#foraging

[fox-bright]

do not taste plants if you don't know what they are

do not identify a fruit as edible just because it tastes sweet

hope you didn't eat any fucking seeds, bro

[taylornprice]

shroooooms

[mulchmouth]

Im going to hold your hand when I say this. It is not realistic to expect yourself or your family to be able to survive solely off of food you have foraged or grown in a garden. People with more knowledge and experience have tried and failed. What do you think happened to all of those communes in the 60s? Most of them failed. Famine and malnutrition have been constant companions to humanity until industrialized farming and food supply lines came along.

It feels like a uniquely American capitalist take to assume these traditions will make you completely self sufficient. You need a lot of people, a lot of time, a lot of knowledge across a lot of subjects, and a lot of luck to provide for everyone's nutritional needs.

So should you even bother trying to be more self sufficient with your food? I argue yes. Foraging and gardening are fun and will teach you so much about many things. They are deeply rewarding activities that can supplement your diet. There are herbs I haven't bought in years because I grow my own. There are dishes I can only make with foraged ingredients because I can't get them in stores.

You may not have the power to do everything, but that doesn't mean your efforts are wasted. Getting 5% of your nutritional needs from food you have grown or foraged, even for a season, is a massive accomplishment.

[amandaherzman]

the blackberry ✨

[melgillman]

I got to spend a terrific weekend in the woods surrounded by mushroom nerds at SOMA Camp! Here's a handful of scribbly diary comics I drew while I was there.

[plantnerderyallday]

The more time I spend around my new coworker, the more I understand about why plant id books and foraging resources are written the way they are.

For context, my mom is the one who taught me to forage, and it was and is just part of life. She regularly added foraged foods to our everyday meals. I knew how to identify huckleberry before I learned the alphabet. Foraging was just another part of feeding ourselves, along with gardening, raising chickens, and going to the store. And the firmest rule was that you didn't eat a plant unless you were willing to bet your life on it being what you thought it was.

So to watch my coworker see a berry, say 'strawberry!' and then pick it and have it three quarters of the way to his mouth before I could point out that it was actually an unripe blackberry...

Well, it was a striking moment. Because while that particular mix up would not actually hurt you, the lack of paying attention it takes to mistake an unripe blackberry for a strawberry and the lack of caution it takes to put a plant that you've hardly looked at into your mouth- no wonder some people think bittersweet nightshade is a look alike to red huckleberry!

And it explains a lot about how secretive most people are about their foraging spots. If you don't care enough about your own health and well-being to actually look at the plant you're eating, how could I trust you to care for the health and well-being of the plants you want to forage and the ecosystems you want to forage from? I want my foraging spots to be better off for my interactions with them. I want to be able to go back to the same spots year after year and decade after decade and see the native plants thriving, the invasive species losing ground, and the biodiversity increasing.

Can I trust you to help with that, if you won't even look at the berry before you pick it?

[sometiktoksarevalid]