic reaction and was itchy for about a week and my heart was burning for a little while. And so, basically, you don’t … you don’t want to touch the fruit. You just … you just wear gloves. And you don’t get it on your body. Simple as that. Alright. I said that was the only question. I’ll answer one more about this gingko before we continue on. [Audience member:] “Thank you. [unintelligible]” [Robin:] Yes. Yes. Yes. It’s only the fruit that that exists in, so you don’t have to be concerned about the tree itself. It’s only the fruit. And so, it’s only if you’re getting the fruit in contact with your body. So, mostly … mostly males are planted to keep the fruit from existing and I’m so grateful for all the female gingkos that make it through! [Laughter] To provide us with some fruit.

Alright. I want to keep us on track. So, I’m going to go a little bit quickly through the rest of these plants. This is roasted dandelion, chicory and burdock root. This is one of my favorite teas. Here we have a spice mix. I’ll pass this around. This is … this is monarda and onion, but in a dry form rather than a fermented form. That’s some of my main herbs for cooking. Here we have some of the berries. So these are blueberries from the Moqua barrens. Moqua is Ojibwe for black … or for ‘bear,’ so … because the Moquas … because the Moqua is the black bear. They love the blueberries.

Here we have chokecherry leather. And I want to give a big gratitude to Linda Black Elk for sharing about chokecherry leather. So, the seeds of chokecherries have a lot of cyanide in them. And cyanide is generally toxic. You don’t generally want to eat cyanide. I say ‘generally’ because there may be some circumstances where you do, I’m not sure. But generally, you don’t. So, how you can get rid of the cyanide in this is really simple. You break up the seed with the fruit, smash it up, lay it out, and then either dehydrate it in the sun or an electric dehydrator and the cyanide offgases. It volatizes. Simple as that. And then you can eat the seed and the fruit. You get the oil and you get the protein and you get the … the fruit, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful food. This has been a long-term food of Lakota people. This has been a staple food for them. And, I’ll pass this around. You can smell this and this is the smell of cyanide actually. So now you know this smell. If you smell this in other plants, it’s the smell of, like, maraschino cherry. Man, I think I got a whole bunch of people here all excited and fired up because there’s a lot of … a lot of fun chattin’ out there.

Okay. Do you want to see the last plants? [Audience:] “Yeah!” [Robin:] Okay. So this is …. Okay. Who knows this? [Audience guesses] Not apricot. Not rhubarb. There is no wild rhubarb. Not plum. [Audience member:] Autumn olive? [Robin:] Autumn olive, alright! Usually it takes a lot longer. Autumn olive or autumn berry. Now this is a plant that’s considered invasive. That’s the term, the word that would be used, and often with great “oomph!” – with great hatred! Great scower! And so, what I’d like to share about that is that I don’t call plants ‘invasive.’ I will say a plant that’s considered ‘invasive’ if I’m trying to talk about what people are saying. But what I say is it’s a plant that has been introduced from one ecosystem to another. It is growing in a way where it’s doing harm to the ecosystem and to the native plants. It’s outcompeting the native plants. And, the reason that I say that is because when we just label the plants ‘invasive,’ we’re not taking responsibility for the human relationship. Most plants that are ‘invasive,’ it’s because humans introduced them. So, it’s … it … we don’t take responsibility for that when we just label them invasive.

Now, there’s a lot of people out there who write on social media and say, “You shouldn’t be foraging! Leave it for the birds!” “It’s bad to be foraging. No human should forage.” And it could not be further from the truth. This is a perfect example of that. When we harvest these plants that are considered invasive, and we eat these plants, we can actually be doing an ecosystem service with every single bite. You’ve heard the term ‘herbivore,’ or ‘carnivore.’ Well, you can also be an ‘invasivore.’ Which is a person who focuses on eating these plants that are considered invasive. So you can help to decrease their population, not by spraying them with pesticides and poisoning the Earth, but by nourishing ourselves with them. So, if you’re concerned and don’t have the knowledge or the skills to forage in a way yet, where you’re concerned about doing harm, starting with plants that are considered invasive is a really, really great place to start.

So, a couple other fruits here. This is elderberry, and I don’t eat this as a food. This is more of a medicine. A lot of people know elderberry for elderberry syrup. I make tea, because I started in the fall, and maple syrup season is not until the spring. So, I don’t have any sugar for about six months or so. I love elderberry.

Here we have evening primrose seeds. These are high in GLAs: Gamma-Linolenic Acid, I think is how you pronounce the “L” part. So, this is a …this is another interesting food. And when I eat it, it tastes a little like hemp seeds, which I was surprised with my first time.

Here we have my medicinal mushroom tea. Okay, we get to talk a little bit more about mushrooms. This is a wonderful little treat. So, in here is reishi. This is Ganoderma, and what species? Does anyone …? [Audience member:] “Sugai.” [Incorrect] [Robin:] Sugai. [Incorrect] Okay. So this grows on dying hemlocks and I harvested this from Madeline Island. And so, although there’s some pain and sorrow about a lot of our hemlocks dying, also we can rejoice in the fact that, at least, we get this wonderful medicine of … of reishi in great abundance right now in some places.

