Abby Artemisia - 15 Jan

Once you know what youre looking for, foraging may not take you far from home. This patch of plantain is just steps from my porch.

In this spirit of cooperation, throughout these pages youll notice I do not say use when referring to plants. I believe it causes us to objectify the plants and forget theyre giving a piece of themselvesor their whole livesfor our food or health. Instead of use, I like to instead say we utilize, employ, or work with the herbs. After all, we are working together, like a team.

My hope in writing this book is that you will learn how to partner with herbs to develop your own herbal apothecary. Maybe youll create a first aid kit with all kinds of helpful remedies, such as tinctures, poultices, and bug sprays. Or perhaps youll dive deeper into infusions, oils, and salves, learning both what nourishes you and what herbs you enjoy the most. Some of you may take your newfound favorites to the garden, planting and tending so you can restock your apothecary. No matter what calls to you, you will feel empowered to support your health and the health of others.

Youll find each chapter in this book has a specific focus. Aside from the first chapter, each one has a featured set of plants as well as techniques to work with those plants. My recommendation is to read the first two chapters before jumping around to what interests you. Together, can be read in any order depending on what interests you. Perhaps youre most interested in tinctures, or maybe you discovered your property has an abundance of plantain. By all means, skip around. Just keep in mind that while certain techniques and plants are grouped within these chapters, your exploration should not be confined by these artificial borders. The techniques youll learn, from infusions and tinctures to oils and salves, all work with a wide variety of herbs. My goal with the groupings and the recipes was to provide a launching point for your own exploration and recipe creation.

So, settle into a comfy seat with a viewand a good cup of to get foraging.

WHEN YOU IMMERSE YOURSELF in the world of herbs, its easy to feel overwhelmed. Dont worrywell take it slow. Theres a lot you need to know: how to properly identify plants in the wild, how to sustainably and ethically harvest them, how to process those wild (or cultivated) plants, and how to store them properly. In this chapter, youll get an introduction to all of that. So take a deep breath and feel the excitement of this new journey.

As someone who has been foraging and in the herbal world for most of my life, people often ask me what they should learn first. I suggest starting with just one plant. Pick a plant that grows right outside your front or back door, or somewhere you go every day. Observe what it looks like through all parts of the year. Research it and get to know it so well that you cant not know it. Make medicine from it; drink the tea made from it (if you can) until you intimately know the effect of that plant on your body. Then move on to the next plant.

Theres a lot of variability in plants, and even the same plant can look different depending on the season and other environmental factors. This makes positive plant identification, or being 100 percent positive you know what plant youre looking at, very important. Soon youll see why botany is so important for a farmer, gardener, or forager.

Its easy to get excited about free food and medicine and forget that not every plant is prolific, or that there are certain ways to harvest them that do the least damage. Its up to each one of us to protect and respect the plants. In addition to ethical and sustainable harvesting, well talk about the best season to harvest each part of the plant to make sure were getting the most vitality in our herbs.

This chapter also wouldnt be complete without a discussion of how to process herbs, meaning cleaning, drying, and storing them. If youre worried you immediately need to buy an expensive dehydrator, hundreds of jars, or custom storage shelves, worry not. As with so much of herbalism, you have many optionsand ample opportunity to learn, explore, experiment, and see which solutions are perfect for you.

In this chapter, youll learn about some of the tools that make foraging easier, such as the hori hori used to dig burdock roots.

Harvesting Herbs

Growing your own herbs is empowering, and it gives you control over how they are grown. Harvesting wild herbs can be just as empowering, but its easy to be put off by the uncertainty. If youve never gone foraging, you might be scared about poisoning yourself or others. Thats a healthy fear! Yet that fear can prevent you from discovering all thats good about foraging.

While Im a cautious optimist when it comes to foraging, I do believe in 100 percent positive identification before harvesting any herb. In most populated places in the world, there are very few deadly poisonous plants. However, if you happen to find and ingest one of them, you could be out of luck. Foraging is a practice where youre better safe than sorry.

While most herbs in this book are accompanied by photographs, this book is not meant to be a definitive source for identifying herbs. As a foraging workshop instructor, I recommend taking a class with a foraging expert in your region. It is really the best way to learn which herbs grow in your part of the world, where to find them, and how to ID them with confidence. If that is not an option, purchase at least three reputable books that deal exclusively with plant identification. While it may be tempting to use a plant identification app, at the time of this writing there was not a reliable app to recommend.