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Speaker 3: Oh hey, it's your friends Kat who just had a
Speaker 3: six hundred dollars hairball Ali ward back with an outdoorsy
Speaker 3: quite frankly a scrumptious episode of ologies. So this ologist,
Speaker 3: we're going to get right to it. Studied both science
Speaker 3: and performance at Ohio State University, you know, but the
Speaker 3: role most know her in is teacher of the can
Speaker 3: I eat this it greu in my driveway arts and sciences.
Speaker 3: So she has a million, a literal million TikTok watchers
Speaker 3: who just eat up her lessons on making violet simple
Speaker 3: syrup and Magnolia cookies and garlic mustard pesto and more.
Speaker 3: And I have had so many of y'all begging me
Speaker 3: to have her on that when I DMed her, honestly,
Speaker 3: I was shocked to get a response. This woman is busy.
Speaker 3: So we recorded this right as April was turning to May.
Speaker 3: And since it's still spring and things are still blooming
Speaker 3: and shooting and crawling from the ground, it's time to
Speaker 3: grab a basket and see what's for dinner. But we
Speaker 3: also talk about year round edibles. We're going to get
Speaker 3: into it. But first, thank you to all the patrons
Speaker 3: who said to their questions you can become a patron
Speaker 3: for a dollar a month a dollar a month at
Speaker 3: patreon dot com slash Ologies. Thank you to everyone rating
Speaker 3: and subscribing to the podcast. Thanks to everyone who has
Speaker 3: already bought a ticket to my first and maybe only
Speaker 3: ever live show. It's Tuesday, May eighteenth, five pm Pacific.
Speaker 3: Tickets are between nine and twelve dollars. They're available in
Speaker 3: the link in the show notes. There's a discount code
Speaker 3: for patrons. Thanks to everyone who leaves such nice reviews,
Speaker 3: keeping Ologies in the top five Science podcast Globally, which
Speaker 3: is bananas. I read all the reviews and each week
Speaker 3: I pick a fresh one. This week it's from BKCBKC six,
Speaker 3: who after listening to the Speech Pathology episode, wrote in
Speaker 3: to say I have just ordered two sets of the
Speaker 3: Recordable Buttons for my human son. Amazing what I picked
Speaker 3: up from this podcast after just discovering it. Going to
Speaker 3: share a set with his teachers and work as a
Speaker 3: team to augment his language.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much so.
Speaker 3: Yes, I read all your reviews from Katie's Just Going
Speaker 3: back to School. That made me cry. Diane, who loves
Speaker 3: a good touristic fact Wigmakers former podcast Loathers, thanks everyone
Speaker 3: for leaving them. They really do get me through days
Speaker 3: when I think I'm not doing a good enough job,
Speaker 3: which is like every day, but that's my own problem anyway. Okay,
Speaker 3: speaking of I know you want to do this interview
Speaker 3: foraging ecology. Foraging comes from a root for hay or
Speaker 3: straw or fodder, and then it evolved to mean hunting
Speaker 3: about for edibles, and ecology comes from the same root
Speaker 3: as ecology for the place we live and our relationship
Speaker 3: to our environment, So foraging for the things around us.
Speaker 3: Now for Breakfast side Out. I just want you to
Speaker 3: know that I ate some low quots that I stole
Speaker 3: from a friend's tree. She didn't even know she could
Speaker 3: eat them. She thought they were ornamental. So we're doing
Speaker 3: a good job today. Anyway, Pull up a stump and
Speaker 3: lean in for a bounty of information on edible versus
Speaker 3: poisonous plants, taproots, blossoms, tinctures, brews and stews and cookies
Speaker 3: and cocktails, and hikes and eating invasive species, some dog
Speaker 3: pee talk, the best guide books, and how gathering what
Speaker 3: grows around us is a radical act for Internet hero
Speaker 3: and teacher, autodidect, wild food Maker and your gathering guide.
Speaker 3: You know her on TikTok and YouTube and Instagram as
Speaker 3: Black Forager Alexis Nicole Nelson.
Speaker 5: I'm so excited to be talking to you. Hello, my
Speaker 5: name is Alexis Nicole Nelson, and my pronouns are she
Speaker 5: hear hers, and my cat just clawed me in the butt.
Speaker 5: None o the time we're having.
Speaker 3: Already get them on the mic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, hey, Auzie, you have words to say, use your words. Yep.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: People have been asking me for so many months to
Speaker 3: get you on this podcast. When you wrote back, I
Speaker 3: was thrilled. I've been wanting to do this topic for
Speaker 3: a while, which would be foraging ecology, I believe right, Yes.
Speaker 5: Foraging ecology, I think is the ology that we settled
Speaker 5: on for this.
Speaker 3: Yes, it works, It totally works. Your TikTok's amazing and
Speaker 3: informative and you're so prolific and it's so great. At
Speaker 3: what point were you like, Okay, it's time the world
Speaker 3: needs to know what they can eat in their backyards.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've honestly felt that way ever since I
Speaker 5: was really little. Like I said, just didn't have the
Speaker 5: tools to tell anybody outside of my parents, family members, friends,
Speaker 5: anyone who I could get to listen to me in persons, Do.
Speaker 3: You remember what the first thing you ate out of
Speaker 3: the ground and were you safe? Was it dangerous?
Speaker 5: The first thing I remember eating out of the ground.
Speaker 5: I must have been about five years old, and I
Speaker 5: was helping my mom in the garden in our house,
Speaker 5: in our old house in Cincinnati, and she pointed out
Speaker 5: some grass but it looked different from other grass, and
Speaker 5: she broke it and it smelled delicious, like it smelled
Speaker 5: like onions and garlic, And she's like, oh, Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: onion grass and it's edible, but it's like not as
Speaker 5: good as the onions in the garlic that we get
Speaker 5: from the store. And if you tell a five year
Speaker 5: old that something is edible, then they're going to put
Speaker 5: it in their face and they're going to get really
Speaker 5: excited about it. So I did, and it just kind
Speaker 5: of ignited a gentle obsession, a lifelong love.
Speaker 3: Where did you get a lot of your information? Did
Speaker 3: you start getting for your sixth birthday? Did you get
Speaker 3: an encyclopedia of edible herbs? How did the information dump start?
Speaker 5: Well, my answer to that question is yes, But for
Speaker 5: my eighth birthday.
Speaker 3: Oh got it, got it little late, late bloomer, late bloomer.
Speaker 5: I know, Oh my gosh, I was so late to
Speaker 5: the game. I just I inhaled all of my mom's
Speaker 5: books on gardening. My mom had like an entire shelf
Speaker 5: in our house dedicated to just her gardening books. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I'd say by the time I was eight or nine,
Speaker 5: I had read each of them front to back. Was
Speaker 5: like trying to memorize every single one of the trees
Speaker 5: and flowers and herbs present in them. And when I
Speaker 5: was done with those I bought more every weekend. My
Speaker 5: parents used to let me go to this independent bookstore
Speaker 5: in Cincinnati, Joseph Beth. After we'd go out to dinner
Speaker 5: and they'd be like, okay, you get one book, and
Speaker 5: it'd be really hard for me to choose between oh gosh,
Speaker 5: whatever fantasy novel I was obsessed with at the time,
Speaker 5: or a plant both.
Speaker 3: When it came time to figuring out your life's course,
Speaker 3: did you want to stick with botany? Did you decide
Speaker 3: to go more of a business route. I know that
Speaker 3: you have been like a social media manager, which explains
Speaker 3: another reason why you're like so good at TikTok. You're
Speaker 3: a professional, But what did you decide when it came
Speaker 3: to figuring out, you know, careers.
Speaker 5: I think I'm still deciding every time I have to
Speaker 5: remember that I'm a real adult. I'm just like, oh
Speaker 5: oh yeah, twenty eight's real. I can't fudget anymore. Definitely
Speaker 5: full full, full blood of adult now. Growing up. I
Speaker 5: in the fourth grade when we had to draw what
Speaker 5: we wanted to be when we grew up, I said
Speaker 5: that I wanted to be a geneticist by day, in
Speaker 5: a pop star by night.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it.
Speaker 5: I mean, I feel like this is closer than anybody
Speaker 5: myself included, thought I was going to get with kind
Speaker 5: of melding this aspect of performance which I've always loved,
Speaker 5: like right hand in hand with like my love of
Speaker 5: plants has been my love of entertaining people. And when
Speaker 5: it came time to choose what I was going to
Speaker 5: major in in college, I was like, pretty gifted in
Speaker 5: math and science. But I was also like pretty gifted
Speaker 5: in theater. But nobody tells you to major in theater.
Speaker 5: Even when you're really good at theater, no one tells
Speaker 5: you to go in major. So everyone was like, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, you're a woman of color, you're good at math,
Speaker 5: you're good at science. If you don't become an engineer,
Speaker 5: what a waste. And I didn't know if I wanted
Speaker 5: to be an engineer, but I did know that I
Speaker 5: didn't want to be a waste. So I applied to
Speaker 5: all of my schools as an engineer, got accepted to
Speaker 5: Ohio status an environmental engineering major.
Speaker 3: On the first day of her schooling as an environmental engineer,
Speaker 3: the dean addressed the students just to tell them that
Speaker 3: most people will quit the program about half, which is
Speaker 3: about as opposite of a pep talk as you can
Speaker 3: possibly get, like, welcome, this is going to suck, You'll
Speaker 3: hate my program. Attrition perhaps should not be something to
Speaker 3: brag about. What do I know?
Speaker 5: And I've always loved the pursuit of knowledge, but I've
Speaker 5: always hated when some sort of like very competitive aspect
Speaker 5: has been thrown into it. So needless to say, I
Speaker 5: had a rough time my first year in engineering school,
Speaker 5: so rough that I took a semester off to kind
Speaker 5: of get my head right and decided that I did
Speaker 5: love math and science, but that I also loved writing.
Speaker 5: I also loved performing, So I came back and focused
Speaker 5: on both environmental science because I didn't take all of
Speaker 5: that calculus and physics and chemistry for nothing. But then
Speaker 5: I also went and got a theater degree and took
Speaker 5: like masters classes in playwriting, put on a one woman
Speaker 5: show before I graduated, wrote a couple of short plays.
Speaker 5: So I feel like everything I'm doing right now makes sense,
Speaker 5: and in terms of where I see it going in
Speaker 5: the future, any opportunity that I get to talk to
Speaker 5: large groups of people about the value in the green
Speaker 5: spaces around them, that's how I would define the career
Speaker 5: that I want to see myself in at any given
Speaker 5: time during the rest of my life. And if that's
Speaker 5: as a TikToker, that's great. If that's oh my god,
Speaker 5: on a TV show, Hey PBS, that's great too. If
Speaker 5: it's writing field guides and books, that's great too. I
Speaker 5: just this is what fills my cup. And this is
Speaker 5: the type of thing that, even when I'm working really hard,
Speaker 5: it doesn't feel like work.
