Spirit in Action

Wild Foods and The Forager's Harvest

Sam Thayer Price is perhaps the Midwest's preeminent expert on wild foods and foraging. With a wide-ranging intellect and a spirit-deep passion, Sam preaches a gospel of connection to the Earth and to the life around us. His new book, The Forager's Harvest is available from Sam's web site, foragersharvest.com.

Broadcast on:: 25 Jan 2009
Audio Format:: other

I have no hands but yours to tempt my sheep No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep I have no arms but yours with which to hold The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old I have no hands but yours with which to see To let my children know that I am out and out is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give, and they give, the ragged and the morn So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you I will be done The enders have I none to help and die The tangle knocks in twisted chains The strangle fearful minds Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands Being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life I have no way to open people's eyes Except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind I welcome today to Spirit in Action, Sam Thayer Price, author of a new book on wild foods called Foragers Harvest Sam leads workshops all around the USA, sharing his passions, knowledge and insights about a very practical and deeply spiritual way of connecting with the earth Finding food and nourishment in the bounty of nature Sam, I've been a grateful witness to your enthusiasm and knowledge about wild foods, so I'm very pleased to have you today on Spirit in Action to share that enthusiasm Well, thanks for having me, Mark, happy to be on your program Let's start out with the basics. What are wild foods? Wild foods are those things that propagate themselves and grow spontaneously on the landscape Or you could say foods that are not intentionally propagated or caused to grow by humans and not cultivated by humans And why are wild foods interesting? Interesting question. Why are wild foods interesting? I think that on some level they're inherently interesting to us because we are economic animals and food is interesting to us because food is important to us I guess I think further that wild food is interesting because understanding wild food brings us to an understanding of human history Our origin as a species is as a creature that ate exclusively wild food Our social interactions developed around wild food are cognitive abilities developed around wild food So I don't think we can really understand humanity in any of its aspects fully unless we understand our relationship to wild food I guess this may be the same question in another form, but perhaps you have other insights to offer related to this Why is connecting with wild foods important for us? Well, I think the basic answer to that is that we protect only what we love and we only love what we know If people are going to change the way they relate to the ecosystem to the earth in a way that is more sustainable We're going to have to have a connection with, we're going to have to have an understanding of a love for the landscape I don't think that we can do that unless we participate in the landscape, unless we act as part of the ecosystem rather than just an observer of it We belong to the earth We all belong to the earth It's not that she belongs to us It's we belong to her It's we belong to her We belong to the earth We all belong to the earth It's not that she belongs to us It's we belong to her It's we belong to her Stranding a web are we Stranding a web I believe To own it we cannot dare to dream It's a web that we didn't leave It's a web that we didn't leave And we belong to the earth We all belong to the earth It's not that she belongs to us It's we belong to her It's we belong to her In sun and in wind and in rain It's a seed of what will be It awakens a power that grows down below It courses through you and through me It courses through you and through me We belong to the earth We all belong to the earth It's not that she belongs to us It's we belong to her It's we belong to her That was Magpie and their song We Belong to the earth I'm Mark Helpsmeet and you're listening to Spirit in Action Just one of the programs produced by Northern Spirit Radio My guest today is Sam Thayer Price He's just released a delightful book on wild foods and foraging Called Foragers Harvest Sam's wild food workshops in the Midwest and throughout the USA Have introduced many to the joys and delights of knowing the earth And connecting with the land in a deeply spiritual and practical manner My understanding is that agriculture evolved Because it gave us more control it meant we could increase the food supply It meant that we could prevent these seasons of famine And abundance that both enriched and decimated humanity over the ages Why would we want to go back to that which led to such vulnerability and part of our race? Well that's really an interesting viewpoint because I guess I think that position holds two misconceptions And one is the misconception that wild food and cultivated food are exclusive of each other So by promoting people having a connection to the land through wild food I am not saying that that means people can't have that connection If they eat cultivated food or that people must eat only wild food to have that connection But the other misconception I think that's expressed in that position Is one that's very prevalent in our society Which is that cultivating plants, agriculture Made our food sources more stable and more reliable The archaeological evidence and the ethnographic evidence is Pretty emphatic that the opposite was the case That as subsistence cultures around the world Moved from hunting and gathering economy To an agricultural economy they had less stability They were more poorly nourished People's overall body size became smaller And there's a