I have just entered my salad bowl.
You can just go for it.
At some point, a dog has peed on this.
So no grocery stores, no restaurants,
not even eating from gardens.
Everything that I am eating
I have to find growing
whether it is city parks, abandoned lots,
or being out deeper in nature.
Just in this little tiny patch
there are four edible and medicinal foods.
We have got of course dandelion.
Everybody knows dandelion.
We have got plantago
which is another really great food and medicine.
And then just a little ways up here
one of my personal favorites,
lamb's quarter.
Similar to spinach, this is growing
in pretty much every major city
across what we call the United States
and a lot of the world as well.
Oh we have got, of course, raspberries here.
You can make raspberry leaf tea from this.
Do I eat complete meals?
Absolutely!
Subsisting of largely wild rice,
venison, or fish,
and different herbs and spices
and all sorts of different greens,
Plus different berries.
Some people call this a roadkill deer.
I call it a deer that has been hit by a car.
This is not a survival project.
For me this is about enjoying life.
And it is about thriving.
It is about feeling great.
I have eaten over a hundred different foods
from nature over the last month
and by opening up my eyes,
I realized I had barely even
tapped into what there is.
I definitely feel more present
and more deeply connected to the Earth.
For the last 10 years
I have been rethinking our
global industrial food system
and all the ways in which it
causes so much destruction.
I want to eat in a way
where I can find food growing
that has no harm to the Earth.
Foraging can be legal or illegal
depending on where you are.
Yeah, some days I am out breaking the law
but for me, foraging is actually one of the ways
in which I choose to purposely
go against the system
go against societal norms
and say, "Yeah I do not need these
corporations to provide for me
in a way that is destroying the Earth.
Most people, they go to the grocery store
and they buy their food,
and they just assume it is safe
because it comes in a package
or because it has got some great advertising.
The truth is is that
a lot of that food there is not safe.
Right here is oxalis or wood sorrel
and this is often one of the first plants
that people try
because it has got a real nice flavor.
The lemony flavor.
You can get oxalis
blended up into your salad dressing
and have a nice lemony salad dressing.
What if everybody started foraging?
Would not we destroy nature overnight?
That could not be further from the truth.
If every human being wanted to start foraging
and wanted to stop going to the grocery store.
You know what that would mean?
It would mean people are thinking
about the world in a different way.
It would mean our broken societal
structures would crumble.
We would replace them with regenerative,
equitable, just ways of living
that are connected to the Earth.
My recommendation for new foragers
is to learn one plant at a time.
If you just learn one plant a month for a year,
you will know 12 plants.
Now if you really want to go faster
you could learn one plant per week.
For a year, that is 52 plants.
You will go from a beginner
to a plant wizard.
My goal is to break free
from the grocery store.
And to maintain that largely
for the next decades ahead.
The world needs more foragers.
Maybe that is you.