Day 280 Foraging 100% of My Food. Nature is my Garden. — Transcript

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1. 0:01Today is Day 280 of the year of foraging all
2. 0:05of my food and medicine.  It has been a little while
3. 0:08since I have shared a substantial update and I am
4. 0:10going to do just that.
5. 0:18I am over nine months into the year of foraging,
6. 0:23which means I have just under three months left:
7. 0:27one quarter, one season of the year. I have some
8. 0:32feelings that I am in the  final chapter, but I still
9. 0:37very much have my work cut out for me. In some
10. 0:41ways, I am feeling like I'm flowing along, and in
11. 0:45other days, oof, I have had the thought of giving
12. 0:50up and, not quite giving up,  but making some meaningful,
13. 0:58substantial exceptions.
14. 1:03It is July 18th here in  northern Wisconsin. I'm in my
15. 1:07off-the-grid hermitage near the  shores of Lake Superior. We're in the
16. 1:12mid-summer. So, what am I  eating and what is making
17. 1:15up my foraged diet?
18. 1:17My pantry is still quite full of food. What I have
19. 1:20had no shortage of are my herbal teas and many
20. 1:24of my different medicines.  I have found that I haven't
21. 1:28needed to really harvest any  of those this summer because
22. 1:31I've been able to continue with the supply that I
23. 1:34harvested last summer.
24. 1:36My dried mushrooms have continued  to nourish me this entire year.
25. 1:41The abundance that I harvested  in the fall has pulled me
26. 1:44through. Right now, we are  having quite the dry spell
27. 1:47and I was really hoping for  a lot of fresh mushrooms,
28. 1:51especially chanterelles, but I've  had close to none. So the dried
29. 1:54mushrooms have continued to sustain me.
30. 1:57Of course, herbal teas and dried  mushrooms are far from making
31. 2:01up my diet, as most of you know. Right now, I
32. 2:05am deeply nourishing myself with  whitefish from Lake Superior. I've had
33. 2:10three successful fishing outings  during my two weeks back between my
34. 2:15West Coast tour and my upcoming summer tour.
35. 2:18I also am eating a substantial  amount of smelt from my
36. 2:23spring harvesting, and I just  picked up a car-killed deer. So,
37. 2:28between the fish and the venison,  I have been really nourishing
38. 2:33myself.
39. 2:34The West Coast tour was quite  the challenge. I ran out
40. 2:38of my main protein sources by the time I got to
41. 2:42northern California. I expected  to be able to fish and potentially
42. 2:46hunt a wild pig. None of  that really panned out. And
43. 2:49I found myself sort of getting  smaller, my muscles shrinking, and
44. 2:54there's also the fact that I  was really trying to conserve
45. 2:57my calories, my starchy calories,  that is wild rice and acorn
46. 3:02flour. I finished off my wild  rice, and I actually managed
47. 3:07to conserve my acorn flour.  Amazingly, I still have six pounds
48. 3:14of acorn flour, and I've  managed to hold myself through.
49. 3:19So, this summer, now that  I'm back, I've been eating a
50. 3:22substantial amount of fish and  venison as well as fresh berries
51. 3:27by the quarts, per day. And that has made up a
52. 3:31substantial amount of my calories,  along with drinking some of my
53. 3:35maple sap that I had frozen,  my maple syrup, and, of
54. 3:39course, lots of nuts.
55. 3:42This year has been a profound  year in my relationship with
56. 3:46wild nuts, and my realization  of how much they can truly
57. 3:51satiate me, and nourish me  and sustain me in a very
58. 3:54sustainable way that's in harmony  with the Earth. And they are
59. 3:58incredibly delicious. Right now,  I'm eating a bounty of hickory nuts,
60. 4:03which I make hickory nut  milk from. I'm also eating a
61. 4:06lot of black walnuts. These  foods have really surprised me at
62. 4:13how deeply nourishing they are.  And, just as important, my limiting
63. 4:17factor with nuts has been time.  Efficiency and effectiveness is very
64. 4:22important with 100 percent  foraged diet. I'm not going to say
65. 4:26every minute counts, but the minutes  really count. And, I've managed
66. 4:30to become quite effective and  efficient at getting in a lot
67. 4:33of fat and protein and calories  through eating my wild nuts.
68. 4:37I've continued eating an abundance  of wild greens with watercress being
69. 4:42one of the main ones, along with  basswood leaves and numerous
70. 4:46others. And one of my main  vegetables this summer has been
71. 4:49cattail spikes, as well as some milkweed pods.
72. 4:53I have been gorging on berries  as a substantial calorie and
73. 4:58nutrient source. Number One has been  the serviceberries or juneberries, and
74. 5:03then mulberries, as well as cherries  and then some blueberries. That's
75. 5:09been my substantial fruit.
76. 5:11You might notice the kind of  puffy face. That's the gnats.
77. 5:16Oh, I was out harvesting the  serviceberries today, and I wasn't
78. 5:20prepared for the gnats to be biting me while I was
79. 5:23harvesting. I just had to  seriously harvest, so they got me.
80. 5:27Right now, I am also dealing  with the smoke coming from
81. 5:32the Minnesota and Canada fires. We're  under pretty substantial air quality
82. 5:38issues here and I'm definitely  feeling it. Living outside and needing
83. 5:42to be outside to do a lot  of foraging, I'm definitely
84. 5:45feeling the smoke. And, I'm  sending love to all of you
85. 5:50who are out there who are  feeling this smoke as well
86. 5:53and who are dealing with these wildfires.