Here we have turkey tail and this is a plant we’ll hear Paul Stamets talking about with its anti-cancer properties, This is a very common midwest medicinal mushroom. Here’s a little chunk of chaga that’s left from my larger chunks of chaga. And then also in here is … not lion’s mane … I say lion’s mane for short, but particularly, this is the boar’s head … bear’s head tooth or boar’s head tooth? [Audience:] “Bear’s head tooth.” [Robin:] Bear’s head tooth. Bear’s head tooth and then there is, of course, maitake, or hen-of-the-woods. So, there’s five different medicinal mushrooms in here. You can buy your Stamets stack at the store or you can harvest these that are growing abundantly. And there are some that are truly in deep abundance: chaga is one that you want to get to know. You want to harvest in a right relationship. Any of the mushrooms you want to do that, but chaga is one that you want to know better and make sure because it’s very slow growing of all the mushrooms. And then mixed in here with this, I’ve blended black birch, sassafras and spice bush. So this is kind of an Appalachian chai blend, because that’s where the spice bush comes from, from the Appalachians. So, I’m going to pass this around and you can smell that. I smell … I smell most strongly the spice bush, then the black birch, then the sassafras, then the mushroom is what I get when I smell that.

Okay, we’re rounding up here. So we have on the bottom, some herbal teas. This is mint. A wild mint. One of my favorites. If you’re ever mowing your lawn and all of a sudden you smell mint, stop. Harvest the mint.

Sweet fern. One of my favorite ones. This is fireweed. And if you ferment fireweed, it’s got a similar flavor and essence of black tea. So if you love black tea and you want a local plant to be able to get that same feeling … it’s not caffeinated, but … fireweed.

This is my morning blend, which …. I’ll pass this around. For anybody who’s feeling a little sleepy, that’ll give you a little kick in the nose there. [Laughter] That’s mint, goldenrod, mullein and heal-all. Which, heal-all is one of the plants that we’ll have tonight in one of our herbal teas. And then, here is gingko leaves. So you harvest the gingko leaves once they are turning yellow.

A few more plants to mention here. This is sumac. Staghorn sumac. And these you can harvest and put them into water and make sumac ade. It tastes like lemonade. It has three different water soluble acids that come into the water and make a very similar to lemonade-type flavor. So you harvest these in late summer into early fall. And you can still harvest them any time, but that’s when they have the most of that acid, because the acid is actually on the outside, so if you have a really rainy season, it actually washes that acid away.

And then, last plant that I’ll mention here for now – who knows what we have here? [Audience member:] [unintelligible] Yes. Wild parsnip. Same exact plant as domesticated parsnip, just slightly more wild. And this is a very dried up one because I’ve been on tour for a couple weeks with this now. But, according to Sam Thayer, which, Sam Thayer’s four books right here are my most important … these … these really are the bulk of my food comes from these four books. And, according to Sam, you can harvest thirty to fifty pounds of wild parsnip per hour, once you get into them. So, we’re talking about serious, serious sustenance. They can get up to a half-pound to a pound per … per parsnip. They get to be pretty big. This is … this one was way bigger before it shrank. And they’re very tasty. You harvest these in the fall through the spring. The ground’s not frozen here probably, since we got the early snow, so you could still dig up wild parsnip this year, if you know where it is. So this is a really joyful food for me.

And, yeah, so, it’s 7:55, and I started talking around 7:00, so I’m on schedule, which is wonderful, because there’s more that I want to share before opening it up to questions.

So, first. Okay. Those are the plants. A couple things that I’d like to share.

First. A lot of people say, “Well, Robin, what would happen if everybody started foraging? Everybody can’t do what you’re doing. We would … we would destroy nature as we know it.” There’s some accuracy to that statement. If everybody today decided that they wanted to forage, went out and foraged, and only had a ‘take take take’ mindset and didn’t educate themselves, then absolutely, we would see some serious destruction of the Earth. But that’s not what foragers do! That’s a very small percentage of foragers that people might focus on, they might hear about harm … harm to the ramps, for example. But, almost always, that’s people who are harvesting commercially: that are harvesting for monetary gain and are selling it. Foragers who are going out to harvest their own food and medicine and to share it with their community, are rarely doing damage and harm. Sure, it does happen sometimes, but it is a small percentage.

Yes, many foragers do go out because they want to harvest food and medicine. They want to spend less money. But the more that people start foraging, the more that they start to tune into this abundance and they realize they want this abundance to continue. They want these plants to be here for the next season and next year. And they want these plants to be there for their friends and for their … for the next generation. And so, foragers really … as a … as a group, as a whole, are protectors of the plants and are stewards of the plants. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the … is the author of numerous books. “Braiding Sweetgrass” is one that has changed me at my absolute core, and I’m sure … how many of you have been positively influenced by Robin Wall Kimmerer? Alright! What a room we’re in. Aah. [Laughter] So, this is not a foraging book. However, this book is one of the most important books to the forager, because this instills in us the desire to live in reciprocity. It does teach the honorable harvest, learning some of the basic guidelines for how to harvest in a sustainable way, which are not a set of rules, but more a set of critical thinking, more a set of .. of feelings, a belief and a way of being. So, this is such an important book to … to … to read. And this teaches us to active reciprocity. Learning how to be in relationship with the plants. Learning. Yes. What we can receive from the plants, but how we can give to those plants as well.

