Food Foraging 101: Why everyone should learn to forage

in #gardening7 years ago

One of the few hobbies that could save your life

Everyone, no matter what part of the world you live in, should learn how to forage for food. There are several reasons why and how it could be knowledge that would save your life one day. We would like to think our world has a safe food supply large enough to feed everyone in the world, but you only have to look at this year’s wild fires in California and the major hurricane that hit Florida to understand huge portions of our food supply can be wiped out in just a day or two.

Many people think foraging means eating nothing but sticks and leaves, but they are wrong. Depending on what grows wild in the area, you can make fruit cobblers, salads, faux fried potatoes, and various teas that have nutritional value. You might be surprised how good edible flowers taste. You can eat them on salads and some can be fried. There is even a tiny flower that grows most everywhere in the USA, that can be dried and ground into a flour to add lots of variety to you diet.

There are herbs growing wild in some areas that can provide healing benefits in case someone in your family gets sick and weeds that can be made into wine, to keep everyone happy. Most people are surprised to learn how much food and medicine is growing in their own yards. You simply need the knowledge to know what to look for and which parts of the plants you can use.

Here’s a few other reasons why everyone should learn how to forage for food in their area.

  1. Man-made disasters could shut down the supply chain at any moment. Few people realize stores have only a 3-day supply of food on hand. If the trucks stop rolling, the people go hungry.

  2. Natural disasters could destroy buildings, roads and other infrastructure over huge areas. But unless the land has been scraped clean, chances are good you could find wild food.

  3. If the economy breaks down and your income stops, how will you buy food for your family. Most people have less than 1 weeks’ worth of food on hand.

  4. Even if you have many weeks’ worth of food put back before a disaster, there is always the chance someone or a group of someone’s will take it from you by force. If you don’t know how to forage you would still go hungry.

  5. If you are injured and can no longer do your job, can you last for several years till the law suits are over? According to a 2017 GOBankingRates survey, more than half of Americans (57 percent) have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts.

  6. If you are struggling to pay your bills, foraging can provide free food to help stretch your budget.

  7. If you become lost in the wild, knowing which plants are edible and which are poisonous could mean the difference between life and death.

  8. The unexpected death of the head of the house could leave your family with a greatly reduced income and only one (or no) income to cover expenses for months.

  9. Foraging is not something you can learn in a short period of time. Many poisonous plants look almost exactly like non-poisonous plants at some stages of their life cycles. You need to look at plants in all stages of their life cycles to have good knowledge of what is edible and what to run from.

  10. Once you learn what wild food grows in your area, you can begin to plant them around your home or in nearby forest areas. Wild food plants are slowly decreasing in numbers. You can help to reestablish them and ensure you have a nearby supply of food for emergencies.

  11. Learning to forage can be a source of exercise. It gets you out into nature and provides many opportunities for walking.

  12. If you do not learn the proper way to forage, you could over harvest or harvest at the wrong time and there will not be any available for the next year.

  13. Every area has different wild plants. No single person can teach you every plant in the world. You need to learn what grows in your area and will probably need to find someone in your area to help you learn. This takes time and effort. If you wait till you need the knowledge, chances are you will go hungry.

  14. Purchasing a book on edible plants that grow in your area is a good idea, but you still need to see all parts of the life cycle to make sure you are looking at the correct plant. A single mistake could kill you or a family member.

  15. Knowing how to forage can make you a valuable commodity in a post disaster community. It could mean the difference in a stronger group killing you and your family, or allowing you to live.

These are some of the main reasons everyone should learn to forage. Other people probably have other reasons. I prefer to look at it from a positive aspect.

It is relaxing to get out into nature and search for food when you don’t need it. Once you need it, if you don’t have the correct knowledge, it becomes scary and the urgency frays your nerves. It is a big boost to your self-esteem to know you can help your family survive no matter what the future holds.

In a worst-case scenario, you can survive with the knowledge. In a best-case scenario, you can get extra exercise and save some cash on your food bill, while never having to use the knowledge.

