Foraging: Novelty vs practicality – Biblical Natural Health Coaching

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Where we live, the idea of foraging is often seen as a hobby for those who can afford all the gadgety gear that tends to accompany hobbyist ideals. Some have even written books about this, literally filled with every gadget under the sun to make your outdoor adventure as enjoyable as possible! (I picked one up in a store a year ago, shaking my head, because most people don’t have the funds to load up on all that gear.) The only people we typically run into who do it for reasons other than a “fun hike” are those who are either herbalists themselves, or who gather and sell to high end customers.

Long before my daughter and I obtained our papers, foraging was a means of reducing costs at the pharmacy and grocery store. Obtaining our papers was seen as a way to legally and legitimately convey the knowledge God was giving us, to others, to hopefully encourage a return to the wilds for similar reasons and purposes. The more I heard of the “novel” aspect or “hobby” nature of local foragers, the more I wanted to bring it down to where the common man on the street would consider it within useful, useable reach. The more we learned about what grows in the wild, the more I saw it as a way that even the homeless could eat better and assist them with any health concerns they might have.

The problem with that outlook, is that it is “mundane”. It isn’t exotic or exciting, unless you count looking forward to a given herb’s harvest time as exciting the way a gardener looks forward to their produce. Certain wild foods do get us excited for their arrival, while the rest are just part of the pantry, having replaced what we buy at the store.

We’ve replaced tylenol with prickly lettuce tincture.
We’ve replaced artificial and real vanilla with Flower of Arrowleaf Balsamroot Glycerite
We’ve replaced Romaine Lettuce with Prickly Lettuce and added Dandelion leaves, wild mustard leaves, false solomon’s seal, twisted stalk, broad and narrowleaf plantain, and mallow leaf to our Caesar salads.
We’ve discovered poor man’s pepper, otherwise better known as peppergrass. It doesn’t replace imported black pepper as it doesn’t contain piperine, but it does add a gentle bit of heat do a dish.
We’ve discovered wild pot herbs such as goldenrod, lamb’s quarters (which others replace spinach with in all it’s culinary uses) and cudweed.
We’ve begun replacing half our flour usage with curly dock seed.
We’ve discovered how culinary ash is made and it’s ability to replace baking soda/baking powder.
We don’t buy maple syrup, we use fir tip, fir/pine cone mugolio, or other syrups made from chokecherry juice concentrate, oregon grape, etc.
We flavour soup with powdered lamb’s quarters, elecampane root, and goldenrod. We throw in chopped up scotch thistle leaf ribs, cudweed, etc.
We’ve learned how to make oil infusions that replace antibiotic ointments, eye salves, and medications.
We don’t buy teas much anymore, making our own from a wide variety of wild herbs. We can count on less than one hand, the teas we still buy, usually because the herbs don’t grow wild here.

We literally go shopping in the woods and spend the same amount of gas as we would to go shopping at the store. We also “go shopping” in our own tiny “lawn” patch. That’s in quotes because it’s so small that only a handful of wild herb varieties grow there, and with the exception of dandelion in spring of 2025, normally not enough to do much more than provide wild salads and a bit of wild medicine.

This presents a second “problem” if I can call it that. Because we spend the same amount of gas to go shopping in the woods as we would to go to the store, we don’t make “fun” trips or go “road tripping” to go foraging out in far-a-away places to find the foods and medicines we forage for. Even the First Nations peoples in times past, would live near their foraging grounds, spending each season near the areas they found their food and medicine in. We do know foragers who will take road trips into the mountains to go foraging. But they either do it for the novelty, or they do it because they sell their forage to high end restaurants. The closest we get to selling to anything or anyone high end, is selling our wildcrafted teas at craft fairs, wellness fairs, mini-markets, etc. Adding sample collection tea chests, vintage English China, and most recently mini apothecary chests, is raising the bar at our booth, catching the eye of potential high end buyers, but what we offer is for everyone, from high end buyers down to those working minimum wage jobs, living on fixed incomes, etc.

