Backyard Foraging

Foraging is a new thing for me this year, and I’m really enjoying it! Also known as wildcrafting; foraging is simply looking to your surroundings for food sources instead of just going to the nearest grocery store.

Of course, you must know what you are looking for- don’t ever just go looking for foods in the wild unless you know exactly what they look like/smell like and how to identify potential poisonous lookalikes.

I think we’ve all heard stories of people who ate what they thought was a safe mushroom and ended up hallucinating or even dying. This is serious stuff, so take it seriously.

I’m sticking to non- fungi plants when foraging (mostly because I don’t care for eating mushrooms) and so far everything I’ve foraged has been from my parent’s own 2 acres of land and the surrounding area- as far as we can walk easily. I may branch out from there, but I think it’s important to know that there are wild foods that we can harvest from our own backyard.

My main sources of information for foraging are: The Forager’s Harvest. by Samuel Thayer,

Encyclopedia of Medicinal Herbs by Andrew Chevallier, Wildcrafting Wednesday– a blog hop with tons of contributors each week on wildcrafting and homesteading. I’ve also read several articles in Mother Earth News Magazine about foraging for certain plants, and several blogs that I follow have articles on foraging and wildcrafting.

I’m no expert, these are just my experiences and I hope they inspire you to get outside and use some of the resources God has given us for food that are often overlooked.

Foraging: Lavender