In Closing

I hope this lesson has helped you make the decision to begin to learn how to forage for food. You can spend hours with your children roaming through the woods and teach them lessons that could someday save their lives. Foraging keeps everyone happier and healthier!

If you have liked this lesson, please consider upvoting, following and/or resteeming. Steemit is one of the only sources of income I have at the moment and I want to build it into a full-time income to secure a future for myself.

Love and Peace
From Denise!

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I would like to suggest a reason that you have not included in your list.

Forming a relationship with Nature.

Humans in Western civilization, in the phases of late Capitalism, and increasingly the remaining rapidly urbanising areas of the world, are becoming more and more alienated from Nature. The Western philosophy as can be traced through modern history and beyond, visualises humans as separate from Nature, superiour entities who have a right to dominate and exploit as they wish, as opposed to humbly being just another thread within an intricate web. As we know, Modern day society is highly consumeristic, the typical cycle is purchase, consume and thoughtlessly dispose, then purchase more and so on and so forth. The consumer is not involved in the creation process, they may in deed be very ignorant of the how or where or who of the product origin. There is no contact with primary materials, no intricate knowledge of wood grains, growing seasons or habitat types... there's no interaction, no knowledge, no relationship.

This has knock-on effects for our environment and our health.

It has been noted that if you do not relate with Nature in some way then you do not value it. The World is going through a period of ecological crisis and it more important than ever that people value Nature and foster pro-environmental values. Yet divorcing themselves from Nature-interaction exacerbates this devaluation in a type of spiral downwards of negative feedback.

Foraging wild food is one of our most primal activities, up there along with activities like animal tracking and fire-making. It presumably satisfies deep primal drivers within our psyches and relates to our health. A burgeoning new area of research is mounting evidence to show that contact with Nature is beneficial on many levels, including physical and mental health. Struggling health services are starting to look to Nature activities as a way to reduce pressure on their services in the long-term (apparently the NHS in the UK is looking into this).

I would also suggest that it is quite important as regards our sense of cultural identity and sense of connection to place, which are further interesting topics to explore and which no doubt lead back in a wending way to health benefits concerns.

Hope you don't mind my long-winded contribution, I was kind of using it as an opportunity to unwind some of the ideas I've been developing with my PhD on the topic of wild food plants in Brazil. Just another 100,000 words...

Feel free to unwind at any time. You are 100% correct in everything you said. I have always been close to nature. Everything from the deepest darkest caves, to forests and mountains, the oceans, etc. etc. No matter how stressed I get, simply thinking for a few minutes, and visualizing the cycles of life in nature is all I need to relax..

What a terrific comment! I hope you are posting here on similar topics - will go check out your blog next. While I think everything you say here is very important and needs to be heard, the potential benefits to health from contact with nature are particularly interesting to me. Fascinating to hear that the NHS in the UK is looking into nature activities. I have always observed the same thing to be true myself (I am a bot in name only and I do value my nature time) RE feeling whole and healthy in body and mind when I have been able to soak in nature.

I am trying to support great commenters like yourself and encourage others to take the time to leave honest thoughtful comments. If you agree to let me quote some or all of your comment, it may be featured in an upcoming post as an example of great commenting. Please reply to let me know if you approve of this use of your terrific comment :) Cheers - R-bot

Ha - thanks! Yes sure you can quote or mention me, go ahead. I'm such a perfectionist if I wrote a post I'd end up spending ages on it which I just can't really afford whereas comments I can just free-write and not worry about perfection. Also there's some really fun conversations to be had! I have literally hundreds and hundreds of scientific articles all about nature connection sort of stuff... in the long-term I would like to do mini-reviews of science topics from my area and try to disseminate to a general public some of the great science going on.