As I shared in my article explaining “Wholefood as medicine that might grow outside your front door”, wild herbs can be food, they can be medicine, and they can be hygiene as well as household cleaning products. The recipe section of this blog shares various adventures I’ve been up to when creating food from wild herbs. I admit that sometimes I get so wrapped up in the medicinal qualities of wild herbs that I forget the food part of the equation. But the food part is just as important, because what better way to maintain or regain health, than to fill your bowl with beneficial food?

Our goal is to take foraging from novel to practical, from exotic to everyday, from pastime to money-saving, and shift the direction of shopping from the store to the wilds.

The wilds might be far closer than anticipated too. Anything growing wild is not domestic. This means you may find the wilds growing in your yard, along your sidewalk, under the fence, even popping up in your garden when you don’t want them there. The wilds in these places are generally known as “weeds”, a term we rarely use anymore in our house. We’ve come to define “weed”, as “anything growing where you don’t want it to”. By that definition, grass is a weed to me! While it does contain a very useful phytochemical known as MSM (livestock owners may be more familiar with the term, and some vets), the only way I’d willingly eat grass, is by making it into a tincture.

Wild food that can help you maintain or regain your health, (newsflash: that’s what food is supposed to do) might literally be growing right outside your home, place of business or educational institution. In today’s world where we are so used to imported foods, herbs and spices, the idea that the wilds could be right outside my home seems exotic, but not enough for those who want the day trip out of town.

Maybe one day, day trips involving 2 or more hours of driving to reach an elusive plant not growing nearby, could happen, but not now. Here in BC with the advent of “fire smart” infrared cameras being installed in trees, remote audio capture devices being hung in trees near human walking trails ostensibly to capture bird calls (my foot!!!), and the UN’s UNDRIP policy coming into play as DRIPA where First Nations could take over entire swatches of the province, the ability to go foraging on crown land could get threatened, whether it’s a day trip or shopping trip. We’ve heard first-hand stories of families who immigrated from Russia, where they foraged at night to reduce chances of being hauled off to prison while augmenting the meager rations provided by the communist government 50 years ago. A visitor to our table once tried to suggest harvesting from city lands without permission under cover of darkness, thinking no one would ever know. All I could think of when she said that, was the forestfire cameras going up around the province. You can bet if they can detect a fire about to start, they will detect your heat signature too! I have no idea how far into the forest one would have to go to theoretically avoid such cameras, and such a distance may indeed require day trips, or even camping trips, but then how you travel out there will be detected by any satellites designed to track vehicular movement.

Currently, I don’t have an answer for safe, unfettered access to the wilds beyond permissions given by land owners to traverse large expanses they may own, should my province choose to get draconian beyond current measures. Currently, as of August 2025, we can still go out on crown land and forage for things we need and use. This isn’t a novelty to us, it’s a matter of affordability. As one example, with the fall harvest season approaching, the cost of glass mason jars at our usual store has skyrocketed! If this price hike has occurred at other stores selling these jars, this will increase costs to make our own syrups and jellies, which we were wanting to sell at the Rock Creek Fall Fair this September. As of today, we have enough chokecherry juice concentrate frozen for the coming year, so now we are looking at the syrup and jelly phase while we endeavour to fill two tubs of crushed leaf for the tea booth. If the cost of jams, jellies and syrups skyrocket at the grocery store in concert with the rise of glass canning jars, then money will still be saved, just not what we saved a year ago.

Foraging for wild food and medicine is a matter of practicality that I aim to teach in a manner that is accessible to everyone, regardless of how you get around. If you are homeless, you can learn what grows in weed patches that gardeners don’t want, get permission to forage their weeds, and they get a clean garden while you get free food and medicine. If you are on fixed income, knowing what you can forage for that drops the costs of your food, medicines and cleaning cupboard, will free up funds to help pay utilities and rent. If you are paycheque to paycheque, learning what grows wild may make monthly expenses easier to deal with. If you have spare cash lying around and can afford novelties and day trips, you can still benefit in the ways the other groups do, but now your spare cash stash is growing, letting you budget for larger expenses.

Foraging was once a way of life on this continent, and in many areas of Europe it is still a way of life even with easier access to grocery stores and pharmacies. It is my goal to return foraging to a beneficial lifestyle that anyone can make use of no matter where they live or their financial lot in life.

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