lot of good logical reasons for that An agricultural society tends to rely on a very small number of foods Maybe six or seven plant foods comprising most of their diet Whereas those people that were living off wild food Would have a larger number of foods that would comprise their diet So they could spread the risk out over a larger number of plant species But back to the first point is we don't need to go back to that economy A stone age economy in order to receive the benefits of connecting to nature That wild foods as a hobby or as something more than a hobby could bring us How did you get started in this? What connected you up with wild foods and Why is it such a passion in your life? Well what got me started was when I was a child I was just interested in all aspects of nature And really for reasons that I can't put my finger on And that I can't trace or their origins I was just excited about the notion of being able to feed myself And if spent I guess my whole life pursuing that fantasy Pursuing that idea The first experience that I remember eating wild food Was when I was four years old And I was hiding under the porch with my older brother and older sister And I don't know what we were doing under there But there was a plant growing under the porch Which my sister picked and showed to me Told me that we could eat and we all ate them It was obvious that my older brother and sister had eaten them before I didn't know what this plant was at the time We called them juicies for years but I know now that they're called wood sorrel I guess the first experience that made me realize that there was a potential of even Eating food out in the wild Food other than what was in the cupboard or from the grocery store Once I had that experience I was constantly searching for any knowledge If I heard anything said about a plant being edible I never forgot that And I pursued it once I could read in literature And I read about plants and then I would go out and test those things And see how they tasted, how they sat with me When I was 13 or 14 I started to read a lot about world and survival And I became kind of obsessed with that notion And my best friend and I would go on camping trips on the weekend Where we wouldn't bring any food with and see if we could survive Obviously we always survived But it was those experiences that really pushed us to learn And we're really exciting and really memorable trips So that's one of the experiences that really solidified my interest in wild foods When I was in my adolescence Could you give us a few examples of foods that are plentiful in this area Or clear area? Foods that a common person could learn to identify Go out, eat and prepare without much difficulty Yeah there's quite a few different green vegetables Shoot vegetables, such as brack and fiddleheads Are real common in the Eau Claire area And are not just eaten by a few wild food fanatics But they're a regular everyday vegetable in the Orient in China, Japan, Korea And is probably the most common herbaceous plant Is a non woody plant in the Eau Claire area There's also, butternuts are fairly common around Eau Claire And can be used like walnuts There's quite a few different wild fruits Huckleberries, blackberries, wild plums, wild blueberries There's good patches of service berries In some of the wetlands there's a berry called nanny berry Which tastes kind of like somewhere between dates and prunes But really it's pretty unique, tasting fruit And is not very well known, but it's real abundant and real easy to collect There's a tuber called hopness or ground nut And that's the tuber of a bean vine, a wild type of bean And that's very common around Eau Claire There's wild parsnips are real common south of Eau Claire And taste like cultivated parsnips and are used just like cultivated parsnips There's really a great variety of wild food Really anywhere that you'd go in North America, including right around here When I think of you, Sam, I think of acorns Now I don't know if that's really a mainstay in your diet or not But certainly acorns are ubiquitous How important were they to the native peoples around here before Europeans came in? Well, the importance of acorns varied throughout North America Virtually all tribes ate acorns to some extent And there were a large number of Native Americans in California Also in a few places in the southern United States Where acorn was the staple food in their diet Sometimes 50% or more of their calories were derived from acorns In this part of the country when Europeans arrived here The Native Americans were not eating a lot of acorns But if you were to go back 1500 years Acorns were a staple in most of the eastern half of North America It's a food that I eat pretty regularly And definitely if you are interested in wild foods And are looking for a food that you can subsist on Or kind of use as a dietary staple Acorns are something that's very common and easy to collect And stores very well and that's why they were so important to Native Americans Also, acorns were eaten all over the world I mean, acorns were a major food source The staple food source for cultures in Japan Korea, China, North Africa, Europe I mean, they were a major food source all over the North temperate parts of the world Do they taste good? And do wild foods in general taste good? I mean, aren't they wild so it doesn't that mean they don't taste as good as What we get from the supermarket? Well, that's a common viewpoint and I find it interesting because When I do workshops on wild food, you know, if I have a crowd of 30 people I'll often ask, "Who in this group is eating wild food before?" And maybe half the hands will go up Then I say, "Well, how about wild blueberries or raspberries?" And then most of the rest of the hands will go up And if I say, "How about wild rice or maple syrup?" Then all the hands are up And what that shows is that we have this subconscious way of when we eat a food that's wild If it tastes