87. 5:59When I left for the West Coast tour, I was at
88. 6:01a weight that felt pretty  great and my body felt really
89. 6:04solid. And I knew that I  really didn't want to lose
90. 6:07another pound at all. And, I  lost another few pounds while
91. 6:13I was on the West Coast tour. Not having access to
92. 6:17enough food and being on a  very busy tour schedule, 28
93. 6:23events over a couple dozen cities  from southern California all the
94. 6:28way to Seattle. It was quite  grueling. I really struggled. But,
95. 6:33being back here in the northwoods,  I have managed to really
96. 6:37get my body back to a state that feels great in
97. 6:39the last two weeks, and a big part of that has
98. 6:42just been getting more  exercise. Being on tour is a lot
99. 6:45of car time. Now that I'm back here, it's been a
100. 6:48lot of being on my bicycle as I'm foraging: a lot
101. 6:51more physical activity through my  harvesting and my daily chores.
102. 6:56With the running out of  wild rice, I managed to eat
103. 7:00a plant in a substantial quantity  in northern California called soap
104. 7:04root. People often ask me  if there's any plants that I
105. 7:07am grateful for, or if  there's any plants that I have
106. 7:10gotten a little tired of,  and soap root is both. It
107. 7:13was a very, very important  staple that helped me to conserve
108. 7:18my wild rice some and then my acorn flour, but I
109. 7:22never got really good at cooking  it and I really struggled
110. 7:26to make it highly palatable.  It is used to make soap,
111. 7:29but it has also been a staple  food for different indigenous
112. 7:32cultures. And that knowledge, I  would say, to some degree, has
113. 7:37been lost. I am grateful to  have worked with that plant,
114. 7:40but I am glad to be on to the next chapter.
115. 7:43The reason that I not almost gave up, but made a
116. 7:51substantial change was running out  of wild rice. And then, running
117. 7:57really short on calories  knowing that it would be a good
118. 8:00couple months until wild rice  would be back to harvest and
119. 8:04acorns would be back to  harvest. And I realized that I
120. 8:07could simply get the amount  of wild rice that I would
121. 8:11need from someone else who  harvested. I could purchase it or
122. 8:15trade for it. Or acorns. And  it really wouldn't change my
123. 8:19diet and it really wouldn't change  the experience that much. And
124. 8:23a lot of people think that  that's what I'm already doing
125. 8:25… is trading for foods or  eating what other people are
126. 8:32foraging as well. But, on some  of those difficult days, I
127. 8:37really thought about it and,  instead, I have decided to hold
128. 8:40through. Being that it's  mid-summer and wild rice is still a
129. 8:44ways off, between fish, venison  and berries, I am managing to
130. 8:49get the calories that I need  and that's what I'm going
131. 8:52to attempt to do until the  late summer, early fall comes,
132. 8:57and those staple calorie foods are back.
133. 9:00I also want to celebrate that I  finally pressed yellowbud hickory
134. 9:06for oil. I managed to get two quarts of oil. This
135. 9:11is an incredible food source.  I'm grateful to Sam Thayer for
136. 9:14having me down to press using  his oil press. That made
137. 9:19it a lot more effective and  efficient. It's been a really
138. 9:21great opportunity to deepen my relationship  with the yellowbud hickories. I
139. 9:27have simply not had time  to do everything that I was
140. 9:30hoping to do during my two weeks back, but I did
141. 9:34manage to store away quite a bit of food that I
142. 9:36am taking on my tour with me. I have my canned
143. 9:40fish and venison, as well as  frozen fish and venison that
144. 9:44I'll carry in my cooler. I have  canned fruit and dehydrated
145. 9:48fruit. I also dehydrated them to  make a serviceberry fruit leather
146. 9:54that I'll enjoy on the road. I  have my dehydrated mushrooms,
147. 9:58my six pounds of acorn flour,  plenty of herbal teas, and
148. 10:03still enough spices, but I'm  running low on the spices as
149. 10:07well.
150. 10:08So. What is coming? In the morning, I leave for a
151. 10:11one-month tour. I head out to New York. I have a
152. 10:15five boroughs foraging tour.  I'll be doing a foraging walk in
153. 10:20all five boroughs in city  parks. I welcome you all to
154. 10:24come out. I'd love to share  my knowledge with you New
155. 10:27Yorkers, fellow human beings.  From there, I will be at MycoFest,
156. 10:32a mushroom festival in Pennsylvania,  a foraging walk at the US
157. 10:36Capitol in Washington, DC. And then I  have Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit,
158. 10:42Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Faribault, and  Minneapolis, Minnesota; as well as another
159. 10:49foraging school in Duluth, Minnesota,  before arriving back here in mid-August.
160. 10:56So, Dear Friends, I welcome  you to come out and join
161. 10:58me for a foraging walk or a  foraging school. Experience this
162. 11:02year of foraging along with  me, and learn about the foods
163. 11:06and medicines that are growing  freely and abundantly right in your
164. 11:09own city parks and right in  your own community. That's what
165. 11:13I'm here for. I'm immersed in  this. I'm deepening my relationship
166. 11:17with the Earth. I'm seeing  that the Earth can provide me
167. 11:20with what I need in a nourishing  and sustainable and harmonious
168. 11:25way, and I'm here to take you all along on this
169. 11:27journey. I love you very much, Dear Friends.