By Tim Rowland | Contributing Writer

Our species has gotten good at strolling through supermarket aisles, ordering off menus and even growing neat rows of peas in raised beds of perfectly fluffed compost. But somewhere, buried deep in our instinctual hardwiring, is a craving to paw around in the forest duff for sustenance, much as our hairy ancestors would have done thousands of millennia before DoorDash, or online foraging apps.

Most people who have developed a relationship with foraging have a natural-food origin story that happened when they were young and blossomed into the careers and kitchens of adult life.

“I was most certainly born with it; one of my earliest memories is foraging hazelnuts off a bush when I must have been under eight years old,” said Melanie Sawyer, a teacher of foraging, history and wilderness survival. “I remember realizing they were edible and foraging them off a bush on the way to school, and eating them and just really loving it. And then the more I got into the wild areas, the plethora of wild food is just absolutely incredible, but nobody really realizes what they’re walking past every day.”

Sawyer, who lives off-grid in Moriah, said she is “fascinated by the fact that you can find food that doesn’t have chemicals and steroids in it, because I just see processed food as the gateway to so many of the diseases that we suffer from these days.”

Spring foraging in the North Country rolls around each May, and offers a brief but bountiful array of plants that are not only super-nutritious but are something you would be proud to serve to the most discerning of dinner guests.

Responsibility, sustainability and ethics of foraging

Know before you go. Be sure to study up on your local environment, get guidebooks and other sources of factual information before you begin your foraging adventure. Wild edibles vary greatly region to region, season, and native/non-native plants (Baillargeon, Field Mag). Start easy, with wild foods that you’re 100% certain on and never bring anything home unless you’re that sure. Your local trails may have regulations and stipulations on foraging practices, be sure to find out what these are before harvesting.

Leave No Trace. Leave the forest cleaner than when you visited. Just like camping and hiking, following the Leave No Trace principles and holding yourself and others accountable positively impacts our environment. Being respectful of our Forever Wild places in the Adirondacks while foraging creates lasting impact, this also includes bringing another bag for litter or trash, in case you find any.

Respect traditional knowledge and Indigenous stewardship. Overharvesting can be a symptom of skill-based learning, rather than relationship building with our environment. “Collectively, we will ensure that we protect the plant, meet its needs, and help it thrive as it helps us heal. Food as medicine means taking care of plants just as they take care of us,” (North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems).

Don’t reveal locations of foraging sites. Sharing on social media (yes, even Strava and other geolocational apps) and with others can lead to overcrowding, degradation and destruction of wild places (Baillargeon, Field Mag).

Harvest invasive species. “Invasive wild plant species can be a huge issue, leading to the endangerment or decline of native plants, so harvesting them is a great way to help out your native flora,” said Zoe Baillargeon in her article A Modern Guide to Ethical, Sustainable Foraging.

Harvest a small amount to allow for regeneration. Avoid digging up whole plants, and if you accidentally do – replant them, the seeds or seedlings (Waters, Environment).

Now onto the best part — finding what to forage in the Adirondacks during springtime.

Ramps: wildly grown and herbaceous spring onions, with a garlicky twist

Perhaps Mother Nature planned it this way, but one of the earliest plants to pop from the forest floor is also among the most nutritious. Ramps, with broad edible leaves and a bulb like a small onion, are chock full of vitamins and minerals and are believed to be effective fighters against cancer and heart disease. Research at West Virginia University has confirmed their ability to lower blood pressure.

Chef Robert Dumas, director of the Institute of Adventure Hospitality and Food at Paul Smith’s College, incorporates ramps into a number of recipes — but the hunting can be just as appealing as the eating.

“I think there’s something really exciting about ephemeral spring greens,” Dumas said. “It’s the whole engagement of going outside and harvesting some food. It’s hard to describe the feeling that you get — it feels very right when you’re doing it, and I would assume that’s because humans fed themselves that way for millions of years.”

Ramps typically grow along rivers, or in low, damp areas, and resemble a broad-leafed spring onion. It’s important to harvest them decisively, either by clipping one of the three green leaves or digging a couple out of a cluster, which, as with dividing flower bulbs, can fuel future growth.

“I try to make it look like no one’s ever been where I picked,” he said. “And do yourself a favor and put clean ramps in your bag as best as you can. When you dig them out of the ground, take a second to kind of run your finger down the outside of it, stripping away any of the excess dirt; you’ll end up with a lot less gritty product once you’re back in the kitchen.”

Like many foraged greens, washing and cooking is important, both from a food-safety standpoint and for palatability. Dumas will throw ramps on a barbecue grill or place them under a broiler for a little char and serve with “green goddess” dressing or a chimichurri. 