good, we automatically classify it as not wild We no longer perceive that food as wild because it tastes good So we forget that, for example, lobster is wild We forget that truffles are wild or caviar is wild Or morale mushrooms are wild And I'd actually challenge people to think about this I think they would realize that generally the food's considered most gourmet And the foods that we would pay the highest prices for And eat at the fanciest restaurants Or find in the fanciest markets would be wild foods That being said, I think we often fail to realize that Wild food encompasses all food that has ever been eaten by human beings Whereas cultivated foods is maybe five or ten percent Of all the foods that have served as subsistence items for humans Everything that is cultivated is also wild But wild food includes a much greater breadth of choices than cultivated foods So within wild foods, there'll be some things that everybody doesn't like There'll be some things that most people like And some things that almost everybody will like Just as there is with cultivated foods So I guess the short answer to the question is There isn't really a distinction between wild and cultivated food Other than where you get it And how it came to be there The foods themselves, there's no distinct difference in quality So yeah, wild foods can be excellent Acorns specifically are a food that requires Very specific processing methods to make it palatable Similar to olives, which are totally unpalatable as they come off the tree Or even similar to wheat, which in its wild form Has to be processed to remove the chaff And then ground into flour or cooked before it's eaten So acorns right off the tree do not taste good But after they're processed according to traditional methods, acorns can make excellent food And how would you eat acorn? Well, there's different methods of processing Some acorns hot leached or leached in boiling water And leaching is just the process of removing the tannin that makes the acorns better And hot leached acorns become real soft And kind of a mild flavored starchy substance That I use in place of beans and chili That's one way that I eat them often You also can dry them and grind them into a flour And so I make a lot of baked goods that have acorns in them And cold leached acorns are leached in cold water They will end up with a very different texture In the cooked product than hot leached acorns would have Cold leached acorns have a gluten-like substance So that they can be baked into kind of a flatbread tortilla-like textured item Without the addition of wheat flour or anything else So with cold leached acorn flour, I make pizza crust I make brownies and cookies And also you can use the flour mixed with wheat flour to make things like pancakes A lot of things that we're familiar with But the people that subsisted largely on acorns Used cold leached acorn flour and made kind of a thick heavy bread And it's a very filling and satisfying type of, I guess, basic food stuff But it's not really comparable to anything that most people are familiar with I'm just trying to picture the world if a lot of people, if most people maybe Were into wild foods How would that work for a city dweller first of all? And if almost everybody became wild food enthusiasts Wouldn't that mean we'd decimate nature? No, absolutely not Right now, we have an economy and a society Where very few people use wild foods And we have decimated nature We have destroyed most of the natural ecosystems In the productive regions of the entire world There is this assumption that collecting wild food is an unsustainable and destructive activity Yet it's the oldest known activity of our species It has shown itself to be something we can practice on a sustainable basis In the same area for thousands and thousands of years Of course, that doesn't mean you can collect everything you want In as great a quantity as you want Any time that you want in any place that you want Just as with hunting or fishing There needs to be some restraint whether it's self-restraint Or regulation in terms of what you would do But if there was an extraordinarily large number of people doing it It could still be done in a very sustainable fashion People would have to be careful simply not to over-harvest things But nature produces Whether it produces in the form of a corn field Producing corn Or a meadow producing 35 different plants that are edible Nature has the ability to produce that food Over and over and over again As long as that food is harvested in a fashion That allows it to grow back It can produce that food perpetually And supply that food perpetually So there's plenty of space in this country For everybody to eat some wild food And certainly for everybody that wants to eat some And does that include city dwellers? Is there a wild food that they could take in? Well actually, there's a lot of wild plants growing in urban areas Even in places we generally don't think of as wild Like plants we might have growing as weeds in our yard Weeds in parks For example that are not tended But are edible such as lambs quarters and dandelions But it is less practical for somebody in an urban area To use wild foods for a larger portion of his or her diet And I guess that's just the way it is It's the same as with any activity you want to participate in Your location is going to determine how much you can participate in it I want to take us over to some kind of theological basis Or theological grounds right now And I'm not presuming that you are the ultimate theological expert of the world But I've heard it said by folks That because in the bible it says that God gave us dominion Over all the animals and plants of the earth That the domestication of plants and animals Is the natural outcome and the good outcome for us How do you see that subject? Nature has things that it doesn't want to do And things that it does want to do If we have dominion over nature And if we accept