What a pleasure it was to speak with lifelong forager and pioneer in sustainable commercial wild food and mushroom foraging, Connie Green. Connie founded one of the very first and largest wild food businesses in the U.S., Wine Forest, where she still resides as “head huntress,” overseeing a beautifully rich and diverse selection of wild foods furnished to top chefs, restaurants, retailers and consumers. Friends of the forest, Connie and her team believe that wild food harvesting goes hand in hand with a love and respect for the ecosystems where these delectable wild edibles grow.

In this episode, Connie takes us back in time through the landscape of foraging over the past few decades and shares how she got her start in the commercial foraging business. She illuminates the commercial side of the foraging world with a focus on what she considers to be the secret ingredient in bridging the ancestral practice of hunting and gathering with modern gourmet cooking: sustainability and ethical harvesting practices. 

We also explore some tactical “in the field” topics, such as Connie’s indispensable foraging equipment and her recommendations for how to get started foraging. Tune in and be inspired — or re-inspired — to participate in your local ecology by hunting and gathering from your landscape!

EPISODE BREAKDOWN:

• Show Introduction:
  • Got a question for Kim Anami about healthy human sexuality?
  • Hunt + gather updates: Freediving in Florida
  • Q&A: Back support on long car rides
• Introducing Connie Green
• How Connie came to this way of life
• The landscape of foraging over the decades
• On Euell Gibbons - the great grandfather of foraging
• Wild food in restaurants
• Crossroads between wild foods and agriculture
• Eating invasives
• The sustainability of hobbyist and commercial foragers
• Level of processing for the commercial forager
• Connie’s indispensable foraging equipment
• Plant people, mushroom people, animal people
• Getting started foraging
• A message to aspiring foragers
• Connie’s prognosis for the future of the human species
• Where to find Connie’s work