Milkweed is a plant that a lot of conservationists would say, “Don’t … don’t eat the milkweed because the monarchs!” And, again, this is another very nuanced area. The reality of the situation is that if you harvest the milkweed shoots in the spring, and you harvest just some of them, you can actually result in a longer growing season of the flowers so that the nectar for the … for the monarchs’ season actually increases. And then, when there’s … there’s pods, you can harvest just the right number of pods. I’ll harvest, like, one or two pods off of a plant that has five of them. And then, you can come back to that same patch in the fall and harvest the seeds and then you can spread those seeds to the areas where they don’t exist as abundantly. So you learn how to work with the plants in a way that actually gives to the plant and helps that plant to thrive. So, thank you Robin Wall Kimmerer for being such an important part of this world. So, yes, we can absolutely …. [Audience member:] “I want to add something.” [unintelligible] [Robin:] Nice. Well thank you for enriching our lives with that knowledge and giving us the opportunity to more joyously harvest some milkweed shoots. Thanks for that, Peter.

Okay, a few other notes in this regard. Let’s see. Okay. The other aspect of that is, people say, “Well, what if everybody wanted to do this?” Well, here’s my question. What if everybody lived off the global industrial food system? [Laughter] Well, we’d see the sixth mass extinction of humanity. The way we’re doing things right now is not working either. News flash.

So, I will say, sometimes I really do question myself. Not my sanity. I think I’ve got … well, I don’t know. That one, too. A little bit. But, I question myself. I have … I have a lot of privilege. I … I did a little bit of research and … and learning about that, and I have, like, 28 of the 32 privileges that exist. I’m a very deeply privileged person. And so, here I am … here I am spending this year just harvesting my food when there’s … there’s millions of people who are food insecure. There’s actually many people that … that don’t … that actually die from starvation. And here I am harvesting my food. Here I am staying up late processing my own food. Thinking about this. And sometimes I really question myself. I could be growing food to … to share with others. I could be working at a food bank. And I … and there’s also just right now … the state that we live in, there’s so many people who have their basic human rights being stripped away from them, right here, right now, in St. Paul and Minneapolis. There’s so many people who are worried for their basic safety with the ICE raids. And so, I’m, like, even today, here, being here in Minneapolis, I feel somewhat self-conscious about being up here and talking about the plants and the mushrooms and my journey of connecting with them.

And so, there’s that self-doubt. But when I really deeply think about it, one of the things that I remember is …. My belief is that our greatest threat as humanity is the belief that we are separate. It’s the belief that we are separate that allows us to exploit, to pillage, to extract, to live in a way that takes away the basic human rights of others. When we believe that we are separate and we believe that we are superior. We live in a time where separation is one of the absolute biggest threats to our existence as humanity and our ability to go on generation after generation. We live in a society that teaches us to believe that we don’t belong here on Earth and that we are separate from all the other plants and animals and that we’re separate from the other groups of people. To me when I really look at racism and sexism and nationalism, it’s this idea that we are separate from one another.

And so, for me, foraging is about really breaking down that illusion of separateness and really bringing together this reality that everything is interconnected. Breaking down this idea of superiority. That one thing is better than the other. And so, I think that foraging is actually a very powerful act in the times that we live in. Linda Black Elk has been a very large influence and inspiration to me. And about five years ago, I heard her say, “Foraging is an act of resistance.” It’s an act of resistance against systems of destruction and exploitation. It’s an act of resistance against a consumer culture that wants us to believe that happiness will only come if we get stuff that is outside of ourselves. It’s an act of resistance against corporations that want us to think that we need them for every single one of our needs and that we can’t get that through a relationship with the Earth, with the plants and animals and with one another.

So foraging is a deep act of resistance. We live in a culture that is actually deeply anti-foraging. For thousands of years among many of these dominator cultures, there’s been the belief that domestication and ‘civilization’ as it’s called is superior to wildness. When people came across from Europe, you could say settlers or colonizers, they came to a place that they considered a vast untouched wilderness. We now know that that’s what’s called delusion, and that actually they arrived to a land mass that had over 500 Indigenous cultures that had relationship and were stewarding the land. It wasn’t a coincidence that something like every third tree was a mighty chestnut that produced wonderful food. It was because they were practicing their own system of food forestry. This wasn’t as they called ‘a wilderness,’ it was humans in relationship with the land.

Many of these settlers decided that it was a very good idea to destroy the buffalo. Why? Because when you can destroy the buffalo, you can destroy the relationship with the land and the animals and the plants of the Indigenous people. You can destroy their ability to exist independently in relationship with the Earth. The destruction of the buffalo is a very clear example of something we’ve experienced in the relatively near past right here on this land mass that many people call Turtle Island. But that’s been happening for at least 10,000 years. The dominator culture intentionally destroys cultures of people who are hunter gatherers that are living in a much more connected way with the Earth. And what we don’t realize is that is ingrained into, what I would say, every single one of us in this room, including myself. Deeply ingrained into us this anti-foragingness, that it is inferior to forage and that …. So, for me, that again is another example of how important of an act of resistance it is. It’s an act of deep, deep reconnection.

Personally, I think one of the most powerful things that we can do today as a society is to support the … the … the recreation … the … the … reestablishment of Indigenous food systems. So right here in the Twin Cities we have a North American traditional Indigenous food systems – natives. Started by Shawn Sherman, a coalition, a collaboration of hundreds of native people and non-native people to create Indigenous food sovereignty. And Indigenous food sovereignty is beneficial to every single human being, because it’s one of the most potent ways that we can actually work with the land that gives back to the land. By learning through these ways of living in a much more sustainable and harmonious way with Earth. So, we are really fortunate to be surrounded by a very, very powerful and … and … and … and rejuvenated and continuing culture of Indigenous people that have been stewarding the land in this way. And so, I think that’s one of the most powerful and beautiful things we can do. I’m … I live in Ashland, so I’m between Red Cliff reservation and Bad … and Bad River reservation. There, there’s Bad River food sovereignty. And it’s so beautiful to see the … the revitalization and the rejuvenation of these relationships. So. Yeah.