that dominion in the way that we normally Think of dominion as far as having control of Or ownership of That still doesn't make it sensible to try to force nature To do things that it doesn't do very well We as a society have an economic system Which whether we want to believe it or not Is not sustainable And by that I mean our form of food production Has shown through history To be distinctly unsustainable It is unsustainable because it functions in a way that is Contrary to the way that nature wants to function So whether we have dominion or not It is still intelligent, wise, prudent, and effective In a long term for us to produce our food In a way that is in accordance with How nature produces food And how nature produces and sustains life Can eating wild foods help us know more About how that really should function? Yes, I really believe so One simple way that it can do that Is just by getting us to think about The possibilities that exist as far as our food choices We eat what we know We eat what we're familiar with And yet there are so many other potential foods That are nourishing, helpful, and delicious foods that we don't eat Which might work better in any particular landscape For example here in North America We produce our food almost exclusively With plants that are adapted to semi-arid, semi-tropic climates Either from Mexico, Peru, or the Middle East And it hasn't seemed to occur to us That maybe that doesn't work very well In the landscape of Eastern North America Perhaps Eastern North America has other food stuffs Which work better in our landscape Using wild food is a way of opening your eyes To the breadth and the depth of food possibilities That we have Anytime you participate in nature in any way You come to understand how it works I think it's important for people to realize that Agriculture, as we know it, works in a short term But not in the long term But isn't it just easier to go to the grocery store? Yeah, it's definitely easier to go to the grocery store I guess I think that's more or less irrelevant People who garden I think recognize that it's easier to go to the grocery store And people who hunt and fish I think recognize it's easier to go to the grocery store And for that matter, somebody who rides their bicycle Probably recognize that it's easier to drive I mean, does the fact that it's easier to drive make walking obsolete? I don't think so at all They're totally different experiences So if food is sacred to us Then it is something that we value above and outside of Just the economic value we could place on it That's how I value food And for people that value food that way What's easier or cheaper isn't necessarily the obvious choice Again, I'm not saying that I don't shop at a grocery store Or that nobody should shop at a grocery store Not by any means, am I saying that? But there's an experience to using wild food That cannot be received through shopping at a grocery store Use the word sacred, Sam, and it's been clear to me The years that I've known you That this is a spiritual thing that you're pursuing Hard to put into words exactly what the spirituality is But that it's very much part of a sacred experience for you Very much part of a... I don't want to engage in too much, I probably But there's a grail that you're pursuing Not just for yourself, but for people This is a ministry of sorts that you have Can you explain more about the spiritual dimension to it? How much is the spiritual dimension, the essence of what you're doing As opposed to the practical things Here you can know, here's these food options you have Here's what you can eat off of your plot There is a practical element But I have a feeling the spiritual part is the big part for you Yeah, I would say that's right Although I find it hard to separate the spiritual from the practical And I think when they become totally separate Then they both become meaningless or at least less meaningful But I guess spiritually my view is that We have this amazing gift of nature of this earth And the ecosystem upon it, the food that it produces The fact that we have this thing provided for us that produces everything we need And we have a choice as a society, as a culture To either work with it or work against it As I said before, I think that the verdict is in That working against it doesn't work Here in North America, we have the luxury of time This continent hasn't been fully occupied by agriculturalists Until the last 100 to 400 years Before that, most of the tillable land on this continent was not tilled So we haven't had as much time to realize how distinctly unsustainable agricultural systems are When we go to other parts of the world where agriculture has been around for a very long time Say, 3 or 5,000 years, we can see quite clearly that agriculture is not sustainable Or it is only sustainable through very drastic measures That make it something that we would see as not economically appealing Now I guess I'm getting a little bit technical in what's supposed to be a spiritual discussion But my point is that the earth has the means here for us to be provided for That can happen perpetually and beautifully if we work with it It can happen dysfunctionally and temporarily if we work against it Oh, my lord, you said unto me Do you like my garden so fair? You may live in this garden If you keep the grasses green and don't return in the cool of the day Now is the cool of the day Now is the cool of the day Oh, this earth is a garden, a garden of my lord and he was in his garden In the cool of the day And my lord, he said unto me Do you like my garden so pure? You may live in this garden If you keep the waters green and don't return in the cool of the day Now is the cool of the day Now is the cool of the day Oh, this earth is a garden, a garden of my lord and he was In his garden, in my lord and the day Now is the cool of the day Now is the cool of the day Oh, this earth is a garden, a garden of my lord And he walks in