This week's interview is with Brian Hammons, CEO and President of Hammons Black Walnuts — the country's largest commercial producer of finished black walnuts. Black walnuts, of course, are a wild food very different from the English Walnuts most of us are familiar with, and sourced from nut trees native to North America.

Each year Hammons buys millions of pounds of Black Walnuts from foragers all over the middle of the country, through an innovative network of buying and hulling stations they set up each harvest season.

Brian is passionate about Black Walnuts, just like his father, and his father’s father were. He and his company embody the noble, but not so common traits, of hard work and work ethic, good stewardship, family tradition, and transparent business practices. And all of that comes through in the way he talks about what they do at Hammons.

We often quote the writer and foraging icon Sam Thayer here on the show. He talks about what he calls “Ecoculture” as a more ancient and sustainable alternative to Agriculture. He’s quick to point out that with the right shifts in landscape management, viable wild food sheds are possible on a scale we can’t really imagine at present. To us, Hammons represents a company that’s been doing precisely that — creating a viable market for a wild food, sustainably, for decades. Not only that, but it’s a win-win-win, because as the customer gets a healthy, sustainable wild food, Hammons prospers and so do the foragers who supply them with their raw materials. Supporting companies like theirs moves us towards a new — or perhaps old — way of engaging the landscape for our food needs. It’s exciting to us, and it opens up a world of possibilities! Here’s to happy foraging!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/104

It’s our pleasure to share a conversation with Sunny Savage of Maui, Hawaii — a modern-day wild food pioneer and incredible asset to our community of foragers. Sunny teaches wild food internships, created a foraging and cooking television series, ran a food truck featuring foraged ingredients, and has even created a foraging app.

While most of us think of Hawaii as a kind of tropical paradise, there are — in some parts of the archipelago — darker forces at work there than just the endless golf courses. Villainous bioengineering companies test their toxic wares there, and invasive species — otherwise balanced into their own native ecology — wreak havoc on the native floral and faunal assemblages of the Hawaiian islands. While the typical response of conservation groups has been to reach for pesticides — very often from those same bioengineering companies we just mentioned —  Sunny has been presenting a different approach. Making them, when we can, into foods.

Sunny shares some powerful insights in this interview that are very important to the ongoing conversation we’ve had here on this show about deleterious, non-native plants, and this is just a compliment to her otherwise wonderful wild food wisdom. So, enjoy this conversation with the one and only Sunny Savage!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/103

We're on our way back from North and South Dakota as this podcast comes out. Instead of flying, we drove out, so we could bring our coolers, which, to our delight and gratitude, are now brimming with buffalo meat. Our harvest was enough to share with our host, the many hands that helped us, and our production team too. As he always has, the buffalo provides.

Now, of course, we know they’re properly called bison today — scientific name Bison bison — but after a week on the Standing Rock Reservation, it's hard to call them that. There, the people — Lakota and Dakota — say buffalo. And who knows better than a people whose life way and history has been so inextricably linked to this animal. So, for now, we'll call them what they call them.

Travis 'Good Bull Man' Condon — our host — invited us out to harvest a buffalo on the prairie and to share a traditional meal with some elders from the community. He put in a tremendous amount of work with us,  gutting, butchering, and packing our buffalo. He shared meals with us — and ceremony, language, stories and songs. It’s hard to describe all the magic we experienced during our stay there, and most is probably best kept close to the heart anyway, but suffice it to say that we are leaving there with more than full coolers. Our hearts are full too, with joy and love, and appreciation for our new friends. We’re already planning our trip back to what was some of the most beautiful country we’d ever visited and some of the most gracious folks we’ve ever met.

Our hunt, our chokecherry harvest, and of course the incredible meal we shared after, will be featured in Season 2 of WildFed on the Outdoor Channel. We’ve already reviewed the footage and can hardly wait for you to see it.

So, Wóphila — thanks — and gratitude. Your listenership, as always, is appreciated.

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/102

Jess Starwood is an herbalist, forager, chef, and the author of the new book, Mushroom Wanderland. Being on opposite coasts, we've only known Jess through the exquisite photography and ecologically inspired writing featured on her beautifully curated social media pages. With her new book getting the attention of the foraging community, and with so many requests to have her on the show, this seemed like a great time to finally connect with her to learn more about the important impact she's having on modern wild food culture.

In this interview, Jess and Daniel chat about the wild world of mushrooms, herbalism, the sustainability of wild food, the complex tastes of wild food and so much more. Enjoy!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/101

Today’s podcast is with Jenna Rozelle, a longtime friend of the podcast and someone who has been very involved — if not from a bit behind the scenes — in the modern wild food culture. She was one of our first guests, and we recently sat down with her to catch up and talk about the state of the wild food scene — both here where we live and around the country.