So for those of you who are feeling a little bit excited about foraging … how many of you are feeling in your … in your heart a desire to forage just a little bit more in the upcoming year? [Audience responds] Okay. Wonderful. And how many of you are feeling the desire to be stewards of this land, protectors of this land through your foraging? [Audience responds] Alright. So. For those of you who are thinking … maybe you’re new to foraging. There’s some of you who aren’t … aren’t foraging here. So, my … my recommendation is this: start with one plant. You only need to know one plant to eat one plant. Or mushroom. Start with one mushroom. You only need to know one mushroom to eat one mushroom. You don’t need to go to the books and see all the toxic plants in order to eat one plant. You can start with dandelion. Most of us know dandelion already. You could start with apples or plums or pears. There are dozens of easy-to-identify plants and mushrooms that don’t have what you would call ‘toxic lookalikes.’ That are very safe.

One of the most renowned foragers of our time is Alexis Nicole Nelson. She goes by Black Forager. How many of you know of Black Forager? [Audience responds] Yes. And so, she ends her videos by saying, “Happy foraging. Don’t die.” [Laughter] Which, I think, says that a lot of people think they’re going to die if they forage. You won’t die if you practice the number one rule, which is only eat a plant, or mushroom, if you’re 100 percent sure of correct identification and how to eat that plant. So, there’s very simple things that you can follow. And so, start with one plant and so, imagine if you’re not foraging any plants right now, you can learn one plant a month for the next year. At the end of the year, that’s twelve plants. You have officially ascended Muggle status [Laughter] and you are now in the slight Harry Potter realm. You are now the witch, the wizard of your community, if you’re not hanging out already with a whole bunch of plant people. You learn one plant a week for a year, that’s 52 plants. Now you’re probably the Harry Potter even within your little plant community possibly. You do that – you learn one plant a month for five years, that’s another way you can do it. That’s 60 plants. Imagine in five years being able to walk out your door and know … and know five dozen different plants that you can work with as food and medicine.

So, foraging – is it legal? Foraging is absolutely legal. There are some places where there’s codes against foraging, but for the most part, we can forage! Right now, there’s the possibility of creating a … a permit for foraging and we talked about that here a little bit at the beginning. And so, I highly encourage everyone here in Minnesota to get involved in making sure that if there is a permit that’s created for foraging, that the foragers are the ones who are helping to guide that to make sure that that permit is actually beneficial to the plants, to the animals and to the humans and not detrimental. So, it’s an important time to get involved in that and make sure that foraging continues in a way where we can have that deep connection and relationship.

So, I want to share …. Yeah, we’re in good timing. There’s one other thing that I want to share before … a few resources. This is also something that I also would love to talk about in more depth, but I always just leave a couple minutes for it.

Right now, this year, I launched the One Million Community Fruit Trees Initiative. So, our objective is to plant one million fruit and nut trees together through a grassroots collaborative effort of thousands of people. So, thousands of us coming together, growing the trees and planting the trees. This is modeled off of Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement. She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. A very big inspiration for me. They’ve planted 51 million trees, primarily in Africa, but around the world. And so, this One Million Community Fruit Trees Initiative – how it works is, we’re teaching people how to create a micronursery, which is a 4’x 8’ bed, about, so, something about from here to the end of this table. And, in that, you can plant about a thousand trees by harvesting the seeds and cuttings that are already growing abundantly all around us. Grow those. Plant those. And after one year, we then distribute those in the community freely. Also, people can make donations to help fund the program, to receive their trees. And do … and through this … be putting … our goal is to make a couple hundred micronurseries all over the country that are regional so that people can come and pick up trees locally, and they can also be shipped as bare root trees as well. So, if that is exciting to you, the idea of taking part in this, you can go to robingreenfield.org/communityfruittrees. There’s a form that you can fill out if you’re interested in becoming a steward. There’s a form that you can fill out if you want to plant trees, so that when we have these ready, we’ll be able to provide them for you. And one thing that we’re looking for is sponsors who would like to sponsor the starting of a micronursery. And we’re looking for people who would like to donate $1000 to sponsor the start, which covers the cost of starting the nursery as well as some of the admin costs, because it takes a fair bit of actual work to plant a lot of these trees. And just the coordination of it, even though it’s mostly volunteer, to run it takes some dedicated core people to be able to run it. So, I invite you to get involved in the One Million Community Fruit Trees Initiative.

A few other notes if you’re really excited about foraging and you’re looking for resources, if you go to robingreenfield.org/foraging, that’s my beginner guide to foraging, which is also fully applicable to any forager. It’ll connect you to all the resources. It’s got a lot of Wisconsin resources that you can … and Minnesota resources. On there is a database that I’ve started called Find A Forager. And it’s a database of over 500 foragers who teach. Who you can learn from. One of the great ways to start foraging is to go out and learn foraging from people who are already doing that. A great way to go out for mushrooms is with the forays. There’s … how many forays in Wisconsin and Minnesota per year? [Audience member:] “Well, on our side, we do about thirty … [Robin whispers:] Thirty! [Audience member:] but there’s the Wisconsin Mycological Society and they do quite a number of them.” [Robin:] So thirty different forays where you can go out with a whole bunch of mushroom experts and beginners learning foraging. A very, very powerful weekend.

