Sam Thayer says that foraging creates a sense of gratitude toward nature.
When Sam Thayer goes looking for wild food in rural Wisconsin, he feels not only connected to nature, but also to humanity. After all, he’s searching for the same edible plants, nuts and berries that once helped sustain all human life in North America — the food, he laments, that we’ve mostly forgotten.
“These people we would call hunter-gatherers, all of them were actively managing their landscapes to produce more food whether they were growing crops in a field or not,” he says. “We once had a food economy that was completely North American-based, but now we see with tunnel vision the 30 or 40 plants we brought over from Europe and Asia, and ignore most of the things that grow here naturally.”
Maple syrup, sunflowers, cranberries, blueberries and pecans are the only plant-based foods native to North America that are still sold on the commercial level, according to Thayer. But other edible plants grow in abundance.
Thayer, a native of Wausau, now lives in northwestern Wisconsin. Through a lifelong fascination with foraging, he’s become an expert at identifying and collecting wild food, leading foraging classes for more than 20 years and authoring three books on the subject, including last year’s Incredible Wild Edibles: 36 Plants That Can Change Your Life.
Thayer is leading three foraging workshops during the annual Fermentation Fest in Sauk County. His classes will cover basics like where to look for seasonal foraging opportunities and how to identify edible plants. He will also explain the three options for storing wild food — canning, drying and fermentation. But his primary goal is getting participants excited about “the food that is all around them,” even if they live in a town or city. In fact, one of Thayer’s walking workshops starts in downtown Reedsburg.
“The cool thing about urban foraging is that it’s the same regardless of the size of the urban area,” he says. “A city of 2,000 people has the same types of things you can collect as a city of 2 million.”
And there’s good news for newbies: Thayer says there’s no such thing as irresponsible foraging — not on an individual level, at least. He does believe that some people become “detached from nature” and misunderstand the practice itself.
“People are extremely instinctively territorial, but they don’t know that,” he says. “The average person sees someone foraging and immediately feels, ‘They’re taking my stuff.’ So they try to find a reason that people shouldn’t be foraging and the best excuse they can come up with is that it’s bad for the environment.”
Only commercial-level foragers are capable of doing serious damage to an ecosystem, Thayer says. Most foragers simply collect enough food for themselves.
“Not only is it almost impossible to do that irresponsibly, but the converse is true — it’s almost impossible to do it without developing a sense of awe and gratitude toward nature,” he says. “That’s why I think it’s really, really important for people to get out there and forage for wild food.”
The festival will feature additional classes on pickling vegetables, making yogurt and kefir and the finer points of brewing craft beer, among other hands-on activities. There will also be talks by such experts as Elizabeth Rich, who will discuss how the collapsed prices of milk, grain and other commodities are affecting the livelihoods of farmers throughout Wisconsin. See full schedule at fermentationfest.com.
Fermentation Fest
Oct. 5-7 and Oct. 12-14; fermentationfest.com
Various locations in Sauk County.
Thayer leads three classes:
Fall Foraging; Oct. 14; 10 am-4 pm; $95
Rural Foraging; Oct. 13, 1:30-3:30 pm; $35
Urban Foraging; Oct. 13, 9:30-11:30 am; $35