his garden In the cool of the day That beautiful voice is Annie Patterson, co-creator of the incredibly popular Group Sing-a-Long book Rise Up Singing She was a recent guest on my Song of the Soul program Here she was doing one of Gene Richie's songs Now is the cool of the day I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeat And my guest today for Spirit in Action Is Sam Thayer Price, author of Forager's Harvest A newly released book on wild foods and foraging Sam leads workshops on wild foods throughout the USA With an emphasis on the Midwest And is a gifted commentator on our connection to the earth And how to deepen that relationship If I say that I mean, or if I say that I feel that agriculture as we know it is unsustainable I'm not saying unsustainable as hyperbole And I think that a lot of people use the word sustainable And they actually use it as hyperbole I don't mean that I think it's wrong or we should do something different I mean that it's unsustainable So the question isn't if our economic system is going to change The question is when and how so I'm advocating that we start looking For how that change can happen now That's something that I don't know if human beings have ever done Has really made an economic change before they had to But maybe we'll have to soon So I think that in relating to the land through foraging for wild food Through that experience we will come to understand what is sustainable And I also think that people will be more able to accept a sustainable system And accept that our present system isn't sustainable If wild foods are a part of their life It'll broaden the views we have as a society I'd like you to imagine if you can How the landscape in the U.S. would look differently If a large percentage of the population Say 50% of the population in the U.S. Did at least some foraging some pursuit of wild foods How would the landscape and the life systems In the United States possibly look different? I think that one thing that would happen If people were more connected with nature they would realize What things we do presently that have a drastic negative effect on the landscape I think that people's yards wouldn't be so manicured I think people would choose to have wild or untamed portions of their yards Or semi-cultivated portions of the yards that would produce food for them I think that our cities would have more parks and our parks would look different I also think that in a lot of areas where rural land is abused for the sake of making money I think people would have different values and would be less likely to abuse that land I also think that the understanding of how nature works And simply caring about nature would work in people's minds and hearts In a way that changed their behavior in all sorts of subtle ways And I think those changes and those understandings would reverberate throughout our society I think that just in the way that television or automobiles Becoming part of our lives has changed the way we think I think that if a lot of people had a relationship with nature through wild food It would change the way we collectively as a society think And I think it would change decisions we make as a society in so many ways That it would be hard to delineate all of them or even conceive of all of them Having been familiar with the ideas you've talked about Sam About the history of people's connection with wild foods like acorns When I was reading through the Nagamati library The books that were not included in the bible that were part of early Christian beliefs I ran into something that echoed something you had said and I was just amazed at it Essentially in the passage it laid out a real strong prejudice against acorns Which after all were the food of the hunter-gatherer local folks in Europe Before wheat came in and took over the territory In that book that didn't make it into the bible It said that wheat is the food of people And that acorns are the food of swine Which is of course from Hebrew tradition. That's the lowest of the low All of that to say that religion can contain a prejudice for or against This practice you're talking about wild food gathering In your views and in your experience What spirituality is compatible with this kind of wild food practice that you advocate It's pretty clear that our values are reflected in how we interpret and implement religious teachings So anybody that values wild food Anybody that has the experience of using wild food Will interpret their religious teachings in a way that's compatible with that I don't know of any religion that would preclude having a deep experience or relationship with nature through wild foods What you brought up in your comment reflects something very different And that's not religion that's economics And economics has a way of slipping into religious ideas You know, maybe it's one of the primary forces determining religious ideas But if you were to go back for 5,000 years Or I guess more along the lines of 6 or 7,000 years ago in Europe When you had people living off of acorns and other wild foods that they collected and wild game and wild fish And you had societies expanding into Europe from the east That were based on herding sheep herding cows and raising barley and wheat and and other crops The archaeological evidence is pretty clear That the people that lived by farming and herding had a very stratified society where there was a lower oppressed class And if you were moving into an area where the population density was low There were people living off of acorns and wild game There wasn't very much to stop your lower class from simply deserting your society and joining another society That was more egalitarian So in that sense hunting and gathering just the very existence of that way of life Threatened the existence of a hierarchical agricultural society So there's a very strong prejudice in civilized societies that tells us that to live off wild food is Subhuman that wild foods are