Food Foraging 101 - Must Know Safety Instructions
One of the few hobbies that can save your life
Foraging for food is a relaxing and healthy hobby that in a disaster can mean the difference between eating and going hungry. It is not a hard hobby to learn, but it does takes effort. There are always new plants to learn. You never know when a plant you have never seen before will suddenly start growing in a place you have been watching for years. That is just the way mother nature does things sometimes. It is up to you to determine if it is edible or not. It will always be in your best interest to memorize as much about each plant as possible. In a disaster, your books and notes could easily be destroyed. Having the information in your brain makes you one of the most valuable people around at that point.
Most everyone understands that not all plants are edible. Some are in fact deadly. Many of the poisons used to kill people, animals and plants throughout the ages have come from plants. In an emergency situation, your knowledge is what keeps you and your family safe and healthy. That means it is imperative you learn everything you can about both the edible and poisonous plants in your area.
List of Rules to ensure safety
Before you make your first trip to find plants in your area, buy yourself a sturdy notebook. You should make note of what you find, where you find it, detailed information about what it looks like, what is growing near it, how it smells and any other things you notice about it or nearby. Also note the date. Is it growing in a sunny or shady area and any other information that might lead you to finding this same plant in a different area.
Always take a camera with you. You should take photos of the plant from many angles. Also, gently turn back the leaves if possible and take photos of the underside. Lay something next to the plant for size reference. There is no such thing as taking too many photos to help with identification.
You want to see the plant in all of its life stages to aid in identification. This is why it is important to date your notes and photos. Then compare the plant in all four seasons, taking more photos each time. This may seem like over kill, but it helps provide you with knowledge few others have, plus after you have identified most every plant in your area, you have the makings of a very good book you can sell on Amazon and make money off your knowledge.
Purchase one or more high-quality book on edible plants in the area you live in. A few recommendations include: A - The Forager’s Harvest, Samuel Thayer, B - Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide C - Native American Ethnobotany by Daniel E. Moerman D - Stalking The Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons. These can help you identify food when in the wild and help you find new food sources you did not realize were around. Please note! Seeing what appears to be the plant in front of you is not a substitute for doing proper research. There are many plants that have poisonous look-a-likes.
Make sure you have the proper gear to safely and efficiently forage. Proper clothing is a MUST. Boots, good quality socks (to prevent blisters), Jeans or some other pants of heavy fabric, (helps keep you from getting poison ivy and can prevent snakes, spiders and other small critters from lunching on you. Gloves are a must to protect your hands. You will also need pruning shears and a hand-held spade or mattock to help in harvesting. If you are going to forage in a sunny area, a hat would also be in order. If you are in an area where there is a danger of coming across wild animals known to kill people, you might want to bring along a gun. Learning to protect yourself now can help you be safer in an emergency situation.
You should also have a basket to carry plants back home in, along with some sandwich bags of various sizes to help keep unidentified plants separated till you know they are not poisonous.
DO NOT EAT ANYTHING you forage until you have seen it in multiple life stages and have seen multiple photographs to ensure you are looking at an edible plant. I cannot stress this one enough. Eating one bite of the wrong plant can be deadly.
After you have identified a plant, there are still testing procedures you need to go through before eating to ensure you have the correct plant and/or you are not allergic to the plant. I will be doing a lesson on this subject very soon and giving step by step instructions. Always remember, some plants do have look-a-likes with one being safe and the other poisonous. It is always better to be safe than sorry.
Learn to identify plants by their botanical names. (Latin Name) Plants have a single botanical name but can have many English names. It will help you to speak intelligently about the plants so others know exactly which plant you are talking about.
Look online and in books to find known poisonous plants in your area. Look for them in the wild and make note of where they are at so you can tell others (especially children) to stay away from them.
Never forage in places that are likely to have been in contact with dangerous chemicals. Never eat anything from along roadways. Roadway plants have been absorbing all the chemicals from roadway materials, plus pollution from the air and pavement (oil from cars, exhaust, etc.) There is no way to know how many cancer-causing agents the plants have absorbed.
Learn which plants in your area are on the endangered species list. Whether it is edible or not, picking a plant on the list can result in fines and/or jail time.
Never pick an entire plant unless you know all parts are edible. When you pick the entire plant, you prevent it from being able to reproduce.
