Foraging The Coastal Plain Region - Introduction

My outdoor involvement, whether teaching skills classes or simply getting out there to piddle and wander, has been quite limited over the past six months.

Personal priorities came into play. 

Nothing over the course of these months has been more important than helping Shirli through two knee replacement surgeries. The first one was back in November. A week ago she had the second replacement done. Those new knees, as drawn out and painful as the process is, are an important step in our progress in the direction we are traveling toward some important goals.

Foremost, in our goals, is for her to be able to get back out doing the outdoors stuff that she loves to do … outdoor stuff that she and I have always enjoyed doing together as a team as a normal part of our lifestyle … stuff that two excruciating knees have kept her from for far too long now.

There’s quite a bit of personal reorientation going on as we prepare for our retirement adventure that includes a move inland away from the hustle and bustle that surrounds us here where we’ve spent the past dozen years.

I have made the statement before.

More than once.

It is a statement that bears repeating again.

I am not an authority on wild edibles. I have, however, made an intentional point … over the course of several years of time … of learning to recognize and utilize a fair number of the seasonal wild edibles that we have here in this Alabama coastal plain region that touches the Gulf of Mexico.

Now that I have taken the time and keystrokes to repeat myself, I can thus get on with what I am doing here in this blog article.

Ma Nature is a wonderful mother. She is a beautiful mother. She is a diverse mother. Her diversity provides absolutely everything that we need to sustain human life. She is, at the same time, a strict mother and will give us a good spanking if we don’t learn her lessons or fail to pay attention to her changing moods.

It has been, and continues to be, somewhat of a personal quest.

Partly because it is such an interesting personal study. Partly because it seems like the natural thing to do. Partly because of the peace of mind and personal assurance that comes with knowing I can supplement my diet with wild edibles on any given day or depend upon them as a resource in the event the need arises in some sort of dire situation.

It is … in the school of the woods … a quest that has no end. It is a quest replete with many points of arrival … many discoveries … many moments of personal confidence building.

One of the things I have not done … and something that this life-season Shirli and I are in affords me opportunity to do … is to prepare something of a syllabus cataloging and outlining these local wild edible and medicinal plants … those that are already familiarly tucked away in my gray matter mainframe and those yet waiting for familiarization … that are abundant in our area.

Some of these are native.

Some of these are naturalized.

Some were here all along. Others came from points elsewhere with the explorers, pilgrims, and planters. Some of them are peculiar to the area. Others have a range that exceeds our regional limitations.

The important thing, whether native or naturalized, is knowing them and knowing what to do with them.

 Tag along, if you'd like, as we explore what we have around us.