Speaker 2: It's best thing.
Speaker 3: Did you ever think that you'd have a million people
Speaker 3: tuning in to watch you make pesto?
Speaker 5: No? Never, never in a million years. I made my
Speaker 5: foraging account on Instagram originally because I was annoying my
Speaker 5: friends with the plants I was eating.
Speaker 3: They were like, we don't want to hear about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, They're like, no, thank you. So I was like, okay, cool,
Speaker 5: I'll just make like a fensta, but just for the
Speaker 5: wild things that I put on my plate. Now I
Speaker 5: feel like my Now I feel like my personal account
Speaker 5: is my finstauh a switch to Rooney that I never
Speaker 5: in a million years would have called.
Speaker 3: So side note, a Finsta, for those of us not
Speaker 3: born in the nineties, is a fake Instagram or an
Speaker 3: alternative handle that's not like one that your boss follows
Speaker 3: or something your followers would find off brand. So perhaps
Speaker 3: it's the real you which makes me want to sit
Speaker 3: on a rock and ponder, am I living my most
Speaker 3: Finsta life in the out, in the open? And why not? Anyway,
Speaker 3: Alexis had an underground passion for plants, and at the
Speaker 3: start of the pandemic, she posted something to her TikTok
Speaker 3: about forging if you couldn't get to the store during
Speaker 3: the first few weeks of the COVID lockdown, and she
Speaker 3: posted it. She woke up to tens of thousands of views,
Speaker 3: and suddenly people were smitten not only with her plucky delivery,
Speaker 3: but her extensive botanical knowledge. So millions of views later,
Speaker 3: she's really opened up people's eyes and noses and mouths
Speaker 3: to edibles that we walk right past all the time,
Speaker 3: all year round. It's been really cool to see the
Speaker 3: seasons change and to see different things that you're harvesting
Speaker 3: and per simmons and then going into blossoms and stuff.
Speaker 3: When it comes to keeping yourself educated, are you looking
Speaker 3: things up before you're forging? Are you already familiar with them?
Speaker 3: Does it really depend on the region, Like, how are
Speaker 3: you keeping all of this knowledge? How often do you
Speaker 3: have to kind of sharpen those tools?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's constantly a process of sharpening. And
Speaker 5: the more you interact with a certain plant, just like
Speaker 5: the more you interact with certain people, you get to
Speaker 5: know them better, you know their nuances better, you know
Speaker 5: when to expect them. So there's definitely a swath of
Speaker 5: plants that I've worked with for a really long time.
Speaker 5: I know when to expect like apples and all of
Speaker 5: the other like rose family trees to start blooming. I
Speaker 5: know when dandelions are coming up. I know when violets
Speaker 5: are coming up. But there are definitely plants that I'm
Speaker 5: a bit newer to that I have to go and
Speaker 5: do a little bit of digging, a little bit of reading,
Speaker 5: or my favorite, I see that someone else in one
Speaker 5: of the regional foraging Facebook groups that I'm in is
Speaker 5: posting about them, and I'll be like, oh, I did
Speaker 5: not know that we were already in cow parsnip season.
Speaker 5: I did know we were already in cal parsnip season.
Speaker 5: That's just the first plant that came to my head.
Speaker 3: Of course, should you also more on those densely hairy
Speaker 3: perennials later.
Speaker 5: And that's been wonderful, is being able to have that
Speaker 5: can unity to always come back to. But I'm always
Speaker 5: rereading all of my foraging books, all of these poor books.
Speaker 5: Their covers are just bent as all get out because
Speaker 5: whenever I have some free time, or if it's before bed,
Speaker 5: I'll just flip one open do a little bit of reading.
Speaker 5: I feel like I noticed something new every single time
Speaker 5: I read one of my foraging books, so it makes
Speaker 5: sense to go back over them again. And it's just
Speaker 5: like when you're in school, like you have to keep
Speaker 5: practicing or you lose it. Use it or lose it.
Speaker 5: Is the tld R.
Speaker 3: It's maybe you don't know what TLDR means, and that's fine.
Speaker 3: It stands for too long. Didn't read I see why
Speaker 3: am I? In case you missed it? So Alexis is
Speaker 3: schooling us on internet culture at large, as well as
Speaker 3: precious overlooked botany Okay, question that's on my mind a
Speaker 3: lot when I watch your chicktoks. How do you know
Speaker 3: something's peed on it?
Speaker 5: I do snifkay, because if it smells like fresh pe,
Speaker 5: that's just like not appetizing at all. The answer to
Speaker 5: this question, and I know Ali that it is not
Speaker 5: the answer that anybody wants, is if it's out in
Speaker 5: a green space, odds are at some point in time,
Speaker 5: and that green spaces passed probably in the last year.
Speaker 5: Something has peed there.
Speaker 3: That's a very good point. Even tiny little invertebrates, they're
Speaker 3: making pee all the time, and they're doing it on
Speaker 3: a romaine lettuce that we're buying from the store. Everything's
Speaker 3: peeing on everything. There are things in us right now
Speaker 3: peeing on each other exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: It's the circle of p And that's my thing that
Speaker 5: I always love reminding people is that the farms that
Speaker 5: we get our groceries from do not exist in a microcosm. Either.
Speaker 5: You don't know how many field mice peed on your kale.
Speaker 5: You should watch everything you take home, whether you pulled
Speaker 5: it out of the ground yourself or if someone else did.
Speaker 3: Very good point.
Speaker 5: I just try and I try to help people kind
Speaker 5: of put that out of their mind. Now. Of course,
Speaker 5: there are some areas that I avoid because they could
Speaker 5: peed on more often than others, and that is what
Speaker 5: I call the dog p zone, which I would say
Speaker 5: is like a solid foot foot and a half into
Speaker 5: anyone's lawn that is on the sidewalk. Probably best to
Speaker 5: just leave that be.
Speaker 3: I bet there's someone out there a forging a college
Speaker 3: is getting their PhD. And like the concentration of urea
Speaker 3: within certain feet of a sidewalk, there's got to be.
Speaker 5: There has to be, and if there's not, that's a
Speaker 5: good reason to go back to school. Yeah, it is,
Speaker 5: I personally need.
Speaker 3: I know, my tiny dog she's got like the perimeter
Speaker 3: of lawns absolutely covered. That's a huge weight off my mind.
Speaker 3: I love foraging. I've always thought it's so fascinating. And
Speaker 3: one thing I I'm so curious about, like, what is
Speaker 3: something that you tasted that you weren't sure if you
Speaker 3: were going to dig it at all and it was
Speaker 3: just delightful.
Speaker 5: Oh that's a fun one. I would say cal parsnips.
Speaker 5: They are in the carrot family, which is famous for
Speaker 5: having some of like the best wild edibles, but also
Speaker 5: fas for having some very deadly lookalikes to those same
Speaker 5: wild edibles. I've been eating Queen Ann's lace for a
Speaker 5: really long time. I think I figured out that Queen
Speaker 5: Ann's lace was wild carrots Doccas carota when I was
Speaker 5: in high school, and it like blew my mind because
Speaker 5: where my family stays in Massachusetts, there's Queen An's lace everywhere,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, you mean, I could have been just
Speaker 5: digging this up this entire time. So cal parsnip is
Speaker 5: also in the apaca family. It's also called pushki.
Speaker 3: Okay, so quick aside. These plants are not another Internet acronym.
Speaker 3: Apaca is a full word. It's just a long Latin
Speaker 3: one for a family of flowering plants. What are some
Speaker 3: other apaca plants? Celery, carrot, parsley, dill, human annis. So
Speaker 3: many apaca plants have already made it into your mouth area,
Speaker 3: but some of them are in the not to be
Speaker 3: messed with category because they are straight up poison like hemlock,
Speaker 3: or are highly phyto phototoxic, which means plant in light
Speaker 3: makes bad. So think skin blisters that require medical attention
Speaker 3: and a lot of well justified moaning and pouting. But
Speaker 3: cow parsnip is safe. However, it doesn't always look like it.
Speaker 5: A lot of indigenous peoples ate it, still eat it
Speaker 5: for a millennia, but it's dangerous. Look like is giant hogweed,
Speaker 5: which has been in the news off and on in
Speaker 5: certain areas of the country because it's super invasive and
Speaker 5: it's super dangerous. Cervigury burns if you interact with the
Speaker 5: sap while the sun is out dangerous. We love a phytotoxin.
Speaker 3: I mean, you gotta give it to the plants. They
Speaker 3: figured it out.
Speaker 5: You do, and one gets really mad at them, and
Speaker 5: I'm just like, well, if it makes you feel any better,
Speaker 5: don't take it personally, because we're not who they did
Speaker 5: that for. The insects are. It's You're not out to
Speaker 5: get us. They're out to get the small crunchy boys.
Speaker 5: Don't take it personally if you get burned. Cal parsnips
Speaker 5: giant hogweed leaf shapes are super similar. The difference is
Speaker 5: col parsnips get to be like is six feet maybe
Speaker 5: even like seven or eight feet tall max, where as
Speaker 5: giant hogweed could end up being like just a sixteen
Speaker 5: foot tower of doom. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: They don't call it giant for nothing.
Speaker 5: I believe the species name is like mega gigantium. It's
Speaker 5: I believe a derivative of the Latin word for humongous,
Speaker 5: and it makes sense. Cal parsnip was one of those
Speaker 5: that I had heard so many good things about it.
Speaker 5: But it's really hard, even when you are so confident
Speaker 5: in your ability to ib plants to get over like
Speaker 5: the hump of the point zero zero one percent chance
Speaker 5: of like mortal danger.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Is there an identification trick for some of the
Speaker 3: more dangerous plants, like between giant hogweed and wild carrots?
Speaker 3: Is there something you can look for, like a purplish
Speaker 3: a ring at the top, or something discerning like that.
Speaker 5: I'm glad you called out purple because I love how
Speaker 5: often purple is the color of danger.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah.
Speaker 5: When it comes to differentiating Queen Ann's lace and poison hemlock,
Speaker 5: purple is actually one of the identifiers of purple splotches
Speaker 5: that you will see on poison hemlock, but you will
Speaker 5: not see on Queen ANNs lace wild carrots. For cal
Speaker 5: parsnips versus giant hogweed, cal parsnips have this like very
Speaker 5: fine kind of fuzz all over them, and these really
Speaker 5: cute papery sheets over their leaves before the leaves go
Speaker 5: ahead and shoot out. Also, their leaves are very even
Speaker 5: in their serration, whereas giant hogweeds, leaves similar shape, irregular serration,
Speaker 5: which I feel like makes sense. Chaos means bad, organize
Speaker 5: means good. And there are a couple other tells to
Speaker 5: like the hollowness of the stem on cow parsnips. But
Speaker 5: the moral of the story is I baby set a
Speaker 5: stand of cow parsnips for a full calendar year to
Speaker 5: watch it go through its entire life stickle before I
Speaker 5: finally eat some last year.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that is an investment of time.