So, the books are all right here. You can come up and take a picture afterwards. But these are also all on the website. And, I teach foraging school. Always available on a donation basis. Last year, I taught four foraging schools in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Next summer I will teach some as well. This winter I’m actually teaching a foraging school in Florida for the first time. It’s the last week … weekend of January, first weekend of February. So if you’re already going to be down there …. And, on that note, if anybody is driving to Florida and is looking for a gnome to enter the car with them, [Laughter] there is one small gnome looking for a ride to Florida that will be carrying some foraged food which he will share. And so, if that is you, or you know somebody who’s going, I’m looking to go around January 1st. And, you can come up and let me know afterwards, or you could send me an email.

And so, the website for this endeavor is robingreenfield.org/foragingyear. So if you want to check in on me over the next ten more months of foraging, see the different classes I have available, I teach mostly up in northern Wisconsin. I have free classes through the Wild Bay Foraging Club. That’s where you want to go and then, if you go to robingreenfield.org/100, that is my list of those first hundred changes that I made. So if you’re looking for some inspiration in that regard. If you’re wanting to volunteer with my nonprofit: Regeneration, Equity and Justice, you can go to robingreenfield.org/volunteer. And there’s a form that shares what you’d like to do, what skills you have that you would like to utilize in service to Earth. And we’re also hiring right now actually. For a social media teammate, for video and for community fruit trees and for general assistance. And that’s at robingreenfield.org/teammates.

So, last note. If anybody is driving to Duluth or would like to drive to Duluth, on Sunday, I’m looking for a ride to Duluth to give my last talk of the tour. I’ve actually patched together this homeland speaking tour, catching rides, with all of my stuff from city to city. So if you’d like to get me to Duluth to my last stop, I’m looking to leave at 1:30 from Roseville, and if that’s … if you’re interested in that, you can talk to me afterwards or also send me an email.

So, on that note, I love you all very much. I’m so grateful to be here today with all of you. Thank you again to the Minnesota Mycological Society for putting this on. [Applause]

[Organizer:] “Thank you so much, Robin. You’re going to be answering some questions?” [Robin:] Yes. Yeah. I’d love to take some time to answer some questions. And I’ll … and I’ll say that no question is off the table. And I’m curious to hear some of your standard questions and some of the more funky questions.

[Audience member:] [unintelligible] [Robin:] What I eat in a day. Is indeed the most common question and it’s a pretty reasonable one. How am I … how is this working? So, what I eat is pretty represented in here. So, I eat wild rice, about three servings’ worth, so that’s about … about a cup-and-a-half of wild rice per day on average. And then, I eat either venison or fish every day, generally a good pound of venison or fish. Sometimes a pound-and-a-half. There’s usually a whole lot of stinging nettles in there. And then, always mushrooms. I harvested about 100 pounds of maitake this fall, lots of … 42 pounds of chanterelles, lots of king bolete. So, there’s lots of mushrooms in there. And then there’s always salt, lots of herbs. So, I generally will make a pot of food and eat that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So, I keep things pretty simple. That really is helpful for my digestion to eat a simple diet. And it saves a lot of time as well. Especially as I’m traveling. I carry an Instapot as I’m traveling, and I can just plug that in at the next place and heat it up. And then generally each day I harvest a … or I eat about a pint of fruit sauce: applesauce, plum sauce, pear sauce, primarily. And then many days I’ll have one of these little half pints of a more potent berry. And then also, of course, nuts, which I totally forgot to mention. But, I eat nuts every single day. So, I’ve got different hickory nuts. Today I’m drinking hickory nut milk. And then black walnuts, of course. One of the great gifts of this region. Basically everywhere … every town east of the Mississippi is … has more black walnuts than most people are eating. And then acorns. I harvested about … well, okay … I just got lost in the plants again. [Laughter] But I do eat some nuts most days. So, yeah, thank you for that question. And right here?

[Audience member:] “Could you tell us a couple ways that you prepare burdock?” [Robin:] Sure! So a couple ways to prepare burdock. Well, the main way that I have burdock is … is through roasting it and putting it in my roasted root blend along with dandelion and chicory. And, I have not eaten a lot of burdock. And, I’d like to have eaten a lot … a lot more burdock by now. Hopefully, in the springtime, I will do that. But it’s just something that got away from me this fall. But basically …. Burdock is also called ‘gobo’ in Japan. It’s grown as a domesticated plant as well. And I basically will roast it or add it into my … my soups and stews and or kind of cook it like you would a potato or a carrot, But I’m not highly experienced in burdock. You can also buy burdock at a lot of the health food stores. The food co-ops will sell burdock. So, one of the … one of the foraged plants that you’ll also find in the … in the stores as well. Right here?

[Audience member:] “Can you talk about getting your water?” [Robin:] So, for the entire year, I am only drinking water that is coming up from the earth unadulterated. So, no chlorine or fluoride. Nothing that has been added to it. It’s just being pumped up through the earth in two different ways. That could be from wells. So, at my home, where I live, there’s a … there’s a well that pumps up water from 198 feet, and I get to enjoy that water. And then as I’m traveling, I drink solely spring water. And so, I get my spring water from different springs. I picked mine up today at a spring southwest of town. I can’t remember the the name of it. But I find my springs through the website: findaspring.com, or findaspring.org. So, it’s a great website, as I’m traveling, I can find springs to fill up. I carry five or ten gallons with me at a time. [Audience member:] “Do the springs flow all year?” [Robin:] Yeah, the springs flow all year long. Absolutely. Most of them. There’s some that might not work, some with a slower trickle, but absolutely, most of the springs are accessible year around.

