What I am eating, on the road… foraging 100% of my food and medicine for a year 🌱 — Transcript

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1. 0:00For one year,
2. 0:01I am foraging all of my food and medicine,
3. 0:04even while I am on the road.
4. 0:07No grocery stores, no restaurants.
5. 0:10So, how am I doing it? What am I eating?
6. 0:14Today, I am going to show  you what I'm traveling with.
7. 0:17Come on over.
8. 0:19This pantry here represents my diet more or less.
9. 0:24And this is what I har..
10. 0:26this is what I take my daily food from.
11. 0:29But it takes a lot more than this little pantry.
12. 0:32I've got lots of jars, dehydrated  foods, nuts, seeds, rice.
13. 0:38So, I'll show you what I have.
14. 0:40First of all, you can see all of these jars here.
15. 0:44So, fish are a staple food for me.
16. 0:47This is smelt, which are a  small fish from Lake Superior.
17. 0:52And I harvested these in large quantities
18. 0:55while I was in my homeland. And on the road,
19. 0:58I am traveling with more or less the fish
20. 1:01and the meat that I need.
21. 1:02So, I'm not needing to harvest that.
22. 1:05I have a balance between having harvested
23. 1:08and stored foods to be able to travel with
24. 1:12and harvesting fresh foods on the road.
25. 1:16Another big staple for me is my wild rice.
26. 1:19This is the bag of wild rice that I have left,
27. 1:23which is about 10 lbs from the total 75 lbs
28. 1:28that I harvested last fall.
29. 1:31I'm going to be running out of my wild rice soon,
30. 1:34which is my staple calorie.
31. 1:36So, I'll be tapping into my acorn flour.
32. 1:42I have a large amount of acorn flour.
33. 1:46Well, not a large amount, but some.
34. 1:49And then I also have yam flour as well.
35. 1:53That's a wild yam flour.
36. 1:56So, that's some of my staple calories there.
37. 1:59I get calories from many foods,
38. 2:01but that's like my starchy carbohydrate rich food.
39. 2:07Now, this bag here is full of nuts.
40. 2:13We have a type of hickory nut here that I smash up
41. 2:21and make hickory nut milk with.
42. 2:24And then I have another hickory here.
43. 2:29This is shellbark hickory, which uh I love to
44. 2:35make hickory nut milk with these.
45. 2:37And then I have in this bag my hazelnuts.
46. 2:44And I love these hazelnuts.
47. 2:46These I harvested in large  quantities in northern Wisconsin,
48. 2:49but they grow wild by the acres.
49. 2:52And then here, acorns.
50. 2:55So my acorns, these are ones that I didn't
51. 2:57have time to process and turn into flour.
52. 3:00As you can see, the amount of space this takes up
53. 3:03versus grinding it down and  traveling it with as a with
54. 3:07it as a flower is quite  significant in the amount of space,
55. 3:12but I just didn't have time.
56. 3:13So, I'm traveling with these acorns and we'll need
57. 3:15to process them somewhere.
58. 3:17So, that's a little bit of  my protein, my calories.
59. 3:22I do a lot of dehydration.
60. 3:25So in this bag I have my bolite mushrooms.
61. 3:32This is my maitake powder.
62. 3:35So my maitake mushrooms that I dehydrate
63. 3:38and blend into a powder.
64. 3:41And the nice thing about dehydrated foods
65. 3:43is they take up so much less space.
66. 3:46So a lot of what I eat on the road is dehydrated.
67. 3:50I've got my chanterelle  mushrooms from last summer.
68. 3:56I have dried powders like this is stinging nettle,
69. 4:02basswood leaves.
70. 4:04This is some of the overflow  that I fill into these jars
71. 4:08which I'll show you. I've got ramp powder.
72. 4:15These are elm samaras that  I harvested with a friend
73. 4:18Daniel Suelo traveling through Colorado
74. 4:22on my way out here.
75. 4:23I'm in Southern California right now in uh
76. 4:26Fillmore, outside of Los Angeles where
77. 4:28I just hosted a foraging school.
78. 4:30This is my medicinal mushroom tea blend
79. 4:33and then I have some chaga mushrooms here as well.
80. 4:38A lot of this food is from my homeland
81. 4:40and a lot of it is food  that I'm that I'm harvesting
82. 4:44as I travel as well.
83. 4:47I also am eating a lot of pecans.
84. 4:49I harvested these as I was traveling
85. 4:51through Davidson, North Carolina.
86. 4:54And I had a huge pillowcase worth of these.
87. 4:58This is the last of my pecans.
88. 5:02Now, I also eat a lot of fruit.
89. 5:05So fruit is a very important staple for me.
90. 5:07So I have my canned fruit. This is pear sauce.
91. 5:12I have applesauce. This is plum sauce right here.
92. 5:17And I am one of the main  things that I like to harvest
93. 5:24as I'm traveling is fresh fruit.
94. 5:27But I have my canned fruit as well.
95. 5:29And also I have my berries.
96. 5:34So this is service berries  and then this is elderberries.
97. 5:38So a lot of very yellow peacock.
98. 5:42A lot of very antioxidant  rich brightly colored berries
99. 5:47that are bring you know in  maze I get a lot of nutrients
100. 5:51but also that's another source of my calories.
101. 5:56Oh, one food that I love that  I travel with, my maple syrup.