Speaker 5: Did pay off, it did, Oh my gosh, absolutely delicious.
Speaker 5: The fried flower buds right before the flowers open especially,
Speaker 5: are just a taste to behold. Behold this for sight,
Speaker 5: still a taste to behold. And the leaves are this
Speaker 5: other beautiful and aromatic this time of year, a little
Speaker 5: bit reminiscent of celery, which makes sense another abaca family member,
Speaker 5: also a little reminiscent of almost like coriander, and a
Speaker 5: little bit of burnt oranginess, which becomes much more prominent
Speaker 5: in their seeds later on in the season. So absolutely
Speaker 5: worth it. I just made a flatbread with some cow
Speaker 5: parts that leaves diced into the dough just yesterday.
Speaker 3: A plush A plus nice A plus.
Speaker 5: Ten out of ten would recommend to a friend. My
Speaker 5: caveat is if you were going to harvest it, I
Speaker 5: don't know, maybe babysit it for a year to make
Speaker 5: sure that you're not gonna get a burn and be
Speaker 5: very sad. And also only harvest from healthy stands of it.
Speaker 5: The stand that I harvest from has doubled in size
Speaker 5: year over year, two years in a row. It's the
Speaker 5: only reason why I feel comfy harvesting from it.
Speaker 3: Ah, do you ever take people with you and give
Speaker 3: up your spots? Or how protective of certain plants are foragers?
Speaker 5: Oh, oh my gosh. It really does depend on the plant.
Speaker 5: There's a handful of people who I've taken to some
Speaker 5: of my like my secret spots, some of my you know,
Speaker 5: this time of year, there's ramps and cut leaf toothwort
Speaker 5: as far as the eye can see, kind of spots.
Speaker 3: Side note, what are ramps? Despite sounding like a disease
Speaker 3: you get from a dirty hot tub, ramps are just
Speaker 3: an oniony, leaky type of scalion oniony type of plant.
Speaker 3: Only they're free if you find them. And also trendy
Speaker 3: and cut leaf toothwort, which sounds like another affliction. It's
Speaker 3: a wasabi horse radishye tasting plant that has gonza looking
Speaker 3: leaves and little pinkish flowers.
Speaker 4: Also, did you know that.
Speaker 3: Wort means root, so toothwort plants have roots that look
Speaker 3: like discarded teeth. So never let anyone tell you that
Speaker 3: science isn't goth.
Speaker 5: I'm not crazy possessive over any of the spaces because
Speaker 5: none of them belong to me. Yeah, and it's just
Speaker 5: it's not worth getting all riled up about because somedays
Speaker 5: someone's gonna find out about it. The only experience I've
Speaker 5: had with something that I tried to keep secret and
Speaker 5: then the beans got spilled but not by me, is
Speaker 5: the Persimon tree near my house, a sweet, curious soul
Speaker 5: using I naturalists last summer probably looked up and said,
Speaker 5: oh my god, this tree is full of these adorable, cute,
Speaker 5: little green fruits. I'm going to figure out what it is.
Speaker 5: I naturalist, being the great app that it is, immediately
Speaker 5: was like, ooh, Dio Spiro's Virginiana. Congratulations, friend, you've found
Speaker 5: the first sympontry. And so they tagged it and now
Speaker 5: I am not the only person who visits that tree
Speaker 5: during the fall and winter, and that's okay.
Speaker 3: Do you ever see anyone else rolling up with a
Speaker 3: basket and are you're like, oh, hello, oh, hello, hello, Oh.
Speaker 5: I've just missed people before. I've seen people like taking
Speaker 5: their plastic bag and like hopping into their car and
Speaker 5: driving away right as I blocking up with my bag.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, And.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh oh, no, friend, come back.
Speaker 3: So foragers make friends. Just respect the supply, and no
Speaker 3: one will have to grapple sweat soaked on a lawn
Speaker 3: for a handful of persimmons.
Speaker 4: So the first rule of forger club.
Speaker 3: Is not don't talk about forger club. Let's say that
Speaker 3: you're a baby forager and you're just starting. You're inspired
Speaker 3: by someone with amazing energy and knowledge on TikTok, and
Speaker 3: you decide I'm going to start eating my neighborhood. Where
Speaker 3: do you think is a good place to start? Or
Speaker 3: like dandelions and entry level? What do we got ooh?
Speaker 5: I would say dandelions are an excellent entry level edible,
Speaker 5: not just because they are almost universally recognizable, but because
Speaker 5: every single part of the plant is useful. You can
Speaker 5: eat the flowers, you can pickle the flower stems. You
Speaker 5: can eat the greens. Ooh, you can ferment the greens,
Speaker 5: making like a sour kraut with dandelion young yum yum,
Speaker 5: very tasty. The taproom, you can go ahead and like
Speaker 5: dig it up and either eat it like a root veggie.
Speaker 5: Know it's a little it's a little bit bitter, So
Speaker 5: a lot of people will roast it and grind it
Speaker 5: into a coffee substitute or dice it, roast it and
Speaker 5: then throw it into some alcohol tomass rate to make bitters.
Speaker 5: Plant is useful. So I feel like that's a great
Speaker 5: gateway plant because if you have fun with that, odds
Speaker 5: are you will have fun with more of them. In
Speaker 5: terms of other really easily recognizable ones, and I think
Speaker 5: this accidentally ended up being a gateway foraging plant for
Speaker 5: a lot of folks. Are Magnolias. So many of us
Speaker 5: have Magnolia's planet as ornamentals in our neighborhoods. They're one
Speaker 5: of those plants that, for whatever reason, a lot of
Speaker 5: us know the names of, and those white and pink
Speaker 5: flowers if we're talking about like saucer, Magnolias are so recognizable,
Speaker 5: so hard to confuse with anything else because I mean,
Speaker 5: Magnolia's as a genus are very unique flowers. That's what
Speaker 5: happens when you decide to push pause on evolution a
Speaker 5: couple million years ago. That's fine, And so that one's
Speaker 5: been a really great one too. And to see so
Speaker 5: many people going out and gathering them and making Magnolia
Speaker 5: syrups and making the Magnolia snap cookies was so exciting.
Speaker 5: We all know that magnolia smell amazing, but did you
Speaker 5: know that their petals kind of taste like ginger? So
Speaker 5: we're gonna do a play on a ginger snap cookie.
Speaker 5: It's a Magnolia snap cookie. Flower work cookie flower Work.
Speaker 3: Also side note, if you're not on TikTok, don't freak out,
Speaker 3: don't worry about it. Check out Black Forager on YouTube,
Speaker 3: where Alexis has posted a ton of recipes, including one
Speaker 3: for Magnolia cookies uploaded about a month or two ago.
Speaker 3: And I was just over on this videos page to
Speaker 3: grab that sound bite, and then I read the description
Speaker 3: and I had to include this. So in the description,
Speaker 3: Alexis rites, I'm super proud of these cookies, and not
Speaker 3: just because they passed the taste test with my partner's
Speaker 3: family but because a year ago, I don't think I
Speaker 3: would have felt confident creating a cookie recipe on my own.
Speaker 3: And as I found myself sitting on the couch this
Speaker 3: afternoon smelling like nothing but magnolia flowers and warm sugar,
Speaker 3: I realized I am quite happy with who I am
Speaker 3: right now. But yes, her TikTok Instagram YouTube, I'll have
Speaker 3: great recipes and the same handle at Black Forager, and
Speaker 3: she has recipes including ones for dandelions and Magnolia's Easy
Speaker 3: Gateway foraging plants.
Speaker 5: So those would be my two recommendations off the top
Speaker 5: of my head if you are in the Midwest or
Speaker 5: along the East coast like I am. Papas are another
Speaker 5: great one, Asamina cherloba, but it is not poppa season yet.
Speaker 3: What is a po pas Ooh?
Speaker 5: So, Popas are the largest native fruit to North America
Speaker 5: if you're not counting squashed squash are really cool too.
Speaker 3: Okay, but back to poppas, which look like if green
Speaker 3: potatoes grew on trees. But what do they taste like?
Speaker 5: They taste as if a mango and a banana had
Speaker 5: a baby. If you get a good one, I'm going
Speaker 5: to give that caveat because last week a friend of
Speaker 5: mine pulled me aside and said, I don't know if
Speaker 5: I did something wrong, but I tried a pop paul
Speaker 5: last year and I didn't like it. And papas are
Speaker 5: a great adventure. They don't breede. True, it's very hard
Speaker 5: to assume how a papa from a certain tree is
Speaker 5: gonna taste until you're tasting it. But when you find
Speaker 5: good ones, oh body, they are fantastic, and they do
Speaker 5: look like little mangoes hanging out in the trees. The
Speaker 5: trees have these humongous, glossy, dark green leaves that make
Speaker 5: them very easy to recognize from a distance. Once you've
Speaker 5: seen one, you start seeing them everywhere if you live
Speaker 5: in a region that they're native to. And they are
Speaker 5: a fruit that did not develop for us. They developed
Speaker 5: for megafauna. They developed for giant slots to eat the
Speaker 5: fruit whole and poop out the seeds. But now we
Speaker 5: get to enjoy them, which is cool.
Speaker 3: That actually brings up the point of native and invasive species?
Speaker 3: Are we doing the earth a mitzvah by eating invasive species?
Speaker 3: And how do you find out in your region what's
Speaker 3: got to go and what's got to flourish.
Speaker 5: Oh. I absolutely think we're doing Mother Nature a solid
Speaker 5: by eating invasives, because eating them is much better for
Speaker 5: the environment than spraying them, which is when I see
Speaker 5: a lot of cities, towns, municipalities turning to when it
Speaker 5: comes to eradication of certain species. Two that come to
Speaker 5: mind for all of us kicking it on the eastern
Speaker 5: half of the United States are garlic mustard, which is
Speaker 5: very much in season in oh Gosh, pretty much early
Speaker 5: through late spring here in Ohio. Right now while we
Speaker 5: are recording this, it is flowering, So I'm just going
Speaker 5: through and picking the flower heads off of all of
Speaker 5: them that I see and bringing them home to have
Speaker 5: them for dinner, but mostly just because I don't want
Speaker 5: them to set seed, because they are very prolific spreaders.
