Foraging for your own food may sound fun, but dangerous. It can be both! With the right knowledge around identification and safety, foraging is a tool to gather your own local and delicious foods that can be as close to you as your backyard. Learn what you need to know to get started, and you will soon be able to identify local foods, impress your friends, and gain the knowledge to sustain your eating for free.

What is gleaning?

While foraging involves going out into the world to gather your own foods from the wild (either urban or rural spaces are appropriate land), gleaning is a little bit different. Gleaning is the act of harvesting food that would otherwise become food waste. For example, if you have an apple farm and a lot of your apple trees don't produce apples large enough to sell on the market, those apples will often time go to waste. Instead of letting those foods go bad, some farms offer gleaning programs to allow folks to harvest those foods that would otherwise be left to decompose back into the earth. Gleaning is another great option for cost efficient, local, and sustainable foods that is similar to foraging but without needing as much knowledge on your local wild edibles.

Being Careful

While foraging has a lot of benefits, there are a few dangers to keep in mind too. There are a lot of delicious and edible foods out there, but there are just as many inedible foods and poisonous look a-likes. As a rule of thumb, you should never eat something you are not 100% certain of. Additionally, having two sources of identification is a good idea to reduce risk of misidentification. These sources can be a field guide, a reliable web source, or other foragers. Even when you are 100% sure of identification, some people still have sensitivities to foods they have never tried before. It is a good idea to eat with caution, and test how your body reacts to small amounts of your foraged goods. Once you know that you are not allergic, you can eat the rest in confidence.

Another thing to keep in mind while foraging is where you are sourcing your foods. Urban foraging is absolutely ok to do, but you should stray away from heavy foot trafficked areas, or areas that may be polluted with pesticides or natural metals. Just as toxins seep into the ground, they grow into the foods that come from the soil. If you take dandelion from a sidewalk where hundreds of people and animals walk everyday, it is likely that plant isn't suitable to be consumed.

Lastly, if you venture into the great outdoors, bring a buddy with you or be sure to not stray too far from the trails! It can be easy to lose track of the trail when you are on the hunt for the perfect chicken of the woods mushroom. Keep spatial awareness in mind as you forage to ensure you don't get lost in the woods.

Food by the Season

Here is a list of some foods you can find in the Vermont woods each month. This will never be exact, as every year is a little different depending on a few different factors.

Winter & Spring

March:

Maple tree sap
Eastern spicy-wintergreen fruits

April & May:

Black locust flower
Dandelions
Japanese Knotweed
Stinging nettle tops
Garlic-mustard tops
Fiddleheads

Winter:

Balsam fir needles
Eastern hemlock needles
Rose hips

What is foraging?

Foraging is the act of gathering edible plants and species from the wild for your consumption. This ranges from weeds to flowers to mushrooms to animals. If it's edible, you can forage it.

There are a lot of benefits to foraging your own food. Here are some of the main benefits:

Cost efficient
- The foods you forage are free of cost!
Nutrition
- Eating foods that are grown in your area often contain more nutrients than the same foods you would find in a grocery store. They are fresh and local.
Sustainability
- The items you forage are organic and naturally grown without pesticides. Since you are the one foraging for your own food, you are at the direct source of your food supply.

Getting Started

So, you know what foraging is but you're feeling a little confused on where to start. A lot of folks are in the same boat! The best way to start is to find a local edible plant in your area that is easy to identify and has no dangerous look a-likes and get comfortable with that one plant. Once you've mastered that one, add another to your list.

Here are a few easy to identify plants in the Vermont/New England area:

Dandelions
- These plants are easy to spot with their familiar yellow disc shaped flowers with the leaves being tooth-edged and hairless. Dandelion leaves taste bitter and can be used in salads, while the flowers can actually be put into jams, honey, mead, and other sweets!
Mint
- Plants in the mint family are edible and medicinal. They can be used in teas, tinctures, or dishes. They are identifiable by their square stems, opposite branching leaves, and are aromatic. Peppermint is often found growing near fresh bodies of water.
Wild Onion
- You can identify wild onion through their waxy, thin, flat leaves. It looks similar to grass but stands taller. Wild onion looks very similar to wild garlic (which has round leaves) and can be used as a substitute for scallions.

Summer & Fall

June

Black elderberry flowers
Black raspberries
Common St. John's-wort flowers
Strawberry fruit
Sassafras leaves
Mulberry fruit

July:

Blueberries
Milkweed flower buds
Huckleberry fruit
Red raspberries
Rayless chamomile

August:

Apples
Beach plums
Fox grape fruit
Wild leek bulbs

September:

Autumn-olive fruit
Wild grapes
Oak tree acorns
Sumac berries
Withe-rod fruit

October:

Black walnut
Cranberries
Hawthorn fruit
Nannyberry fruit
Purple chokeberry fruit