Wild Edibles Series - Careful and Slow

I do not have a stat counter in view on this blog. I’ve done that on some of my other blogs over the years but gave up the practice of doing that.

There are enough statistics on the Blogger page that I use to publish with. I do not need the information for personal gratification. It does help, though, with sensing the pulse of things. It helps with seeing interest levels.

I do, very much, appreciate you as a reader. And I do, very much, appreciate your sharing these pages with your friends and groups. That you read and share is very encouraging. Thank you for the encouragement.

In monitoring the stats, it seems pretty apparent that there is quite a bit of interest in this wild edibles topic.

Personally, I think the interest is a good thing.

The world found immediately outside the doors of our homes … the world found farther out in the fields and in the woods … the world found along the streams, creeks, and rivers … is a very interesting world. That world, one so largely lost to a modernity confined within the zones of convenience and creature comfort, is more than interesting. It is an amazing interconnected world full of both educational and entertaining experiences if we will only seek the experiences.

Research is an important and integral aspect of learning … regardless the subject matter … and especially important where wild edibles are concerned. My understanding is that only something like four percent of wild plants are edible. Four out of every one hundred. That means ninety-six of every one hundred are not. That’s a lot of not and a lot of the not will either make you very sick or kill you.

This not business makes the subject of wild edibles sound scary.

Well, it is a little scary. Especially at the beginning of a wild edible journey. It is not something that one should go about without doing a lot of homework on the subject. Even then, after doing the homework, sampling various carefully identified wild edibles should be done in small amounts. It would also probably be best to be schooled by a wild edibles instructor. Most of us do not have a credible wild edibles instructor close by.

I did not when I started sampling wild edibles several years ago and still do not.

I asked the one person locally that I thought would know. He didn’t. So I made up my mind to just do it even if it meant going it alone. Study on my own. Learn on my own. Do some experimental dining on my own.

The encouraging thing, where the scary is concerned, is that it is only once in about every twenty years, or so I have recently read, that a forager dies from making a mistake. The mistake, usually, involves mushrooms. Me? I stay away from wild mushrooms. One reason is that so many of them will kill you. Another reason is that it takes more energy to digest them than they give back in return.

I think one operative word is CAREFUL. Be careful.

Be sure you have made a positive identification before you sample.

Use a good wild edibles guide and consult the internet library.

This is part of the research thing. There are some great websites on wild edible and medicinal plants. I’m not going to make a recommended list. I think the digging and looking is part of the challenge as part of the research. It is a meaningful and enjoyable part of the journey. A lot of knowledge is garnered on a specific subject. A lot of knowledge is garnered on parallel subjects. A lot of knowledge is garnered on unrelated subjects. Research is a win-win-win deal that taking shortcuts robs product from. Seems like shortcuts and fast-tracks are where it’s at with life in general these days. I not so sure they are the cat’s meow.

Besides, I’m not a copy and paste parrot parroting information … even if the information is good information. I, rather, see myself as just one person on an interesting journey of discovery, learning what I can, and sharing some of these experiences and discoveries as I go along.

As for a wild edibles guide, what we use is a Peterson Field Guide. Why Peterson? It’s the one we have. Where these printed guides are concerned, I’m not so sure that there is a layman’s guide that is exhaustive. A guide that focuses on a geographic region presents way more than enough offerings to begin.

Another operative word is SLOW. Go slow.

CAREFUL and SLOW are a good combination. 

I always encourage this combination in anything woodcraft-bushcraft-survivalcraft related. Careful and slow can save us some skin. It can save us a lot more than something that can be fixed with a Band-Aid fished out of our kit. Careful and slow will definitely allow us to see, hear, and experience more of the natural surroundings around us.

Going slow … learning to identify and utilize one plant a month … over the course of a year amounts to a dozen wild plants in your storeroom of knowledge and practical experience. It’s a lot better to have a safe dozen committed to memory and sight recognition than to have a notebook full that you aren’t honestly personally familiar with. Make a dozen the initial goal and then go on from there.

Follow these familiar few through their growing season … whether they are cool weather lovers or hot weather lovers. Become familiar with when they first appear and when they go dormant if they are annuals. Become familiar with the changes in their appearances over the course of their growth habit. It gets to be kind of an intimate thing … sort of a love affair with nature. It has for me anyway.

And here’s something else that’s as old fashioned as using a Card-Catalog and understanding the Dewey Decimal System.

Journal what you are doing.

Take notes, put it down on paper, and include photographs. Even an old dinosaur like me is computer savvy enough to load pictures from my iPhone to the computer and create files. As busy as most of us are these days, as hectic as life can be at times, it’s a chore to remember things if we don’t make a special effort at it.