Speaker 5: They are a non native brassica, and brassicas are just
Speaker 5: so good at their job, and their job is being
Speaker 5: spicy and spreading seeds.
Speaker 3: And what is a brassica, you ask, That's I'm here.
Speaker 3: Brasica are things such as broccoli and cabbage and kale
Speaker 3: and rudebega and colabbie and brussels sprouts and mustards and
Speaker 3: the oil of the brassica seeds is where canola oil
Speaker 3: comes from. There's no such thing as a canola. The
Speaker 3: word just means Canadian oil low acid because it was
Speaker 3: invented in Canada.
Speaker 4: Jarrett, did you like what I told you all about
Speaker 4: that earlier?
Speaker 5: I loved it. I loved learning about Canadian oil low.
Speaker 3: Acidno, there's no such thing as a canola. Okay, But
Speaker 3: back to yellow mustard flowers which bloom in early springtime
Speaker 3: in California, and everyone gets so hyped up about nature
Speaker 3: or not knowing that it's wildly invasive and may have
Speaker 3: been introduced by Spanish missionaries tossing it out like confetti
Speaker 3: on their path up the California coast. Mustard it's so
Speaker 3: good for Instagram pictures, but native plant enthusiasts are hate it.
Speaker 5: Hey yeah, oh my gosh. If you are in California,
Speaker 5: go find all of the mustard, pull it up, eat
Speaker 5: it blanket, put it into pesto, put it in a pickle,
Speaker 5: the stems.
Speaker 3: Eat all of it, get rid of it, eat it please.
Speaker 5: And I know here we also have Japanese not lead,
Speaker 5: which is a prolific spreader, and it is kind of
Speaker 5: becoming a sturge in a lot of areas in the Northeast,
Speaker 5: we'll just see towns just spray the worst kind of
Speaker 5: chemicals onto them. Because it's a very hearty species. It's
Speaker 5: very good at the game of survival. So you kind
Speaker 5: of got to drown it in a lot of things
Speaker 5: that are not good for the rest of the environment
Speaker 5: if you want to get rid of them. But what
Speaker 5: a joy it would be if instead, you know, in
Speaker 5: the spring, when they start putting all of their chonky
Speaker 5: little shoots up, people were just going through cutting them
Speaker 5: off or pulling them up and collecting them for people
Speaker 5: to eat.
Speaker 3: Eat that not weed. Northeast United States and actually every
Speaker 3: state it's up North Dakota, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida,
Speaker 3: and Hawaii who aren't yet overrun with it. If you're like,
Speaker 3: what is the not weed? Okay, So it's been in
Speaker 3: the US since the eighteen sixties when it was given
Speaker 3: to a nursery owner in New York, and now it's everywhere.
Speaker 3: Japanese not weed. Its root systems can span seventy feet.
Speaker 3: It grows up to one and a half stories tall
Speaker 3: eight inches a day, and it has these large green
Speaker 3: leaves and a bunch of little white flowers, and the
Speaker 3: stems look a little like bamboo, which is why it's
Speaker 3: called American bamboo. It's not bamboo. And in spring sprouts
Speaker 3: look like reddish asparagus, and it has a sour flavor
Speaker 3: or kind of lemone like rhubarb, which is where it
Speaker 3: got the nickname donkey rubar. Now, if you want to
Speaker 3: name your edmp donkey rhubarb, think again, people, British electronica
Speaker 3: outfit AFX twin already beat you to it. Why why
Speaker 3: does AFX twin care about donkey rubarb? Because in England,
Speaker 3: if you have this invasive not weed on your property,
Speaker 3: banks might refuse to give you a mortgage because it's
Speaker 3: so robust and so hard to eradicate, and it ruins
Speaker 3: foundations of buildings. And in prepping for the twenty twelve Olympics,
Speaker 3: London spent the equivalent of one hundred million dollars to
Speaker 3: get rid of Japanese not weed on ten acres one
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars ten million dollars an acre. Connecticut weed
Speaker 3: scientist Jatinder Alloc has said ominously there is no insect,
Speaker 3: pest or disease in the United States that can keep
Speaker 3: it in check.
Speaker 4: So what do you do?
Speaker 3: One make sure it hasn't been doused in herbicides and
Speaker 3: to eat it. It grows through the cracks in a
Speaker 3: lexusis deck.
Speaker 5: Because for a species that is very quickly changing the
Speaker 5: landscape on the outskirts of a lot of cities, it
Speaker 5: is delicious. It's very rhubarb esque, but slightly more vegetable
Speaker 5: than rhubarb. That being said, it does lend itself both
Speaker 5: sweet and savory so well. I made sorbet with it
Speaker 5: last year that I was obsessed with. I need to
Speaker 5: make it again this year for a class over the weekend.
Speaker 5: I did like a fun little sauteed grains and threw
Speaker 5: a couple of the shoots in. And they just add
Speaker 5: a lot of lemony brightness to any dish. And when
Speaker 5: the shoots are young and you cook them just right,
Speaker 5: they get kind of like melt in your mouth when
Speaker 5: you cook them. For my friends who do eat the eggs,
Speaker 5: I hear that they're a wonderful addition to an omelet.
Speaker 5: They're delicious. And what a joy it would be if
Speaker 5: we just suddenly had cities with armfuls truck falls of
Speaker 5: free lemony Japanese nottweed shoots this time of year instead
Speaker 5: of just going and like dousing them in herbicides.
Speaker 3: On the topic of herbosides, that's something I didn't even
Speaker 3: think of. But when you're foraging, is that something that
Speaker 3: you have to be more careful of than p and how.
Speaker 6: Do you go?
Speaker 5: Oh, yeah, I'm way more worried about herbicides that I'm
Speaker 5: worried about. Yeah, there are a couple of things that
Speaker 5: I tell people to look out for when they're foraging
Speaker 5: in urban spaces. I think some people don't realize how
Speaker 5: visually apparent it is when an area has been treated
Speaker 5: recently with herbicides. You will see like rings of discoloration
Speaker 5: around the very obviously sprayed weeds. So if you're looking
Speaker 5: at someone's lawn and it is otherwise like it's ninety
Speaker 5: eight ninety nine percent beautiful grass throughout the rest of
Speaker 5: the lawn, and you look around the fringes and you
Speaker 5: see some weeds doing their thing because they're they're hardy
Speaker 5: af and stubborn AF, you should probably stay away from those.
Speaker 5: Because the way that people get perfectly manicured monoculture lawns
Speaker 5: is help from herb sides. So those guys I typically
Speaker 5: leave alone. If you see any odd discoloration either on
Speaker 5: the plant or in a like little perimeter ring around
Speaker 5: the plant, leave it alone. Absolutely, any irregular wilting that
Speaker 5: you wouldn't expect to see this time of year, absolutely
Speaker 5: leave it alone. And just for the sake of things
Speaker 5: like run off and what not to and exhaust. I
Speaker 5: give a pretty wide margin to streets that are wider
Speaker 5: than two lanes, and an even wider margin to railroads.
Speaker 3: Oh really because of a diesel engines? Yeah, Oh, I
Speaker 3: wasn't sure if it was that or just the you know,
Speaker 3: getting lost in a playlist, headphones on and just atitute,
Speaker 3: you know, Yi.
Speaker 5: And that's and that's how we lost the forager.
Speaker 3: Wow knows that when it comes to where you forage,
Speaker 3: how do you do it differently in the city versus
Speaker 3: if you're out on a high And what kinds of
Speaker 3: stuff do you find in each place?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So in the city, it's going to be a
Speaker 5: lot more of the kind of classic quintessential weeds, the
Speaker 5: plants that like taking advantage of disturbed ground where they
Speaker 5: don't have to outcompete any of our other native species.
Speaker 5: So right now in the cities, I'm seeing a lot
Speaker 5: of Queen Anne's lace, already putting up their new sets
Speaker 5: of leaves for the year, a ton of day of thelions,
Speaker 5: a lot of clover, white clover, red clover, and now
Speaker 5: sweet clover is starting to show up to hang out,
Speaker 5: a ton of mugwort. I passed a couple very healthy
Speaker 5: stands of mugwort while I was on a walk around
Speaker 5: the neighborhood today that I will be visiting this weekend
Speaker 5: because I'm in the mood for mugwart roasted potatoes.
Speaker 3: So what does mugwort look like? Okay, I had to
Speaker 3: look it up. It's a member of the daisy family,
Speaker 3: so it's leaves look like daisy leaves, and it has
Speaker 3: clusters of these drooped bell buds at the tip of
Speaker 3: a stock. And mugwort can grow meters and meters high.
Speaker 3: And while scientists call it artemisia vulgaris close friends call
Speaker 3: it riverside wormwood, felon herb old uncle, Henry a naughty man,
Speaker 3: And I feel like I have to buy mugwort a
Speaker 3: beer to hear how it got those nicknames. But mugwort
Speaker 3: just means marsh root, and it's best to pick the
Speaker 3: leaves and buds between July to September, and you can
Speaker 3: season some meat with it. You can make a mochi dessert,
Speaker 3: or look into its medicinal purposes. And Indigenous people in
Speaker 3: North America used mugwort for a wide variety of ills
Speaker 3: like pitstank to colds and flues, rousing folks from comas,
Speaker 3: and even inducing labor so ethnop Pharmacology episode anyone, Yes,
Speaker 3: but yes. When this was recorded a few weeks ago,
Speaker 3: Alexis was planning to gather some mugwort and roast potatoes
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 5: Just a lot of the friends who you see in
Speaker 5: joining spaces that maybe have been modified for something else.
Speaker 5: A couple empty lots in our neighborhood in which the
Speaker 5: ground was turned over before the winter, and now that
Speaker 5: ground is just covered in weeds.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 5: Whereas if I'm in the forests right now or out
Speaker 5: in the woods, oh gosh, it's like almost a completely
Speaker 5: different biome. We're still in the middle of spring ephemerals seasons.
Speaker 5: I'm seeing trout lilies, trilliums, ramps, cut leaf two for
Speaker 5: Virginia bluebells. I'm starting to see pheasant back mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, morales,
Speaker 5: of course. And then you have a lot of the
Speaker 5: trees whose early leaves are edible starting to leave out,
Speaker 5: like your maples. You have pines, spruces, and furs putting
Speaker 5: out their new growth, and their needles are very soft
Speaker 5: right now and great to incorporate into meals too. So
Speaker 5: it's a fun game kind of having to change the
Speaker 5: mindset of what you're looking for depending on where you are.
Speaker 5: And I'm lucky that where I live here in Ohio,
Speaker 5: while I very much live in the city Columbus proper,
Speaker 5: I do not have to go very far to not
Speaker 5: feel like I'm in the city anymore.