fit for beasts but not for humans And that prejudice is really derived from the economic necessity of keeping your subjugated classes in line Of preventing them from leaving the conditions they were living under Also, it helps to dehumanize your enemy and when you're an expanding agricultural economy You need to dehumanize those people that you need to kill to take their lands So this quite pervasive prejudice against wild foods And the people who ate them is something that we don't often think about because it's so ingrained in our culture But if you stop and think about it, you'll see it popping up repeatedly in the literature So I think that the passage that you were speaking of Is reflective of a point of view that is almost universal in agrarian civilizations I guess I want to hone in a little bit sam on your personal religious spiritual background Could you tell us how you were raised religiously spiritually if this wild foods Spirituality that you have was consistent with what you grew up with or did you get put down for it? I think in the same way that in years gone past when prejudice against native americans was more prevalent Kids that were being wild would be put down by saying you're running around like a bunch of wild indians As if that was some kind of an insult I have a feeling that the same kind of thing would be present with respect to food Oh, you're you're eating grass like a cow and that kind of thing As you point out already that may be more a Economic prejudice a structural prejudice than a religious prejudice But I have a feeling that it seeps in and is part of religious structures that we have So could you talk about your personal experience? Religion spirituality and how your personal spirituality wild foods Fit or didn't fit with the religious structures you've encountered Like I said, I really feel like having a relationship with wild foods fits Any religious structure that I know of and that's reflected in other people that I know that are interested in the topic have A very broad range of religious views I won't hesitate to say that some religious views are more conducive towards having a relationship with nature But as far as my background my parents were both roman catholic and we were raised as a very Not a real religious household. I guess but what was there was definitely of the christian bent And I never really felt like there was anything about my personal beliefs That ran contrary to any religious beliefs that I had and I was never told that either So I guess that aspect never really played a role in my development I was certainly faced with the idea that wild food was a waste of time or something not worth being interested in But as far as it being improper or against any religious teachings, that's something that I never experienced But it's also something that I didn't share a lot of was was my views about wild foods or even my interest There was nobody in my life As I was growing up that shared that interest and there was nobody that I You know made that interest extremely apparent to or intentionally made it apparent to I was thinking of a particular aspect of religion, which is the holding of weddings You had a wedding just a few months ago And you did the food yourself I was comparing that with the catholic weddings of my upbringing and of my experience And I was just having a hard time imagining that wedding as a catholic wedding Given the food you prepared first of all would you share with our audience? The menu that you and melissa put on for your wedding And how that was rooted for you and out of what kind of religious spirituality you did that I guess I don't know if it was so much religious as it was just a A matter of pride and in a way of keeping myself occupied so I didn't get nervous leading up to the wedding But we wanted food that was meaningful and and food that was good So I had some very traditional dishes for feeding large groups of people I made some pasta salad and potato salad and we had a pig roast from a pig that melissa's father had raised And then we had a wild food dish, which was a cast roller hot dish that was wild rice wild leeks mushrooms Salsifier oyster plant, which is a a root vegetable Wild parsnip it might be everything that was in there So I I wanted to have one dish that was wild, I guess to represent I guess I wanted you know some of my relatives and uh friends to Maybe be introduced to the notion that wild food could actually taste good and wasn't Something that always had to be marginalized, but I guess I didn't perceive it as a Religiously meaningful act having wild food at the wedding I sometimes substitute the words one for the other I might have also said spiritual act and spiritual might be more comprehensible in this context One of the parts of the wedding that I thought significant and I imagine it struck other people As either significant or strange was the fact that you were barefoot throughout the wedding service On a day when there were a couple inches of snow on the ground This was an outdoor wedding under a tent most of the time except for when you said your vows Is there some spiritual significance to that from your point of view? Well, yeah, I would say there there was the short answer to why it was barefoot is because I couldn't decide what she was I wanted to wear and feet don't go in or out of style And my feet don't get cold the way other people's feet get cold I'm blessed with warm feet and warm hands But I really liked the notion of that when I made these vows I was going to be standing directly on and connected directly to God's wonderful earth So that had an important symbolic meaning to me as well as just having the ceremony outside That's part of my broader perspective that my implementation or interpretation of my religious beliefs Includes a healthy dose of thanksgiving for what we have here that I think we often take for granted Because this earth is really a pretty wonderful place Did you get