I’m really excited about the spirit of hope and unity I feel as an American and global citizen today. The excitement and anticipation of better things to come will fade as we face the reality of how to transform our problems…but I hope we will hold this feeling of unity close in our consciousness.
I’m also really excited that kids will be part of our social-political consciousness. Bringing kid energy back into the White House will be good. My vision of having every child in America learn 10 wild food plants in their bioregion seems more easily achievable, and of creating cooperatives of people who are harvesting and distributing wild foods seems more achievable *yeehaw…progressives have been empowered. Enjoy your personal life, while participating in our collective experience in an active way. Teach the children well.
I am so excited to announce the launch of my new eco clothing and design company Savage Designs. It all started with a dream to create clothing out of wild harvested nettle, clothes that heal us and the earth. Besides being an incredible wild food, nettle has been used as medicine and fiber for millenia. Although nettle is our signature fabric, we also use other fabrics like bamboo, wool, organic cotton and wild crafted hemp (along with a few other, as yet, unrevealed wild-crafted fibers).
Above is a photo of Stardust Magick, our head designer, and a Village Chief who showed us how to harvest nettle bark in the jungle. We work with tribal villagers in Nepal, in a just and conscious way, who have retained their sacred knowledge of working with nettles. You can watch a short clip in the video below, which highlights how the villagers strip the bark from the plants (about 5 minutes into the video), as well as see how how it is spun into thread. You will also hear the ancient song of the giant himilayan nettle (Girardinia diversifolia), sung by an 18-year old Kulung Rai woman named Naibi Lakchhi Rai, who sees the importance of keeping their traditions alive.
We are coming into a new stage in our human evolution, a time in which we realize the fabric of our lives is connected, an era in which our organic beauty can be freely expressed and celebrated through the clothes we wear and the relationships we harbor. I would like to see small fiber cooperatives of people forming in the United States…to create fiber security and remove us from the cycle of capitalism. I don’t see this as a step back, but rather we will learn how to take ancient knowledge and techniques and work them creatively in new ways.
Standing with a giant himilayan nettle plant.
Adorned in a crown of raw nettle bark and a 100% wild crafted nettle shawl knit by Kulung Rai women.
Here’s the final video from the Wild Food Summit, held on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota around the summer solstice. Click here to watch part 1, and here to watch part 2. This video is the remaining interview with Sam Thayer, author of Forager’s Harvest. Sam and his wife Melissa recently challenged themselves to eat solely wild foods for one month. Sam actually continued on longer than the one month time period and said he really enjoyed the experience. Although he already eats a diet comprised of many wild foods, taking the leap to exclusively wild was a fun process.
Here is the second video of 3 from the Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Reservation. Be sure to stay tuned for part 3 in this series of videos. Click here to see part 1. Or click here for part 3.
The White Earth Tribal and Community College, located on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota, hosted the 3rd annual Wild Food Summit. This gathering, which was held during the summer solstice, brought folks together who were interested in learning about identifying and preparing wild foods. But as shown through the various interviews, the gathering runs deeper than that, and is really about that intersecting point between how plants and people shape each other.
The above video is the first of 3, which includes interviews with some of the presenters and folks attending the event. Below is the recipe outline for a cattail stirfry prepared during the event. I got the idea for the nettle and sesame seed powder from Susan Weed’s book Healing Wise, and the stirfy is just one of the many number of ways our family prepares cattail hearts/shoots. enjoy!
Nettle/Sesame Powder
Harvest your nettle leaves, clean them, and then thoroughly dry them. Take some sesame seeds and put them into a hot skillet. Keep moving them around with your spatula so they don’t burn, and watch out because they will start to jump and pop. Once they start to smell like they’ve been toasted and start to brown you can remove them and put into a food processor/blender/mortar & pestle, along with your dried nettle leaves and a small amount of salt (I used 1 tsp of salt to a 1/2 gallon mason jar full of dried nettle leaves and about 2 cups of sesame seeds). Experiment with how many nettles to sesame seeds you like. Use this powder to top rice dishes, soups, salads, etc. It is loaded with nutrients and adds a delicious nutty flavor to your foods.
Cattail Stir-fry
Gather your cattail leaves/shoots and pull off the tough/fibrous outer leaves until you reach the tender white inner core of the cattail heart. Wash them thoroughly and cut into roughly 4” pieces. Put a healthy amount of high-heat cooking oil in the bottom of your skillet. Put in your burdock root slices into the hot oil, which are cut diagonally about 1/8” thick, and cook for about 5 minutes. Then add chopped spring onion, carrots that have been cut into long strips (julienned), and the chopped burdock petioles. Cook about 3-5 minutes and then add cattail shoots, minced garlic, and minced ginger (you could use a small amount of wild ginger). Cook for about 3 minutes. Then add a few splashes of sesame seed oil, some black sesame seeds, chopped red cabbage, some finely chopped wild greens (we used sow thistle greens) and a lot of Bragg’s Liquid Aminos/soy sauce/tamari/shoyu. Cover and let cook for about a minute. Serve with Nettle/Sesame Powder sprinkled on top.