Speaker 3: By the way, congratulations on your mushroom find. Thank you
Speaker 3: pretty big deal.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, I know. I feel like morels are
Speaker 5: just like a badge of honor in the foraging community.
Speaker 5: I feel like I haven't been an official forager until.
Speaker 3: Now, I know. I saw that. There are so many
Speaker 3: questions from patrons, and so many of them start off
Speaker 3: congratulations on the morale, Like so many, you are so
Speaker 3: thrilled for you. I was wondering what percent of your
Speaker 3: diet do you think is foraged versus market.
Speaker 5: Ooh, I love this question because it varies a lot
Speaker 5: throughout the year, and we just finished the time of
Speaker 5: year where it's like maybe ten or like fifteen percent
Speaker 5: in the winter through early spring, and now I think
Speaker 5: we're kicking it up probably the closer around twenty five percent,
Speaker 5: just because there's not a whole lot of the high
Speaker 5: caloric value, high nutrition value plants out to play. But
Speaker 5: oh my gosh, once we get to late summer and
Speaker 5: into the fall, where it's like acorn season, pop las season,
Speaker 5: hazel not season, person in season, that's the time of
Speaker 5: year where I can have entire days where everything that
Speaker 5: I'm cooking, with the exception of maybe a little bit
Speaker 5: of flour being thrown in or you know, an olive
Speaker 5: oil being added into a pan, is something that I foraged.
Speaker 5: So it very much fluctuates as we progress through the year.
Speaker 3: I have so many questions from listeners. I have thirty
Speaker 3: five pages of questions from listeners. Yeah, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: thirty five pages of questions single space, So a lot
Speaker 3: of questions, so many people who just love you. I mean,
Speaker 3: I can't. I should just forward you all these questions.
Speaker 3: So if you're ever having any kind of bad day.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, people love you so much. Can I ask
Speaker 3: you some of their questions? Oh?
Speaker 5: My, oh my gosh.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 5: Do we have time to go through all of them?
Speaker 3: I wish we did thirty five pages of questions. Okay,
Speaker 3: but before we start answering them, first, we're going to
Speaker 3: take a pit stop to donate some money to a
Speaker 3: charity of the ologists choosing. And this week Lexus chows
Speaker 3: Backyard base Camp, which aims to inspire Black, Indigenous and
Speaker 3: all people of color across Baltimore City to find nature
Speaker 3: where they are and empowers them to explore further. And
Speaker 3: Backyard base Camp also offers garden consultations, educator training, habitat
Speaker 3: discovery programs, and more. And they're awesome. We've donated to
Speaker 3: them a few times in the past, so check them
Speaker 3: out and consider donating to That is Backyard Basecamp dot org.
Speaker 3: And that was made possible by sponsors of the show,
Speaker 3: who you may hear about.
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Speaker 3: Okay, let's rifle through a basket of your questions and
Speaker 3: then feast on her answers. Okay, two great questions. I
Speaker 3: really loved one from Lyd Hodnett, who says it seems
Speaker 3: to me that it's important to keep in mind that
Speaker 3: there are respectful ways to forage at least or should be.
Speaker 3: Are there guidelines for this and do these guidelines draw
Speaker 3: knowledge or inspiration from the indigenous people of the region
Speaker 3: you're foraging and also says I feel like Native people
Speaker 3: are routinely harassed for performing traditional actions like foraging. Well,
Speaker 3: White people get away with taking more than they need
Speaker 3: and segouiny. Dana says that she learned about plants and
Speaker 3: their medicinal values, among other things, from my parents. She
Speaker 3: and her dad are Panopscott, and that knowledge has been
Speaker 3: passed down, but she is wondering kind of how you
Speaker 3: gain the knowledge You're not going to poison yourself because
Speaker 3: she trusts learning from elders more than books, because oh yeah,
Speaker 3: she would rather learn in the field hands on. So yeah,
Speaker 3: any thoughts on kind of what you've learned from indigenous
Speaker 3: cultures and foraging?
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, I mean, that's the indigenous peoples of
Speaker 5: the Americas. That's like the crux of everything that foraging
Speaker 5: is here right now. Their knowledge is the foundation of
Speaker 5: the knowledge that everyone else has had the opportunity to
Speaker 5: interact with and build upon. I know Michael Twitty talks
Speaker 5: about this a little bit in his book The Cooking
Speaker 5: Gene because a lot of enslaved black folks in the
Speaker 5: South foraged, but obviously the people who they got that
Speaker 5: information and that knowledge from were the indigenous people. So
Speaker 5: coming from my dad's side of the family, my dad's
Speaker 5: mom hails from the Seneca up in like the New
Speaker 5: York area, but she passed away when my dad was
Speaker 5: in high school. So he got like bits and pieces
Speaker 5: and little like inklings about certain plants in certain foods,
Speaker 5: but not in the way that he wished he had,
Speaker 5: and honestly, he also knew a whole lot about plants.
Speaker 5: I'm very lucky that, as a person of color, both
Speaker 5: of my parents are very outdoorsy, also got a lot
Speaker 5: from his dad's side of the family down in Mississippi,
Speaker 5: from bits of information that they had been passing through
Speaker 5: the generations since they had been enslaved there. So yeah,
Speaker 5: of course, I feel like some in like some way
Speaker 5: or another, every single one of us who's talking about
Speaker 5: foraging in North America is only doing so because of
Speaker 5: the generosity with knowledge of the indigenous people who now, yeah,
Speaker 5: do not get to continue some of those practices in
Speaker 5: some of that land stewardship. That is the whole reason
Speaker 5: why this nation looked the way that it did period.
Speaker 5: I honestly feel like we need more Indigenous voices front
Speaker 5: and center when it comes to foraging here in the
Speaker 5: United States, because while I like to think that I
Speaker 5: know a whole lot about foraging in a way that
Speaker 5: preserves for not just me next year, but me in
Speaker 5: ten years, and children in twenty years and their children
Speaker 5: in fifty years, sixty years, I know that I don't
Speaker 5: know everything.
Speaker 3: Alexis notes that we could do an entire series of
Speaker 3: episodes on the role of indigenous land stewardship before colonization,
Speaker 3: and this field does have an ology, environmental anthropology. For
Speaker 3: the proof that I will make this podcast until I
Speaker 3: die because there are so many good ologies. So please
Speaker 3: just get used to me friends. Speaking of friends, first
Speaker 3: time question asker Alexander Holland rode in to say, quote,
Speaker 3: I love Alexis so much, I'm going to die of excitement.
Speaker 3: And Alexander wants to know how do you use foraging
Speaker 3: to connect to other people and to yourself? And Constantine Getnachenko,
Speaker 3: as are there any.
Speaker 4: Clubs that I can join?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 3: Yes, do forgers hang out together? How does one get
Speaker 3: invited to those gathering gatherings?
Speaker 5: Oh? Absolutely, we have a whole little community. I love it.
Speaker 5: I love it so much. We have Facebook groups divided
Speaker 5: by region and divided by country and divided by continent,
Speaker 5: and just a global foraging groups too that really let
Speaker 5: us bond with one another past all of our borders.
Speaker 5: So it's great. You get to know the people very
Speaker 5: closely who are near to you. I'm in like a
Speaker 5: Midwest foraging group. I'm in an Ohio foraging group. I'm
Speaker 5: in a Central Ohio foraging group, so we definitely have
Speaker 5: a community, and we exchange recipes, and we exchange ideas,
Speaker 5: and we build each other up, and we buy each
Speaker 5: other's books. It's really it's really nice. I'm so thankful
Speaker 5: that the Internet makes it possible to digitally, you know,
Speaker 5: get to know all of these people and spend time
Speaker 5: with them, especially in the age of COVID, because it's
Speaker 5: not like any of us were able to go out
Speaker 5: and actually see each other in person.
Speaker 3: Such an interesting thing about the last year for you is,
Speaker 3: you know, when so many people felt so isolated, they
Speaker 3: gained a new appreciation for being outside and then also
Speaker 3: had like a really cool new friend to show them,
Speaker 3: you know, which is so great. We have so many
Speaker 3: questions that use the word nubie. By the bye, so
Speaker 3: many people, literally almost fifty folks asked this question, so
Speaker 3: I'm just going to shout out for this one the
Speaker 3: first time. Question askers including Kaitlyn James, Alex Nilsen, Curtis Rodrick,
Speaker 3: Dane Shuckman, Katie Kyle, and Bennet Gerber, wants to know
Speaker 3: what are some go to foraging tips. The mushy what
Speaker 3: are your favorite tools for different kinds of foraging? So
Speaker 3: just one huge question, how do you start?
Speaker 5: My the Black Forager God to getting started foraging is threefold.
Speaker 5: Number one one is get a foraging guide that is
Speaker 5: as specific as you can find for your area. For
Speaker 5: some places, that's just going to be a regional foraging
Speaker 5: guide like the book Midwest Foraging. For some places, like
Speaker 5: where some of my family lives in Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard,
Speaker 5: there is literally a Martha's Vineyard Guide to Wild Edibles
Speaker 5: that their conservation society puts together each year. So find
Speaker 5: a guide as hyper specific as you can find is
Speaker 5: number one. Number two is to join a regional foraging
Speaker 5: group on Reddit or on Facebook wherever you find groups
Speaker 5: of people hanging out digitally, because one, it will introduce
Speaker 5: you to people who are like minded but maybe have
Speaker 5: a bit more experience than you. And two, what a
Speaker 5: perfect way to see what is in season because you know,
Speaker 5: ten fifteen times a day other people are posting what
Speaker 5: they're seeing and they don't lift you far away from you.
Speaker 3: So get a book, join a group, and then what's
Speaker 3: the last step?
Speaker 5: And then three make friends with one of the folks
Speaker 5: in that group and go out with them, because you
Speaker 5: can't replicate seeing the plants in real time in all
Speaker 5: three dimensions. For me, that's where the real learning comes,
Speaker 5: and that's where the real memorization comes from. Just for
Speaker 5: me personally, I can see a plant or a mushroom
Speaker 5: in a book until the cows come home. And the
Speaker 5: way that it'll stick in my mind, and the way
Speaker 5: that I will be able to, like, point from across
Speaker 5: a field and be like, look, it's yellow rocket is
Speaker 5: being able to see it in person for the first
Speaker 5: time and get a good gander at it. So hit
Speaker 5: the trails with someone who's been at it for a
Speaker 5: bit longer than you. There is no replacement for it.
Speaker 3: Well all, see, I guess you can't smell a book, CanYa,
Speaker 3: but smell must come in to it, right, you can't.
Speaker 5: And so when people are like pheasant back mushrooms, they
Speaker 5: smell like cucumbers. Well, yeah, there's no scratch and sniff
Speaker 5: that I know of, at least forging books yet I
Speaker 5: don't know that could be a million dollar idea of
Speaker 5: out there scratch and sniff foraging. Yeah, I'd buy.