Ah I see you haven't been posting much but you really are a terrific commenter! Really nice to scroll through your "comments" feed and see you generating so much positive interaction in your time here even though you are personally not posting much. This is exactly what I am trying to encourage so I am really glad I saw your comment! I hear people calling for "more original content creators!" all the time here on Steemit... but there is such a dearth of good readers and good commenters that what we have at times is a sterile ecosystem. I am all for original content creators, but I also think we need more engaged readers in a big way! Great job filling this niche! Love - @r-bot

Love this! Nature really is medicine and we often forget that we are a part of nature not separate from it. Once we remember that, we'll start treating nature with more respect and gratitude. :)

Ahoo to that :)

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You are absolutely right. Man made diseases could shut down the food chain. Great post thanks for sharing

Thank you @gardengirlcanada. There is probably no one who actually wins if the worst case scenarios happen, but those with knowledge of how to feed themselves have a much better chance to survive than the majority.

I definitely want to learn more about food foraging! I've mostly focused on growing food but have enjoyed the empowering feeling of harvesting natures gifts. I especially want to learn more about mushrooms but have had some small successes with morel and chicken of the woods mushrooms since they have very few lookalikes and are pretty easy to identify.

Thanks so much for this inspiring message!

You are very welcome. Just never stop learning. I have been foraging since I was a child, grandma spent a lot of times in the forest around the farm and always brought home many goodies. But I still learn something new every few months and I am now 60 years old, lol.

excellent post @fernowl13
i cannot agree more in your reasons why we should forage...especially as it exposes us to nature and empowers us on how to find food source especially at times of great needs...who knows..one could be lost while hiking...or issues related to unforeseen accidents or disaster..and such kowledge can help save a large group of people.. now i shall learn more especially safe and unsafe plants...and natural medicine...thanks for sharing this

You are very welcome.

great and keep steeming hot!

Another thing...
... people who are involved with nature themselves inspire others and instill how important it is to the kids who are watching. It's a plan for community and the future generations.

You are 100% correct @re-engineer

Yes I totally agree 100%. Everyone should be aware of the food that is all around them. I freeze tons of fruit and berries that grow in our neighborhood every summer that would otherwise just literally rot on the ground because so few people pick them. I wish I lived closer to the woods to do some true foraging. But even the urban foraging that I do is pretty rewarding.

Great post - very happy to have found you, following you now :) Cheers - Carl

I am happy to hear you are urban foraging. People don't realize it, but there are plants that are beautiful and can add to the look of any urban landscape that can be grown in most places. I sort of have a dream about a world where everyone could walk out into their yard and pick a large portion of the food they eat. Someday...

Dear Denisse i loved your post really really loved when i see this i say wat wonderful information are here, I am practice of foraging too but as a middle age we do not have a lot of experience to get our own food but it is amazing to go to the forest and found some plants for eat, specially mushroom that it is my favorite knowledge, by the way I only know one Pseudofistulina Radicata only this I am sure if I find this in the forest I catch for have a good and interesting food,
Dear I want you let me translate with google translate and with a review of my own word of your amazing contents in Spanish for share in a comment here in your post ok.
For people who see this post in the resteem of my followers.
I hope a lot of people like me enjoy this amazing information.
Best regard. @galberto.

Do you have any photos of Pseudofistulina Radicata? Photos of specific plants are often hard to find. Mushrooms are especially hard to find photo.

Here we go dear here are an old post with great photos of pseudofistulina radicata that i forage one year ago, was amazing i hope you could identify this mushroom if you find this please tell me.
It is in spanish but if you need traslate it will a pleasure to do its for you ok.
Best regard @galberto

https://steemit.com/food/@galberto/tenquiques-la-trufa-salvadorena#@haphazard-hstead/re-galberto-tenquiques-la-trufa-salvadorena-20171104t221527691z

Dear this is mi list of plants some gets from foraging i hope know someones for their scientific name.
Best regard.
It is for see amazing photos of plants with his scientific name https://steemit.com/spanish/@galberto/las-plantas-no-se-mueven-solas-de-como-me-converti-en-el-transportador-de-plantas-para-mi-y-mi-vecindario

This is useful, more knowledge, more chance of survival. :)

Thank you. Our world always seems just one tiny step away from major disaster. Knowledge is the best tool to survive.