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Foraging for wild food and medicinal plants

Pigweed, also known as wild amaranth. Plants are considered weeds by farmers and gardeners because they thrive in disturbed soils. Nutritious young plants can be boiled like spinach or eaten raw in salads. (Photo courtesy of Cornell University)

If you go…

What: Cornell Cooperative Extension of Franklin County’s Wild Edibles and Medicinal History Workshop

When: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 26

Where: 4H Camp Overlook; Beach Road, Mountain View.

How much: $85 includes all materials and lunch – Reduced family-rates are available.

More: The workshop is open to adults and youth age 12 and older, when accompanied by an adult.

To register: Call 518-483-7403 or visit franklin.cce.cornell.edu online and click on the event

I’ve always found the idea of foraging for wild edible plants appealing, but daunting. I know a little about wild plants and foraging, but I lack confidence. And with good reason. I didn’t grow up foraging and, although it’s possible to acquire knowledge about foraging from books and websites, it’s a lot easier (and safer) to learn from someone who has first-hand foraging knowledge and experience … someone who has been gathering, preparing and eating wild foods throughout his or her entire life.

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Franklin County will host a Wild Edibles and Medicinal History Workshop on May 26.

This is a hands-on-learning workshop, in which participants will discover how to identify several common wild edible plants; examine their traditional usage as food, their historic applications as medicines and how associated tinctures and ointments are made; and how to make flour from wild flowers and pine cambium. In addition, everyone will help prepare a lunch made from the wild edible plants they’re learning about. The term “wild” refers to plants that grow without being cultivated and mostly includes native species growing in their natural habitat. However, managed and/or introduced species that have been naturalized are sometimes included, as well. Most often these are not exotic plants. In fact, they’re more likely to be the “weeds” you mow down or remove from your lawn or garden.

The instructor for this workshop, Franklin County CCE 4-H Program Educator Pat Banker, was an essential contributor in writing the statewide, review-board-approved, 4-H Wild Edibles Curriculum and developing the 4-H Wild Edibles Curriculum Training for Educators, which is being offered on May 24 at Camp Overlook and at several other locations across the state in upcoming weeks.

Pat has been a forager and herbalist all of her life. Unlike me, she grew up eating wild-foraged foods and is a local expert. She shared with me how, as a girl, she would accompany her father to some of their favorite backcountry fishing lakes, ponds, rivers and streams to catch fish for their family’s supper. But their fishing trips didn’t end when they’d caught their limit. Instead, their attention turned to collecting healthy, wild garnishes for the frying pan and side dishes to round out the meal. Her family never went hungry. In fact, they had plenty of wholesome, nutritious food to eat, with much of it coming straight out of nature’s cupboard.

During my nearly two decades at CCE, I’ve watched Pat share her time and talent with hundreds of eager 4-H club-members and their club-leaders, as well as numerous elementary and high-school students at in-school and after school Extension-sponsored 4-H programs, as they explored the process of confidently identifying wild edibles and foraging for those wild foods and healing plants. She encourages curiosity, participation and stewardship of the land.

The plants she’ll be examining in this class remain a treasured part of her life, and are still essentials in her pantry, kitchen and medicine cabinet. She considers many of these wild plants to be among the most nourishing foods on earth and she’s exuberant about passing on the botanical skills and harvesting ethics necessary to safely and assuredly forage wild foods and herbs. She’s made me realize, too, that regardless of who you are or where you grew up, your ancestors harvested wild plants, in season, for food and medicine. The loss of such traditional knowledge and practices can be associated with reduced interaction with nature, lifestyle changes, urbanization, large-scale farming and a variety of other reasons.

You’ll find the detail and practicality of the information provided in this workshop to be extremely useful, easily understood and a heck of a lot of fun. It’s a program based, not on a pricey directive to go out and buy, but rather on instruction to become more self-sustaining by going into the wild and harvesting.

What’s more, the use of wild plants is often, although not necessarily, associated with times of food scarcity. Food substitution is the most common individual subsistence strategy in times of want and food shortages. Educating yourself about wild edibles as a potential food source can be the difference between survival and demise in the event of a catastrophe.

While almost all of the common wild edible plants found in our region are not mainstream culinary foodstuffs in the United States, some are relatively common fare in other countries (e.g. pigweed and purslane).

Learn how to identify, ethically harvest and prepare edible wild plants as food and medicines.

Join us on May 26.

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