Another method is to blanch the leaves — a quick boil in a pot of salted water followed by a plunge in an ice water bath — and using them in your favorite pesto recipe. Because of the intensity of ramps, Dumas cuts them with spinach leaves and prefers pistachios to pine nuts.

For chimichurri, “Once they come off the grill and cool down, give them a nice chop and then add in olive oil, a little bit of some sort of chili to add a little bit of heat, then add salt, pepper and red wine vinegar, and it’s a wonderful condiment to top things like grilled seafoods, grilled poultry, and it’s also really good on roasted potatoes.”

Fiddlehead ferns: the “asparagus” of the northeast forests

Fiddlehead ferns, which are the sprout of an ostrich fern, is another popular foraging target that also grows primarily on riverbanks. Dumas said it’s distinguished by a V-shaped stem and the brown papery layer covering the coil. Again, ethical harvesting is important — just cut a couple out of the bunch as they emerge from the ground.

After blanching, the classic preparation is to sauté in butter and serve next to the trout that you’ve just pulled from the same stream. But they are also good pickled, or served in most any you would cook asparagus, which their flavor resembles.

Stinging nettles: a highly nutritious spinach alternative

Dumas’ sneaky-good foraging target is stinging nettles, a plant most people go out of their way to avoid. “Stinging nettles are fantastic — they’re super nutritious and relatively easy to identify,” he said. “You’ve got to take a little bit of precaution in the harvesting of them, but as soon as you blanch them, the sting goes away, and you’re left with an ultra nutritious green that tastes a lot like spinach and is just as fantastic as a sauteed green, chopped up, mixed with ricotta and used as a pasta filling, in soups or omelets.”

Pick them when they’re about a foot high, plus overharvesting of this aggressive weed is not an issue. Dumas likes them so much he has even transplanted them to his own property to have a ready supply. 

Propagation of nutritious and healing plants is an area of increasing public interest, but one that’s been around for a long time. Herbalist Jane Desotelle started in 1978 when her newly minted philosophy degree was proving unpopular with the hiring commercial sector.

Today, Underwood Herbs offers medicinal plants, dried and fresh herbs, oils, wreaths and sachets. She also leads workshops teaching people about the benefits of wild plants.

When she was a girl, Desotelle’s mom would send her into the backyard with a bowl to collect greens for the supper table, so she was open to the idea of wild plants when, during down time at a work-study job in the college library, she stumbled upon books of medieval recipes and potions.

In those pre-internet days, conferences, field guides and time spent walking old pastures translated into a business, selling to a co-op and New England gift shops that were beginning to discover the appeal of local products. That nascent interest has blossomed through the years, as Desotelle is finding plenty of takers for her tours.

“Food is getting more expensive, and people are worrying about what they get in the grocery stores,” she said.

Because of today’s emphasis on pills and chemicals, Desotelle said we’ve largely forgotten the catalog, hundreds of thousands of years old, of human healing experience using plants. Indeed, she said, more doctors are coming around to the “food is medicine” theory that suggests good or bad health is dictated by good or bad food. Our forebears may not have had the whiz-bang drugs of today, but neither did they have today’s range of diseases to treat. “I think a lot of the doctors are coming around to ‘Yeah, it’s all coming down to diet,’” she said.

Running an AirBnB farmstay alongside Ben Wever Farm in Willsboro, Pierre-Luc Gélineau said people without rural upbringings are showing an interest in wild foods — something that has the potential to be incorporated into agritourism. “We’ve had people look for mushrooms or other things, and it’s a big learning experience,” he said. “They don’t realize what’s accessible. And some of the edible or medicinal plants are typically what’s considered to be weeds. So you don’t really have to go to a remote place to find plants that are useful.”

Mushrooms: so many varieties to find in the Adirondacks

For Sawyer, learning — and that there is so much to learn — is part of the magic. George Washington learned it when his troops were starving in a harsh, northeastern winter. The Mohicans were surviving in that same environment, the general discovered, on rock tripe lichen and tree cambium, which could be harvested without expending a lot of energy, and provided basic carbohydrates and starches. 

“Those two things were very prevalent, and they must have saved many, many lives,” Sawyer said.

Knowledge such as this has modern applications. Lyme disease, with which modern science has struggled to address, may be treated with Japanese knotweed, which in environmental circles, is a hated invasive. “There is definite link between the chemical makeup of the Japanese knotweed and its efficacy in being able to stop some of the inflammation flare ups associated with Lyme,” said Sawyer, who treats the springtime knotweed spears like asparagus when young and like rhubarb when the shoots get taller.

“I’m fascinated by what nature has to offer, and I am fascinated by the fact that you can find food that doesn’t have chemicals and steroids in it, because I just see processed food in any which shape or form as kind of the gateway to so many of the diseases that we suffer from these days,” Sawyer said. “For me, it’s just fascinating what you can do with nature.”