Speaker 3: It, Okay, So I looked it up and I found
Speaker 3: one title the Scratch and Sniff Book of Weeds, but
Speaker 3: alas on second glance, it just said weed, not weeds.
Speaker 3: So the Scratch and Sniff Book of Weed. The blurb
Speaker 3: on the front boasts this book is dope. Also, I
Speaker 3: looked up when is a plant a weed? And essentially
Speaker 3: a weed is just eddy plant that is unwanted in
Speaker 3: a human controlled setting. And so weed as a name
Speaker 3: for marijuana perhaps as ironic as they come, because for
Speaker 3: the most part it seems pretty wanted. Ps is weed
Speaker 3: and reefer and trees and laughing grass, cabbage that's smoochy,
Speaker 3: woochy poochy. Is that even to North America? Nope, it
Speaker 3: originated in Central Asia before making its way to Africa
Speaker 3: and then the Caribbean and South America. And then after
Speaker 3: prohibition ended, the agency that became the DEA was like, quick,
Speaker 3: what should we ban next? And they turn their attention
Speaker 3: to this smokable plant that humans have used for eons,
Speaker 3: that sticky, icky skunk weed, which brings us back.
Speaker 5: To smells the devil's lettuce.
Speaker 3: But that must be good to know when you're out foraging,
Speaker 3: that you're using a lot of your senses at once too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And That's one thing I think so many people
Speaker 5: get very worried about lookalikes, which you should. That little
Speaker 5: like ladder of anxiety is something that keeps you safe.
Speaker 5: But I can't even fully communicate how you are truly
Speaker 5: using all of your senses for iding. Yes, I made
Speaker 5: a video on how to tell the difference between Queen
Speaker 5: Anne's lace and poison hemlock when they are still we babies,
Speaker 5: just we little rosettes. When honestly, the best way to
Speaker 5: tell the difference is that poison hemlock smells like rat
Speaker 5: p and quinn Hans lace doesn't. Poison hemlock does not
Speaker 5: smell like something you want to put in your fist,
Speaker 5: And for good reason.
Speaker 3: If you don't like rat p.
Speaker 5: If you don't like rape, if you do like rat p,
Speaker 5: I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 3: But what if something smells like fungus genitals and you
Speaker 3: like it and want to put it in your mouth? Well,
Speaker 3: all mushrooms share that characteristic, Maybe not if you wanted
Speaker 3: to put in your mouth, but they're all fungus genitals.
Speaker 3: And so many patrons including Ned Lansing, Dori Brenda Anderson, Eden,
Speaker 3: Sunshine Morel Hunter's Madeline Duke and Curtis Rodrick, Rebecca White,
Speaker 3: Settle Haley Everson, Rachel Stern's, Kate Bell, Madeline Winter, New Listener,
Speaker 3: Nicholas Maritime archaeologist, Chanelle Zapp, Christy Kazakhov, Sebastian Papanou, Anya
Speaker 3: Marian R. J. Deutsch, Catherine Jamison, Andy c and Zoe
Speaker 3: Hull all asked about this in thimble Whim's words, I
Speaker 3: love forging for garlic, grass, fiddle heads, and dandelions. I
Speaker 3: never forge for mushrooms because I don't know enough and
Speaker 3: I'm way too addicted to not dying. And Rachel Kasher
Speaker 3: wrote in all mushrooms are edible, some mushrooms are only
Speaker 3: edible once. Where do we even start learning proper identification?
Speaker 3: I have a lot of questions about mushrooms because, Okay,
Speaker 3: set me straight here. I feel like mushrooms is like
Speaker 3: you level up to mushrooms. Is that correct?
Speaker 5: So? I feel like you level up to mushrooms because
Speaker 5: I grew up being very plant specific in my study
Speaker 5: of what's growing around me. So I think it kind
Speaker 5: of depends on what you feel more comfortable learning. First.
Speaker 5: For me, I guess I've just I've been learning about
Speaker 5: plants for long enough and interacting with them for long enough,
Speaker 5: then I can go into a new space in a
Speaker 5: region that I'm somewhat familiar with and be like, I
Speaker 5: have a good idea of what I'm going to find here.
Speaker 5: Flora Wise, you do not ask me what I think
Speaker 5: I'm gonna find fun guy wise, because I will not
Speaker 5: have a good answer for you. Every time I find
Speaker 5: a mushroom, it is a pleasant surprise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someone about your morel's, ask Zoe Hall says, Oh
Speaker 3: my goodness, I love Alexis so much. Yay, she just
Speaker 3: found her first morel So I gotta know what is
Speaker 3: the secret to this elusive cerebral delight.
Speaker 5: So unfortunately, the only secret that I know that seems
Speaker 5: to be worth it salt, is the one that I
Speaker 5: did have in that video, and it is if you
Speaker 5: are in an area that is known for having moral
Speaker 5: mushrooms and the ground temperature has been consistently between like
Speaker 5: forty and sixty degrees and it has rained within the
Speaker 5: last week, look for trees that are dead and have
Speaker 5: bark starting to peel off of them. The cool thing
Speaker 5: about morel's is they begin their life in between the
Speaker 5: cells of those trees, and then when those trees die,
Speaker 5: that is when morels then kind of convert to breaking
Speaker 5: down that dead matter and put up those fruiting bodies.
Speaker 5: So you're you're going to be finding them near dead trees,
Speaker 5: but not trees that have been dead for a very
Speaker 5: long time, just because they would then be devoid of
Speaker 5: the nutrients that the morels need to grow and to fruit.
Speaker 5: And honestly, I've like had that knowledge up in my
Speaker 5: noggin for a while, and I still only found my
Speaker 5: first morel last.
Speaker 3: Week, so exciting. How did you cook it?
Speaker 5: I brought four home, and everyone was just because I've
Speaker 5: only had them dried before, which are still, you know, delightful,
Speaker 5: But there's something about like not having to reconstitute them
Speaker 5: that everybody says is just miraculous. So I went super simple.
Speaker 5: I melted a little bit of a vegan butter. I
Speaker 5: added in a splash of white wine, and I added
Speaker 5: in a little bit of dice field garlic, some alium banailey,
Speaker 5: just to like get some aromatics going. And then I
Speaker 5: have the morels and tossed them in the sauce, cooked
Speaker 5: them until the wine had cooked off and had caramelized.
Speaker 5: Them just a wee bit and then just ate them
Speaker 5: that way, and Ali, they were so good, I cried
Speaker 5: a little.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's so exciting. Is this the season
Speaker 3: for it?
Speaker 5: Or is that?
Speaker 3: Are they a seasonal mushy?
Speaker 5: So they are a seasonal mushy. Here on the eastern
Speaker 5: side of the United States, we are like right in
Speaker 5: the middle of morel season right now. In the Midwest specifically,
Speaker 5: things are a little up in the air right now.
Speaker 5: We've had some very chaotic weather. It has been both
Speaker 5: eighty degrees and we have had an inch of snow
Speaker 5: all within the last seven dates.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 5: So we have no idea if that means good things
Speaker 5: for the rest of morel season or if it means
Speaker 5: bad things for the rest of morels season. But on
Speaker 5: the West host, where you also have things like burn morels,
Speaker 5: those are going to be dependent on wildfires whether or
Speaker 5: not you're going to be able to find them, and
Speaker 5: morels season is much more like late winter morel mushrooms.
Speaker 5: They're kind of creepy, but at least they say it's good.
Speaker 3: Kender Sinclair wants to know if you write your songs
Speaker 3: ahead of time or if they are musical improv.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, what a great question. It is a
Speaker 5: little bit of both. If I'm just riffing in a
Speaker 5: video that is almost always just musical improv. I was
Speaker 5: in an improv group called Affirmative Distraction here in Columbus
Speaker 5: for a couple of years and all like improv group
Speaker 5: here in the city, and I love I love musical improv.
Speaker 5: It used to scare the crap out of me, and
Speaker 5: now it's one of my fun little side hobbies. That's
Speaker 5: a really the thing that I really enjoyed doing. But
Speaker 5: things that involve in oh, absolutely written ahead of time.
Speaker 5: I am not one of those people who can just
Speaker 5: pick up an instrument and be like, and now here's
Speaker 5: a song fresh out of my brane hole. I mean
Speaker 5: I can do that, it just won't be good understood.
Speaker 3: Great question from Catherine Jamison wants to know why are
Speaker 3: so many forged plants so mucilaginous.
Speaker 5: I think the answer is a lot of plants are mucilagenous,
Speaker 5: and we just don't cultivate a lot of them. So
Speaker 5: then when it's time to go out and forage things,
Speaker 5: you just get constantly surprised by the plants and the
Speaker 5: fung gui that do that do a slimy when you
Speaker 5: come to.
Speaker 3: A slimy, well, you know you you compared it to
Speaker 3: okra as a kind of a thickening agent, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: And that's exactly what I was going to mention. I
Speaker 5: was going to say, for folks who grew up eating okra,
Speaker 5: that is not a crazy surprising thing. But for people
Speaker 5: who didn't like, giving them something made with like mallow
Speaker 5: for the first time might be a bit of a
Speaker 5: squicky experience. Yeah, they're not prepared.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Just a little slippery, just a little bit,
Speaker 3: just a little slippy and from slime to something more serious.
Speaker 3: A lot of patrons had cultural questions about forging, like
Speaker 3: Riley Mcinness, Emily Richardson and Claudia Dana, and first time
Speaker 3: question asker Vicky Preston, who wrote in to say, so,
Speaker 3: I'm an Indigenous person living in my rural homelands and
Speaker 3: for us, foraging or gathering is still a common and
Speaker 3: necessary practice as much as it's always been. But Vicky
Speaker 3: wanted to know, alongside listeners Alexis Jarvis and Ammani al Kidwa,
Speaker 3: how and why can it be empowering as a black,
Speaker 3: Indigenous or person of color forager.
Speaker 5: My Instagram handle is a Black Forager, and that was
Speaker 5: one hundred percent on purpose, because one I didn't see
Speaker 5: a lot of people who looked like me in the space,
Speaker 5: and I still don't see a lot of people who
Speaker 5: look like me in the space. It's I honestly think
Speaker 5: of it kind of like an act of restorative justice
Speaker 5: to be a person of color who is foraging, because historically, culturally,
Speaker 5: and legally, a lot of barriers were put in place
Speaker 5: to prohibit us historically from being able to do so.
