One of the oldest professions in the civilized world is the collection and preparation of wild plants for use as drugs, special foods, or home remedies. Wildcrafting is the practice of harvesting plants from their natural habitat for the use of food or medicine. Ancient as this skill is, however, it’s far from outdated. Herbalism is trending and it’s easy to understand why. Plants are beautiful. They are powerful healers. Wildcrafted herbs can be used in a variety of medicines like tinctures, herbal salves, and infusions, and when done mindfully, you can reap the benefits of wild herbal medicines without disturbing the ecosystem.
Interacting with them feeds us-body/mind/spirit. So it’s no wonder that more and more folks are turning towards herbal medicine and learning the art and science of herbalism, have decided to make the switch from modified, mass-produced plants to an organic alternative. Wild plants are more potent and nutrient-dense than their monoculture counterparts because they come from richer terrain, often in relatively undisturbed meadows and forests. Commercial farms often have depleted soil, or only feed the plants with isolated nutrients.
Many people today have decided to take a proactive approach to their health and not a reactive approach. Wildcrafted herbs for food and medicine can support your efforts to eat more nutrient dense foods, reduce dependence on imported foods and expensive medicines, and keep yourself healthy with natural tonics and remedies. For any budding herbalist, the most exciting thing is wildcrafting herbs.
These organic spices, herbs and botanicals can be used for medicinal remedies, culinary seasonings, or even skincare. There are a TON of ways to use plants for food, medicine, cleaning, crafts, and more. The gathering of herbs was just a part of life and had been for thousands of years before that. It’s staggering to think about how much earth-connection we’ve lost in such a short time but wildcrafting can add much to your life when done correctly.
It is so gratifying and empowering to collect herbs in the garden, field, or woodland area and then lovingly dry them for tea or make them into an herbal elixir, tincture, salve or other healing medicine. These simple skills can be available to anyone willing to take the time to learn. And just how many useful plants are out there? Thousands depending on your area! Once you learn to identify some useful plants, you will see they are everywhere. Many useful plants are so prolific they are also known as weeds.
If you are interested in wildcrafting of your own, the first, and most important step, is going to be learning to identify the plants you hunt and collect. Wildcrafting requires a ton of knowledge and understanding especially if you plan to use them for consumption. Proper identification is important as many plants can look very similar. You do not want to collect the wrong plant and accidently ingest something that turns out to be toxic or poisonous. Before you harvest a large number of plants, you’d probably do well to cut and dry two or three samples of the species you intend to collect so that you can be sure of the accuracy of your plant as well as see if it is a plant you can comfortably preserve and use. There are many classes, books, and even apps that can help you identify plant species and their common uses.
If we’re going to harvest wild plants we should do so in a way that proliferates their population- rather than depleting it- known as wildtending. Wildtending includes a variety of practices, and may mean that some years we don’t harvest from a particular patch or population because of drought, disease or pest pressure, or any other situation that might threaten a plant’s population. It also means learning the “At-Risk” and “To-Watch” lists of plants from United Plant Savers, and paying attention to threatened plants and ecosystems locally.
This means leaving an area in better shape than we found it, removing trash and litter, or collecting seeds in the fall and spreading them around the site. It looks like moving like an herbivore does across the landscape when we harvest, taking a little here and a little there, so that you can barely even tell the area has been harvested from, leaving enough for the animals, pollinators, germinating seedlings, and so on. It involves deep observation and becoming a citizen scientist and understanding- intimately- the reproductive cycle of each plant we harvest so we can help it proliferate.
The guidelines for honorably harvesting by professional herbalist, Robin Wall Kimmerer:
- Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
- Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
- Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
- Never take the first. Never take the last.
- Take only what is given.
- Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
- Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
- Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
- Share.
- Give thanks for what you have been given.
- Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
- Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
Part 2 explores what can be crafted and how and can be found HERE
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