102. 6:00I love my maple syrup. A nice sweetener.
103. 6:03I don't have endless supplies,  so I use it conservatively.
104. 6:08And then my herbs and spices.
105. 6:09So, my salt from the ocean.
106. 6:12I have Brazilian pepper, onion, and uh garlic
107. 6:18and balm as one of my main seasonings.
108. 6:24seaweed powder. That's adds a lot of vitamins,
109. 6:28a lot of nutrients to my food.
110. 6:30Apple cider vinegar, a lot of ferments.
111. 6:33So, what you see down here,
112. 6:35I have this is a fermented wild onion
113. 6:39that's been fermenting for about 3 months now.
114. 6:43Mostly what I'm eating right  now as far as my ferments
115. 6:47is my wild ramps from northern Wisconsin.
116. 6:51So, lots of ferments and then a lot of teas,
117. 6:56a lot of herbal teas.
118. 6:57So, my day my common ones are my evening blend,
119. 7:02golden rod, fireweed, sweet  fern, ginko leaves, and mint.
120. 7:08And these are many of my  different herbs right here.
121. 7:13So, you've got the calories, the fat, the protein.
122. 7:16The area that I'm lacking  the most right now is fat.
123. 7:20And I have lost a little bit of  weight and I would really like
124. 7:25to harvest a nice fat supply.
125. 7:27There's fat in the nuts as well,
126. 7:28but I do not have a cooking oil or a cooking fat.
127. 7:33And then, you know, I get so much vitamins
128. 7:36and minerals and nutrients from from berries,
129. 7:39from fruits, from herbs, from greens.
130. 7:42So, speaking of greens,  right now a priority for me
131. 7:47on the road is to be  harvesting fresh greens ideally
132. 7:51every single day and eating  a large quantity of them.
133. 7:54And here I have mallow the common mallow.
134. 7:59I have sow thistle. I have some some feral fennel.
135. 8:06And then lots of mustard flowers and mustard stems
136. 8:10that you can see in there.  So I eat a lot of raw greens,
137. 8:14but mostly I cook them. I have cooked greens
138. 8:16with most of my meals right now.
139. 8:19And although I do travel with dehydrated greens
140. 8:22like my stinging nettle and my green powders,
141. 8:25I really try and ideally if I'm doing really well,
142. 8:29I'm eating about a pound of wild greens per day,
143. 8:32but at least a half pound of wild greens.
144. 8:34It is the dry season here in Southern California.
145. 8:38So, it's not primo greens  time, but as I'm working my way
146. 8:42up through Northern California,  Oregon, and Washington,
147. 8:45I'll get into more peak green time.
148. 8:48And then over here, this is  how I'm cooking on the road.
149. 8:54So, take a look. This is a freshly  prepared meal of wild rice,
150. 9:01smelt, seaweed, mushrooms,
151. 9:03different herbs and spices, salt.
152. 9:06And what I do generally is  in the morning I make a pot
153. 9:09and then I can have this for  breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
154. 9:12And wherever I am, I can plug it in to warm up.
155. 9:15And then I can just swap  this out and then I can cook
156. 9:19my fresh greens in here as well.
157. 9:20So I have a pot of greens  and a pot of cooked food.
158. 9:24So that system is working out very well for me.
159. 9:28Um time efficient and Whoa, that was close.
160. 9:33And able lot of commotion here at the
161. 9:38Eden Forest Collective in Fillmore.
162. 9:43So that's working out very well.
163. 9:45And then I think the last note here is water.
164. 9:48I'm not foraging my water strictly,
165. 9:51but I'm only drinking water  from wells, from springs,
166. 9:56lakes, rivers, basically unadulterated water
167. 9:59that doesn't have chlorine  or anything added to it.
168. 10:02So, fairly wild water. So,  there you have it, friends.
169. 10:06This is my 100% foraged diet  down to the salt, the oil,
170. 10:10the spices, the calories, the fat, the protein,
171. 10:13the the uh and the medicine from the land.
172. 10:17This is a deep practice in  reconnecting with the earth.
173. 10:20This is a deep practice of  belonging here on this earth
174. 10:24and truly feeling at home  here everywhere that I go.
175. 10:28Right now, I'll be in Los  Angeles for the next week
176. 10:32and then working up the coast.
177. 10:34So, if you are wanting to come out and learn,
178. 10:37I'm hosting foraging schools, foraging walks
179. 10:40and talks from San Diego all the way up to Seattle
180. 10:44in central Northern California, Eugene, Ashland,
181. 10:49and Portland, Seattle, Port Townsend,
182. 10:52and then a whole bunch of  California in between there.
183. 10:55You can go to robingreenfield.org/schedule.
184. 10:59All of my offerings are donation based.
185. 11:01So everybody, no matter your skill level,
186. 11:04no matter your skill level is welcome.
187. 11:06And I am here to help you to break free from
188. 11:09the systems that no longer  serve to deeply reconnect
189. 11:13with Earth and community through building skills
190. 11:16and relationships in a very  connective, enjoyable way.
191. 11:21So I love you all very much, dear friends,
192. 11:23and look forward to sharing  a hug with many of you.
193. 11:26Today's day 226 of the year, a little celebration.
194. 11:33So, there is still a long ways to go,
195. 11:36but I'm almost eight months into the year
196. 11:38and things are going very well.
197. 11:39So, grateful to be on this  journey together, dear friends.