Jenna, our producer Grant, and Daniel have a fun and lively discussion ranging all over the map as they discuss foraging, hunting, fishing, and general wild food ecology, as well as some thoughts about the future of wild food culture in North America. The conversation is filled with a lot of useful info and some good laughs too. Enjoy!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/100

Mario Kalpou is the host of Man Eats Wild, a new show premiering on Outdoor Channel later this month.

Mario’s lifestyle is larger than life. He’s a self-professed adrenaline addict, who seeks thrills and big adventure, but he’s also a very thoughtful hunter, and his ethics, like ours here at WildFed, center around his approach to food.

A native of Australia, he made the first season of his show in the South Pacific — filming in Australia, but also in New Zealand.

As you’re listening to this, he’s headed off to Africa, where he formerly worked as a hunting guide — what they call a Professional Hunter there — to film the second season of his new show.

Man Eats Wild, like WildFed, airs on Mondays on the Outdoor Channel as part of their Taste of the Wild block, as both of our shows are food-focused. While our artistic styles are a bit different, we both view hunting, fishing, and foraging through a similar lens. We think it's an ancient — but still relevant and important — approach to acquiring quality food and that this food is healthier for us than anything we can purchase in the store.

This was a great conversation, and we're excited to have him as a friend and ally… and we're wishing Man Eats Wild huge success with its upcoming premier!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/099

We've just returned from a week in the beautiful Hill Country of Texas, filming an episode for Season 2 of WildFed TV show on the Outdoor Channel.

Our host and guide to the incredible property we visited — Bamberger Ranch Preserve — was Jared Holmes, a zoologist, herpatologist, hunter, butcher, ecological steward and landscape regeneration specialist. Bamberger Ranch serves as a model of what is possible with good stewardship, despite the incredible insults to the land that have been perpetrated here over the last several hundred years.

We came home from the ranch with feral hog meat, and braised one of the hams a few nights ago. We were simply blown away by the quality of the meat. We’ve had wild hog before, and have enjoyed it, but not like this. These hogs have been living in an intact eco-community, with mineralized soil, clean spring water, and feeding on a diversity of healthy, wild foods. They’re simply healthier hogs, and their meat reflects that.

Jared’s living, working, and raising a family in this little slice of paradise. But the thing is, the whole earth is ready for this kind of regeneration. We just have to get to work.

We’ll leave it to Jared to tell you how.

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/098

Today’s episode was a lot of fun to record, since it's rare that Grant Guiliano — co-producer of this podcast and co-creator of the WildFed television series — and Daniel sit down to just record a show together. There’s so many fun stories and interesting reflections on the things we learn and encounter during — and outside of — those productions — and we thought it would be fun to share some of that with you today!

If you’re just tuning in for the first time, this episode isn’t our typical content, since we’re usually interviewing wild food experts, wildlife biologists, ecologists, authors, chefs, or noteworthy hunters, anglers, and foragers. And we’ll be back to that content next week.

But for now, we hope you’ll enjoy this more candid, behind the scenes conversation between Daniel and Grant.

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/097

Moose! They’re the largest member of the deer family, and no one knows them better than our guest today, Lee Kantar, Maine’s State Moose biologist and head of its Moose Management Program.

Here in Maine we have a thriving population — the largest in the lower 48 — but our tags are coveted, released each summer after a much-anticipated lottery drawing.

While moose are majestic, if not a bit goofy on those long spindly legs, they’re also facing several threats, not the least of which is the winter tick, an ectoparasite that’s literally been bleeding our moose population to death. Add to that the threat of brain worm and chronic wasting disease, and it soon becomes apparent why the work of Lee Kantar and his colleagues is so important.

It’s also important for us to understand what helps them thrive and what leads to their ultimate demise. That’s why Lee is flying around in helicopters counting moose, wrangling them for the tagging program, and racing to the scene when a collar shows a mortality to perform a necropsy on the spot. All that data is fed back into a management program that’s goal is ensuring moose have a future here with us. Not just for the hunt, but for their own intrinsic value on the landscape.

Tune in for a fascinating conversation on moose, their ecology and effective moose management.

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/096

Never buy fish from a stranger. That’s the motto of our guests Tim and Kayla, AKA the New England Fishmongers.   The Fishmongers of New England have created a model that is changing the way consumers get their fish. From the boat where it's well-cared for, to the Fishmongers who cut and package it, direct to you at the farmers market or restaurant. We're hopeful that this and similar models become the norm, not only bringing the fishermen and the retail buyer closer together, but shortening the supply chain, ensuring that less of the quality, and just as important, the story, is lost in the exchange.   Seafood is, in our opinion, one of the healthiest, most nutrient dense, and physiologically most important food sources we can access. But it can also be some of the most ecologically unsustainable and, frankly, bad tasting if it’s not done right.   If you don’t hunt or raise animals, you need a good butcher. If you don’t fish or get offshore you need a good fishmonger. Fish sticks be dammed!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/095