Before I forget, since I notice that some people are leaving, I want to mention, I have my book outside. And this book is about my year of foraging and growing all my food that I did in 2019. If you open up to the front cover, the front page, it says, “This book is not for sale.” So this is an experiment in the gift economy. And, so you can receive it by donation. Your donation can be anywhere from zero to one million. [Laughter] If you’re really wanting to do more than one million, we can talk, but probably won’t be able to do that for you. But, that zero can mean that you learn how to grow more food and you share that with some elders, some people who don’t have access to food. It could mean you learn how to forage more and you teach that to others. So, if you’d like to make a donation, you can use the QR codes right here or there’s a jar out front by the books. There’s a whole bunch of books there and I don’t need to leave with any of them. It’s the time to give gifts, take books to give as gifts. Put them into the public libraries, university libraries, school libraries, and I’ll be happy to sign books as well. After we’re done, I’m just going to stay right here, so you can go out, get a book, come in. I’m happy to sign books, share hugs, take pictures, et cetera. And 100 percent of our profits are donated to Black and Indigenous-led food sovereignty initiatives. So, whatever we bring in, beyond giving books for free to people, is donated to those initiatives. So, yes.

You’ve had your hand up consistently, so I’m going to go ahead and call on you. [Audience member:] “Hello!” [Robin:] Hello! [Audience member:] “Could you talk a little bit more on how you harvest milkweed pods and then also [unintelligible]. [Robin:] Okay. So. I have never actually harvested the milkweed shoots. The reason why is I’m never here in the springtime. I always come back here in the midsummer to fall usually. But this spring, I will be harvesting them for the first time. If you want to harvest the milkweed shoots, then … and get to … really get to know the milkweed, then what you want to do is read Sam Thayer’s chapter on milkweed, which is in one of these three books. On their website, they’ll tell you which … which plants are in each book. How these three books work is each one only covers about forty plants, but in depth. And it shares everything that you need to know, from identification, to harvesting, to preparation, to storing. And it goes through all the edible parts of the plant, potential precautions. How to harvest in a more sustainable way is often in there. So you want to read that chapter about milkweed to really get to know it.

As far as the pods go, you want to harvest them when they’re young and tender. You can eat them in a couple different stages: you can eat the whole pod like a green bean, or you can also break it open and eat just the inside, which is called ‘silk.’ You eat it when the inside is still pure white basically. And hasn’t … you can’t see the seeds having started to form and no brown starting to form. Milkweed pods are a little tricky. Generally, when you squeeze them, you don’t want [them] to be very spongy, but the only way really to get effective at it is, you have to make some mistakes. You have to open up some and, “Oh, that really wasn’t ideal.” It’s not like … it’s not something that’s quite so easy, and so you just have to do a little practice of getting the right consistency. So. Yeah. Definitely read that chapter on milkweed pods. Let’s see. Right here?

[Audience member:] [unintelligible] [Robin:] Sure. So the question is mentioning that I do travel a lot, I forage in big cities: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, here in the Twin Cities, Orlando, Miami. I have foraged in most of the big cities across this country. And so, the question is about pollutants. You also mentioned resources. And that makes me want to mention Fallingfruit.org is actually an online map where foragers will pin their different trees … all sorts of different fruit trees. And so you can go right to that. When I was foraging mangoes, I went to that, typed in ‘mango,’ and I started from that to find a couple mangoes and then expanded out from there. So, Fallingfruit.org and they have an app, is an incredible resource. One note on that actually, I’ve been in connection with them for awhile. They’re actually looking for new board members who could help invigorate their organization. So, if you’re really passionate about that, you can … you can email them for that.

So, as far as pollutants go, I will make a note that in the back of “Food Freedom,” I do have a beginner foraging guide that includes how to avoid pollutants, so you’ll get more than I can answer in this moment. And then also through the beginner foraging guide I have online. But, it is challenging as a traveler, because you’re in new places all the time. And you’re … and you’re … so, whereas if you live here in the Twin Cities, it’s relatively easy to, like, learn the areas you want to forage, and then learn the potential pollutants of that area. One thing that I encourage is if it’s a public park, you can contact the city and you can find out what the practices are. That’s a good way to start. I … one way to start is to harvest in areas that you are sure aren’t sprayed. But, I harvest from basically everywhere. So, what I … if I … so, if I’m harvesting large quantities of food, then I try to harvest from the cleanest areas. But, if I’m just harvesting small quantities, like my tea for tonight, then I’ll harvest from most areas. I don’t harvest from interstates, but highways that are, like, 55 mph or less, that’s where I get a lot of my fruits along the side of the roads. Mushrooms are something you want to avoid harvesting from heavily polluted areas, but fruits like apples are something that are …. There’s actually an idea that plants know not to store the pollutants in their offspring. So, in the fruit itself. I really like that idea. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I really like it. [Laughter] But, yeah, so you want to avoid industrial runoff sites. And so, for example, you want to pay attention to which way is the water flowing? Being uphill can often be a beneficial thing. Next to the roads, I don’t generally harvest from the ditches, but I’ll happily be harvesting from uphill because heavy metals that come out of cars are actually literally heavy, so they sink down fairly quickly and don’t go up as high. So, those are just a few notes and I would read the little section in the back of here that will give you much more detail around that. Right here?

