Why Forage? to Eat ‘The Best Stuff You’ve Ever Had,’ Says Sam Thayer

Why Forage? to Eat ‘The Best Stuff You’ve Ever Had,’ Says Sam Thayer
Sam Thayer among blooming elderflowers. (Courtesy of Sam Thayer)
4/1/2023
Updated:
4/2/2023
​​“I added up a list of all the things I collect within walking distance of my house, and it was 346 species,” says renowned forager Sam Thayer. A count of plants (excluding spices) in all the products at his local grocery store? 124. For more than two decades, Thayer’s been touting the bounty of readily available wild foods, and the people he encounters “practically lose their minds” when they try unexpected delicacies such as a thistle stalk. Reactions, he says, are “not just ‘I could eat that if I had to,’ but ‘That’s like the best thing I’ve ever had!’”

An inductee into the National Wild Foods Hall of Fame, Thayer, who was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, and raised in Madison, took to foraging at a very early age. “I had a couple parents who didn’t really want to be parents. The more I could parent myself, the better—from their perspective and mine.” Often left to fend for themselves, he and his three siblings quickly learned to be independent. When he was four, his older sister showed him wood sorrel growing under the front porch, a common lawn “weed” but edible and rich in vitamin C. And so began his lifelong fascination with what he could eat in the natural world.

Black locust flowers. (Courtesy of Sam Thayer)
Black locust flowers. (Courtesy of Sam Thayer)

Thayer is self-taught, as are many foragers, relying on tracking down information one plant at a time. “I started out learning things that were not particularly difficult or hard to find. My neighbor had a black walnut tree and told me what it was. You could eat black walnuts. Lots of people know that. I just never forgot that and I started eating black walnuts.” He’d add perhaps half a dozen items each year, just by asking people. “There’s a lot of knowledge floating around, but people just aren’t picking it up and using it.” When he was 10, he discovered books on edible wild plants, which rapidly sped up the learning process.

By middle school, he was presenting his learning to classmates in science class. He learned survival camping in his teens, guided foraging walks, and, after high-school graduation, built and lived in a log cabin on an abandoned farmstead near Lake Superior. But far from living a quiet life off the grid, he traveled the nation to give workshops, learning more regional wild foods as he went. He published his award-winning first book, “The Forager’s Harvest,” in 2006; his latest, “Sam Thayer’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants,” will be out in May 2023.

Teaching the Trade

In a typical year, Thayer hosts 10 to 15 workshops. “If I have 100 people and I say, ‘Who here gathers wild food?’ 30 hands will go up. And if I say, ‘Who here gathers wild blackberries?’ 90 hands go up. As soon as people eat something, they don’t think of it as wild anymore. It really helps them accept that [foraging] really is a normal activity.”

Thayer has seen his audience change over time. “Twenty years ago, a big part of my audience and people coming to my classes was fundamentalist Christians preparing for the collapse of civilization,” he says, a reaction to Y2K. “That demographic has almost totally disappeared from my classes.” Today, his “prototypical” attendee is slightly more than 50 percent likely to be female—often a rural or urban housewife between the ages of 35 and 60 who has a garden and likes to cook. But he sees a wide variety of backgrounds from the others, all of them tending toward middle class who are more likely to pay money for a workshop.

Yellow thistle. (Courtesy of Sam Thayer)
Yellow thistle. (Courtesy of Sam Thayer)

Some are a bit leery of wild plants, especially their perceived risk of poisoning the eater, but Thayer dispels the myths. “Practically every person I know who is an avid bicyclist has been hospitalized.” Foraging, on the other hand, “is statistically so safe, when you actually look at it, it’s almost ridiculous. The big safety rule is: Don’t eat something unless you are positive what it is.” He jokes that no one fears that they are eating a deadly false blackberry. “You know what a blackberry is, so that means you are ready to eat it. All the plants we eat, all of them, are equally distinct. But you have to work to get to that point of familiarity, and you do that one plant at a time. Once you’re there, you have it for the rest of your life.”

“Here’s the thing that people don’t quite grasp about foraging: People imagine this food isn’t as good and that that’s why you can’t buy it at the store,” says Thayer. Thistle stalk tastes “like a honeydew melon but in the shape of a broccoli stalk.” Shelf life is two to three days; pick it a week late and it’s too tough. If someone “got asparagus and it was 4 feet high and it had already branched out and they grilled it, they aren’t going to think it’s delicious.” Learning the timing is also key.

Then, “once you start eating this stuff, you can’t imagine not eating it, because it’s literally the best stuff you’ve ever had.”

Sam Thayer

Location: Madison, Wis.
A Favorite Spring Wild Edible: The blossoms of the common black locust tree (Robinia pseudoacacia) are “like snow peas with a little bit of vanilla and honey on them.” Try them in fruit salad, ice cream, or fritters, but they can also go savory.
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Expert Tips for Beginner Foragers

Ready to head into the field? Study these expert tips before you go.
Abide by the Golden Rule: Never eat anything from the wild unless you’re 100 percent certain what it is. Less than that? Don’t throw it out just yet, Alan Muskat advises—ask about it, and turn it into a learning experience.
Find a Local Expert: The absolute best way to learn is in person, with an experienced guide. Attend guided tours and classes and join local community groups, which now abound both in person and online, to maximize your exposure to what others are finding.
Round Out Your Toolbox: Get a solid set of guidebooks. Alan Bergo highly recommends all of his mentor Sam Thayer’s books on wild plants, and David Arora’s on mushrooms. He also recommends plant identification apps such as iNaturalist and PlantSnap—though he notes that others may not agree—as a tool not to rely upon, but to use in conjunction with guidebooks and expert advice.
Start Small: Learn to identify three plants in your own backyard or area where you live, Tama Matsuoka Wong suggests. It’s a great way to familiarize yourself with your home environs, and you’ll be aware of whether or not anything has been sprayed on the plants, legal permissions, and so on (be sure to research these if you’re looking elsewhere). Really get to know those plants, including at different stages of their life cycles and in different preparations, before you move on to others.
This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
Kevin Revolinski is an avid traveler, craft beer enthusiast, and home-cooking fan. He is the author of 15 books, including “The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an American Teacher in Turkey” and his new collection of short stories, “Stealing Away.” He’s based in Madison, Wis., and his website is TheMadTraveler.com
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