responses from relatives and friends that this was a little bit far out the whole Kind of Quaker service that we did the the food was a little bit strange Your outdoors when there's snow the pressing of the apples the playing ultimate frisbee and the sheep field What kind of response did you get to this and did this feel like a spiritual jarring sense for some people and or did it feel like It's a place where your spirituality was easily accepted If anybody was uncomfortable or disappointed with the wedding or any aspect of it that didn't come back to us Although, you know somebody that felt that way would likely keep it to themselves What did come back to us from quite a few people was comments such as this is the nicest wedding i've ever been to or I hope that my wedding could be like this And from my experience, I would say the wedding was Better than I even could have expected it to be so I was really glad That we weren't afraid to ignore a few traditions and do things in ways that felt meaningful to us And certainly were in no way irreverent and we just wanted to do in a way that was meaningful Of course, I was there for your wedding sam and I helped facilitate the kind of quaker meeting for worship style of the wedding I think of quaker worship as rooted as very That people need to be present in that worship for it to mean something I believe at least some of your relatives were very nervous that A lot of these people having no knowledge of what quakerism is like Were going to feel very uncomfortable that it was going to be as strange as eating sauce fire or whatever Did you see that also as being a comfortable part of the experience for them? I think quite a few of the people in attendance were Uncomfortable to begin with but I think for the most part They sensed that or trusted that we weren't going to put them in a situation that was So uncomfortable they couldn't handle it and I think within a short time into the ceremony I think people started to realize, oh, hey, this is no big deal I have no wedding like this but it's pretty laid back and easy to handle so It wasn't a Context that expected a lot from them and so I think people once they got over there initial surprise that it was different than other weddings They had been to I think they were pretty accepting of it One of the aspects that was beautiful about your wedding and I think it also connects with wild foods Is the apple cider that we drank you had piles of apples there The making of the apple cider with a hand press it felt to me like integral with your approach to wild foods A lot of people when they think wild foods are only thinking of dandelions or something out there They don't think of the fact that wild foods includes apples which can grow in the wild Or the deer that they hunt at Thanksgiving time that these are wild foods as well Do you run into that preconception that people miss out a lot of the wild foods that they do eat That are even popular like venison because they don't define it as wild foods Yeah, and that goes back to what I said earlier. I think that the prejudice the subconscious Prejudice against wild food is so strong in our culture That if we enjoy something if we want to accept a wild food as quote normal We have to perceive it as not wild So the apples that we had at our wedding were apples that the trees had overgrown an abandoned pasture There were orchards nearby and I'm sure the birds or the bears or the deer carried the seeds over to this abandoned pasture It had grown up with apples and we harvested these wild apples there But I don't think anybody thought of them as wild when they saw them because they were something familiar They were apples and apples are normal and apples are acceptable That's one way that I think people get introduced to wild food and realize That food doesn't have to be dichotomized into wild and not wild and it doesn't have to be imbued with this Sense of this food is normal and this food is abnormal There's a lot of foods we eat two good examples are cranberries and pecans that grow wild and are cultivated But the cultivated forms are not different from the wild forms They're just selected directly from the wild population And so if anybody's eating cranberries, they could eat wild cranberries or what sauce from wild cranberries And that's a totally wild thing and yet a totally familiar thing These are foods that kind of bridge the gap between cultivated food and wild food And help people realize that the distinction is not important Our obsession with the distinction is really the result of this ancient prejudice that's in our psyches And it's a good prejudice to stamp out It's a good prejudice to erase the lines of so that we can see some more of the bounty that's there One last question I guess I would like to ask you before Send you on your way I'm looking for the way I want to express this properly. Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? I do consider you an environmentalist, but I was wondering if you consider yourself an environmentalist And particularly I was wondering about any insights that you have about a healthy relationship between environmentalism and What we might call healthy spirituality Environmentalism is an interesting term. I guess I do consider myself an environmentalist You know 50 years ago the term was conservationist all the leopold defined conservation as a state of balance between the needs of humans and The needs of the ecosystem and I really like that definition Later on in the 70s the term environmentalism came into use and it reflected something different Something a lot more human centered, which is essentially that I'm concerned about my environment In other words, I'm concerned about the health of the things around me because that might come back to harm me You know, I'm concerned about pollution because pollution could make me sick I'm concerned about water pollution because the water can make me sick or the fish could die and