[Audience member:] “How much time do you spend foraging and how much time do you spend processing?” [Robin:] Yes. How much time do I spend foraging and how much time do I spend processing? So, it varies a lot from time to time. Like, right now, I’m not spending basically any time. I’m able to just eat the abundance that I’ve stored. In the summer, I’m some time … or especially in the fall. The fall is overwhelmingly abundantly wonderful and at the same time stressful. The challenge of foraging is not finding the food. It’s … it’s the … it’s … it’s … there’s so much, it’s the time to harvest it and process it. That’s actually the limiting factor: is time. That’s the number one limiting factor generally. That’s where Sam’s books are so key, because they teach you how to do it efficiently. Efficiency is so important if you want to break free from the grocery store. If you just want to harvest a little bit of food and medicine, efficiency is not important. But if you want to really break free, then it’s one of the most important aspects of foraging.

So, how much time do I spend? Sometimes it’s morning ‘til night and late into the night, like wild rice season. And the fall definitely. And then other times it’s very, very little. And I have the system down now where right now I won’t even … it only takes me a half-hour, forty minutes to cook my three meals for the day, and then I get to eat my meals just by heating them up. And so, I’ve got a system down pretty well. So, it varies … it varies quite a bit. And. But when life is good, it’s a lot. Foraging is joyous. It’s not time ‘spent,’ it’s time enriched with my connection with the Earth. And it’s often time with friends, too. When I’m with my friends, I bring some nuts and maybe they crack some of my nuts as well, and help me … help me a little bit.

Oh! And that’s one other really important note that I’ve forgotten to, in this talk often mention. But, I’m definitely not doing this alone. Although I am … I’m the only one who’s foraging 100 percent of my food in this adventure that I’m doing, I’m not doing this alone at all. This is definitely a very community oriented initiative. I have many foragers who I go out with. They often take me to some of their best spots. That saves me so much time. I come to a city and people take me to places where I can harvest abundantly. I have many people who help me to process the food. I have actually have people who take food home and actually can it for me. I personally don’t like pressure canning, and someone from high school who I hadn’t seen in twenty years came to my talk at the Washburn Public Library, loves canning and said she’ll can all my venison and whitefish if I bring it to her. And so, some people are, like, have like a … they get a kind of a fuss about that. But the reali … in a negative way, like, that I’m doing something bad. But the reality is that this is great joy for people. They get to be a part of something. And most of the people who help me with my processing are doing it because they want to learn. And the best way to learn is hands on. And I teach for free! Here we are. It’s free tonight. There’s not … money is not the … is not the … the idea of this. It’s skills, it’s community, it’s resources. So, yes, I can … I can only do this because of community. And also, in reality, a little bit of fossil fuels, too. I definitely burn my little share of fossil fuels doing my harvesting and getting around. So, just … it’s an interesting aspect of this whole thing. So, yeah. Other questions? Let’s see. I already answered one of yours, right? [Audience member:] “Yeah.” [Robin:] Okay. Right here?

[Audience member:] “Talk about the money. Because you, like, committed to earning less than the United States federal taxes. So how do you pay for your gas and … stuff?” [Robin:] Sure! So, I love …. This has been one of the most dedicated question sections on specifically foraging. So, I can see we’re really excited about foraging. This question was about money. So, yes, I have committed to life to earning less than the federal poverty threshold. This is part of my practice of living simply so others can simply live, which is one thing Mahatma Gandhi said and he’s been my … my greatest influence. So, I’ve also committed to life to not paying federal taxes. Because when we pay federal taxes, we pay for police brutality, we pay for ICE raids, we pay for the military/industrial complex, and we pay for the prison system and the bailout of the big banks and et cetera and et cetera and et cetera. So, I’ve made a lifetime commitment to instead of doing that, I’ve created my own tax system. And that’s 100 percent of the income that I would make from books and TV shows and et cetera, and donate it to the people. The people who are really doing the work for the people, for the Earth, for the plants and animals.

So, I make about $10,000 a year. How I earn that is by doing my foraging schools, which are all donation-based, and that’s been my way of being able to very grassroots make the little bit of money that I need while teaching, sharing knowledge, that I also would share freely and do share freely. Also, through skills. Skills. There’s so many skills that help us to break free from the monetary system. Foraging is one of them. Growing food is one of them. But, … making your own clothes is another one of them. Music can be another one. Acupuncture, massage, herbalism. There’s endless skills: carpentry and basket making. There’s so many skills that we can demonetize our life from. So, skills is another. Community is absolutely the way that I have demonetized my life. Imagine if every single one of us shared the skills that we have. What we’d be able to do just as a small community, how much we could demonetize our lives. And so, lastly, I do run the nonprofit Regeneration, Equity and Justice, and I keep my financial self pretty separate from that. But, for example, tours like this, the cost of the gas for when I’m doing this work, are covered by the nonprofit, or by people who contribute, who are just putting me in their … giving me a ride and saying, “This is my contribution in a non-monetary way.” So, yeah. That’s a little answer on that. Yeah. In the back here?

[Audience member:] [unintelligible] [Laughter] [Robin:] Ha! Well, I have great news for you that in this book, I wrote a five-page guide on how to harvest a car-killed deer. [Laughter] And, I sound like a salesman right now, but remember, the book is free. So, I’ll read the first … I’ll read the first paragraph. This is exactly what I was going to say. “As much as I never thought that I’d be the one writing about how to harvest a deer from the side of the road and process it, here I am. In the many talks I’ve given, and the many classes I’ve led, this question always comes up. [Laughter] So many are intrigued to know more. Supposedly they’re not planning on doing it themselves. [Laughter] The media feeds on this story, too. I’ve come to see that this skillset and resource is far too valuable not to share. And it … and it is not widely distributed information. I know what I share here will be of value to many people.” So, it’s a five-page guide. It teaches you everything you need to know about using your senses: sight, smell, touch, feel – all … all of the senses. And so, that will share with you what you need to know. And I’ll … I’ll go ahead and leave it at that, because otherwise we’d be here for a little bit longer.