Speaker 5: I talk about it a little bit in a video
Speaker 5: that I'd made for Black History Month. But in the South,
Speaker 5: immediately after the Civil War, a lot of laws were
Speaker 5: put in place to purposefully curb recently freed black folks
Speaker 5: from being able to forage and trap to provide for themselves,
Speaker 5: essentially kind of holding them an economic bondage to the
Speaker 5: plantations so they you know, they weren't enslaved anymore, but
Speaker 5: now they pretty much have to be sharecroppers because there's
Speaker 5: not much else you can do, because trespass one from
Speaker 5: being a civil offense to being a criminal offense, which
Speaker 5: suddenly makes it a way more expensive problem for you.
Speaker 5: If you are on somebody else's land, and they don't
Speaker 5: want you to be there. But also, if you're recently freed,
Speaker 5: you don't have land of your own to be foraging on,
Speaker 5: to be growing things on, to be trapping on, to
Speaker 5: be hunting on, and both physically in some places but
Speaker 5: mostly metaphorically, fences were put up around public property, and
Speaker 5: in a lot of spaces it became illegal to forage
Speaker 5: and trap there too. A lot of that also has
Speaker 5: some history in the very beginnings of the national park
Speaker 5: movement in the late eighteen hundreds, you know, the eighteen
Speaker 5: eighties and the eighteen nineties, when a lot of quite
Speaker 5: men wanted to preserve the pristine conditions of the green
Speaker 5: spaces they saw around them, while completely ignoring the fact
Speaker 5: that the way that those green spaces became the way
Speaker 5: that they were were because of a lot of these
Speaker 5: symbiotic relationships between the people who were living off of
Speaker 5: them and the land itself. So when a lot of
Speaker 5: laws are put in place to purposefully disenfranchise people from
Speaker 5: being able to do something, it has usually a lot
Speaker 5: of generational and cultural skill Over here's a pretty big
Speaker 5: cultural barrier to hop over to be a person of color,
Speaker 5: even just existing in the outdoors when a lot of
Speaker 5: us have grandparents or even in my case, parents who
Speaker 5: grew up in a time where there was like a
Speaker 5: very real fear of being a black person in the
Speaker 5: case of my family, by yourself out in the middle
Speaker 5: of the woods, like that wasn't a situation that you
Speaker 5: would ever want to find yourself in for fear of
Speaker 5: extreme acts of violence. So for me to be a
Speaker 5: black woman foraging, yeah, it it feels like justice to me.
Speaker 5: It's an act that I feel like we should begin reclaiming.
Speaker 5: We have just as much a right to do it
Speaker 5: as anybody else. But because we have all of these
Speaker 5: historical and external factors working against us, there's just not
Speaker 5: a lot of us out here. Thankfully, I do see
Speaker 5: that beginning to change, and I hope to see it
Speaker 5: change even more rapidly as we move forward.
Speaker 3: Alexis notes that if your great grandparents aren't foraging, well
Speaker 3: they're not going to teach your grandparents how to forage,
Speaker 3: and they aren't going to teach your parents, who aren't
Speaker 3: going to teach you, and not to mention so so
Speaker 3: much oral tradition and teaching has been lost over the years,
Speaker 3: and I think One of the things that's so powerful
Speaker 3: about Alexis's lessons are that she has been captivated by
Speaker 3: foraging since she was five and has been studying it
Speaker 3: for years and years, And part of her work feels
Speaker 3: like carrying on a certain kind of oral tradition of
Speaker 3: her own and telling stories and showing us exactly what
Speaker 3: to look for, how to prepare it in a manner
Speaker 3: that has been missing through generations of trauma. And her
Speaker 3: work is igniting a new interest in folks who have
Speaker 3: been kept from this knowledge and resources. Gathered around the
Speaker 3: glow of our phones, folks listen intently to her lessons.
Speaker 3: I think it's so great that you're bringing so many
Speaker 3: people together who feel similarly. We Actually we have one question,
Speaker 3: Jessica Duncan, says, first time question asker and fellow black
Speaker 3: girl who loves plants here and is from the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 3: I'm interested in getting into foraging for mushies. However, I'm
Speaker 3: also concerned about trail erosion and the negative effects of
Speaker 3: trampling through forests. Do you have any tips for Deska
Speaker 3: on how to ethically and sustainably forage?
Speaker 5: Yes, Well, since she said that she is specifically interested
Speaker 5: in mushroom collecting, I would say if you have like
Speaker 5: a little pocket knife and you go ahead and just
Speaker 5: cut off the fruit and bodies instead of, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe disrupting the macilium that are doing their thing. A
Speaker 5: lot of foraging is honestly evaluating space by space where
Speaker 5: you are at any given time. If you are in
Speaker 5: a place that is having issues with erosion of soil,
Speaker 5: and you look around and you see signs of erosion
Speaker 5: of soil, you see a top layer with poor soil quality,
Speaker 5: you know, the wind blows and you see a whole
Speaker 5: lot of the kind of nutritionally depleted top soil blowing around,
Speaker 5: like that's probably not an area that you want to
Speaker 5: be taking any biodiversity out of you. You want to
Speaker 5: kind of give it as much of a chance to
Speaker 5: thrive as it could possibly have. So a lot of
Speaker 5: it is just reading the space that you're in, visually
Speaker 5: reading up on a space that you're going to be
Speaker 5: in ahead of time. And that doesn't even just go
Speaker 5: for things like erosion. I know, when I'm on the
Speaker 5: East Coast, if I'm foraging seaweed, I'm checking the water quality.
Speaker 5: Those are levels that are usually posted for commercial fishermen,
Speaker 5: but anybody who is out there, you know, fishing, clamming,
Speaker 5: in my case, dragging seaweed directly out of the ocean
Speaker 5: to put into their gullet. You also want to be
Speaker 5: knowing about the water temperature, aligal blooms, any spills that
Speaker 5: have happened in the area. So a little bit of
Speaker 5: it is just doing the research that you can if
Speaker 5: you are able for a space that you hope to
Speaker 5: be foraging from.
Speaker 3: Are those the dead man's fingers?
Speaker 5: Yes, Oh my god, I love deadan's fingers so much.
Speaker 3: Dead man's fingers, A healthy bouquet of them. Okay, so
Speaker 3: we're not talking about the mushroom called dead man's fingers,
Speaker 3: which truly are a ghastly grayish fingery looking site on
Speaker 3: the forest floor. Rather, these dead man's fingers are also
Speaker 3: called green sea fingers, stag seaweed, green fleece, and oyster thief,
Speaker 3: also known as codium for gila, if you're feeling specific now.
Speaker 3: Alexi says that she tries to use the binomial nomenaclature
Speaker 3: or genus and species format because so many forgeible foods
Speaker 3: have tons of local names, and she says that if
Speaker 3: a thing is important enough to have different names in
Speaker 3: a bunch of different places. It's because it's really tasty,
Speaker 3: or it's really really gross or lethal. Now, how do
Speaker 3: you make sure that you keep eating dead man's fingers
Speaker 3: without having dead man's fingers? You know, Hope says, And
Speaker 3: maybe this is some flim flam you could bust, Hope says.
Speaker 3: I'd been told that you can test for berries being
Speaker 3: poisonous by rubbing them on your hand and seeing if
Speaker 3: it tingles or numbs, and then if it doesn't, doing
Speaker 3: the same with your cheek, and if nothing there either,
Speaker 3: you might be able to eat it. Is that true
Speaker 3: at all? Is it flim flam?
Speaker 5: Is it reliable for a lot of us, especially who
Speaker 5: grew up being very outdoorsy. That was kind of the
Speaker 5: way that we were told to deal with the situation
Speaker 5: if we like found ourselves stranded in the middle of
Speaker 5: the woods. The way that I always heard it was,
Speaker 5: you know, you'd rub it on the inside of your ankle.
Speaker 5: You pretty much just travel to more sensitive pieces of
Speaker 5: skin and wait a few hour hours to see if
Speaker 5: it reacts. Because I am a cautious bean, and because
Speaker 5: not every hazardous plant behaves the same way or possesses
Speaker 5: the same toxins. I'm just gonna go ahead and say
Speaker 5: that unless you are dying, probably not the best rule
Speaker 5: of thumb to go by. If you are dying, probably
Speaker 5: not the best rule of thumb to go by. Also,
Speaker 5: if you are looking for berries, I can say with
Speaker 5: confidence if you are in North America, we don't have
Speaker 5: any poisonous compound berries. So if it looks like a raspberry,
Speaker 5: you're good to go.
Speaker 3: Okay. So compound or aggregate berries include the dewberry, the BlackBerry,
Speaker 3: the raspberry, So that should help. Rebecca racial Sorder, Mandy Smith,
Speaker 3: Donnell O'Neil, and Megan Burnett Toskowitz. Oh, on that topic,
Speaker 3: this is a very very good question. Emma. Kylie is
Speaker 3: a first time question asker and their greatest love is
Speaker 3: for service berries.
Speaker 4: Is a service berry like a raspberry?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, service berries. I'm so glad someone brought
Speaker 5: service berries up because I always want to shoehorn them
Speaker 5: into the conversation, but I never know if people are
Speaker 5: gonna know what I'm talking about. So service berries, which
Speaker 5: are the amulanchiar genus. There are a couple of different
Speaker 5: species that fall under it, but we call them all
Speaker 5: service berries or juneberries or Saskatoon berries. In southern Ohio
Speaker 5: sometimes they just call them service or service berries. They
Speaker 5: actually look a lot more like blueberries. They are crowned berries,
Speaker 5: so you know they have the little little points sticking
Speaker 5: out of them, the little last signs of their flowers.
Speaker 5: They they might they might be my favorite. I love
Speaker 5: papas just from like a purely ethno botanical history standpoint,
Speaker 5: but service berries might be my favorite thing to forage.
Speaker 5: They taste like apples and blueberries mixed together.
Speaker 3: Oh man, so can you make a cobbler? Can you
Speaker 3: get enough to make like a cobbler out of them?
Speaker 3: Or is it like if you get three of them,
Speaker 3: you've had the best day of your life.
Speaker 5: Oh no. So last year, just from the soul tree
Speaker 5: closest to my house, I gathered enough berries while still
Speaker 5: leaving all the ones that I couldn't reach, which was
Speaker 5: most of them for the birds, I gathered enough to
Speaker 5: make like ten hand pies.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 5: Last year, for whatever reason, I gathered like one big
Speaker 5: jar of service berries and was like, you know what,
Speaker 5: I'm tired. And by the time I wasn't tired anymore
Speaker 5: service berries. So this year I'm gonna stock up all
Speaker 5: of my my energy and my strength, and we're gonna
Speaker 5: go ham on service berries. My neighborhood loves planting them
Speaker 5: as ornamentals, so they are everywhere.