we might need fish to eat Those are of course legitimate concerns, but I like the idea that nature has value Inherent value that has nothing to do with its economic value to me So yes, I do consider myself an environmentalist But I like the concept of conservation or the old concept of conservation better or what some people have called deep ecology I don't care too much about the label as long as it's understood that I feel that these things have value for practical reasons And they have value because they are sacred because they have value in their own right When I go for a walk in the woods and I see a black bernie and warblers beautiful little black and orange bird I don't need to think that that has an economic value to me To think that that bird has value and ought to be there I think that environmentalism is a dead end and open to a lot of manipulation If it doesn't acknowledge that we think nature has inherent value There's a danger in only being concerned with the environment for our sake I don't know if that kind of selfish concern could even be termed spiritual I think that just about every religion allows for an interpretation that gives nature some inherent value People often quote a biblical passage about God giving man dominion over nature But at the same time if you read the book of joe, you'll get a very strong feeling that god is saying Nature is there because nature is there and it has value And that's really what I believe We need to relate to it in a proper fashion in a sensible fashion both because it makes economic sense But also because it is something that sacred is something like my sister or my brother I treat them well because they deserve to be treated well I don't need an economic justification for that and I think the same applies to nature It is good. It is there and we ought to treat it well I know sam that we've only scratched the very tiniest surface level Of the knowledge that you have with respect to wild foods With respect to preparation identification and uses of wild foods You just came out with the book this past year the foragers harvest That's one way people can get some more knowledge about wild foods from you You also do workshops periodically So if people want to get involved in your workshops scattered around the midwest And even outside the midwest if they want to get ahold of your book How do they find out what sam thayer price is doing and what he can share with them? Well, the book is pretty easy to find If your local bookstore doesn't have it it can always order it. It's available through most of the major uh, wholesalers and distributors You can also order on amazon.com or directly from my website, which is foragersharvest.com It's been received pretty well by the people interested in edible wild plants And as far as the workshops that I do I have some workshops this year in main in west virginia, north carolina, mizzuri So scattered over a pretty wide area, but the majority are concentrated in the midwest here Wisconsin minnesota, Iowa Those are posted on my website So they should be heading to foragersharvest.com And they can find your book and your list of your workshops there Yes Well, we've been sitting inside a long time. Don't you think it's about time that we went outside? I don't think out in the snow that we've got here That we're going to go find a lot of wild foods right now But is there something that we could step outside and grab and eat right now? Well, there's a few uh tea plants, but there's not really a lot of wild food available in the winter Now if the ground was thawed like it was a month and a half ago or a month ago Then there's a whole bunch of different root vegetables that we could actually dig up But as far as when the ground is frozen, that's when if you want to eat wild food, you better have some stored up Thanks sam for taking the time here and for going out and doing this good work I hope you do succeed in helping change a lot of people's lives to connect them a little bit more with the fullness of the earth Well, I hope so too and if it wasn't for that hope I wouldn't be doing this because it hasn't been a very easy path to get here Thanks again sam God bless the grass That grows through the cracks They roll the concrete over it and try to keep it back The concrete gets tired What it has to do It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows through And god bless the grass God bless the truth that fights toward the sun They roll the lies over it and think that it is done Moves through the ground reaches for the air And after a while it's growing everywhere and god bless the grass God bless the grass that grows through cement It's green and it's tender and it's easily bent After a while it can piss up its head For the grass is living and the cement is dead and god bless the grass God bless the grass that's gentle and low It's roots they are deep and it's will is to grow And god bless the truth a friend of the poor And the wild grass growing at the poor one's door And god bless the grass God bless the grass is a malvina Reynolds song done so beautifully here by Sarah Thompson You've been listening to a spirit in action interview with sam thayer price author of foragers harvest And educator on the spiritual and practical aspects of wild foods You can find out more about him on his website foragersharvest.com And you can hear this program again on my site northern spirit radial.org Look there also for info on the music featured on this program and further links and programs The theme music for spirit in action is I have no hands, but yours by carol johnson Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit You can email me at helps meet at usa.net May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is spirit in action I have no higher call To love and serve your neighbor Enjoy selflessness To love and serve your neighbor Enjoy selflessness To love and serve your neighbor You You You You (upbeat music) You