Never clear pick an area. Always leave enough plants to be able to reproduce for the next life cycle. Controlling how many plants you take from a specific area can ensure you have a constant supply of food forever.
Always make sure it is legal for you to harvest in a specific area. Places such as nature preserves and public parks usually do not allow you to forage. If it is private land, make sure you get permission from the land owners before foraging. Never take plants from someone’s property whether it appears wild or not. They may have planted it as a food source for their family.
When you find an edible plant that grows well in a certain area, think seriously about ordering seeds for that plant and spreading them in similar areas nearby. It can increase the amount of food available for many years to come and could prevent plants from becoming extinct in a specific area.
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER leave trash behind when foraging. It is pollution that causes nothing but harm and can result in a land owner who originally gave you permission, withdrawing their permission.
That’s it for this lesson. While it is not necessary to memorize these rules word for work, you should be able to tell someone else what the rules are without looking at the list. Every forager should know this list. It helps keep people, plants, and animals safe and healthy for years to come.
Food Foraging 101 – part 1 – Why everyone should learn to forage
Coming soon! Food Foraging 101 – part 3 – Beginning to harvest and testing your harvest for safety
After that, I will begin to take one food source at a time and go into great detail explaining all aspects of its life cycle, as much nutritional value as I can find, any medicinal uses, cooking methods and anything more I can think of or find.
I want to start off by covering the more commonly known plants that also make great plants to grow in your yard. The first three will be as follows:
1- Dandelion
2- Daylilies
3- Purple Cone Flower
If you happen to have any photos of any of these plants and you don’t mind if I use them, please let me know. With more photos the chances of identifying a plant that is new to you goes up.
Till next time…
Love and Peace
From Denise
Thanks for the post! Very informative.
I'm very nervous about foraging for food, I tend to just stick to what I know.
It's good to be a little nervous, but it is in your best interest to learn. In the next lesson I start to talk about some of the plants growing in my yard. I'll also teach you a check list of signs that most poisonous plants have one of more of and how to test the food to make sure it is not harmful to you, without risking dying from it. Chances are you have probably seen 100's of plants that are edible. You just have to figure out which ones are around you.
A much needed topic and a perfect example of how knowing "about" something doesn't equal knowing something. I have spent the last two years trying to learn which plants are edible on some land we acquired. As you point out it is NOT a simple or quick process.
But more importantly regaining knowledge that we have lost in only a few generations is vital. Basic skills of foraging, plant remedies, fermentation, food preservation, even basic gardening are quickly disappearing. Many are trying to save the skills but often the best they (we) can do is write a book. Writing is good but I fear if we don't learn it ourselves and teach our kids and others we will be left with the Reader's Digest condensed version of everything. (That allusion is probably a bit dated for many)
One phenomenon I've witnessed that I believe is hindering the preservation attempt is minimally qualified folks trying to overly profit from the tiny bit of knowledge they have. What are your thoughts?
I agree, I have seen hundreds of ebooks on Amazon selling for as much as $25. I read them for free via Amazon Unlimited and found most had 10 to 20 pages of nothing. A triple spaced list of "here's what you need to learn, now go find a book on it and memorize it."
I have been dealing with survival topics for 35 years now. My husband was a Marine and heavily believe in being prepared for anything. I started learning medicinal herbs about the same time because I was born with a heart murmur and cannot take any types of cold and sinus medications because of it.
We have forgotten how quickly a mayo and garlic sandwich can ease the pain of a sore throat and stop your sinuses from draining too. And how drinking tea made from one of plants in the mint family (which can grow in your yard but are invasive, best to grow in planters) can cure heartburn without shutting down the acid you body needs to digest food.
I want to try to teach as many people as possible how to live off the land before my time here is done.
It will probably take me at least a year to get just the foraging information posted in the blog, but I probably will make a book out of it afterward. Won't be a $25 book with 20 pages. More like a $3 book (I have bills too) with 300 to 400 pages.
I grew up doing all the things you mentioned like preserving food (canning, dehydrating, pickling and such) I make sauerkraut, Kefir, pickles, and so much more.
I'll probably spend the rest of my life getting it all written down for people, lol
Here's praying you have a long life!
Thank you very much!