The Canadians are definitely ahead of the game on publicly bringing in the ‘goods from the woods’. As leaders in this movement for the North American continent, our neighbors to the north have private businesses, educational institutions, and government monies dedicated to promoting and supporting the harvest and distribution of wild foods. Click here, to read a recent CBC article on the increased interest in wild foods.
Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon popularized local eating in Canada with their 100-Mile Diet. Canadians have started to gain deeper connections with their foodsheds, and are starting to nourish their curiosity of ALL available foods growing in the areas in which they live. The Centre for Non-Timber Resources at Royal Roads University in British Columbia has a cool website called BuyBCWild. They organize and are host for the 3rd annual Shop the Wild Festival. This festival celebrates all things wild that are available from BC forests, along with educating folks about the benefits of buying local and going green.
I have always felt that creating cooperatives of people harvesting wild foods is the route we must take to make wild foods available to the populous. We should all, especially children, learn about wild foods to ensure our own health and ability to survive. Good, healthy food is our birthright and it’s all sitting free right out our own doorsteps…but we still need people to focus on creating beautiful music, amazing art, innovative designs, building homes, etc. For those who enjoy spending large amounts of time in the great outdoors, becoming a full-time wild food forager, I think, will become an economically viable profession of the future. Creating job opportunities in our rural communities is an essential function of these cooperatives. So, chalk it up to the Canadians to get things rolling in this direction. Forbes Wild Foods is a wonderful company located in Ontario who supplies wild foods to individual consumers, as well as restaurants/hotels/health food stores/etc. They purchase their wild foods from remote rural communities of Aboriginal Canadians who respect their lands, and who also regenerate and plant the forests they are harvesting from.
Check out the video below to see how the Ogallala Comfort Company is creating beautiful high-quality products out of one of my favorite wild plants, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). I was able to interview Herb Knudsen, who founded the Natural Fibers Corporation back in 1986, at their headquarters in Ogallala, NE. For those interested in finding job opportunities that get you outside, while getting exercise and enjoying the great outdoors, Herb’s company is an active buyer in the milkweed trade. Contact his company to find out more details about becoming a supplier.
Hello from Boulder, CO!
I’ve been having such a great summer, spending most of it outdoors and eating a lot of wild plants along the way. One of my favorites is common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), and it’s time to eat its silk. So luxurious! Will probably be enjoying some for dinner over the full moon tonight.
I’ll be posting a video from the Wild Foods Summit on the White Earth Reservation, hopefully soon. But also wanted to put a call out for anyone who might be interested in joining my son and friend/assistant Johnny along the way. We need someone to assist with harvesting and preserving wild foods, researching wild foods, logistics of where the plants are and what they are doing, helping me prep and clean up from filming cooking segments of the television show, and general upkeep of life in the RV. If anyone is interested, please send an email to: info@wildfoodplants.com. There’s a small stipend for the roughly 3 1/2 month commitment, from early September through mid-December.
Here is the second video from a wild plant retreat I attended with Doug Elliott and Frank Cook. Based out of the Sunnybank Inn, which sits along the Appalachian Trail near Hot Springs, NC, we traveled to some amazing places nearby and learned a wealth of information from these two astute mountain men. Doug Elliott is a gifted storyteller and musician, and we start this video off with his Dandelion Song. The remainder of the video highlights Frank Cook of www.plantsandhealers.com. Frank has an encyclopedic knowledge of the plants, and the real beauty lies in that he blends this knowledge with love and wisdom. Frank travels the world learning about and teaching about plants, and he has a wonderful way of bringing truth’s out and making you think about your own evolution. Please check out his website to see some of the articles he’s written, books he recommends, and his tour schedule.
I really fell in love with those Appalachian Mountains, and send a big thanks to all the plants, the people attending the retreat, and our amazing teachers!
Here is a long-overdue video from my time spent in the Appalachian Mountains with Doug Elliott and Frank Cook, during the late part of April. I attended an absolutely wonderful wild plant retreat with these gentle giants of the plant world and learned so much from them both. Doug is a gifted mountain man who, in addition to his knowledge of the natural world, shares his enthusiasm for it through stories and song. He is a national treasure…keeping the stories and songs alive, and I would encourage you to visit his website www.dougelliott.com to see the wide range of CD’s and books he has available. Doug is a tender-hearted man, with a lifetime of experience living off the land and staying attuned to the plant world.
One of my favorite things I learned from him was that when you are walking through the forest and you go through a spiderweb…well, that’s the forest imprinting your face! And when you step over one of those rocks that tips and wobbles a bit…well, that’s the forest figuring out how much you weigh! And finally, when you stumble upon one of those jack (or jill) in the pulpit’s…well, that’s the microphone of the forest and they’re listening to your words. It’s alive!!! Please check Doug’s website for his class schedules, and stay tuned for part two.
Sunny Savage, host of the television series ‘Hot on the Trail with Sunny Savage’, helps us untame our lives by incorporating wild foods into our modern-day diets. She holds an MS in Nutrition Education and has traveled to all 7 continents, learning from the plants and the people along the way. Her vision is that this website will become a clearinghouse of information and resources for wild food plants worldwide.