So I think I’ll do about three more questions because I want to leave time to sign books and share hugs, because we have a ‘hard out’ at nine, is it? [Organizer:] “Yes.” [unintelligible] [Robin:] Okay. Sure! [Organizer:] “First of all, I want to thank you for being here.” [Applause] [unintelligible] “And I want to thank all you guys for being here and dealing with our … system. The money that you guys did donate will be donated to the Million Fruit Trees initiative. …” [Robin:] Ahh! Wonderful! [Organizer:] [unintelligible] “So thank you for that. I was going to mention one other thing. Oh, thank you to [unintelligible] of you UofM, who reserved this space for us so we could participate at no charge. [unintelligible] You have to look it up, but I think in Minnesota, you have to call the DNR if you want to harvest a deer from the side of the road. And I think, ‘cause there’s sort of a [unintelligible] And I think they clean them up, which is why we don’t see as many as we do in other states, but you can have it. I think you just have to call and say, ‘Hey, I found a deer. I’d like to harvest it.’ And they kind of count it and I don’t know if there’s a small fee or not.” [unintelligible][Audience members:] “No fee.” [Organizer:] “But I think you’re just supposed to legitimately call the DNR and ask.” [Audience member:] “Or your local police department.” [unintelligible] [Robin:] Yeah! [Audience chatter] Okay! So Rachel. You had a question? [Rachel:] [unintelligible] [Robin:] You can do all that if you want or you can just eat the deer. You choose. You choose. Okay. Couple more … last two questions. Let’s see. Right there.

[Audience member:] “Have you ever had any issues with micronutrients being [unintelligible]?” [Robin:] Okay. Have I had any issues with micro … micronutrients? So, I will say I’m really excited. I did do bloodwork at the beginning – a full blood panel. I’m doing bloodwork at the end as well. I wasn’t going to do that, but on social media, a doctor saw what I was doing and was happy to sponsor it, so sent me to do all the bloodwork. And then I’m also doing my gut microbiome: three months’ before, just before, in the middle, and at the end. I’ll have all of that information published on my website unedited. I’ll just upload the PDFs of everything so you can take a look at that. So, we’ll see. But I will say, going into it, my health was far better than I expected. I had only a few minor things, which I don’t remember off the top of my head, but we’ll see. So, I started off in a really solid place. Am I even better after a year of wild food? Am I … actually, I don’t want to use the word ‘wild.’ I’m just going to say ‘foraged food.’ Am I the same? Have I, like, some deficiencies, some of everything? What’s the microbiome like? Am I still human? [Laughter] We’ll see. So. But I have not gotten any deficiencies from foraging. I’ve had deficiencies …. I was plant-based for a couple years in 2014 to 2016, lacked in B vitamins and fatty acids, but nothing from the … from the foraging diet. So. Alright.

I think this is officially the last question so we have time for books. And let’s go here in the back there. Yep. [Audience member:] [unintelligible] “I work in a nonprofit in Minneapolis for food sovereignty …” [unintelligible] [Robin:] Hmm. Nice. Do I understand the name of the organization? [Audience member:] “Project Sweetie Pie.” [Robin:] Project Sweetie Pie! Project Sweetie Pie! Feel free to look that up. Sounds wonderful. So, okay. Top three plants for permaculture garden in Minneapolis/St. Paul,Twin Cities area. Let’s see. I’m going to go … I’m going to … I’ve got a few that have come to mind. I’m going to say stinging nettle as one of the top ones. Or … or wood nettle. Wood nettle grows really prolifically in this area. That’s a really, really wonderful food. So, I’m going to add … I’m going to go with that. I also want to say … I’m going to say Jerusalem artichoke, because it is so abundant. [Audience member:] “I was just thinking about that.” [Robin:] Or sunchoke is another name. Reproduces on its own. I like to plant plants where other people complain that there ends up being too much food. [Laughter] That’s, for me, that’s a problem that I like to work with, is too much food. So, I would say sunchokes are definitely one of them, and I’m going to say elderberry. I’m going to say elderberry and the reason I’m going to say elderberry is because it is really prolific. It’s beneficial to the birds, very easy to propagate. You can just take a cutting from it. Any garden, you’d just be able to take cuttings from that, give them to other people to start cuttings as well. So, I’m going to say elderberry is another one. And, I’m going to also say mulberry, although there’s a lot of mulberry around already because of the leaves and the fruit. Actually, one of the other questions is, “If you were a plant, what would you be?” I‘d actually be a mulberry tree perhaps. [Laughter] Perhaps. But there’s already enough of those basically around. But I’m also going to say basswood, if there’s a larger tree, because that’s basically like a gigantic kale tree in that the leaves are edible, but it’s a giant tree. And then the flowers make a wonderful sleepytime tea. And, it’s … so that’s a big one. So, there’s so many. And a lot of them are foods that I would forage.

And, on that note, I love you all very much, so grateful to be here, and now I’m going to sign books, share hugs and take photos with anybody who’d like to. [Applause] Yeah!