Speaker 3: Oh man, that's that'll be in apartment listings. What is
Speaker 3: around you that you could eat? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I almost think that people need to start listing it
Speaker 5: because if someone told me that a house that I
Speaker 5: was maybe gonna move into has a service berry tree outfro,
Speaker 5: I'd be like, oh, I'm done. So yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: you don't have a lasher or a dryer, but you
Speaker 5: have a service berry tree. Who cares. I'll wash my
Speaker 5: clothes in the same That's fine, It's better for the environment.
Speaker 3: Any Now, a certain film came up a few times
Speaker 3: and Lena Zekis and Julia McDonald wanted to know how
Speaker 3: to avoid the same fate. Julia asked, please tell us
Speaker 3: how to not Chris mccantless ourselves.
Speaker 4: Does Alexis get this question a lot?
Speaker 3: Are there any movies about foraging or survivalism that are
Speaker 3: inspiring to you or that you fucking hate at all?
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, I mean people do bring up into
Speaker 5: the wild. Yeah, that's like everyone's literary experience with foraging.
Speaker 5: And I feel like for a lot of people, their
Speaker 5: literary experience with foraging is is like people being in
Speaker 5: mortal peril. It's always either into the wild or it's
Speaker 5: that like freaking scene in The Hunger Games where it's
Speaker 5: just like that's night walk Pena, It'll kill you. That's
Speaker 5: the way that everybody thinks about it. I'm trying to
Speaker 5: think of how I know of any movies in which
Speaker 5: their portrayal of foraging doesn't make me big sad. Oh no,
Speaker 5: oh no, none are coming to mind. Quick. Someone write
Speaker 5: heartfelt children's film with foraging in it. You can consult me.
Speaker 5: I'll do it for free.
Speaker 3: Yes, first PBS show and then consulting. Also, please, yes, please.
Speaker 3: Last questions, I always ask what sucks the most about
Speaker 3: either foraging or having a million people watching your foraging?
Speaker 3: What is one thing that you would change about it?
Speaker 5: Oh? Man, I don't think there's anything that I would
Speaker 5: changed about foraging. Processing. What you bring home is sometimes tough.
Speaker 5: I feel like that's that's what I don't get as
Speaker 5: many questions about. But I feel like I need to
Speaker 5: warn people about is if you're getting into foraging, like
Speaker 5: eighty percent of the fun is going out and finding
Speaker 5: the thing, but you do have to bring it home
Speaker 5: and do things with it, or like either cook it
Speaker 5: immediately or do something usually a little labor intensive to
Speaker 5: it so you can preserve it for cooking with it
Speaker 5: in the future. I don't get to just bring the
Speaker 5: acorn some and crack them open and have a snack. Yeah, unfortunately,
Speaker 5: oh God, acorns especially, that's like a week's long process
Speaker 5: every fall. But that being said, I also find processing
Speaker 5: my fines to be very like meditative. It's like a
Speaker 5: great thing to do after a busy week. I'm a freak.
Speaker 5: I will process plants for two hours in complete silence
Speaker 5: in my kitchen and be just the happiest version of
Speaker 5: myself after.
Speaker 3: I bet, especially after you've had each thing that you're processing,
Speaker 3: has a narrative too, of when you found it, how
Speaker 3: you decided to pick that one over the one next
Speaker 3: to it. I mean, there's there's so much context for
Speaker 3: every single leaf, you know.
Speaker 5: Exactly, There's there's so much to consider, and I find
Speaker 5: that taking the time to really pause and to really
Speaker 5: think about how thankful I am for everything that I
Speaker 5: brought home. For each of one of those plants, and
Speaker 5: for all of the people, places and books where I've
Speaker 5: gotten my knowledge about that plant from it, just it
Speaker 5: fills my heart up, makes my heart feel all warm
Speaker 5: and fuzzy. And then at the end you get a
Speaker 5: snack who doesn't like that. So since I would change
Speaker 5: nothing about foraging, because foraging is amazing and wonderful, I
Speaker 5: will say being a person who a lot of people
Speaker 5: are watching on the internet nine times out of ten,
Speaker 5: super cool, very surreal experience. But a lot of people
Speaker 5: talk to you, or at least leave comments on your
Speaker 5: things as if you are not a real human person
Speaker 5: who then has to process what it is that they
Speaker 5: have said, and that stinks. Additionally, being a woman and
Speaker 5: a woman of color in the space comes with a
Speaker 5: lot of added pressure to be so incredibly perfect. And
Speaker 5: I mean yes, this is a line of study, a
Speaker 5: line of work in which you want to be perfect
Speaker 5: and you want to be accurate because you care about
Speaker 5: all of the people who follow you, and you want
Speaker 5: them to be safe and you want them to feel
Speaker 5: like they are prepared knowledge wise to go out and
Speaker 5: find something, or at least prepared to ask the right
Speaker 5: questions when they go and find more information about it.
Speaker 5: But being a person of color, I do find that
Speaker 5: I tend to incur skepticism a lot more than some
Speaker 5: of my delightful white peers.
Speaker 3: God that sucks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it sucks, Thank you, it sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Alexis recounta that online her knowledge gets doubted more
Speaker 3: than others, even though she's been studying this for years,
Speaker 3: and it's impossible to ignore that sexism and racism. But
Speaker 3: it's also partly why she knows the work and being
Speaker 3: in this space is important, and also she's just entertaining
Speaker 3: as hell. I think what's so compelling about it is
Speaker 3: it's outdoorsy and it's funny, and it's personable, and it's
Speaker 3: science and it's food and its history. It's like a
Speaker 3: septople whammy, just.
Speaker 5: A one stop shop for all different kinds of content.
Speaker 3: It really is. And I just love the way that
Speaker 3: it gets people to notice their surroundings more and not
Speaker 3: take for granted all of the the things that are
Speaker 3: growing around us.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think a lot of people have found solace
Speaker 5: in nature, and a lot of folks who maybe wouldn't
Speaker 5: have otherwise. And for me, mymo has always been when
Speaker 5: you see more value in a space, you take better
Speaker 5: care of it, and foraging is absolutely a way to
Speaker 5: see more value in the space around you.
Speaker 3: And that being said, I always, I always end on
Speaker 3: your favorite thing about it, but I don't even how
Speaker 3: do you even pick a favorite thing about it? I
Speaker 3: also feel like your microbiome must be so good, you
Speaker 3: must have such a healthy microbiome.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I eat normal things like right now,
Speaker 5: I do have a glass of like a red bud
Speaker 5: and dandelion like fermented beverage that I just bottled earlier
Speaker 5: this week, and I'm like, yay, good gut bacteria. We
Speaker 5: love to see an active fermenting drink. But I I
Speaker 5: also ate two oreos for breakfast, so Jerry's out on
Speaker 5: that one. I guess I don't get sick a lot.
Speaker 3: What about your favorite favorite thing about it? What just
Speaker 3: gives you butterflies?
Speaker 5: Getting to see, either in real time or to have
Speaker 5: people like relay to me like a breakthrough that they
Speaker 5: have had or like a special moment that they have
Speaker 5: now had in their surroundings because of my content. One
Speaker 5: of my best best best friends has never been super outdoorsy,
Speaker 5: but she she loves food, an amazing chef, and so
Speaker 5: her kind of foray into the outdoors, has been through
Speaker 5: foraging and watching kind of like the light bulb go
Speaker 5: off for her now when we go out on hikes
Speaker 5: together and you know, watching her being able to like
Speaker 5: recognize things so confidently on her, I'm just like, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Do.
Speaker 5: And those moments supersede the negatives by so many degrees
Speaker 5: and make me make me feel like I'm doing something beneficial,
Speaker 5: I guess, I hope.
Speaker 3: So ask smart people simple questions, because chances are they
Speaker 3: do what they do because they really love what they do.
Speaker 3: And you never know, you might got to know, get
Speaker 3: hit by a bus, so you might as well ask questions.
Speaker 3: Also follow Alexis. Turns out she's a fellow Ologite and
Speaker 3: she'd listened to the show before I ever reached out,
Speaker 3: which was so cool to learn. And she is at
Speaker 3: Black Forager on TikTok, on Twitter and on Instagram, so
Speaker 3: do follow her. We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 3: I'm at ali Ward just one l on both. Thank
Speaker 3: you to all the patrons at patreon dot com slash Ologies,
Speaker 3: where you can join for just one tiny dollar a
Speaker 3: month and sub big questions. Thank you Aaron Talbert for
Speaker 3: adminting the Ologies podcast Facebook page. Thank you Emily White
Speaker 3: of the Wardery who makes our transcripts. Thank you to
Speaker 3: Caleb Patten who bleeps them. Bleeped. Episodes and transcripts are
Speaker 3: available for free at the link in the show notes.
Speaker 3: Ologies merch is available at ologiesmarch dot com. Thank you
Speaker 3: Shannon Felt some Body Dutch of the comedy podcast You
Speaker 3: are That for managing that. Thank you to Susan Hale
Speaker 3: and Noel Dilworth who help with social media on scheduling.
Speaker 3: Thank you to Mae Squeeze and Huge editing hero Jared
Speaker 3: Sleeper of Mindgem Media and longtime editor newly unmustached Stephen
Speaker 3: Ray Morris of the podcasts The Podcast and Ceed Jurassic Right.
Speaker 3: Oh my stash they both shaved this week Stephen and Jarrett.
Speaker 3: People are vaxed. Stashes are waxed. Wow, springtime in America. Oh,
Speaker 3: I'm Nick Thorburn of the band Islands did the music.
Speaker 3: They have a new album do out in June. And
Speaker 3: if you're listening to this before five pm Pacific on
Speaker 3: May eighteenth, go get a ticket for the live show.
Speaker 3: It's Ology's first live show. It's with the Jess Phoenix,
Speaker 3: the Volcanologist and you know I tell secret at the
Speaker 3: end of each episode, and tonight tonight, the secret today
Speaker 3: is I don't know if I'll ever do another live
Speaker 3: show again. I don't know. This is just kind of
Speaker 3: a test. I'm a little bit like.
Speaker 4: What did I get myself into? I hope this is fun.
Speaker 3: I hope I do this okay anyway, Yes, it is
Speaker 3: with volcanologist Jess Phoenix. I may try to make a
Speaker 3: cone hat so that my hair spews out of the
Speaker 3: top like a volcano, but I don't know if that's
Speaker 3: just too much, I'm going to try to do it anyway.
Speaker 3: That's the secret is, I'm not sure if I'm ever
Speaker 3: going to do another live show. So if you're listening,
Speaker 3: I don't know, get a ticket. Who knows? Okay, see
Speaker 3: you tonight maybe Bye bye.
Speaker 6: Pacadermic College, Mombiology, ryto Zoology, lithology, zechnology, meteorology, fology, thenthology, seriology, clithology.
Speaker 3: That night, lot Rita maybe did in a minute.
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